A Brief History of Circumnavigators

by Derek Wilson

  Businessmen, like Nature, abhor a vacuum. As Europe passed from the age of Enlightenment into the era of unbridled commercial expansion, merchants sought ways of exploiting the newly-discovered regions on the surface of their planet. The Australian settlements grew, not just as penal colonies, but as places where massive land grants and cheap convict labour enabled rough pioneers to become estate owners of substance. Western entrepreneurs fixed their eyes on the virtually closed economies of China and Japan: surely some way could be found to force these haughty orientals to trade with Europe and the USA. The western seaboard of America also had commercial potential. The local people were experienced trappers eager to exchange the skins of bears, beavers and sea-otters for cheap manufactured goods. As more and more ships travelled to the Pacific coasts and islands, circumnavigation ceased to be the preserve of explorers and adventurers. More and more merchant captains braved the Horn, the Roaring Forties and the empty Pacific.

  But national pride was still a major factor. The heirs of La Pe-rouse were just as eager as the heirs of Cook to claim their share of the commercial results of exploration:

  The English have too long taken advantage of our silence; too long have they had the honour of those discoveries in which we have anticipated them: what! because unfortunate circumstances, too well known to the whole world for me not to spare myself the mortification of repeating them, and the reader that of reading them, have presented insurmountable obstacles to the publication of the voyage of our countryman, at the time that it ought to have appeared, must we suffer, without complaining, that this unfortunate navigator should not, after his death, enjoy his immortal labours? Ah! if his destiny has not allowed us to engrave them on his tomb; at least, in claiming this inheritance, let the feeling and just nation, for which he sacrificed his life, for ever consecrate in the annals of history, his services, his death, and its gratitude!2

  So wrote Monsieur Charles Fleurieu in his exceedingly pompous account of Etienne Marchand’s circumnavigation of 1790–1792.

  Marchand was a man on whom fortune did not smile. He emerged from obscurity to lead a pioneering commercial expedition. It failed and he returned to obscurity. The failure was not due to any flaw in the project. Only the timing was wrong. Unfortunately, in business bad timing is even more disastrous than a bad product. The main objective of the voyage was to trade skins from North America with Cantonese merchants and return laden with Chinese wares for the home market. Marchand was also anxious to stake out colonial claims for France. All this had been planned under the ancien régime but, by the time Marchand sailed, at the end of 1790, that regime had been swept away. No one at that stage realised how far the French Revolution would go. Days before Marchand’s return in August 1792, the royal family were thrown into prison. Within weeks the slaughter of aristocrats and officials had begun. A government that was violently overthrowing society at home and fighting enemies on its borders had little time or enthusiasm to spare for overseas adventures. Thus, when Marchand’s journal was turned into a highly-coloured, nationalistic report it was completely ignored. Its author could not even find a French publisher prepared to have it printed.

  Marchand set off westabout in the 300-ton Solide and rounded the Horn during the month of April. His first halt for watering was in the Marquesas. While there, he explored the islands thoroughly and was able to add another cluster to the group shown on his chart. He called his discovery Revolution Isles and claimed them for France. But such imperialistic behaviour agreed ill with the new philosophy reigning in Paris, and M. Fleurieu found it necessary to explain away the good captain’s behaviour:

  Since navigation has made known to Europeans parts of the terrestrial globe of which the ancients did not suspect the existence, they have persuaded themselves that the whole world belongs to them and that the lands which they happen to discover are portions of their universal domain . . . Captain Marchand, following the example of his numerous predecessors, thought it incumbent on him to take possession, in the name of the French nation. . This ceremony which would be only ridiculous from its inutility, if it were not contrary to the law of nature and of nations, was performed by fastening with four nails, against the trunk of a large tree, an inscription containing the name of the ship and of the captain and the act of taking possession of the island by the French.3

  Fleurieu was less critical, though excessively arch, about another aspect of the Solide’s visit to the Marquesas:

  Among the islanders brought by the canoes from Santa Christina and La Dominica, was a pretty considerable number of women and young girls: the greater part were remarkable for their youth and beauty. Their looks, their gestures, and repeated allurements, left no doubt of the motive of their visit; and the men who accompanied them, vied with each other in their eagerness to serve them as interpreters, and to make a tender of them to their entertainers. The ladies were admitted on board, and were welcomed by some young seamen of the southern provinces of France, whose senses six months of fatigues had not been able to deaden. At first sight, negotiations were begun; and the contracting parties not opposing to each other any dilatory or evasive clauses, they presently flew down between decks to conclude the treaty . . . Let us throw a thick veil over what is passing. I shall only say that, on the approach of night, the young Mendoca belles were seen to re-appear on deck, loaded with nails, small looking-glasses, little knives, coloured glass-beads, ribbands, bits of cloth, and other productions of our arts, which they had bartered for the only commercial article that they had at their disposal. Often, in the sequel, they introduced less mystery into their traffic; they have been seen, without any other clothing than that of nature, to climb to the masthead by the ratlings, with an agility which the young sailors, who hastened to follow them, could scarcely equal; and, more than once, the tarry top was transformed into a temple of Gnidus.4

  Marchand reached the coast of North America in August and in the region of Queen Charlotte Islands he found a group of Amerindians willing to trade in furs. Uncouth these fellow human beings may have seemed to sophisticated eyes – and noses: ‘on approaching them the olfactory organs experience a most unpleasant sensation, which apprises the stranger to go no farther’5 – but they proved to be shrewd businessmen. They were used to dealing with white men, mainly Spaniards, and were quite clear about what they wanted in exchange for their skins. Pots, pans and tools were welcomed, as were any utilitarian metal goods. Trinkets, beads and decorative items did not interest them at all. They were vaguely aware that the Europeans had come a long way to obtain furs and could not afford to return empty-handed. They were in a sellers’ market, and they knew it. The ‘civilised’ Frenchmen discovered that there was nothing they could teach the ‘primitives’ about business. For example, when one of the Indians struck a particularly good bargain, his neighbours immediately put him in charge of negotiating on their behalf. However, patience and persistence brought their reward: after a couple of months, Marchand had a hold well loaded with otter, seal, bear, beaver, racoon and marmot skins.

  He set sail across the Pacific and, via the Sandwich Isles and the Marianas, he came to Canton. There he had a double shock. The Chinese, having recently concluded a commercial treaty with the Russians, had put an embargo on trade in furs with all other foreign nationals. The other unwelcome news came from Captain James Ingraham of the United States brig Hope. Ingraham had been on a similar voyage. He, too, had called at the Marquesas and he had discovered the ‘Revolution Isles’ just a few weeks before Marchand arrived.

  These were cruel blows but Marchand was resilient. As soon as possible, he made sail for Île de France. He had arranged for money to be deposited there for further mercantile ventures. But all he found waiting for him when he arrived on 30 January 1792 was news of the confused state of affairs in France. There was no money and, therefore, no possibility of returning to the Orient to salvage something from the commercial ruins of the voyage. There was nothing to be done but to return to France. The Solide reach
ed Toulon on 14 August.

  But there were, of course, the furs. They should fetch a good price in European markets. Alas, Marchand’s precious cargo was the final victim of his genius for bad timing. The skins were sent to Lyons. Now Lyons was a royalist centre and not a safe place to be. Within months the city was besieged by government forces. When it fell, in October 1793, it was decided to make an example of the place. Many of its buildings were razed and 2,000 citizens were executed. As for the furs, they were confiscated, thrown into a warehouse and forgotten. After a long struggle with the revolutionary bureaucracy, the owners eventually established title to their property. It was too late. The cargo that Etienne Marchand had brought two-thirds of the way round the world had been almost completely destroyed by worms.

