This is a rather long post. But 22-year-old Rose de Freycinet is one of my favorite heroines of the sea.
Gentle young
Rose was not even supposed to be there.
Back on September 17, 1817, she had dressed up in a suit of blue
frockcoat and trousers, and just after midnight she had sneaked on board the
corvette Uranie. This was not because
she was naturally daring, or a cross-dresser, but because she wanted to
accompany her beloved husband, Captain Louis-Claude de Freycinet, on a
discovery expedition to the Pacific.
Rose remained hidden in the captain’s cabin until the vessel
was well away from the French coast.
Then her husband made her presence public by inviting the officers,
chaplain, and the expedition artist to a tea party where Rose, still in male
attire, presided. According to her, it
was a happy occasion. “I received them
with a great deal of pleasure and I had a good laugh listening to the various
hypotheses which each one had formulated about my identity.” And the officers
did not seem to mind, either, agreeing one and all that the dainty little lady
with the charming manners and very agreeable appearance was a fit companion for
her aristocratic husband—though some people said that during mess dinners the
conversation about the dining table was more sharp-edged with brilliant wit
than it might have been without a woman to impress.
When the news broke in France,
reactions varied wildly. On October 4,
the editor of the Monitor Universel
declared, “this example of conjugal devotion deserves to be made public.” Reportedly, Louis XVIII was amused. The Lieutenant-Governor of Gibraltar, the
first official to receive visitors from L’Uranie,
was not, and neither was the French Ministry of the Navy. Women were not supposed to travel in ships of
the State, and yet Madame was there—in male clothing! It was unsupportable.
One result of this was that every
now and then the artists of the expedition painted the same scene twice, one
work being true to life, and the other sans
Madame. This subterfuge was necessary
for the official record, Voyage autour du
Monde … exécuté sur les corvettes de S. M. L’Uranie et La Physicienne,
which was prepared by de Freycinet and published between 1827 and 1839. Madame herself was embarrassed that her
presence was against the rules. She was
not comfortable in men’s clothing. The
only time she was glad of it was when the corvette was pursued by an Algerian
corsair. The prospect of being enslaved
was bad enough, but “the thought of a seraglio evoked even more unpleasant
images in my mind, and I hoped to escape that fate thanks to my male disguise.” Luckily, the corsair veered off after
counting the corvette’s cannon, and the possibility of the disguise being
penetrated was averted. Then, after a
disastrous meeting with the scandalized Governor of Gibraltar, it was decided that she should
abandon male dress altogether, much to her relief.
But then, there was the crew. When Rose first arrived on deck the men were
deferential, leaving the lee side of the ship so she could walk in reasonable
privacy. They did their best to refrain from swearing, too, but inevitably
their self-imposed discipline lapsed, a curse slipped out, and Rose was forced
to concentrate her troubled gaze on the water.
This, once noticed, was considered a very good joke, and so from then on
the men would swear and sing rude ditties just loud enough for her to hear,
while the boatswain tried to shut them up by making violent signs behind her
back.
In the end, Madame was forced to
keep out of sight as much as possible.
As the Dictionnaire de Biographie
Français remarked afterwards, this was an admirable display of “moral
superiority over the crew,” but it did have the disadvantage that it made life
on the rolling wave very boring—though Rose herself denied this, declaring she
was happy enough with her guitar, her journal, and her sewing. She revealed herself more frankly when, on
September 12, 1819, on departure from Oahu, she noted ruefully that “this part
of the voyage will be greatly prolonged.”
Louis had made the decision “in order to collect data on the magnetic equator. However much I respect science, I am not fond
of it,” she complained; “nor am I likely to be reconciled to it by Louis’
prolonging of the voyage, which holds nothing terribly exciting for me. It is true that this work is one of the main
objectives,” she allowed, but it was inescapably boring. “If only, like so many travelers, we were
fortunate enough to discover some new island.”
