Jean-François de La Pérouse was one of the most renowned mariners and explorers of the 18th century, but in 1788 he and his expedition disappeared without a trace, leaving behind a mystery that would take decades to unravel. La Pérouse visited Cape Breton Island several times during his early years at sea – this episode introduces La Pérouse and touches on his visit to the Fortress of Louisbourg in 1757.

TRANSCRIPT

Over the centuries, the harbour of Louisbourg in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, has been host to an extraordinary number of historical figures, from James Wolfe, conqueror of Canada to the Spanish scientist Antonio de Ulloa, but likely none so famous in the French world as the explorer, mariner and navigator Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse, or La Pérouse for short.

Jean-Francois de La Pérouse embodied the vibrance of the mid to late 18th century like few had before him – he was scientific, quick-thinking, daring, controversial and above all else he was nobility. As a young man, records show that he got himself into trouble here and there and occasionally would write a strongly worded letter to his superiors about missed promotions, but in the classroom and on the quarterdeck, he quickly outperformed many of his peers. After having served in the waters of modern-day Atlantic Canada in the 1750s, the Island of Mauritius and the Indian Ocean during the 1770s and then as a frigate captain during the American War of Independence, he came to the attention of Louis XVI through the patronage of the Secretary of the Navy the Marquis de Castries. During his time serving abroad, La Pérouse had become fascinated with the voyages of James Cook, Bougainville and Wallis, mariners who had blazed the trail of Pacific exploration during the late 1760s and 1770s, and he displayed a similar aptitude for organization, navigation and leadership. Because of this, in the year 1785, La Perouse was chosen by the King to undertake a voyage of exploration to the distant Pacific Ocean. He was the perfect choice to finish what James Cook had started the decade prior. In fact, it was Louis XVI himself that instructed La Pérouse on the direction of the expedition and goals of the mission itself.

The La Pérouse expedition would follow closely in the footsteps of James Cook, and after making it around Cape Horn, sailed from Chile to California, then over to Russia, Korea, China and onward to the coast of Japan. The expedition seems to have gone everywhere one could possibly think of going in the Pacific ocean at that time. After spending a month in Botany Bay, the expedition set sail again northward toward the Solomon Islands. They were never heard from again. France waited patiently year after year for their possible return, but it never came. It’s been said that on the day of Louis XVI’s execution five years later, the King  asked, “any news of La Pérouse?”

The disappearance of the La Pérouse expedition weighed heavily on the mind of France for almost 40 years, but due to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 followed by the Revolutionary Wars and then the Napoleonic Wars, a rescue expedition simply couldn’t materialize. It wasn’t until the mid-1820s that artifacts found in the Solomon Islands could be positively identified as having come from the long lost expedition. The indigenous population of the Islands even recounted how the survivors from two ships that had run aground during a hurricane had built a small ship out of the shipwrecks, but what had happened to them, they did not know.

La Pérouse was born on the 23rd of August 1741 in the town of Albi in the Languedoc region of southern France. Although not having had access to the ocean at all growing up, he decided early on to join the navy and go to sea.  The chateau in which he grew up, the Chateau du Go, still stands and is in use down to this day. 

He began his long-lasting relationship with the ocean when he joined the French Navy as a garde-marine (or midshipman) in the port of Brest in the year 1756. A year later, with the Seven Years War well underway, he received his first posting to Le Célèbre, a 64-gun ship with a crew complement of 680 seamen, that had just come off the stocks and was being fitted out to join the squadron under the command of Comte Dubois de la Motte. Luckily for La Pérouse, it was a relative, Clément de la Jonquière, in command. Finally, In the month of May, the squadron of eleven ships managed to leave the port of Brest, slipping past the British blockade during inclement weather and beginning the long North Atlantic crossing, bound for La Pérouse’s first oversea port-of-call – Louisbourg, the capital of the French Colony of Île Royale, known today as Cape Breton Island.

It was in the waters of Atlantic Canada between the shores of Cape Breton and the rugged coast of Newfoundland that as an officer-in-training, La Pérouse began connecting what he had learned in school – mathematics, astronomy, and cartography – to what he was learning on the deck of a square-rigged sailing ship – navigation, dead-reckoning, and log-keeping. He would also have to accustom himself to living with almost seven hundred other people in extremely close quarters.  For someone’s first time at sea, these first few months must have been vivid and engrossing – hours were replaced with bells, mattresses replaced by hammocks and one’s usual diet with shipboard victuals.

 The year of 1757 was one of the busiest that the port and town of Louisbourg had ever seen. In response to the combined threat of a land assault and Sir Francis Holburne’s fleet operating out of Halifax, three French squadrons had been ordered by the French government to rendezvous at Louisbourg – a grand total of eighteen ships-of-the-line with more than 10,000 seamen. To put this into perspective, this was about a quarter of France’s entire battle fleet at that time. One can imagine La Pérouse watching the delicate job of moving these 18 colossal ships into line at the mouth of the harbour with fascination from the deck of his own ship. Historian John Dunmore in his book Where Fate Beckons: The Life of Jean-François de la Pérouse says of La Pérouse’s time in Louisbourg: “Jean-François received a warm personal welcome from the governor, Augustin de Drucourt, who had once been in charge of the Brest École des Gardes and who was always pleased to welcome any of the young gardes who chanced to land in Louisbourg. Although busy with his duties, he saw that La Pérouse was shown around and well looked after during his brief stay.” The officers and seamen of the fleet would spend the early summer alternating between constructing defensive works up and down the coast of Cape Breton and no doubt partaking in a little bit of shore leave. To add to the hustle and bustle, two battalions from the Artois and Bourgogne regiments had been sent to Louisbourg to reinforce the garrison, making this seaport town a very busy and likely very crowded place. Commenting on the overall state of the town during the year 1757, another young mariner who was aboard the fleet in the harbour and whose journal survives down to this day describes the “total abandon” of Louisbourg as a whole during this time.

Le Celebre and another ship were soon ordered to carry troops to Quebec, and then were sent back across the Atlantic to Brest, where La Pérouse received a transfer to another ship. Little did La Pérouse know that one year later, the ship that brought him to sea for the first time would be sitting at the bottom of Louisbourg harbour. Le Celebre would find itself back in Cape Breton for the final defense of Louisbourg against the British army and navy in 1758, and one night, a British mortar exploded on her deck while she was moored in the harbour, burning her to the waterline and spreading the fire to two other ships also moored close by. As a side note, much underwater archaeology has been carried out on the many wrecks sitting at the bottom of Louisbourg harbour, and some artifacts from the wreck of Le Celebre can be found in Halifax’s Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. 

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