  War and ideological ferment preoccupied the nations of Europe for many years. The political climate was not congenial to adventurous ocean voyages. Yet, paradoxically, one of the oddest circumnavigations sprang directly from the clash of ideas which so much engaged men’s minds in the dying years of the eighteenth century.

  Thomas Muir was a young Scottish lawyer and an advocate of parliamentary reform. In the revolutionary 1790s the views he expressed could only be alarming to the government. In 1793 he survived a charge of sedition and fled across the Channel where he spent some months being fêted by kindred spirits among the new ruling élite in Paris. The moment he set foot once more upon his native soil he was arrested and subjected to a mockery of a trial. He was found guilty on a number of ridiculously vague counts and sentenced to be transported for fourteen years. The members of the jury were appalled and would have made a plea for commutation of sentence had not the government made their will plain by means of a threatening letter to one of the jurymen. Thus, in March 1794, Muir set off in a convict ship on the first leg of his circumnavigation.

  At Botany Bay he decided on making the best of his captivity. He bought some land and settled down to become a farmer. But not everyone was prepared to let him disappear into obscurity. He was widely regarded as a martyr for political freedom, nowhere more so than in the USA. A group of Americans decided to rescue him and, a little more than a year after his arrival in Australia, he was brought away in the US sloop Otter. But his adventures were only just beginning. He was taken across the Pacific. Then his ship was wrecked in Nootka Sound. He and the other survivors were captured by Amerindians, made their escape, and travelled in an open boat right down the coast to Mexico. They were well treated there and, making their way across the country, were able to find a ship bound for Cuba. There, Muir’s luck changed yet again. England was now at war with Spain and Muir was arrested by the authorities and shipped back to Cadiz. He thus returned to Europe as he had left it – as a prisoner. Just off the Spanish coast the frigate in which he was travelling fell in with two English ships. There was a fierce exchange of fire and the Spanish captain sustained heavy losses before he was able to get his vessel into harbour. Among those given up for dead was Thomas Muir. A cannon ball had taken away half his face. Amazingly, he survived. The French government intervened and he was welcomed back to Paris as a hero, in February 1798. There his strange journey ended. But he was not destined to be able to recollect adversity in tranquillity. His terrible wound eventually got the better of him. He died seven months later, at the age of thirty-three. Perhaps it was as well. He was spared the prospect of seeing the egalitarian revolution collapse and be replaced by the tyranny of Napoleon Bonaparte.

  That tyranny rose and fell. It left in its wake a dynamic and turbulent Europe: a continent of rapid commercial expansion, changing social aspirations and sporadic political upheaval. Much that was true of the old world was also true of the new, Certainly, on both sides of the Atlantic scientists and scientifically-minded captains vied with each other in taking up the interrupted task of exploration. Scarcely had the Napoleonic Wars ceased before expeditions were being fitted out to the Pacific and the North-West Passage. But, within a few years, mariners turned their attention to that territory which Cook had declared unexplorable – Antarctica.

  The impetus for this area of enterprise was, as usual, commercial. It was the quest for whale oil and seal skins which drew men to the inhospitable seas on the edge of the pack ice. At the same time that Marchand was making his unsuccessful voyage (1790–1792), an American captain, Daniel Greene, completed a circumnavigation during which he visited South Georgia to hunt seals and did a lucrative trade in them at Canton. Over the next thirty years US, British and Australian captains were increasingly active in pillaging the natural resources of this remote region.

  But it was not trade which drew Baron Thaddeus von Bellingshausen to the Antarctic, to stake a small but significant claim for Russia in the process of polar exploration. Not until 1803 did the empire of the tsars take an interest in long-distance navigation. By that time their colonisation of the northern landmass had extended to Kamchatka, on the Pacific coast. Overland communication was difficult and the only satisfactory way of supplying the new settlements was by ship, which, whether eastabout or westabout, involved a journey more than half-way round the globe. The pioneering voyage was made between 1803 and 1806 by Baron A. J. von Kruzenstern, who reached Kamchatka via the Horn and continued westwards, returning to the Baltic without having lost a single crew member from his two ships. The young fifth lieutenant in the Nadezhda was Thaddeus Bellingshausen. Thirteen years later he was given the command of his own expedition.