Louis had promised her that if
they did find an unclaimed dot of land, he would name it after her. And lo, two months later, in latitude 14º 32’
42”, they did indeed find an atoll that was so insignificant that it did not
seem to have a name—and so Rose had her wish, even though she was not supposed
to be there. “Let’s see, what shall we
call it?” the artist, Arago, mused in a letter to a friend, his tongue firmly
in his cheek. “Let it be a flowery
name. Shall it be Green Island, Red
Island, or … No, I suppose it will be Rose Island.”
At other times, Rose was terrified
to the point of biting her fingers until they bled. And yet, she never regretted her decision to
defy custom and sail with her beloved husband.
She had sailed to be with him, and to care for him when he was sick or
weary, and no one could nurse him as she could! In ports (with the exception of Gibraltar) La Jolie Commandante —as the officers dubbed her—was an asset, too,
for Madame was a marvelous ambassador, being most loyally French and a
natural diplomat.
While her husband navigated his
ship at sea and measured eclipses on shore, with equal élan she threaded her way through colonial jealousies and strange
points of etiquette. When Rose decided
not to attend a ball at Government House in Mauritius (because she did not
think the expense of a new gown was worth it), she developed a migraine to
avoid the social blunder being seen at a dinner party staged by her host that
night. She was equally adept with native
peoples. Rose was amused when the
Caroline Islanders burst into roars of laughter every time the corvette’s
officers politely raised their hats to each other—”We must, indeed, appear as
strange to the natives as they are to us”—and only a little taken aback when a
woman in Guam, after complimenting her on her curly hair, offered to come on
board and seek out her head lice.
Dietary customs fooled her
completely, especially when Moslem guests left the table in horror after pork
was served, but a Papuan pirate chief who “became very attached” to her chairs
was immediately presented one. Another
Papuan inhaled all the pepper on the table, ate all their pickles, and asked
for “the plate, the glass and the bottle” he had used. These were gladly given (though she refused
him the napkin), for Rose found him such excellent company. She even maintained her poise when some of
the Hawaiian men startled her by throwing off all their clothes, layer by
layer, as they got hotter and hotter while working their way through enormous
meals.
Her descriptions provide a view of
the early nineteenth century that is as feminine as it is French. There was,
for instance, the celestial singing at a religious festival in Rio de Janeiro,
in which the voices, “though far too sweet and melodious to belong to men, had
a virile force and a vigor which were not characteristic of women’s
voices. I was overwhelmed,” Madame
declared, and took the first opportunity to ask details. “The answer”—that the singers were castrati—”conjured up a cruelty I could
never have imagined before that day!” Quelle horreur! What a waste!
More amusing were the native girls whom a party from L’Uranie surprised bathing in the
Marianas, who screamed with embarrassment and flew to cover themselves, but
were more concerned with veiling their backs than their breasts. “Methinks the gentlemen were not tempted to
take issue with them on this matter!” And only a Frenchwoman, surely, would
slyly remark, as Rose did, that a certain Australian was not just “very pretty,”
but had “a ravishing ankle, or so Louis noticed.”
Departing
from Sydney on Christmas Day, 1819, the corvette took the deep southern route around
Campbell and Auckland Islands. She had developed a leak, but instead of
stopping on the way, de Freycinet carried on. They saw their first iceberg on
January 21, 1820, and land was sighted on 7 February—spiked with black rocks,
and covered with short, dense shrubbery. The following day they rounded Cape
Horn in mild, calm weather—”Was this really the notorious Cape?” she asked. As
the ship steered north the weather deteriorated, and so they dropped anchor in
the Straits of Le Maire. Then, while the naturalists were gathered at the rail,
contemplating the lush vegetation and the thousands of birds, the order was
shouted to cut the cable. The current was dragging the corvette onto the rocks.
Getting back to sea was no
improvement, as the gale rose and tore at the rigging until the last sail was
in shreds, making it almost impossible to steer. The ship lunged north for two
stormswept days, until the Falklands were raised. Louis decided to head for
French Bay (now called Uranie Bay) on the northeast coast of East Falkland
Island, where repairs to the ship could be made. They were slowed up by a thick
fog, but on February 14, the headlands surrounding the sheltered bay were
sighted, and the corvette sailed toward them.
All seemed calm and promising, but then they hit a rock.
As Rose described it, they were sitting at the table when the ship
stopped in her wake a moment, and then sailed on. The shock was so slight that nothing was
upset, but shortly afterward, water started rushing into the holds. The gentle blow was fatal, for a rock had
pierced the hull. As Rose wrote, it was a dreadful, suspenseful moment—the bay
where they had intended to anchor was still some distance away, and the coast
around it was studded with sharp rocks.
If only the ship could be kept afloat as far as a sandy beach, then the
equipment and natural history collections could be saved before she foundered,
so de Freycinet ordered the entire watch to man the pumps, while the others
steered the ship and managed the sails.
The operation took ten arduous
hours, and all the time Rose was abject with terror. She shut herself in her cabin, “overcome by
the horror of our situation,” and for a while she and the Abbé—the ship’s
chaplain—knelt together in prayer, but then she rallied to help the crew bring
all the ship’s biscuit to the poop, to save it being soaked. As the artist, Arago, put it, la pauvre petite “arranged it all with
the minutest care.” Every now and then
she could be seen at her window, vainly searching the faces of passing sailors
for a sign of hope. And all the time the
men labored at the pump, shouting out crude, wild songs to keep up their
strength and spirits. When Rose cried
out that they must put their trust in the holy Virgin, Arago retorted, “In the
holy pump, Madame!”
Whatever the focus of their
prayers, it worked. At three in the
morning a faint, kind breeze wafted them up onto a sandy beach. The barren sandhills that dawn revealed did
not look promising, but the company took the ship’s altar ashore and said a Te Deum.
Luckily, the expedition carried an abundance of tents, so that a village
soon took shape on shore, though in the meantime the company still lived on the
steeply canted ship. The next task was to discharge all the scientific material
from the holds and cabins of the corvette, and stow it in tents according to
order. Providentially, the weather stayed fine.
Four days later, though, the skies
blackened, the gale rose, and it poured with rain. The beached ship was
battered constantly, and settling further on her side, so that Rose had to go
in and out of her deck cabin through a window, as the door was completely
submerged. It was time to go on shore, and live in a tent. The canvas house had
not been set up properly, however, and so the first night was a torment of
being soaked in bed. When day dawned the
first job was to secure the tent, but no matter how tightly it was secured the
canvas leaked and their bedding was constantly damp—”We shall be most fortunate
if we are not afflicted with rheumatism in our old age.”
It was now that de Freycinet felt
very thankful that he had shipped tradesmen in his crew, for he had the
necessary carpenters, sailmakers, blacksmiths, and ropemakers to turn the ship’s
longboat into a seaworthy craft. They
called the little vessel L’Espérance—Hope. Hunting and fishing parties were assembled to
go foraging in the hinterland, to save as much preserved food as possible. However, fresh provisions soon became
scarce. For the hunters to track down a
wild horse was an occasion for joy, as otherwise their diet was limited to
penguins or seal meat, roasted or stewed in water with biscuit crumbs for
thickening. A wild snipe was a special
treat.
Incredibly, the scientific work
went on. With wonderful single-mindedness, the scientists built an observatory in preparation for an eclipse of the sun on 15 March. The naturalists
determined which of the local wild herbs was safe to eat, and so Rose and the
Abbé collected celery and purslane for salads to go with the horse meat that the
hunting parties carried in. With joy,
Rose found a sack of flour that the Abbé had intended to use to powder his
hair, and so the cook was able to bake bread. Some essence of hops that had
been procured in Port Jackson was also salvaged, and so Rose took up the role
of expedition brewer, making beer by adding sugar. Then a box of 66 cheeses was
found, making the occasion for a party. But, as Rose privately admitted,
religion was her only real source of consolation.
