After cutting loose from the raft, the governor’s and captain’s barges managed to stay close to each other. Governor Schmaltz had stashed on board fifty pounds of biscuits, eighteen bottles of wine, two bottles of brandy, and sixty bottles of water. Captain Chaumareys was less lavishly provisioned: for the twenty-eight people in his barge, there were only eighteen bottles of water, a dozen bottles of Madeira, a sack of biscuits, and some overripe pears.
As they pulled away from the raft, freed of immediate and crippling responsibility, they profited from a north-northwesterly breeze that sped them in the direction of Portendick and Saint-Louis. They sailed briskly through the day, in the knowledge that if they made good time the provisions would last until they reached Senegal.
By July 8, as the tropical sun burned down upon them and the ocean’s glare dazzled their eyes, midshipman Sander Rang was on the point of putting into shore when he calculated that as they could be only about thirty-five nautical miles from Saint-Louis, they would do best to continue by sea. At ten o’clock that evening, a French brig and a French corvette were sighted. The barges hoisted their mainsails, sent up flares, cried, “Long live the king,” and “Long live France,” and with all possible speed made in the direction of the lights on board the ships. They were hailed from the deck of the Echo and astonished the watch by replying that they were boats from the Medusa. The surprised officer demanded the whereabouts of the frigate and Rang replied that Captain Chaumareys would explain anon.
The twenty-eight people from the captain’s barge were already aboard the Echo when the governor’s barge drew alongside. Desiring nothing but rest and sleep, everyone was given a good supper before settling down for the night, thankful to be aboard a ship from their convoy at safe anchorage off Saint-Louis in Senegal.1
The French connection with this part of West Africa dated from the end of the fourteenth century when merchants from Dieppe were active along the coast. During the first third of the fifteenth century, Portuguese explorers profited from the imperialist ambitions of the papacy. Under obligation to convert the heathen population, whose goods they were authorized to steal, they were also granted permanent rights of possession over the territories they discovered and were busy charting the mouth of the Senegal River. By the end of the century the Spanish, likewise benefiting from papal endorsement, were exploiting the region. The Dutch came later to barter and plunder, eventually losing their foothold to the French who, in the seventeenth century, came to dominate trade in the area. They eventually attempted to secure the delta of the Senegal River by building a giant, ill-designed, and vulnerable mud fort on the island of Saint-Louis. In 1758, during the Seven Years’ War, the English obtained control of Senegal and kept it until 1783, after which the colony reverted to France with England continuing to enjoy commercial rights. Along the coast a series of trading posts had been established on Arguin Island, at Portendick, Saint-Louis, Galam, and on the island of Gorée. At all of these posts, gum was traded and, at Saint-Louis and Gorée, there was a thriving traffic in human beings.2
In 1800, with the capture of Gorée, the English demonstrated their considerable commercial interest in the area. Benefiting from Napoleon’s indifference to French colonial holdings, they took Saint-Louis in July 1809 without a struggle. So when, on July 9, 1816, Governor-designate Schmaltz went ashore, he came under the jurisdiction of the English governor, Thomas Brereton, until such time as the British government, in accordance with the recent Treaties of Paris in March 1814 and November 1815, sanctioned the handing back of the settlements of Senegal and Gorée to the French.
Though they were to appear dilatory in giving up the colony, the English were quick to react to the hardships endured by the French colonists. British officer Major John Peddie, whose compassion for the shipwreck victims was considerable, noted that “every attention within the means of this Garrison was immediately afforded.”3 Governor Brereton wrote to Schmaltz on July 9: “A most ready and prompt compliance shall be given to your wishes in affording every bit of assistance in my power and I have ordered two craft … best suited to the purpose. They will be dispatched without delay.”4 Representatives of both governments sent men and ships to search for survivors, although Schmaltz’s initiatives seemed, in comparison with those of the English, bafflingly sluggish.
The first group of castaways, including Brédif and the Picards, arrived in Saint-Louis on July 13 and were greeted by the English governor on horseback, accompanied by Kearney and several officers. Dismounting, Colonel Brereton, in marked contrast to his French counterpart, seemed most affected by their sufferings, and those in the worst condition were at once admitted to the English hospital.
