Terre Napoleón; a History of French Explorations and Projects in Australia

by Sir Ernest Scott

But we have seen that, although Port Phillip was included in the French charts, and inside soundings were actually shown, neither the port nor the entrance was seen by the expedition. How was that information obtained?

Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste lay in Sydney harbour from June 20 to November 18, 1802, their afflicted crews receiving medical treatment, and their officers enjoying the hospitality of Governor King. Flinders and Lieutenant John Murray, who discovered Port Phillip, were both there during part of the same time. It was then that the French learnt of the existence of the great harbour of which Baudin was ignorant when he met Flinders in Encounter Bay; and it is highly probable that by some means they obtained a copy of the chart which they saw.

Grounds for stating that that is a probability will be advanced a little later. But let us first see how the drawing of Port Phillip that does appear on the Terre Napoleon charts got there.

It was taken, as Freycinet acknowledged,* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 3 430.) "from a manuscript chart prepared on the English ship Armiston, in 1804. In 1806 the French frigate La Piedmontoise captured the British ship Fame. Amongst the papers found on board was this manuscript chart. It so happened that one of the officers of La Piedmontoise was Lieutenant Charles Baudin des Ardennes, who had been a junior officer on Le Naturaliste from 1800 to 1804. (He was no relative of Captain Baudin. The family of Baudin des Ardennes was very well known in France; and this officer became a distinguished French admiral.) He took possession of the manuscript, and handed it over to Freycinet, who made use of it in preparing his charts.

Probably it was a very rough chart; but even so, if Freycinet had had anything like a drawing of Port Phillip made on Le Geographe, he would have turned out a better piece of work. Not only is the outline very defective, but the "lay" of the Nepean peninsula is so grossly wrong that this alone would suffice to show that Freycinet did not merely correct his chart with the aid of that captured from the Fame, but that the whole drawing of Port Phillip was fitted in, like a patch. However ill a navigator may draw, he always knows whether a coast along which he is sailing runs west or north-west. A mariner's apprentice would know that. But on the Terre Napoleon charts, the peninsula lies due east and west, whereas in reality, as the reader will see by reference to any good map, it has a decidedly north-westerly inclination. The patch was not well put on. The consequence of this bad cobbling was to give a box-like, rectangular appearance to the bay, utterly unlike the reality. The east and west sides were carried about as far as Mornington and St. Leonards respectively, in two nearly straight and parallel lines; Swan Bay and Swan Island were missed altogether; and the graceful curve of the coast round by Sorrento and Dromana--a curve most grateful to the eye on a day when sea and sky are blue, and the silver sands and white cliffs shine in the clear light--was tortured into a sharp bend. It was a very rough bit of work.

The fact that an expedition sent out for discovery purposes, and which named a considerable extent of the coast-line traversed after the Emperor who had enabled it to be despatched, had to depend upon a manuscript accidentally obtained from a captured British merchant ship for a chart of the principal port in the territory so flauntingly denominated, hardly calls for comment. But even when we are in possession of this information, we are still left in some doubt as to whether the French had not some sort of a drawing of Port Phillip before they left Sydney. Otherwise the course pursued by their commodore after quitting that port is quite unaccountable. The following reasons induce that belief.

When Baudin bade an affectionate and grateful farewell to Governor King at Sydney on November 18, he sailed direct to King Island, which is situated in Bass Strait, on the 40th parallel of south latitude, about midway between the south-east of Cape Otway and the north-west corner of Tasmania. Le Geographe was accompanied by Le Naturaliste and the little Casuarina. A camp was established on the island, which was fully charted. Baudin had missed it on his former voyage, though he had sailed within a few miles of it. It will be remembered that when Flinders conversed with him in Encounter Bay, and "inquired concerning a large island said to lie in the western entrance of Bass Strait," Baudin said he had not seen it, "and seemed to doubt much of its existence."* (*Flinders, Voyage 1 188.) But Flinders found it easily enough, and spent a little time there before entering Port Phillip. It was doubtless this inquiry of Flinders that induced Baudin to mark down on his chart a purely fictitious island far westward of the actual one, and to inscribe against it the words, "it is believed that an island exists in this latitude."* (* "On croit qu'il existe une ile par cette latitude." See the chart, a little west of Cape Bridgewater (Cap Duquesne).)

As Baudin afterwards found the real island, it is curious that the imaginary one should have been kept upon his chart; but there is a reason for that also. While the French lay at King Island, most of the work done up to date--geographical, zoological, and other--was collected and sent back to France on Le Naturaliste; Le Geographe and the Casuarina remaining to finish the exploratory voyage. Le Naturaliste sailed for Europe on December 16, and entered the port of Havre on June 6, 1803. Had Baudin lived to return to France, and to supervise the completion of the charts, it is most probable that he would have erased the island which was merely supposed, as he had since charted the real one; but Freycinet, not having been present at the meeting with Flinders, and knowing nothing of the reason which induced Baudin to set it down, left it there--a quaint little fragment of corroboration of the truth of Flinders' narrative of the Encounter Bay incident.

Now, when at the end of December Le Geographe and the Casuarina sailed from King Island--the naturalists having in the interval profitably enjoyed themselves in collecting plants, insects, and marine specimens--they made direct for Kangaroo Island, four hundred miles away, to resume the work which had been commenced in the gulfs in the previous April and May. The whole of the movements of the ships up to this time are to be read in the printed logs appended to volume 3 of the Voyage de Decouvertes. Baudin made no call at Port Phillip, nor did one of his three vessels visit the harbour either before or after reaching King Island. But by this time Baudin knew all about the port, and it is surely difficult to suppose that he would have sailed straight past it in December unless at length he had it marked on his rough charts. His officers knew about it too, though none of them had seen it; for Captain Hamelin of Le Naturaliste reported when he reached Paris, that, as he left King Island, he met and spoke to "an English goelette on her way to Port Philips [sic], south-east coast."* (* Moniteur, 27 Thermidor.) It was the Cumberland, Lieutenant Charles Robbins, bound on a mission to be explained later.

It seems reasonable to assume that when Le Naturaliste sailed for France on December 16, and the two other ships for Kangaroo Island later in the same month, Baudin was quite satisfied that he had in his possession as complete a representation of the whole of the Terre Napoleon coasts westward to the gulfs, as would justify him in resuming the work from that situation. Clearly, then, he obtained a Port Phillip drawing of some kind before he left Sydney.