An Indian seaman’s tale of being shipwrecked on a remote Australian island could shed light on the 230-year-old disappearance of a famed French explorer, one of maritime history’s greatest mysteries, an anthropologist said yesterday.
In 1785 Jean-Francois de Galaup de La Perouse was sent by King Louis XVI to chart the globe and map lands that had eluded English explorer Captain James Cook.
Three years later the explorer and his 220 crew were shipwrecked after setting sail from Botany Bay in New Holland — now Australia — in the direction of New Caledonia.
Photo: AFP
His two frigates were eventually found off the tiny Solomons island of Vanikoro, northeast of New Caledonia, and locals said the survivors built a vessel to sail back to France. After they left, they were thought to have vanished at sea.
However, the survival story of an Indian sailor, Shaik Jumaul, hints at a bloodier end for La Perouse and his crew — about 2,500km back toward Australia.
Jumaul’s tale, chronicled in the Madras Courier newspaper in 1818, but largely ignored until now, detailed the shipwreck of his merchant ship off northern Australia in 1814, Australian National University anthropologist Garrick Hitchcock said.
Hitchcock, who detailed his research in The Journal of Pacific History, said the Indian sailor was marooned on Murray Island in the Torres Strait.
When Jumaul was rescued by merchant ships in 1818, he told the crew he saw cutlasses and muskets on the islands that were not English made, as well as a compass and a gold watch.
“When he asked the islanders where they obtained these things, they related how approximately 30 years earlier, a ship had been wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef to the east, in sight of the island,” Hitchcock said.
However, according to the testimony, the shipwrecked sailors were not given a warm welcome.
“Boats with crew had come ashore, but in the fighting that followed, all were eventually killed, except a boy, who was saved and brought up as one of their own, later marrying a local woman,” it said.
Hitchcock said he believed the seaman’s tale, mentioned briefly in a 2012 French book, but dismissed as unreliable, could be true as it matched the chronology of the survivors’ attempt to return home.
“Historians and maritime archeologists are not aware of any other European ship being in that region at that time,” he added.
Hitchcock said he was hopeful archeologists looking for shipwrecks in the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef around Murray Island could find some French artifacts. He added that he was planning to undertake a search of the island with the help of locals.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese