The exciting story of Rose de Freycinet’s journey around the world on board l’Uranie from 1817 to 1820 now has a new narrator. Jose was the half Mulatto son of Louis’ friend. The boy had been running wild on Mauritius and his father was contemplating sending him to school in France. Thinking that Jose would benefit from Rose’s enquiring mind and her knowledge of, and love for, the classics, and that teaching the boy would give Rose something to occupy her mind during the long months at sea, Louis agreed to add him to the ship’s company. But things did not quite work out as planned.

Jose was a very reluctant pupil. And Rose found his lack of interest in learning to read and write frustrating in the extreme. Nevertheless they did have a lot in common. Both were first-time sailors, homesick and struggling to cope with the harshness of life on board ship. They were both high-spirited, determined and courageous. And they were both airbrushed out of the official records of the voyage. For example, in the first version of artist Alphonse Pellion’s painting of the camp at Shark Bay both Rose and Jose were shown sitting outside Rose’s distinctive conical tent, no doubt during one of Rose’s lessons. But in the official version, although the tent remains, there is  no sign of either Rose or Jose.

Jose has a keen mind and plenty of native cunning. He is already plotting ways to get out of the dreaded lessons by persuading Rose to tell her many exciting stories to him instead. And just by being on board he is developing stories of his own. At the end of the new Chapter 4, the ship is on fire and everyone on board fears for their life. Find out what happens as this new version of the story unfolds each week.

The Old Port of Toulon with the Naval dockyards in the background. 'Uranie' set out from here in September 1817

Hartog, Vlamingh & Hamelin plates

Back in the days when I was a student at Wyalkatchem Primary School not much Australian history was taught. We were told about Captain Cook of course, but my memory of the details still tend to be a bit hazy. The one thing I have always remembered from those early history lessons is that Dirck Hartog landed on Dirck Hartog Island, Shark Bay, in 1616. Perhaps it was the pleasing symmetry of the numbers. Or perhaps it was the notion of washing up after dinner, scratching your name and the date onto your pewter plate and nailing it to a post on the other side of the world that appealed to my ten-year-old imagination. Much later in my life, while searching out  and writing some of our fascinating West Australian stories, I discovered that in 1697 Wilhem de Vlamingh had actually found Dirck Hartog’s plate and replaced it with one of his own, copying the original inscription onto the top half and adding his own information below.

When I became engrossed in the story of Rose de Freycinet and discovered that her husband, Louis, had sent a party of his men to find and bring back the Vlamingh plate in 1818, my interest was sparked again. Louis took the plate with him back to France where it lay forgotten in the Musee National de la Marine for more than one hundred years, before finally being tracked down and returned to Western Australia where it is now on display in the Shipwreck Gallery. The plate had had so many adventures it was almost a story on its own. Certainly too big a story to do justice to within the pages of Wild Rose.

It was not until last week that I learned that there was actually a third plate! Louis de Freycinet was on board the Naturaliste when Captain Hamelin, who was in charge of the ship which was part of Baudin’s expedition, found Vlamingh’s plate in 1801. Louis was afraid the plate would be lost for ever if they didn’t take it back to France for safe-keeping. But Hamelin refused. He did, however, instruct his men to rescue it from the sand where it had fallen and re-attach it to its post. Then he added a plate of his own – on a separate post. Now there’s a story. Perhaps I will get to write it one day.

Some of the de Freycinet boxes in the Archive de Laage

This week I was contacted by a French Maritime Archaeologist who is working with the Maritime Archaeology Department at the  Shipwreck Gallery in Perth. There has been a growing interest, over the last four or five years, in Rose and Louis de Freycinet’s visit to Shark Bay on board the Uranie in 1818. And significant research has been carried out by the archaeological team during that time.

Earlier this year an article called Who do you trust? by Dr Michael McCarthy was published in the book European Perceptions of Terra Australis, edited by Anne Scott. In his article Dr McCarthy examines the original documents, journals and artworks produced during the time l’Uranie was anchored in Shark Bay and highlights the places where the official and unofficial accounts are at odds. Disparities of this kind are not unusual in historical documents. In fact they appear much more frequently than most people realise. And not only between official and unofficial documents. Sometimes eye-witness accounts of the same incident vary so much that a lot of cross-referencing is needed and, in the end, choices have to be made about which version is most likely given the times and the circumstances surrounding the reported event. So there can never be one ‘true’ version of history. Is it any wonder then that novelists fill in the gaps? Otherwise how could their readers, who are not research scientists, ever make sense of the past? We know that the past is important. It influences so much of what we do here and now. But if novelists are continually criticised for making thing up, as they often are in the press, there is a real danger that fascinating and informative stories from the past will be lost forever.

I am pleased to say that my contacts with the Maritime Archaeology Department over the years have always been very positive, helpful and supportive, first with Straggler’s Reef, then Black Jack Anderson and now with Wild Rose. I always feel a new serge of excitement and enthusiasm for the long and difficult task of ‘getting it right’ when I know that others find the story just as fascinating as I do.

Middle Island, where Black Jack Anderson established a well hidden base.

Black Jack Anderson has slipped through the net – again!

Last Tuesday he was due to appear on the SBS1 TV programme, Who do you think you are?. But just when we thought we had him in our sights he disappeared. The producers had found a connection between the indigenous Australian footballer, Michael O’Loughlan’s, forebears and the Aboriginals who were taken by Anderson to Kangaroo Island. But in the end there was too much footage and they had to cut that segment from the show.

It is a very interesting story, nonetheless, and well worth watching if you get the chance.