To Joseph-Paul Gaimard, formerly assistant surgeon on the Uranie, the opportunity to sail again to the South Seas, this time with Dumont d’Urville in the Astrolabe, was welcomed, but it seems always to have been a second best. Throughout the Astrolabe voyage, which began on 22 April 1826, he kept his former captain, Louis de Freycinet, informed of its progress, and his letters form an interesting supplement to the much more complete account eventually published by d’Urville himself. In the first of the letters he described the relatively uneventful voyage from France to New South Wales and expresses at its end his never-to-be-fulfilled hope of sailing again under Freycinet command.The letter was published on pages 205 to 208 of volume VII of the Bulletin de la Société de géographie . Translations are shown below in italic type.
EXTRACT from a letter from MM. Quoy and Gaimard, dated Port-Jackson, 4 December 1826, addressed to M. Louis de Freycinet.
We arrived here on 2 December, and because two days later we found an opportunity of communicating with you via England, we eagerly take advantage of it.
In order to keep you informed of our trip, we will summarise the events of our one-day visit to Praya in the Cape Verde islands, where M. d’Urville still expected to find Captain King, who had been waiting for us in Tenerife. He was no longer there, but we saw Captain Owen, who has been occupied for four or five years in surveying the Madagascar archipelago and a portion of the neighbouring coast of Africa and also that part of it extending west and north of the Cape of Good Hope as far as Senegal. His expedition consists of three ships and since the beginning of the voyage it has had to mourn the deaths of 150 sailors and twenty-four officers; all those who survived were midshipmen. Captain Owen appears to be a man of merit and simple ways: our officers say his work is very meticulous. He had been to the Ile-de-France on several occasions to recruit crew.
The Bulletin misprinted the first name mentioned as ‘Knig’, but from d’Urville we learn that the name was indeed King, born by no less a person than Phillip Parker King, son of Philip Gidley King, who governed New South Wales from 1800 to 1806. In May 1826 he sailed in command of H.M.S. Adventure, with H.M.S. Beagle in company, to chart the coasts of Peru, Chile and Patagonia, a voyage that was only completed in 1830. He perhaps waited a few days in Tenerife in the hope of seeing the Astrolabe and getting information from the several people on board who had been to the area before him. Among King’s subordinates were John Stokes, John Wickham and Owen Stanley. They had several narrow escapes from shipwreck, putting the two commanders under great strain, and In August 1828 Stokes, the captain of the Beagle, shot himself. When the expedition returned to England in October 1830 King was in poor health and in 1832 he returned to his home town of Sydney. He had already published the Sailing Directions to the Coasts of Eastern and Western Patagonia, and the Straits of Magellan and the Sea-Coast of Tierra del Fuego, and his later journal of the survey forms the basis of the three volumes of the Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships, Adventure and Beagle, published in London in 1839. It was edited by Captain Robert Fitzroy, who succeeded Stokes to the command of the Beagle and in 1831-36 commanded the expedition that took Charles Darwin on his epic voyage of scientific discovery. Tragically, Fitzroy later followed the man he had replaced by killing himself.
William Fitzwilliam Owen was also a figure of some importance in the history of exploration. His Narrative of voyages to explore the shores of Africa, Arabia, and Madagascar; performed in H.M. ships Leven and Barracouta, under the direction of Captain W.F.W. Owen, R.N…., published in London in 1833, is a somewhat odd publication, because although based entirely on Owen’s own reports, it was edited by H.B. Robinson and refers to Owen himself entirely in the third person. Unusually for such an expedition, there was considerable contact with the shore in many of the areas surveyed, some of which were notably unhealthy for Europeans, and in consequence roughly half of all those on board succumbed to diseases of one sort or another. It may be that Owen went to Mauritius (still the ‘Ile de France’ to Gaimard) to recruit crew because he found it easier to do that in a place where the often fatal consequences of service under his command might be less well known.
Crossing the Line, French style. Sketch from Dumont d’Urville Volume 1, p. 65. Gaimard did not mention this ceremony, but he would not have been required to play an active part, having crossed for the first time on the Uranie.
From La Praya to Port King George in New Holland, we saw land only at the Trinity; but we passed two or three of the points where Saxemburg Island has been located, without seeing it.
That they did not see Saxemburg Island is no surprise, because it never existed.
After having rounded the Cape of Good Hope, we were accompanied almost without cease by the winter storms of this hemisphere: gales assailed us which for strength approached very much that of the one we experienced together near Cape Horn: fortunately they pushed us in.the right direction.
