And That Is Precisely What The East India Company's Directors
Feared That Napoleon Intended.
One of them, the Hon.
C.F. Greville, wrote
to Brown, the naturalist of the Investigator, "I hope the French ships of
discovery will not station themselves on the north coast of New
Holland";* (* January 4, 1802. Historical Records of New South Wales 4
677.) and the Company, recognising their own interest in the matter,
voted six hundred pounds as a present to the captain, staff, and crew of
the Investigator before she sailed from England. But instead of what was
feared, the French ships devoted principal attention to the south, where
there was original geographical work to do - a natural course, their
object being discovery, but not what might have been expected had their
real design been acquisition. Peron censured Baudin because he examined
part of the west coast before proceeding to the unknown south; and when
at length Le Geographe did sail north, the work done there was very
perfunctory. Baudin himself was no fighting man; nor was there with the
expedition a military engineer or any officer capable of reporting upon
strategic situations, or competent to advise as to the establishment of a
fort or a colony. Captain Hamelin and Lieutenant Henri de Freycinet
afterwards saw active service with the Navy, but the staff knew more
about flowers, beetles, butterflies, and rocks than about fortifications
and colonisation.
In recent years research has concentrated powerful rays of light on the
intricacies of Napoleonic policy.
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