11

confession

Samoa and Vanuatu, May 1768

I drift on the surface of the water, warm sun on my back and the reef stretching kaleidoscopically beneath. An air-breather immersed by virtue of a thin plastic tube. I like the quiet of snorkelling, the only sound that of the water slopping about my head, my own wheezy breath and the distant pop and crackle of the underworld. If I used scuba I would have more freedom, could dive down and investigate the darting fish and dark crevices. But I have no wish to poke or touch, no need to catch or hunt, to investigate or pry, with the rattle of compressed gases hissing and boiling in my ears, metal-strapped to sink onto a world where I don’t belong. I prefer to float in silence on the surface, in the liminal space between worlds, half air, half water, and observe.

I remember the first time I saw a coral reef – little more than an unexpected brown tint in the water instead of green or blue. Caliph was anchored off Great Keppel Island. It was too late in the afternoon to go swimming, and too cold, so I put on a pair of goggles and hung over the edge of the dinghy with my face in the water, watching this new wonderland drift beneath me until my limbs grew numb.

As we travelled north, the reefs grew larger and more interconnected. Tiny village outcrops gave away to great sprawling high-rise metropolises teeming with fish, coral, sponges and molluscs. It is impossible to describe the diversity, complexity and variability of the Reef – the beauty and the terror. Exploring gardens of intricate delight tended by colourful darting fish that sweep the paths and collect the litter. Or lazing among great schools of silver, within finger’s touch of shimmering fearless piscine companions in the neutral territory of marine reserves.

I remember the clouds of colour sweeping in murmurations across valleys and plains. Delicate fans and fingers feathered in the currents to touch and taste. Cephalopod ghosts morphed invisibly against sand, reef and sea, before streaking away in a jet stream. A crack opened in the grey rock to reveal the black velvet eye of a giant clam, flecked glowing green and blue, like a portal to another dimension.

But there were other staring eyes and sharp teeth lurking in dark spaces. A serpentine slither or spider-like scuttle sparked primitive mammalian fears. Knives, blades, harpoons, poisons and potent toxins, concealed in a fish that looked like a rock or within the exquisite beauty of a deadly géographe cone.

And then, across a ridge, I found myself drifting over great plains of white bones that even then, 35 years ago, had been laid waste by a blast of coral bleaching or the depredations of marauding armies of crown-of-thorns starfish. I couldn’t help but notice in such laid-waste waters, and outside the protective boundaries of reserves, the absence of giant fish that watched impassive and unassailable. Instead there was just an overabundance of the small and inedible. Grey and brown where there should be colour, a lone cloud of violet swirling pale against the blue, the great clam eyes closed or emptied, their white carapaces stolen to delineate the paths of earth-bound feet.

You cannot weep underwater or you will drown in your salty tears. So instead I tumbled across the threshold of the deep, felt the vertiginous wall drop beneath me, snatching away my breath and heartbeat as the dark shapes of an uncertain future loomed and swirled in the distant open ocean.

The Boudeuse and the Étoile sailed west into unknown waters. Bougainville’s charts may have been empty, but Ahutoru knew exactly where they were. He tried desperately to persuade Bougainville to stop over at the island of Raiatea as they sailed past. He seized the helm of the ship and tried to change its course. But Bougainville refused, even though it was barely out of their way at all. Ahutoru climbed the rigging and looked longingly in the direction of his homeland as the ships sailed on.

When he finally came down to the deck, he informed Bougainville that if there were no women where they are going, they may as well cut off his head. He talked endlessly of women. Bougainville observed that this was ‘his only thought, or at least all the others he has relate to this one’.

Bougainville had other concerns as they left Tahiti. Surely he would have to deal with the issue of Jeanne now that the Tahitians had identified her as a woman. He must have known about the revelation on the beach. Gossip would have been rife on the ships. Wouldn’t Ahutoru have told him that Jeanne was a woman dressed as a man? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps an expedition commander with a few hundred men under his command and their lives in his safekeeping had better things to do than worry about an otherwise impeccably behaved botanist’s assistant who caused no trouble other than being a woman. Perhaps an experienced commander would know that it is best to let such storms-in-teacups subside on their own, that it is better to wait and see than act precipitously, particularly when there is nothing that can be done about them in the middle of the Pacific.

On the day of their departure from Tahiti, the Boudeuse unexpectedly hauled to and sent its boat over to the Étoile to collect Commerson with the message that his medical opinion was needed.

‘I hurt my leg while going,’ complained Commerson, somehow blaming Vivez for the mishap.

Apparently Bougainville had a fever. If he did, he recovered very rapidly. There is no mention of their conversation in either Bougainville’s or Commerson’s journals. I find it hard to believe that this private medical consultation would not have included a discreet conversation about Commerson’s assistant turning out to be a woman.

But nothing happened. The ships simply continued on their course.

They proceeded with caution, aware that somewhere ahead lay the uncharted east coast of ‘New Holland’. Jacques-Nicolas Bellin’s Carte réduite des terres Australes, updated by Didier Robert de Vaugondy in 1760, broadly outlined three-quarters of the coast of Australia, north, west and south, but from the eastern end of the Great Australian Bight right up to the top of Cape York was largely one long côte conjecturée. The question was not whether they would be able to find the Australian east coast, but whether they would be in a state fit enough to land and explore it.

There was nothing to relieve the long days on the ship. In the tropical heat, the smallest irritation of salt-washed clothes scratched and abraded the skin, opening wounds that soon oozed with infection. They drifted by enticing islands of thickly wooded slopes filled with botanical treasures, and yet were unable to go ashore. Jeanne and Commerson were confined to investigating the seaweed that drifted past the boat. The ships had not been careened for months. Their underbellies trailed long ropes of weed and crusts of barnacles. The heavy drag did not help the ships beat to windward.

If you lay on your stomach and hung over the side, you might have seen clouds of tiny fish shimmering in and out of this ‘under’ growth. Or perhaps noticed larger shadows lurking – great triangles of fish, flat and dark with heavy beaks. Sound travels well beneath the waterline. With no high-pitched whine of outboard motors, nor thumping of passing engines, you can hear all sorts of distant oceanic messages. And in the quiet of the night, more mysterious sounds disturb your sleep at sea – the distant echo of whale song, the crackling pops of pistol prawns, and the disconcerting sound of teeth grinding against the hull as if they might eventually chew their way into the ship itself. Small wonder sailors are so prone to superstition.

Despite their stay in Tahiti – despite all the coconuts and bananas and pigs – they knew that their food would not last. Fresh food only kept so long in the interminable heat. These lands of perpetual abundance had no need of stores to see them through cold hard winters. Nature provided food, warmth and water, all year around. And what nature gave, it also took away. Within hours, fruit decayed, meat decomposed, mould grew, timber rotted and water putrefied. Nature did not tolerate stockpiles, returning every excess back to the earth. They needed to get to a European port.

They sailed through the islands we now know as Samoa, and then Vanuatu, trying to attach their observations to those of Portuguese sailor Pedro Fernández de Quirós, whose journal Bougainville was following. They made reference to the past, to stories and suppositions, to pencil marks on scrappy half-empty maps, as if it was the solid earth in front of them that was not real.

The people here were different from the Tahitians, not as handsome nor so friendly in the Frenchmen’s opinions. When Ahutoru tried to talk to them, they did not understand. He dismissed them, telling Bougainville that he should just shoot them. To be fair, I suppose that was how most encounters with Europeans ended, no matter what their intentions. The Tahitians learnt this with Wallis, were reminded with Bougainville, would find out again with Cook. So too would the people of these islands. And perhaps it was how many Polynesian interactions ended too, in bloodshed.

The reefs that surrounded these islands bared their white teeth against the intruders. Fires burnt along the shores as they sailed past. Drums beat across valleys. Sailors are meant to be good at reading the signs, but they remained obtusely oblivious to these. The canoes came out, warily, laden for trade, in a tentative effort at preliminary diplomacy, but the French had nothing to offer but scraps of red cloth.

Bougainville sent some small boats ashore to search for wood and vegetables. They buried a plaque claiming possession of these islands for France. They did not ask permission. The locals objected and shots were fired. Three of the Vanuatuans died and several were wounded, although Caro was not sure how many. The visitors loaded their timber, cleaned their muskets and pondered the mistrustful and warlike nature of the residents in these parts.

