The writer referred to was Bory de Saint-Vincent, who
wrote the Voyage dans les quatre principales iles des mers d'Afrique,
Paris 1804.) He related, on the alleged authority of an officer, that,
being in want of a magnetic needle to replace one belonging to a compass
which had been injured, he applied to the commodore, who had several in a
drawer in his cabin. Baudin found one, but as it was somewhat rusty, the
officer feared that the magnetic properties of the steel would be
impaired. Baudin expressed his regret, and said: "Everything has been
furnished by the Government in the most niggardly fashion; if they had
followed my advice we should have been provided with silver needles
instead of steel ones!"
Whether or not we believe that a naval commander could be so ignorant of
magnetism, it is certain that Baudin did not enforce the laws of health
on his ships. Sufficient has been said in the first chapter to show so
much. The Consular Government gave unlimited scope for the proper
provisioning of the vessels, and yet we find officers and men in a
wretched condition, the water insufficient, and the food supplies in
utter decay, before the expedition reached Port Jackson. It must be
added, however - even out of its proper place, lest an unduly harsh
impression of Baudin's character should be conveyed - that he seems to
have made an excellent impression upon the English in Sydney. Governor
King treated him as a friend; and the letter of farewell that he wrote on
his departure was such a delicate specimen of grace and courtesy, that
one would feel that only a gentleman could have written it, were there
not too many instances to show that elegant manners and language towards
strangers are not incompatible with the rough and inconsiderate treatment
of subordinates.
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.
Peron 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."* (* Quarterly Review
4 43. There can be no doubt that this Quarterly article had a great
influence in formulating the idea which has been current for nearly a
century regarding Napoleon's deep designs. Paterson's History of New
South Wales (1811) repeated portions of the article almost verbally, but
without quotation marks (see Preface page 5), and many later writers have
fed upon its leading themes, without submitting them to examination.) The
fact that this sweeping condemnation was made in a powerful organ of
opinion bitterly hostile to the administration which it meant to attack,
would minimise its importance for us, a century later, were it not that
more recent writers have adopted the same assumption.
