But Though His Duty Prescribed That He Must Not
Offer Any Provocation, He Could Not Forget That When He Left Europe Great
Britain And France Were Still At War, And Preparation For Extremities Was
A Measure Of Mere Prudence.
The stranger proved to be "a heavy-looking ship without any top-gallant
masts up." On the Investigator hoisting
Her colours, Le Geographe "showed
a French ensign, and afterwards an English jack forward, as we did a
white flag." Flinders manoeuvred so as to keep his broadside to the
stranger, "lest the flag of truce should be a deception." But the
demeanour of the French being purely pacific, he had a boat hoisted out
and went on board, Le Geographe having also hove to.
On the French vessel, meanwhile, similar curiosity had been provoked as
to the identity of the ship sailing east. Captain Baudin's men had been
engaged during the morning in harpooning dolphins, which they desired for
the sake of the flesh. Peron, in his narrative, waxes almost hysterically
joyous about the good fortune that brought along a school of these fish
just as the ship's company were almost perishing for want of fresh food.
They appeared, he says, like a gift from Heaven.* (* "Cette peche
heureuse nous parut comme un bienfait du ciel. Alors, en effet, le
terrible scorbut avoit commence ses ravages, et les salaisons pourries et
rongees de vers auxquelles nous etions reduits depuis plusieurs mois
precipitoient chaque jour l'affreux developpement de ce fleau." Voyage de
Decouvertes 1 323.) Unlike the bronzed and healthy crew of the
Investigator, the company on Le Geographe were suffering severely from
scurvy. The virulence of the disease increased daily. They were rejoicing
at the capture of nine large dolphins, which would supply them with a
feast of fresh meat, when the look-out man signalled that a sail was in
sight.* (* Mr. T. Ward, in his Rambles of an Australian Naturalist (1907)
page 153, relates that in 1889 he harpooned a large dolphin, Grampus
gris, in King George's Sound, and that whalers told him that dolphins
were at one time common in the Bight, in schools of two and three
hundred. As to dolphin flesh as food, the reader may like to be reminded
that Hawkins's men, in 1565, found dolphins "of very good colour and
proportion to behold, and no less delicate in taste" (Hakluyt's Voyages
edition of 1904 10 61). So also in 1705 a voyager to Maryland related the
capture of dolphins, "a beautiful fish to see...it is also a good fish to
eat." "Narrative of a Voyage to Maryland," printed from manuscript in
American Historical Review 12 328.)
At first it was considered that the ship was Le Naturaliste, the consort
of Le Geographe, the two vessels having become separated in a storm off
the Tasmanian coast. But as the Investigator steered towards the French
and hoisted her flag, the mistake was corrected.
Flinders took Brown, the naturalist, with him on board, because he was a
good French scholar; but Captain Baudin spoke English "so as to be
understood," and the conversation was therefore conducted for the most
part in that language.
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