Although many French merchants and all the French administrators had been forced to leave Saint-Louis in 1809, there were still some tradesmen in the colony and the successive waves of survivors were welcomed by these compatriots, as well as by a host of deeply sympathetic English families. Most of Picard’s children lodged with Artigue, his old friend from his previous stays in the colony. Charlotte and her sister, Caroline, however, were billeted with a kindly English couple, the Kingsleys, who occupied one of the fifty European-style bungalows in the center of the island of Saint-Louis. These dwellings had meager gardens and terraced roofs and housed the five hundred resident merchants and administrators. There were also two thousand free blacks and mulattoes along with seventy-five hundred slaves on the island, which was just over two miles long and, at its maximum, half a mile wide. The French fort stood in the middle of the island, flanked by large, unpaved roads that proved unpleasant thoroughfares when the wind blew, carrying sand off the Sahara. At the northern end of the island, inland from the mangroves, there was a hospital, a church, and a store for gunpowder. In the southern part, amid the palm trees and baobabs, stood the natives’ badly constructed straw huts, largely blackened by smoke.5
Upon arrival, the sisters were taken to be washed and treated with ointment by two of the Kingsleys’ servants. They were given clothes and linen of a smoothness and whiteness that were shocking against their frazzled skins. Throughout their recent ordeal, Charlotte had been kept alive by her exceptional fortitude, but once saved and finding herself in the luxury of European-style surroundings she feared for a complete breakdown. Having gone beyond the limits of all she had ever known or could imagine, the sheer comfort of white linen seemed oddly terrifying. When her hostess invited her to join the family in the drawing room, Charlotte struggled to summon up hidden reserves of strength in order to negotiate this difficult return to civilization. The young lady, who only days before had drunk muddy, putrid water from a soldier’s greasy cap, was taking tea and pastries in the company of late enemies who were offering her, in conspicuous contrast to her own leaders, the most gentle welcome.
Picard’s understandable outburst over the cowardice of the commanders of the expedition had been reported to Schmaltz and was most probably the cause of the governor-designate’s neglect of the family. When Picard asked for supplies, Schmaltz refused. Unable to obtain anything from his leader or from Durécu, the prosperous merchant who was currently financing and supplying the French expedition, Picard was eventually obliged to borrow money to rent a small apartment in which to lodge his entire family, all of whom had, miraculously, survived the desert trek. If he had made enemies among the nastiest and most powerful of the survivors from the Medusa, Picard luckily still possessed a group of old friends from his previous visits. Furthermore, natives from the surrounding countryside came to offer help, carrying donations from their simple harvest. Thus, living cheaply on native dishes, the Picards were discovered by the kindly Major Peddie, who immediately instructed the mayor of Saint-Louis to grant the family the rations expected by English officers.6
Although the various accounts do not agree on the details and the extent to which the English were of assistance, neither are they unanimous concerning the actions of the French merchants. Brédif, who praised the English officers for their kindness and attention, also writes that he was received with “tender hospitality” by Durécu and his nephews, noting that “it was with great simplicity and without ostentation” that Durécu helped the victims of the shipwreck. Charlotte Picard, on the other hand, suggests that Durécu was an opportunist who, it was rumored, was taking a hundred percent profit on all the loans he made. Yet because he was Schmaltz’s chum, he was awarded the Légion d’Honneur. This portrait of Durécu as a calculating profiteer is upheld by Savigny and Corréard, who suggest that the governor had entered into a kind of business pact with him, a pact that would lead to some very sinister dealings.
Whereas Major Peddie’s actions and attitude are universally praised, the conduct of Colonel Brereton is frequently questioned. Savigny and Corréard are incensed by his apparent procrastination in handing over the colony. As the gum harvest was imminent, a holdup in the transfer would guarantee the English merchants this year’s profit from the lucrative trade.7 Gaspar Mollien and Savigny and Corréard record that any kindness shown by Brereton was short-lived. As early as July 17, before the raft had even been found or all the desert castaways accounted for, many French soldiers, sailors, and officers were obliged to embark for their settlement at Cap Vert. Schmaltz would follow, while those too sick to travel would remain in Saint-Louis until they regained their health. However guilty the French governor-designate was of sluggishness or hardheartedness, the situation in which he found himself was obviously uncomfortable and logistically problematic.
