Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
they would make discoveries about untravelled oceans and the flora
and fauna of distant lands which would add lustre to the reputation
of French philosophy and science. Bougainville wanted to be in the
forefront of this new enterprise. As soon as he received permission
for his settlement, he set about recruiting colonists and accumulat-
ing grain, cattle and other necessaries. On the following 5 April, hav-
ing established and provisioned his little settlement on East Falk-
land, he claimed the islands in the name of the French crown and re-
turned to Europe for fresh provisions.
All this activity had not been lost on France's rivals. Early in
1764, the Admiralty commissioned two ships, the
Dolphin
and the
Tamar
, ostensibly for a voyage to the East Indies by way of the Cape.
But the expedition's commander received secret instructions of a
very different nature.
They represented the conviction, urged since the 1740s by Ge-
orge Anson and now enthusiastically taken up by the Earl of Egmont,
First Lord of the Admiralty, that the Falklands provided the key to
the Pacific. In a long, chauvinistic preamble the instructions laid
claim on extremely tenuous grounds to various, for the most part un-
specified, distant territories and affirmed the desirability of adding
newly-discovered land to the British Empire:
Whereas nothing can redound more to the honour of this nation
as a maritime power, to the dignity of the Crown of Great Britain,
and to the advancement of the trade and navigation thereof, than to
make discoveries of countries hitherto unknown, and to attain a per-
fect knowledge of the distant parts of the British Empire, which though
formerly discovered by his majesty's subjects have been as yet but im-
perfectly explored; and whereas there is reason to believe that lands
and islands of great extent hitherto unvisited by any European power
may be found in the Atlantic Ocean between the Cape of Good Hope
