| RESEARCHED BY PETER KILLACKEY |
This was on 23 January The fleet did not, however, sail for Port Jackson the following morning for to the great surprise of Phillip and his crews two ships were seen making towards the bay.
Some thought they were Dutch vessels sent to order them away; others that they were extra store-ships from England. They turned out to be the Astrolabe and the Boussole under the command of Jean-Francois de Galaup, Comte de Laperouse.
These vessels had left Brest in August 1785 on a voyage of exploration in the Pacific. Laperouse had received instructions to visit Easter Island and a number of other Pacific Islands and then to proceed to the western coast of New Holland. Having explored these shores he was "to take a closer view of the southern, the greater part of which has never been visited."
These instructions left a good deal to his discretion and Laperouse proceeded from Easter Island to the Sandwich Islands, and thence to Alaska. Then he turned south and having examined the American coast as far as Monterey in Mexico struck across the Pacific to Macao in China. Thereafter he visited the Philippines, and Formosa and explored the north-east coast of Asia to Kamschatka. There the journals were sent overland to France.
The ships then took a southerly course reaching the Navigator Islands in December 1787. At the island of Tutuila a tragedy occurred. Captain de Langle of the Astrolabe and eleven men were killed in a surprise attack by the natives and two of the ship's boats were lost. While at Avatscha Laperouse had received instructions to visit the English colony at Botany Bay so he proceeded there to replace his lost boats and refresh his crews.
Possibly too, he had some hopes of direct assistance from the newly established colonists. That he realized was out of the question but the relations between the French at Botany Bay and the English at Port Jackson were quite cordial as long as the French ships stayed, before they sailed Pere Receveur, chaplain of the Astrolabe died and was buried at La Perouse where a monument, erected in 1829, may still be seen.
The French ships left Botany Bay on 10 March 1788 and disappeared. Many years later it was discovered that they had been wrecked in a sudden cyclone off the island of Vanikoro in the Santa Cruz group, and that those who managed to struggle ashore were murdered by the natives as soon as they landed.
|