While
Making For Bass Strait, Le Geographe Fell In With A Small Vessel Engaged
In Catching Seals, With Whose Captain The French Had Some Converse.
He
told them that the British Government had sent out special instructions
to Port Jackson that, should the French
Exploring ships put in there,
they were to be received "with all the regard due to the nature of their
mission, and to the dignity of the nation to which they belonged"* (*
Peron, 1824 edition 2 175.) - surely a noble piece of courtesy from the
Government of a people with whom the French were then at war. It was this
intimation, there can be no doubt, that a month later determined Baudin
to go to Sydney, for Captain Hamelin of Le Naturaliste was not aware of
his intention to do so, as will appear from the following chapter. Bass
Strait was entered on March 27, and the ship followed the southern coast
of Australia until the meeting with Flinders in Encounter Bay, as
described in the earlier part of this book.
By this time, as has been related, scurvy was wreaking frightful havoc
among the crew. Before the Encounter Bay incident occurred, the French
sailors had expressed so much disgust with their putrid meat, weevilly
biscuit, and stinking water, that some of them threw their rations
overboard, even in the presence of the captain, preferring to endure the
pangs of hunger rather than eat such revolting food. After Baudin had
made those investigations which his means permitted in the region of the
two large gulfs, the winter season was again approaching, when high winds
and tempestuous seas might be anticipated. It was therefore hoped by all
on board that when the commandant decided to steer for the shelter and
succour of Port Jackson, he would, as it was only sensible that he
should, take the short route through Bass Strait. In view of the
distressed state of his company, it was positively cruel to think of
doing otherwise. But there was, it seems, a peculiar vein of perversity
in Baudin's character, which made him prone to do that which everybody
wished him not to do. We may disregard many of the disparaging sentences
in which Peron refers to "notre commandant" - never by name - because Peron
so evidently detested Baudin that he is a doubtful witness in matters of
conduct and character. We must also give due weight to the fact that we
have no statement of Baudin's point of view on any matter for which he
was blamed by colleagues who were at enmity with him. But even so, we
have his unquestionable actions upon which to form a judgment; and it is
difficult to characterise by any milder term than stupidity his
determination to sail to Port Jackson from Kangaroo Island round by the
south of Tasmania, a route at least six hundred miles out of his straight
path. That he came to this decision after having himself sailed through
Bass Strait from east to west, and thus learnt that the navigation was
free from difficulty; when he had in his possession the charts of Bass
and Flinders showing a clear course; during a period of storms when he
would be quite certain to encounter worse weather by sailing farther
south; when his crew were positively rotting with the scorbutic
pestilence that made life all but intolerable to them, and attendance
upon them almost too loathsome for endurance by the ship's surgeon; and
when his supplies were at starvation limit in point of quantity and
vermin-riddled in respect of quality that he resolved to take the long,
stormy, southern route in face of these considerations, seems hardly to
admit of explanation or excuse. "A resolution so singular spread
consternation on board," wrote Peron; and it is not wonderful that it
did. The consequence was that the voyage to Port Jackson made a story of
privations pitiful to read. The bare fact that it took Baudin from May 8
to June 20, forty-three days, to sail from Kangaroo Island to Sydney,
whilst Flinders in the Investigator, despite contrary winds, covered the
distance by the Bass Strait route in thirty days (April 9 to May 9),
including several days spent at King Island and Port Phillip, is
sufficient to show how much Baudin's obtuse temper contributed to
aggravate the distress of his people.
Peron described the weather during the voyage southward as "frightful."
"And now the storm blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'er-taking wings,
And chased us south along.
With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roar'd the blast,
And southward aye we fled."
Torrents of very cold rain fell, furious squalls lashed the sea to a
boil, thick fogs obscured the atmosphere; and the ship had to be worked
by men "covered with sores and putrid ulcers, each day seeing the number
of the sick augmented." There was a short rest in Adventure Bay, Bruni
Island, for the purpose of procuring fresh water on May 20, and when the
order to sail again was given, the crew were so much enfeebled by disease
that it took them four hours to weigh the anchor. On the east coast more
storms came to harass the unfortunate men. A paragraph in Peron's own
terms will convey a sufficient sense of the agony endured on the stricken
ship.
"On June 2 and 3 the weather became very bad. Showers of rain succeeded
each other incessantly, and squalls blew with a violence that we had
never experienced before. On the 4th, during the whole day, the weather
was so frightful that, accustomed as we had become to the fury of
tempests, this last made us forget all that had preceded. Never before
had the squalls followed each other with such rapidity; never had the
billows been so tumultuous.
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