Describing Cap Vert, Geoffroy de Villeneuve wrote of its “perpetual greenness,” of the “singular vigour of its productions,” which “proclaims an earth fertilized by several centuries of vegetal decay, and by the two volcanoes of which we see traces everywhere.” Cotton and indigo were cultivated; there was game in the forests and fish in the sea. Cornette de Vénancourt, in his survey of the area, noted “papaya, guava, citrus fruits, manioc, sugar cane and cows.” Clearly, it was a potentially rich peninsula for the proposed agricultural establishments sponsored by the Philanthropic Society. Despite the breathless heat of early August, the explorer Mollien set about, with the help of the sometime stowaway Rabaroust, planting seeds of lettuce, carrots, celeriac, and melons.
Dakar was the largest of the six villages on the peninsula, and a provisional camp for the army and navy was established there by Vénancourt. Dysentery was endemic and excessive drinking reduced many to a stupor. People were dying daily. Chaumareys attempted to manage the growing disorder between the soldiers and sailors, but it was Schmaltz, arriving on July 26, who solved the problem. He separated the feuding members of the different services by containing the sailors on board the Argus and the Echo.8 Meanwhile, Schmaltz installed himself comfortably on the nearby Ile de Gorée, which lies in the lee of the cape. It was an island where Europeans who became sick while living in Senegal went to regain their health.9
When, with the permission of the English governor, the raft survivors were disembarked at St. Louis on July 9, Lieutenant Reynaud, whom Savigny and Corréard accused as the person who had cut them adrift, was on the quay to shake their wretched hands. The crazed survivors were terrified that they would be put to death for murder and cannibalism. In the most wretched condition, Alexandre Corréard begged to be thrown into the sea. With their coming ashore, Brédif writes that those already arrived in the colony became aware of “the terrible butchery” that had occurred, how large numbers of men had been carried off by the breakers and how the survivors had been found with “pieces of human flesh hanging above them and urine bottled”—their only food and drink. “What horror,” he observes, “caused by the incompetence of a single man.” The government had appointed Captain Chaumareys in scandalous disregard of sound judgement.10
To those who had never been pushed to such extremes, the men who had been on board the raft were frightening beings who had transgressed all civilized standards in order to survive. They had lived beyond what was deemed acceptable and now appeared as strangers among friends. Their notions of what may or may not be permissable were blurred and, while dining with a merchant one evening, one of the survivors blithely commented that the liver of the pig they were eating was not half as tasty as the liver he had torn from a man on the raft. When he embraced Savigny and Coudein at Governor Schmaltz’s, Sander Rang records that they seemed like figures risen from the tomb; indeed, he notes that letters had already been dispatched to France reporting their certain loss.11
Several were lodged with the merchants Durécu, Valentin, and Lasalle and the others were taken to the English hospital. It was there that those who had survived the ordeal of the raft, second lieutenants Lozach and Clairet, Sergeant-Major Chariot, the black soldier, Jean-Charles, and Courtade, the master gunner, would soon die.
Toward midnight on July 19, the same day on which the Argus had arrived, Lieutenant Anglas de Praviel reached the colony in “a state of utter destitution.” The weakness of his voice making him difficult to understand, Praviel announced the arrival of the second group of castaways.12 On the very next day, July 20, Kummer and Rogery, the two men who had been washed ashore at Portendick in the same group as Brédif and Charlotte Picard and who had wandered separately off into the desert and been given up for lost, were led into Saint-Louis by some Moors.
Soon after leaving his party early in their march, Kummer had found the camp of Prince Muhammed, the son of King Zaide of the Trazas tribe of Moors. He had boldly stridden into the midst of their encampment, and, in the few words of Arabic that he knew, passed himself off as the son of a Muslim woman. The Moors seemed overjoyed to welcome him, quizzed him about recent events in France, inquired as to why the trading posts on Arguin Island and Portendick had fallen into disuse, and asked him to lead them to the place where his boat had come ashore.
While they were resting by a pond, another group from the same tribe arrived with Rogery, who declared that he had not been treated well. The women and, above all, the children had pestered him and robbed him of almost everything he carried or wore. After a short rest, the Frenchmen were conducted to the camp of King Zaide. They negotiated a fee for their safe conduct to Saint-Louis and were able to observe the customs and pursuits of their hosts—the polygamy of the king, the fair treatment and education of black slaves, and the trade in salt, furs, feathers, and skins.