On March 19, 1820, the sound of “extraordinary
shouting” was the signal that a ship had been raised. Everyone rushed to the top of the sand dune
that was closest to the sea, to see nothing at first, but then a sloop coming
into the harbor. Three guns were fired,
and a white flag raised, and in due course the sloop arrived—when, with French
hospitality, the impoverished settlement offered the newcomers food and drink. “Imagine
our joy at the thought that our exile would soon be over!” wrote Rose. However, they were to be gravely
disappointed.
The sloop, it seemed, was the
tender of a whaler-sealer that was anchored twenty leagues away. They had been hunting seals for the past
eighteen months, and needed another ten months to fill their lading. Louis de Freycinet
told them that he pay the captain well for passage to Rio, but the man in
charge of the sloop refused to go back to the ship—he had been given orders to
fish for eight days, and he dared not return until he had his catch. Showing
him a document from the United States government that enjoined all American
ship captains to render any assistance needed had a better effect; grudgingly,
the sloop-captain agreed to go back, carrying an officer from the Uranie who would convey de Freycinet’s
message.
So off the sloop went, but in no
great haste. Frustratingly, the longboat was now ready for voyage, but
departure had to be postponed until the American captain’s decision was known.
Meantime, too, men were falling sick with colic and diarrhea, probably because
they had been eating penguins. Getting desperate as the days dragged by with
horrible weather and no news from the sealer, de Freycinet planned how to
capture and commandeer the sealing vessel, while Rose agitated about the
violence that this would involve. “May God preserve us and bring back the sloop
bearing good news!”
A ship finally arrived on March 28—but it was not the whaler-sealer. Instead, it was the 280-ton American merchantman Mercury, en route to the Pacific. According to the captain, a man named Galvin, she had struck a leak, and he had turned back for repairs. And would he carry them to Rio? Of course he would! But he would need help with fixing the leak first, if the French could assist? That was easy, too. Louis de Freycinet sent twelve of his best shipwrights on board.When Rose learned the nature of
the Mercury’s cargo, she should have
become suspicious—it was cannons, for the Chilean rebellion. Which made matters
somewhat inconvenient, as Captain Galvin mused aloud, as he revealed his actual
mission. While it was convenient for him
to carry the French to Valparaiso, on the Pacific coast, Rio was out of the
question, being an Atlantic port. Louis
offered to pay enough money to cover that loss as well as expenses, but the
master only agreed to think about it—though, as the shipwrights reported,
Galvin needed help even more than they did, as the weight of the cannon in the
hold was forcing the planks of the American ship apart. And, what’s more, the Americans were short of
food. Within days, the American captain was begging for rum, as well as the
game that the French hunting parties were bringing in. On the other hand, he
was able to give them some medicine.
Then, at last, the sloop arrived,
with the news that the sealer-whaler was in the outer harbor. The whaler was
the General Knox of Salem, and the
captain, named Orne, was willing to carry them to Rio, probably because his
voyage had been so poor. The problem was that his ship had been unrigged to
make a clear platform for flensing the whales that the sloop brought in, and it
would take time and labor to get it seaworthy again.
And, of course, Orne wanted
money—50,000 pieces of eight, or piastres.
Arguing hard, Louis reduced it to 40,000 piastres, telling him at the
same time that he had another offer, from the captain of the Mercury. Waving a casual hand, Orne
declared he was glad of that, because he did not want to miss out on the
whaling season, but nevertheless he kept on bargaining. At the same time, the
captain of the Mercury was
threatening to leave without them, ignoring the fact that the French
shipwrights were still working on his ship.
And so the double blackmail from
the two captains continued. Galvin swore he would sail next day unless some
cable was sent on board; Captain Orne demanded permission to salvage whatever
he liked from the wreck of the corvette, though de Freycinet staunchly refused,
saying that it was the property of the French government, and Rose was
perfectly sure that the crew of the General
Knox would steal everything they could.