The Tahitians had lit fires on their reefs to guide their canoes to safe water after dark just as the Greeks and Romans had built illuminated beacons at the entrances to their ports. The French relit these navigational innovations in the sixteenth century after the darkness of the middle ages with the Cordouan lighthouse, near the Gironde estuary at Bordeaux, over time incorporating technological advances such as parabolic mirrors, clockwork mechanisms, the Argand lamp and the Fresnel lens. Cape by cape, the coasts of the world have lit up with beacons to guide the network of ships that traverses a watery globe, maintained by dedicated men, women and families who have lived on the most remote and isolated outcrops to keep the lights on for others

My mother took celestial navigation classes when I was in primary school, jovially encouraged to ‘follow the class’ of all males. It made the local paper when she took out the top grade. On Caliph we used much the same tools as Bougainville had: paper charts, ruler, compass, dividers, pencil, sextant and a vast array of mathematical tables. Some of our old Pacific charts still carried Bougainville’s name, the cartography unchanged from the contributions of his voyage.

But in the course of my lifetime navigation has been revolutionised. We sail today by feel, to the electronic pulse of a satellite transmission, pulled like marionettes across the ocean, around reefs and rocks, by invisible strings in the sky. We watch a small screen that maps our path, rather than scanning the far horizon. Massive supertankers ply interoceanic trade routes with crews of no more than a dozen, confined within steel soundproofed bunkers, tending the internal needs of the ship with little thought for the external world. Whales, debris, small craft are all mobile hazards that are not plotted on maps – not big enough to do significant damage. The supertankers plough through them without even registering. Smaller boats can purchase beacons that transmit a proximity alert, attempting to communicate with the giant tankers electronically. They should set off a warning on the ship’s navigational control panel – if anyone is watching it. Once these ships would have at least been restricted to shipping lanes, but now they wander at will to maximise the winds and weather for greater efficiency.

You can plot a course from New Zealand to Fiji on a GPS just like you do in a car. You don’t even have to steer. The GPS pilots the boat down the river, through the channel, across the bay, past the ferry, between the islands, through the heads and into open water. All you have to do is watch for other craft.

As you head offshore, the sea picks up, the swell rises and the boat begins its steady canter over the waves, a rolling gait that will, with any luck, remain calm and steady for the remainder of the journey.

The GPS draws a straight line over 1952 kilometres direct to Fiji. You sail across the South Fiji Basin, a thalassic plateau enclosed in a triangle of mountains and trenches shaped like a harp with Fiji at the apex. Your route travels parallel to the Kermadec and Tonga Trenches that link New Zealand to Tonga and Samoa, crossing the underwater mountains that run from New Guinea, to the Solomon Islands, to Vanuatu to Fiji. These changes of terrain go all but unnoticed except for a blip on the sonar registering the changing depths from 4 to 5 kilometres. Occasionally someone notices a mountain peak beneath them and throws a line off the back of the boat. The steel cables flicker in the sunlight, the lure spinning and flashing in the wake as the ship drops its speed to a more enticing pace. The float disappears and a metre-long Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorus commerson) flashes to the surface.

In the middle of the voyage you are 976 kilometres from the nearest land, with 480 kilometres of atmosphere between you and outer space, and 4 kilometres of water beneath you. It is the 4 kilometres that bothers you most. It’s not really even that deep. The Kermadec Trench is 10 kilometres deep, not much shallower than the deepest known point of the ocean at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

It’s not the nothingness that bothers you – the nothing between here and the next piece of land, or the nothing between you and the Milky Way that sprawls like a glowing carpet in the pristine darkness. It’s the something that might be lurking in the depths, the unknown creatures swimming beneath, an unseen, inexplicable world living just out of sight. Is it that, like Herman Melville, you give too much consideration to the way ‘its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure’? Or is it that we are mesmerised by the bow-crushing might of a white whale rising from the waters, or shark jaws festooned with rows of razor teeth, or tentacles of giant squid with unblinking eyes rising beneath a moonlit sea? Kraken, Leviathan, Cetus, Hydra, Scylla, Moby Dick, Timigalam, Yacumama – our imaginations are filled with creatures from the depths.

There is nothing to do in the middle of the night, alone at the helm, but stare at a blinking light on the screen and think dark thoughts. There is no internet signal here, no phone towers. Communication with the outside world is curtailed to a few snatched moments of priceless satellite traffic. There is no task to keep your focus, no sails to watch, no course to steer. The compass hovers magically on its setting, swinging only mildly from side to side, always returning like a butterfly on a string, more precise than any human hand or brain could ever manage. The ship steers its own course and all you have to do is stay awake for your allotted hours and keep your mind from drifting into other places.