  By this time Russia had rapidly emerged as one of the leading European powers and national prestige demanded that she demonstrate her capability in all fields of human endeavour. But that was not the only reason for Bellingshausen’s voyage. It was obvious in St Petersburg that any further colonial and commercial expansion would depend on an efficient navy. To help achieve this the government decided to commission a voyage which would test men and ships to the uttermost. Bellingshausen’s own prime motivation came from his intensely high regard for Captain Cook. He wanted to complete the great pioneer’s work in the Antarctic by circumnavigating as far as possible within the circle.

  After a personal send-off by Tsar Alexander I, Bellingshausen quitted the port of Kronstadt with two ships, the Vostok and the Mirnyi, on 23 June 1819. He sailed for the South Atlantic where he completed the survey of South Georgia begun by Cook. He followed his hero’s eastward path but aimed to strike farther south. He crossed the Antarctic Circle at the beginning of 1820 and travelled south-eastwards through the steadily thickening ice-fields. Three weeks later, in about 69°S, Bellingshausen made the following entry in his immaculately-kept journal:

  The ice towards the south-south-west adjoined the high icebergs which were stationary. Its edge was perpendicular and formed into little coves, whilst the surface sloped upwards towards the south to a distance so far that its end was out of sight even from the masthead.6

  Without realising it, Bellingshausen had become the first explorer to see the edge of the Antarctic continent. (The terrain he failed to identify lies due south of the Cape of Good Hope. It was not charted until 1931, when it was named Princess Ragnhild Land.)

  Leaving the polar region for the winter, Bellingshausen now undertook a thorough survey of the treacherous Tuamotu group of islands and reefs. Then he made a refreshment stop at Tahiti. The place had changed. The Society Islanders were still very friendly. But now they were clothed in dresses, shirts and jackets of European manufacture. A number of white men (mostly sailors) who had deserted had settled among them. Missionaries had arrived. The people had pulled down their shrines. And on their first Sunday, when the officers went ashore,

  . . . we saw only children about the houses, all the grown-up natives having gone to the service. When we arrived at the Church, it was already quite full . . . All the islanders were dressed very neatly in their best white and yellow holiday robes; almost all wore the umbrella-shaped head-dress and the women had fastened white or red flowers above their ears. All were very attentive to the Christian teaching of Mr Nott,
who spoke with great feeling. Coming out of church the natives greeted us and then scattered to go home, whilst we returned to the cutter. After dinner the officers of both ships went ashore again, where they were received in the usual friendly way and were entertained with cocoa-nut milk. Some of the natives would not accept any presents on Sunday.

  This strict observance of the religious law enjoining disinterestedness in a people whose former savage instincts cannot have completely faded from memory, must really be regarded as exemplary.7

  The preacher was Henry Nott, one of the missionaries who, with the active help of King Pomare II had brought Christianity to the islands. (There was a considerable relapse into paganism after the king’s death in 1824.)

  As soon as the weather became warmer, Bellingshausen pointed Vostok’s bow once more to the southern Pacific and the Antarctic. In January 1821 he discovered the first land located within the circle: two islands which he named Peter Island and Alexander Island. When he eventually left the Antarctic Circle for the South Shetlands and the warmer seas beyond, Bellingshausen had added to the charts another 42° of explored ocean above the line. It was a considerable achievement. (All the captains who steered their vulnerable little ships through that maze of towering, fragmenting ice command our admiration.) Yet it attracted little public attention. Nor did the voyage of English whaler John Biscoe, ten years later (1830–32). He followed a similar route to Bellingshausen’s but reached farther south at several points and identified at a distance the coast of Enderby Land, the first part of the continent to be discovered within the circle.