Then Galvin agreed to take them to Buenos Aires—only half the distance they
wanted to go—on the payment of 10,000 piastres.
After another bout of argument, he grudgingly offered to take them to Rio de Janeiro for 15,000, but then
abruptly changed his mind, asking eighteen thousand. “This is an enormous price
to pay for the minor inconvenience we shall cause him. But he is a rogue who is trying to profit
from our present predicament,” she angrily wrote. Meantime, Rose packed boxes, and suffered
from the wet and cold, scarcely able to walk because of the agony in her frozen
feet.
Finally, after a great deal of
insult and shouting, the company boarded the Mercury, two months to the day since the wreck of the
corvette. “Uranie! Poor Uranie!
You who were my abode for so long … we must now forsake you for ever!” Rose’s cabin on the discovery ship had been
small enough, but here she was in a cubby hole with much of the scientific
collection packed around her, lit only by a small round of glass in the deck
overhead, which went abruptly dark every time someone stepped onto it. Worse still, all her painfully gained courage
seemed to be flooding away—just three months ago, she kept on thinking, she was
comfortably housed and very well fed, and the voyage was about to come to an
end. But now she and Louis were in a tiny cramped room on a miserable foreign
vessel, “eating indescribable food with strangers to whom one has to be
pleasant and whom I would often like to send packing.” Little wonder that she could not stop crying.
Fate, yet again, was ironic. The
commander of the Scottish brig Jane,
a 120-ton whaler that had been at anchor in Berkeley Sound (present day Port
Stanley), just along the coast, arrived to declare that he would have been glad
to rescue them all at no cost. This was
Captain James Weddell, a man whose naval career had been interrupted by the end
of the Napoleonic wars, and who went on to become a distinguished Antarctic
explorer. He was delighted with the “extreme
vivacity” of Madame, “who was young and very agreeable.” Louis presented him with the longboat that
the French seamen had worked so hard to turn into a seaworthy cutter, and
Weddell christened her Rose.
Finally, on 27 April, the Mercury set sail, still rife with
dissension. Galvin kept on altering his
demands, while first the passengers and then the French company threatened to
seize the ship. Finally, the dilemma was
settled by buying the ship in the name of the French government, for the same
amount of 18,000 piastres that had been bargained for the passage to Rio. “All this is preferable to coming to blows,”
sighed Rose.
The vacillating, blackmailing
Galvin and his unpleasant passengers were set ashore at Montevideo, along with
their traps, and the French company sailed on to Rio in their new possession,
renamed La Physicienne. Here, Rose
became reacquainted with friends made on the outward passage, listened again to
the castrati (this time without a
tremor), rejoined society, and refurbished her wardrobe.
La Physicienne was
being repaired and refurbished too . It took over two months, but Brazil’s
gallant Minister of Marine would take no payment for it. They sailed from Rio at
dawn on September 13, 1820. And finally,
on November 13, three years and fifty-seven days since the night Rose de
Freycinet had crept on board, the expedition anchored in Le Havre. It was a moment that Louis and Rose both
welcomed and dreaded, for now they had to face the consequences of their
actions.
Louis was court-martialed for the
loss of his ship. The deliberations
lasted exactly one hour and a half.
Captain Louis-Claude de Saulces de Freycinet was completely exonerated
of all blame, the court finding unanimously that he had done all that prudence
and honor demanded. Rose’s name was not
mentioned, her presence being tactfully ignored. The ordeal seemed behind them. Rose, who had been pale, yellowish, and
sunken-eyed, was once again able to dance all night, and Louis, who had been
sick and racked with worry and pain, was back to noticing elegant ankles.
The voyage, however, was yet to
take its tragic toll. In 1832, when
Louis fell ill in a cholera epidemic, Rose was struck down while nursing him,
dying within hours at the age of thirty-seven.
Heartbroken, Louis survived for another ten years, but, as a friend
remarked, it could not called “living,” for he “only languished.”