The tip of Fiji’s Tomanivi appears on the horizon, an extinct volcano, cloaking itself in cloud rather than heat-spumed ash. As you pass the smaller southern islands of Kadavu and Vatulele, the ship shows no sign of slowing, no deviation from its 2000-kilometre route, but powers up along the coast before suddenly throttling back and changing course north-north-west, towards Nadi. With centimetre precision, the ship slides itself along the channel south of Akuilau Island and turns sharp to starboard, following the breakwater and navigating around the mudflats into the Cove at Denarau. Only then, in the midst of luxury cruisers, do you turn off the GPS and human agency retakes control to dock alongside the floating pontoons.

Quirós had piloted the voyage of the Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira, who twice sailed from Peru in search of Terres Australis. His first voyage had charted the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu, and he returned with a second expedition of settlers, including his own wife and her family, visiting and naming the Marquesas Islands on the way. The settlement on Nendo Island, which they called Santa Cruz, failed. Mendaña, and then his brother-in-law, died, leaving Quirós and the new captain to continue on with the ships and survivors to the Philippines.

It is Quirós’s account of the journey that we remember. He wrote and published his journal of the voyage, which was referred to by all navigators in the area thereafter. The captain who brought the remaining 100 men and women of this famous expedition back to the Philippines under stern and uncompromising command is all but forgotten. If she wrote a journal it was not published. There is no mention of Dona Isabel Barreto de Castro in the accounts of the navigators I have read – only her pilot Quirós and her husband Mendaña. This woman, who crossed the Pacific several times, who was one of the first women in history to hold the title of admiral, barely rates a mention.

Curious that the paths of these two women with such similar surnames, Jeanne Barret and Isabel Barreto, should cross in the middle of the ocean, both leaving as little trace in the written record as their ships did in the sea.

The Boudeuse hung mid-Pacific Ocean, square sails brailed against the spars. Only the main topsail shivered in the light breeze. There was nothing ahead but the horizon swinging in a perfect arc from north to south. On a sunny day, the water was so clear you might think you could see all the way to the bottom of the ocean, but no lead line on this ship, no anchor rope, could find the bottom here. There was no land ahead and none below either.

Dark cloudbanks formed mirage mountains that dissolved into passing squalls, stippling the flat metallic sea. The great forested peaks, which yesterday thrust themselves from the skyline like Protean sentinels, had subsided behind them. No white sandy atolls here, no canoes laden with fresh fruit and pigs. No rocks slipping just beneath the surface, nor coral reefs with teeth bared either. Just a ship in limbo rocking on its keel, waiting for its slower consort to finally catch up.

There was nothing much happening on the Étoile worth reporting. On 23 May, Commerson noted that the Étoile’s clerk, Michau, had been arrested and locked in the brig. He offers no explanation for this, nor any hint as to why this was worth commenting on. I wonder what the otherwise unremarkable Michau did to deserve his punishment.

Saint-Germain – the clerk on the Boudeuse – had other, more scandalous, news.

‘It had been long suspected that M. de Commerson, a botanist doctor aboard the Étoile, had a girl for a servant, whom he had embarked at Rochefort,’ wrote Saint-Germain, ‘but today, it’s no longer a mystery. Various young people visited him despite all the precautions, complaints from Mr. de Commerson, and he really is a girl.’

Bougainville, watching impatiently as the Étoile crept ever closer, chafed against the delays his slower consort caused. The islands of these waters, so rich and bounteous, offered only a transitory reprieve from their hunger. The feast of fresh food they enjoyed in Tahiti had already receded, like that of Tantalus, leaving nothing for tomorrow. They would soon be forced to fall back on three-year-old horse beans, bacon and salt beef.

Already the signs of scurvy were reappearing. Every soul on board this ship was the commander’s responsibility. He was determined not to lose a single one of them.

It had been 539 days – one year, five months and 22 days – since they left France. Nearly ten months since they last saw a European face, in the Spanish colonies of South America. They all longed to make new discoveries, to make their names, to find new lands and chart the east coast of New Holland, completing the circumference that would become Australia, but they also longed for the familiar and the known. Glory must always be weighed against the risks. Whatever they achieved, they would, in any case, be condemned for not having found more, done better. Bougainville preferred to return home with all his men.

The Étoile was making less than 2 knots in the still air, but finally they were close enough to hail, for the dinghy to be lowered and for Bougainville to clamber aboard and make his way to his storeship, to attend to ‘some business’ in the captain’s cabin. It had been seven weeks since they left Tahiti and the last few days of calm had, at least, given the opportunity for interacting with the Étoile more frequently. Each ship and crew had their own peculiar challenges and imbalances. Sometimes they could be left to sort themselves out, sometimes they could be nipped in the bud, and sometimes they lingered on and eventually had to be dealt with directly.