The king put a stop to the tormenting of Rogery, who, without the pretended traces of Muslim blood, had been made to feel less welcome than his friend. Zaide exhibited considerable knowledge about recent European events and pressed them for information about the Hundred Days. He treated the two Frenchmen with much kindness and sent them off on their journey to rejoin their countrymen.13
The victims from the raft were, according to Brédif, being badly cared for in the English hospital. Praviel visited them on July 23 and found Corréard still in the most desperate state. He also noted that the raft survivors were given preference over his own troop from the desert who had arrived during the previous days. The least healthy among the desert marchers were packed in a single room and given a ration of biscuit and bacon while those from the raft were given the English soldier’s ration of white bread, meat, rice, sugar, coffee, Madeira, and rum. Despite this generosity, the survivors from the raft protested that such a ration was unsuited to the restoration of their health, and though the English surgeon and Governor Brereton proved deaf to their complaints, Major Peddie and some other English officers showed them considerable kindness, inviting the four officers in the healthiest condition to dine with them daily, even offering them a good champagne.14
Corréard, who remained in hospital the longest, was left on what he described as a hard bed with dirty sheets. He was in excruciating pain from the sores, the sickness, and the bayonet and knife wounds he had sustained on board the raft, and he passed endless days and often sleepless nights brooding on his misfortunes.
Nothing relieves me; on the contrary, the length of the nights, the continuation of my sufferings, the sight of those of my companions in misfortune, the disgusting filth by which I am surrounded, the inattention of the army nurse who is always drunk or negligent, the insupportable hardness of a wretched bed, scarcely sheltered from the inclement air, all bode an inevitable death.
Having received no news from the French at Cap Vert, Corréard was becoming anxious to join them, but Major Peddie dissuaded him from going to a camp where dysentery was rampant. The major had come bearing gifts and had shed tears at the sight of Corréard’s sufferings. He professed himself honor-bound to reciprocate a little of the kindness that he and his comrades had received at the hands of their late enemies during the Napoleonic wars. It was to Peddie and the three other English officers who exhibited much kindness toward him that Corréard claimed he owed his life. Not once, during all this period of suffering, did Madame or Mademoiselle Schmaltz care to visit the hospital.15
The Argus had returned with the survivors of the raft on board but without sighting the Medusa, so another salvage expedition was dispatched on July 26. This attempt was made by a far from seaworthy schooner owned by Durécu. There were other ships available that were more suited to the task but Schmaltz liked to deal exclusively with Durécu, whose ill-equipped vessel was forced to return after encountering adverse weather. Setting off once again, she was again forced to put back to port after her sails were all but destroyed in a gale. The third time she set sail she found the Medusa, fifty-two days after the frigate had been abandoned.
The ghostly hull was broken and she had slumped on her port side. On board, like some weird, Gothic vision from a contemporary poem, were three cagey, skeletal figures crouched in different parts of the deck among the scattered debris. They had only brandy left to drink and days, if not hours, later would have been dead. Indeed, a fourth had died only a short while before the arrival of the schooner and had been committed to the sea. Of the other thirteen who had been left on board on July 5, the crew of the schooner learned that for forty-two days they had survived with an ample supply of biscuit, bacon, prunes, wine, and brandy, but that when these had begun to dwindle, twelve of them had constructed a raft and set sail. This rudderless craft was eventually found washed up on the shore by some of King Zaide’s men, without trace of survivors. One of the five other men tried to make for the shore on a chicken coop but sank a short distance from the frigate. The four remaining men preferred to stay safely on board rather than offer themselves to the “sea-monsters which are found in great numbers on the coasts of Africa.” These four fed themselves on salt pork, tallow, and the remaining brandy until all but the liquor ran out and one of them died. At the time of their eventual rescue, despite their weakened state, the three remaining appeared ferocious, brandishing knives at one another and charily guarding their self-apportioned and broken domains.16 When the schooner had salvaged what it could from the Medusa, these wild survivors were taken on to Saint-Louis.
