Of the many early European explorations of the Pacific Ocean, none ended in a greater mystery than the voyage of Jean-Francois de Galaup, Comte de la Perouse.
Setting forth on August 1, 1785 with two ships, he was last seen at Botany Bay where he left a copy of his log.
The mystery was solved in 1827 when Peter Dillon, an Irish trader in the South Seas, made landfall on Tikopia.
There, he was astonished to find the natives in possession of a silver sword hilt, teacups, knives and glass beads. He was told that they came from Vanikoro, a tiny island in the Solomons, ringed by almost impenetrable coral reefs.
Dillon visited the island and was told two ships had been wrecked on the reefs in a violent storm. The crew of La Boussole were massacred, and their heads taken to a skull shrine. Those from L’Astrolabe survived and made a fortified camp beside a creek. Over the next six months they constructed a ship and sailed away.
As I discovered myself, Vanikoro is indeed ringed by a deadly reef and our inflatable needed help to weave a passage through it. Having landed, I was taken to the site of the French camp, where excavations have recovered a teacup, candlestick, several French buttons and a small cannon with musket balls.
How about the ships? Underwater archaeologists have probed the wreck site of L’Astrolabe and come up with silver vessels, a clock and the skeleton of a French sailor.
What happened to those who sailed away? In 1818 a ship anchored off Murray Island in the Torres Strait found the local First Nation people possessed a number of European objects including a compass. They were told that 30 years before, a boat had been wrecked, and all survivors were killed except a boy who later set out to sea, never to be seen again.
And in a final twist, history could have taken a very different course had a 16-year-old applicant to join the expedition been accepted by La Perouse. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte.
