Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
As soon as the new sailing season arrived he set out with the intend-
ant of IÎle de France, Pierre Poivre, on an expedition to the Spice Is-
lands which brought back specimens of clove and nutmeg trees for
replanting.
The only remaining feature of interest about Bougainville's voy-
age was the incident we have already mentioned when the French
ship overtook Carteret's near the island of Ascension. His offer of
help to the British captain was undoubtedly genuine; he noted in his
journal that the
Swallow
'went very ill'. But it was doubtless with a
distinct twinge of pride that he watched the British ship which had
set out months before his own fall far behind and disappear over the
southern horizon.
The French ships sailed on and reached St Malo in March 1769.
Bougainville closed his account of the voyage with what he obviously
considered to be its most important achievement: 'I entered it on the
16th in the afternoon, having lost only seven men, during two years
the seven, only two had died of scurvy. The longest period spent at
sea without anti-scorbutics had been five months and Bougainville
noted that, had their arrival in the Moluccas been delayed by a few
more days, he would certainly have lost several more men. What this
voyage demonstrated was the maximum length of time sailors could
survive without a proper diet.
Louis de Bougainville's circuit of the globe was the first French
circumnavigation, but it has another - and perhaps more intriguing
- claim to fame: it was the first circumnavigation by a woman. When
the
Étoile's
crew was embarking at Rochefort, one of her officers, M.
de Commercon, was approached on the quayside by a young man,
named Bare, who asked to be taken on as a servant. After a few
weeks at sea certain suspicion was being entertained about young
Bare. 'His shape, voice, beardless chin, and scrupulous attention of
not changing his linen or making the natural discharges in the pres-
