Terre Napoleón; a History of French Explorations and Projects in Australia by Scott Ernest Sir

Author:Scott, Ernest, Sir [Scott, Ernest, Sir]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Classics, General, Fiction, Nonfiction, Reference & Language, Reference, Fiction & Literature
ISBN: 4057664572233
Google: ur7CDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2019-12-03T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8. EXODUS OF THE EXPEDITION.

The passports from the English Government.

Sailing of the expedition.

French interest in it.

The case of Ah Sam.

Baudin's obstinacy.

Short supplies.

The French ships on the Western Australian coast.

The Ile Lucas and its name.

Refreshment at Timor.

The English frigate Virginia.

Baudin sails south.

Shortage of water.

The French in Tasmania.

Péron among the aboriginals.

The savage and the boat.

Among native women.

A question of colour.

Separation of the ships by storm.

Baudin sails through Bass Strait, and meets Flinders.

Scurvy.

Great storms and intense suffering.

Le Geographe at Port Jackson.

England and France were at war when, in June 1800, application was made to the British Admiralty for passports for the French discovery ships. Earlier in that year the Government of the Republic sent to London Louis Guillaume Otto, a diplomatist of experience and tried discretion, to arrange for the exchange of prisoners of war; and it was Otto, whose tact and probity won him the esteem of King George's advisers, who conducted the preliminary negotiations which led up to the Treaty of Amiens. Earl Spencer was First Lord of the Admiralty--in Pitt's administration (1783 to 1801)--when the application was made.

The Quarterly Review of August 1810 (volume 4 page 42) fell into a singular error in blaming Addington's administration for the issue of the passports. Pitt's ministry did not fall till March 1801; and the censure which the reviewer levelled at the "good-natured minister," Earl St. Vincent, who was Addington's First Lord of the Admiralty, for entertaining the French application, was therefore undeserved by him. "A few months after the retirement of Mr. Pitt from office and the succession of Mr. Addington, that is to say, in June 1800," are the opening words of the Quarterly article--an extraordinary blunder for a contemporary to make. The Quarterly was, of course, bitterly adverse to Addington's administration, in politics; but though party bias is responsible for strange behaviour, we shall be safe in attributing to lapse of memory this censure of a minister for the act of his predecessor. St. Vincent was in active service, as Admiral in command of the Channel Fleet, when the passports were issued.

It cannot be assumed that Spencer would have complied with such a request from a nation with which his country was at war, had he not been satisfied that the expedition was what it professed to be, one for discovery and scientific research. The passports granted guaranteed to Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste protection from hostile attack from British ships, and bespoke for them a favourable reception in any British port out of Europe where they might have to seek shelter.

The Admiralty was in later years severely blamed for compliance. Circumstances that have been narrated in previous pages generated the suspicion that the real purpose of the expedition was "to ascertain the real state of New Holland, to discover what our colonists were doing, and what was left for the French to do, on this great continent in the event of a peace, to find some port in the neighbourhood of our settlements which should be to them what Pondicherry was to Hindustan, to rear the standard of Bonaparte on the first convenient spot.

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