Was ever a captain’s cabin home to a stranger collection than this one? Boxes and books, papers and presses, specimens in all stages of drying and decomposition, emanating a heady aroma of fish and sulfur, mixed with the sweet herbal scent of dried plant matter.

Who knew which of these plants contained the seeds of new food crops, new trading empires? Which of these shells formed the currency for new markets – for food, pearls, nacre or slaves? The turban shell from Tahiti might have been an overgrown version of the tiny phasianelles found on any French beach, except that its patterns were more precise and intricate, like a tapestry, or bands of ancient indecipherable text. The slightest chip on the surface revealed a layer of iridescent green. Everything in nature was more spectacular, more peculiar, more vibrant, here in this Pacific Ocean. It was a naturalist’s heaven.

Jeanne, the cause of all the controversy, entered the cabin. As a man, she did not stand out among the hundreds of men on the ships, and were it not for the gossip that trailed her Bougainville might well have been hard pressed to pick her out from the others. Rumour was rife on any ship. One or two hundred men crammed aboard a small ship for months on end have an insatiable thirst for tittle-tattle and gossip to relieve the tedium of long dull hours at sea. La Giraudais had clearly done his best to suppress their enthusiasm with threats and penalties, but the events in Tahiti had brought things to a head and they could be ignored no longer.

Looking at Jeanne with an impartial eye, Bougainville described her as small and slightly plump, no more than 25, with a freckled face and smooth chin. He noted that her voice was a little high – she might sing countertenor – or perhaps contralto.

It seemed impossible to Bougainville that this unassuming young man could be a woman. ‘Baré’, as he called her, was well trained, and her knowledge of botany was impressive. She served her capricious and demanding master dutifully and without complaint. Her strength and courage were often remarked upon. She had slogged through the icy mountains in the Strait of Magellan, carrying all of Commerson’s provisions, weapons and notebooks, with neither ill effect nor ill will. Commerson laughingly called her his ‘beast of burden’. Bougainville had been a leader of men for long enough to know the scarcity of such stoicism. He could do with more men like Jeanne.

Even so, Bougainville could not ignore what happened in Tahiti. The Tahitians must have thought these small pale European men were a little stupid not to have noticed a woman in their midst.

Sometimes it was convenient for a captain not to know about such rumours. Up until now there had been nothing in Jeanne’s behaviour to disrupt the smooth running of the ship. But it was forbidden under naval ordinances to bring a woman on board ship. If Commerson had broken the law, then Bougainville must know and punish him.

He asked the valet directly, for the truth.

Tearfully, Jeanne confessed to everything. It was all her fault, she claimed. Commerson knew nothing. She had deceived him by appearing in men’s clothing at Rochefort before boarding. She had worked as a valet before, for a Genevan. She was an orphan from Burgundy and, when the loss of a lawsuit had reduced her to penury, she decided to disguise her sex. She knew, when embarking, that it was a question of circumnavigating the world. The notion of such a voyage had excited her curiosity.

If Bougainville did not believe everything she told him, there was no reason for him to delve further. If he doubted Commerson’s innocence in this charade, he did not need to question it. No great crime had been committed. There were no naval ordinances about women dressing and signing on as men. It was not a problem that commonly arose – at least as far as anyone knew. Jeanne had been an exemplary, hardworking member of his crew. Bougainville clearly admired her determination and the fact that that she had always behaved with the most scrupulous correctness. The same could not be said for everyone aboard the ship. But since the rumours of her ‘discovery’ it had become increasingly difficult to prevent the sailors from sometimes ‘alarming her decency’, as Bougainville put it. He would have to take steps to ensure that she suffered no further unpleasantness.

Bougainville added nothing further to his account of this remarkable woman. Others on the ship were astonished by her bravery and thought she deserved to go into the annals of the world’s most famous women. But Bougainville did not mention her again, beyond a brief entry in his journal noting that when Commerson disembarked at Mauritius he did so along with ‘his valet, a girl as a man’.

The first woman known to have circumnavigated the world warrants barely more than a page and a half in Bougainville’s journal. This is the only record we have of her own words, transcribed by her commander. But for this brief mention, Jeanne Barret, and her achievements, would have vanished entirely from the historical record.