The first day that Corréard was able to get up from bed and take a short walk in the town, he called on the family of the French governor. He was appalled to discover their attitude toward the schooner’s expedition. Their only concern seemed to be the recovery of valuables and provisions from the wreck, no one caring a fig for the possible survival of the men on board. Already disgusted by their indifference, Corréard became irate when he learned that he would not be able to recover any of his own engineering instruments on which his livelihood depended. Later, when the schooner arrived in Saint-Louis, it was declared that what it had recovered from the wreck was a “prize.” Lieutenant Reynaud was among these “pillagers” and carried off several trunks as Saint-Louis was turned into a weeklong market fair. Everything was up for sale, including the French flag that had been transformed into tablecloths and napkins. Blacks bought signal flags to make aprons and cloaks. Even vases belonging to Chaumareys were on offer and the captain himself later noticed them gracing the house of the governor. There was furniture, tackle, and instruments on offer—even clothes belonging to people who were still alive. Thereafter, the various other merchants in Saint-Louis were authorized to plunder the wreck in a fifty-fifty split with Schmaltz.17
But even before the finding of the wreck, the first moves in the discovery and exposure of the scandal of the Medusa began. On July 29, the Echo set sail for France. She carried a letter from Schmaltz to the minister of the navy, vicomte DuBouchage, stating that he was left with only half the complement of his garrison. On board were fifty-five survivors of the tragedy, among them the valorous Lieutenant Espiaux, Ensign Lapeyrère, midshipman Coudein, and Henri Savigny.
In complete contrast to the disorder that had endangered his outward voyage, Savigny recorded that in all his time in the navy he had never beheld such a well-kept and soundly run ship. Cornette de Vénancourt was in command, a man of skill and rigor; his navigation to Senegal had been exemplary and Governor Schmaltz praised his “zeal after the loss of the Medusa.” In a report of the Philanthropic Society written at the end of July, Vénancourt was likewise singled out for his aid in exploring Cap Vert after the delegates from the Medusa had lost all their instruments in the wreck.18
Vénancourt was also an ambitious man. He took obvious satisfaction in tactful criticism of Chaumareys’s handling of the convoy. Considering their respective careers in the navy, while Chaumareys had spent the last twenty years resting on the laurels of his fictitious heroism during the Quiberon campaign and steadily forgetting his maritime skills, Vénancourt had been sailing. Appointed captain of a frigate in 1815, after nine years as a lieutenant and twenty-five years at sea, Vénancourt had demonstrated the flair and courage needed to bring a ship full of mutineers to heel during the Hundred Days. Clearly, with such a long and distinguished career, superior qualities of seamanship, and royalist sympathies, it dismayed him to think that the bungling Chaumareys had been allowed to steer a large number of people to dereliction and death. During the thirty-four-day voyage home, when he found out about the manuscript that Savigny was writing as a kind of therapeutic rite of passage back to civilization, Vénancourt realized that the misjudgments and resulting horrors catalogued by the account could do nothing but demonstrate to the government that it had plainly appointed the wrong leader.19
Toward the end of the day on September 2, 1816, a telegraph arrived at the Ministry of the Navy in Paris from Vice Admiral Saint-Haouen in Brest, alerting the authorities that the Echo had arrived in his port carrying news of the wreck of the Medusa. Two days later, Saint-Haouen telegraphed the ministry to say that he had asked for reports from those officers from the Medusa who had arrived on board the Echo and would dispatch them forthwith.
The captain of the Echo also presented a neutral and nonaccusatory verbal report to Saint-Haouen. Furthermore, on his own initiative, Vénancourt sent the Echo’s log direct to Minister of the Navy DuBouchage. He also asked Savigny for a copy of the narrative that the surgeon had written during the voyage. At that stage, without the input of the politically agitated Corréard, the text was mildly accusatory, but not insistently antiroyalist. It was not therefore offensive to Vénancourt, nor would it be anything but an embarrassment to his minister. It would, moreover, prove useful in Vénancourt’s desire to make clear the innate superiority of his seamanship, a fact that, once established, might serve him well both in regard to future appointments and in his solicitation for the Légion d’Honneur.
By the time Savigny set out for Paris on September 11 to deliver his narrative to the ministry, Vénancourt had already dispatched a copy to a friend who passed it on to Councillor Forestier, who was supposed, in turn, to hand it over to vicomte DuBouchage. Realizing the volatility of the document and presumably for reasons of political inclination, Forestier gave it not to his royalist minister, as was intended, but to the man who, over the previous months, had desperately been trying to save the restoration from hardening into a dangerous and unacceptable resurrection of the ancien régime: the minister of police and the king’s favorite, Elie Decazes.20