This is a reference to the last days of the Uranie. Having left Sydney on Christmas Day 1819, she rounded Cape Horn in almost perfect weather on 5 February 1820 and two days later entered the Bay of Good Success, where the southernmost scientific observations were to be made. Almost immediately a hurricane-force wind sprang up and the vessel barely escaped from the bay and was then driven far to the east under bare sticks for three terrifying days. It is not surprising that de Freycinet chose to then make his observations in the Falklands rather than return to the bay, but it was a decision that led to disaster and the wrecking of the Uranie.
We passed near the islands of Saint Paul and Amsterdam without seeing them. Finally, after three months and seven days of navigation, we made landfall at Port King George, all the more welcome because the seal fishermen, who camp there temporarily, provided us with game and fish. We do not know whether, when you were there yourself, you communicated with the natives, but they have been with us constantly. The Englishmen employ their wives for hunting, fishing, etc., etc. However, these indigenes do not use any kind of canoe, and do not even seem to have ever had the idea of building one.
Louis de Freycinet was one of the early visitors to King George Sound when in command of the Sydney-built schooner Casuarina in the second phase of the Baudin expedition. The Sound was a designated rendezvous for him with Baudin’s Géographe. He had planned to make a second visit as part of the Uranie expedition but after leaving Mauritius he was so far behind schedule that he headed directly for Shark Bay instead.
The decision may have had significant consequences. Had the Uranie returned to France in 1820 with a favourable report on the Sound as a place suitable for European settlement, it is just possible that France might have bestirred herself and sent a fleet, and Western Australia might now be Francophone. By the time of the Astrolabe visit, the window of opportunity for French colonisation had been closed.
Passing through the Bass Strait, the Astrolabe visited Western Port, where the English are preparing to establish a settlement in addition to the very precarious one of fishermen that we found there. It has its disadvantages, however, because fresh water is scarce. We realised when we there that Captain Baudin did not spare you when he sent his boats such a great distance from his vessel. There will be a few corrections to be made to the plan of this port as surveyed by M. Faure, especially in the West Pass, which is large and wide: we got out by tacking. We have also been able to correct the position of Crocodile Reef in the middle of the Bass Strait.
According to Wikipedia, “In the year 1826 it was reported that the French had resolved to found a settlement at some Australian harbour – probably King George’s Sound or Western Port. The British Government at once sent instructions to Sydney for Governor Darling to immediately take possession of these places. As a result, on 18 November 1825 Colonel Stewart, Captain S. Wright, and Lieutenant Burchell were sent in HMS Fly (Captain Wetherall) and the brigs Dragon and Amity with orders to proceed to Western Port. They took with them a number of convicts and a small force composed of detachments of the 3rd and 93rd regiments. The expedition landed at Settlement Point, on the eastern side of the bay near present-day Corinella, which was their headquarters until the abandonment of Western Port at the instance of Governor Darling about twelve months later, as being unfit for civilisation.”
Formal British possession of King George Sound began when Edmund Lockyer arrived there on 25 December 1826 in the Amity with 20 soldiers and 23 convicts. The Union Jack was raised and the annexation was announced on 21 January 1827.
Before arriving at Port-Jackson, we took a quick look at Jervis Bay, which is very beautiful. The entrance is wide and there is a good anchorage inside, sheltered by land on all sides, but there is hardly any fresh water. This is, no doubt, the reason for the English not having established themselves there.
We learned at Port Jackson that the Carpentaria colony was to be re-established further west, because it was placed on a sandy island, and almost all of the men were suffering from scurvy: there is a ship and two frigates here, one of which is to be responsible for the operation I just told you about.
The ‘Carpentaria Colony’ was not in the Gulf of Carpentaria but on Melville Island, off Arnhem Land and was intended for trade with the ‘Malays’ of the Indonesian Islands. The first settlement, known as Fort Dundas, was established on Trafalgar Day, 21 October 1824. The information about the proposed move was obtained by d’Urville when dining with Captain James Stirling, who would attempt to establish an alternative settlement at Raffles Bay on the Cobourg Peninsula (and therefore east rather than west of Fort Dundas). Named Fort Wellington, it was abandoned after just two years, and no trading ever took place.
From Port-Jackson we will go to New Zealand, the Fiji Islands and finally the Torres Strait: Amboine will be our first stopover in civilized country.
Ambon was the base from which the Dutch controlled the spice trade. Whether their occupation of the island could be considered civilised is another matter
If for a time we had to suffer from remaining at sea on a small ship, now we enjoy the advantages of being able to approach land more closely, to anchor and to moor more quickly; etc. All is well and very well on board; our expedition is very agreeable to us; but, very dear commander, we keep talking about what we hope to do with you again.
You will soon receive a fairly large quantity of drawings at your academy, together with a Memoir. We will try to take advantage of an English ship that has to leave Port-Jackson in a month’s time to send them to you. We will write to you then in more detail than is possible today.
The next letter, however, would be sent from the Bay of Islands, in the extreme north of New Zealand’s North Island.