Coming home

Deleted until photo is corrected. Sorry...

Marin, you need to lay off the sauce, or maybe it was the medicinal maijuana?

No, I took tbe photo with a stupid phone instead of a real camera and the resulting picture imports upside down. Tried flipping it in various apps on the iPad and no dice-- the metadata only allows the photo to import as upside down. So I need to put it in Photoshop and fix it properly.

Maddening! The iPhone has to be held like you would for a call, or if on its side, with the volume buttons up.

It really was a beautiful day!

Okay, here's the corrected photo. Taken at the end of the day today as we were entering our harbor after a nice, but cold, fall run. Don't you non-PNWers go getting the idea that the days always look like this up here: this is just the third one we've had since I moved here in 1979.

You must have slept thru the one we had 3 years ago.

Who's that a picture of on the upper left. Not GW himself??
Pre civil war when they changed white hair for beards.

The line drawing in the brass frame is of Jean-Francois de La Perouse, the person our boat is named for. He was the first French explorer to come to the Pacific Northwest.

In 1785 he crossed the Atlantic, rounded Cape Horn sailed over to Hawaii (he was the first European to visit Maui), then sailed to SE Alaska and explored north to Mt. Elias and Lituya Bay (origionally named La Perouse Bay) before heading south down the west coast to California. He then sailed across to the northwest Pacific around Japan, Korea, and Kamchatka and then down to Australia and the southwest Pacific.

His two ships were wrecked in a storm on a reef in 1788. They built a boat from the wreckage and La Perouse and a small crew headed out for New Zealand to get help. They were never seen again.

La Perouse commanded a French naval frigate during the American War of Independence and captured several British warships in Hudson's Bay. He was quite different in character from most naval commanders of the day in that he treated his crews extremely well. He was fascinated by all sorts of things--- geology, panets, animals, etc., and carried several scientists on his voyage of discovery.

His two ships were the Bussole (compass) and the Astrolabe. This painting shows the Bussole, which was the ship captained by La Perouse. The Astrolabe is in the background.

I got the little portrait when we visited the La Perouse museum in Albi, France. Albi is where La Perouse was from (as was the artist Toulouse Lautrec).

My father was French (from France), hence the connection with regards to our boat's name. Our current dog is named Albi for the same reason.

RobertLeatch said:

His final expedition arrived in Botany Bay less than a week after the First Fleet (though I think it is now accepted that he had no orders to actually claim Australia for France)..

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Yes, some say if La Perouse had arrived in Australia a couple of weeks earlier everybody would be speaking French down there today.

I knew about Napolean's application and rejection for La Perouse's voyage, but I've never read a reason for it

I have a two-volume English translation of La Perouses journal of the voyage which he sent back overland with one of the expedition's scientists when he was in the Kamchatka area. That journey took the fellow over a year and would be fascinating to read about in itself.

I have yet to read the journal--- I've only gotten as far as the introduction by the translator--- but I'm looking forward to having the time to get into it. He was apparently a really observant and sensitive man, and he wrote quite a bit about the injustices and cruelty to the local folks he observed being practiced by missionaries in Chile and California.

Marin said:

His two ships were wrecked in a storm on a reef in 1788. They built a boat from the wreckage and La Perouse and a small crew headed out for New Zealand to get help. They were never seen again.

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Possibly eaten, if they made it.
There is a Sydney suburb called La Perouse,located beside Botany Bay.

Nicolas Baudin (in 1801) was actually the bigger threat – he was actively looking at ways for France to invade and prepared a detailed plan for Napoleon to take over the colony. To complete the circle… Hyacinthe de Bougainville (a very underrated French explorer) was with Baudin at the time as a young midshipman. He later returned in 1825 (as part of his own circumnavigation) and laid the foundation stone of the La Perouse Monument in Sydney. The monument still exists and is well worth a visit if you’re down under.

Marin said:

... Don't you non-PNWers go getting the idea that the days always look like this up here: this is just the third one we've had since I moved here in 1979.

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Oh? Like our visits to Seattle and Vancouver earlier this year, as in the several times in other years, the weather was clear and beautiful, not that I haven't experienced the rain's drizzle and once a pinch of snow in Seattle.

Bruce - there's a theory that some (at least) survived for a number of years on Vanikoro – signal fires from there were seen in 1791 by the Pandora (while searching for the survivors of the Bounty) but were ignored at the time. Another one of those choices that on reflection could have made for a different outcome.

mr RL, Marin, very interesting reading!

The wrecks of La Perouse's two ships were eventually found. One of them had slipped of the reef into much deeper water. A number of artifacts from the ships were brought up; some of them reside in the Maritime Museum in Paris and some in the La Perouse museum in Albi.

Bits and pieces of hardware and tools from the wreck that stayed on the reef were also found on Vanakoro, indicating the possibility that the crew members who remained on the island lived there for some time. There are stories among the natives in the area of fair skinned people on Vanakoro for a time, and IIRC some of the natives had metal implements that could only have come from a European vessel. I don't recall how the information that La Perouse and some of his men had built a boat and set off for New Zealand became known, whether it was related by the natives or something was left behind on the island to tell the tale.

The small boat that La Perouse and his men built from wood and hardware salvaged from the ship that stayed on the reef as never been located.

Dillion seems to have been the one who discovered the relics in 1827 and was told by natives that some survivors had built a 2 mastered vessel from the wreckage (and felled trees) and sailed away. Apparently a few also remained on Vanikoro but had all died by the time Dillon arrived. An interesting early account attached.

Marin, the French have a red expeditionary icebreaker called the Astrolabe, no doubt named after that second vessel, that services the French Antarctic base, which is often berthed at Constitution Dock in Hobart, Tasmania. My brother, who is a helicopter engineer based in Melbourne, has been down there on it several times to look after their choppers. Closest I'll ever get to Antarctica is he takes my video camera on loan with him.