When I looked again at the “Le Butin” documents a few days ago, I noted that I thought BN3 (the third letter, apparently dating to not long after the Fall of Tamatave in 1810) had been written not by Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang, but by someone else entirely – someone who had ended up with Nageon de l’Estang’s Will and other documents.
Whereas Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang seems (from his letters) to have thought and acted like a pirate, this unidentified other person seems by contrast to have thought and acted like a corsair (i.e. a French privateer). I know there’s a lot of practical overlap between the two categories, but the two men’s core motivations seem to have been quite different, along with their use of language.
If we abandon the idea that the third letter (“BN3”) is in any way connected to Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang, can we use the internal evidence to identify the missing corsair who appears to have written it? It would seem that:
* he was from a family in France whose ancestral house remained but whose proud splendour had long faded;
* he had a “beloved brother” called Etienne, who had at least two sons;
* he was alive after the Fall of Tamatave in 1810 (though weak, and fearing death);
* he had (almost certainly) been on a ship under a “Captain Hamon” (Jamon?) not long before;
* his “glorious feat of arms” had been rewarded by none other than Napoleon Bonaparte, the First Consul;
* he was on the Apollon’s ill-fated last sea mission in 1798;
* at “our last battle with a large British frigate on the shores of Hindustan”, the dying Franc-Mason captain had given him “his secrets and his papers”, leading to buried treasure; and
* there were three documents about the treasures (though it would seem that we only have seen two of them).
Incidentally, I’ll return to the “last battle with a large British frigate” at a later date (I now have a strong suspicion which battle that was): but right now I’m more concerned with the Apollon.
The Apollon Crew List
After a previous spectacular success when captained by Jean Francois Hodoul, the 12-cannon Apollon (now captained by Louis Le Vaillant) was captured in 1798 by HMS Leopard. According to the prize documents in the National Archives at Kew, it had either 132 or 137 men on board.
If our missing corsair was – as BN3 suggests – on the Apollon’s last sea mission, then we should be able to see his name on the crew list. Furthermore, I think it would seem more likely that he was a sailor, ensign, or pilot than a volunteer, cook, or carpenter: and we can very probably rule out anyone with a non-French surname or any of the “noirs liberés” on board.
Hence I have image-enhanced roughly half of the crew list, numbered them, and placed them on a new page on the Cipher Foundation website.
The first two names on the crew list are very straightforward: Louis Le Vaillant and Jean Francois Hodoul, the latter of whom left the ship at the Seychelles (according to a note in the margin):
However, there are plenty of other names on the crew list that I’m far less certain of, so this is very much a work in progress.
Could I therefore please ask those readers with experience of reading older French handwriting if they would contribute, by suggesting what the other crew members’ names are? I have made some obvious-looking readings to try to get the list going, but this is not something I can claim any great expertise in. Please leave your comments either on this page or on the Cipher Foundation page and I’ll integrate them into the list, crediting you on the page for your help if you like.
Incidentally, I’m simply not allowed – as normal with historical archives – to publish the raw images of the crew list from Réunion on the web. But feel free to email me (nickpelling attus nickpelling dottus commus, hopefully you can read Latin email addresses) if you are a researcher who would like to see more from a particular page etc.
Thanks!
Hi Nick,
I had a glance through the list and don’t think I could improve on what you have even done if I had time but here is a suggestion about the name ‘Beranger’. There are a lot of variants of this name and it has an old and distinguished history in France, Spain and England which would tie in with the impoverished nobility.
Robert: unfortunately, there were plenty of other French noble families who were in difficulties at that time, for some reason or other. So this may not be the shortest route to an answer here. 😉
Hello, Nick! I can’t seem to find a contact page, so hopefully a comment will do…
Have you ever heard of Cicada 3301 and the Liber Primus? I don’t know how big you are on modern ciphers as opposed to historical ones, but it seems like it would be right up your alley… It’s an internet puzzle/ARG (and possibly secret society recruitment drive, but let’s not worry about that now) that, in its last stage before largely vanishing off the web, dropped a “book” of encoded messages, most of which have yet to be decrypted. Two years later, no new progress has been made on it. It also seems to take some stylistic cues from the good ol’ Voynich manuscript, so I think it’ll appeal to you.
If you just want to take a look these pages have the decrypted and yet-to-be-decrypted pages:
http://cicada3301.org/liber/
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lkta4q921vliyuw/AADmZ1YUHXWSjSizlMGZHXVMa?dl=0
And here’s a wiki on the whole puzzle if you decide you want to dig deeper:
http://uncovering-cicada.wikia.com/wiki/Uncovering_Cicada_Wiki
yam: truth be told, I’m far more interested in historical ciphers than in ciphers made by living people snickering into their hands. Klaus Schmeh has covererd Cicada 3301 a few times, but (as you can probably guess) it’s not really my kind of thing. 😐
Nick
Dont you find it odd that Jean Marie Justin Nageon was apparently killed while serving on the Apollon in 1798, and had a brother called Etienne with two sons? As you have previously pointed out the 1798 date conflicts with the fall of tamatave, and Etienne was only born in 1791, so there is a major date issue here, but the coincidence of the other details with the anonymous sailor of L3 is a bit suspicious.
Likewise, if Justin was Jean Marie, as appears probable, as you have noted elsewhere he was already dead when L2 was written. Also, from the little I can find it appears that Justin lived all his life in the Indian ocean islands, so why would L2 direct him first to the indian ocean when he was already there?
In this line it has ocurred to me that maybe the documents are true, in the sense of old, but form part of a contemporary scam – for example, perhaps defrauding rich frenchmen smarting from recent english victories by getting them to fund expeditions looking for treasure hidden by a patriot for the purpose of fighting the english. It strikes me that the letters contain just enough detail that people in France could verify the general context, eg the Apollon, the fall of Tamatave, the Nageon family etc, but other relevant details not mentioned (ie the death of Justin) would probably have been much harder to verify and relatively easy to hide from selected targets.
Finally, there were only three french ships at the battle of Tamatave – it would be interesting to cross-reference any crew lists with the Apollon to see if any names come up on both
Patagon: I don’t have any documents to say where / how Jean Marie Justin Nageon de l’Estang died, just a single Internet report of a date. Do you know any more about this?
Incidentally, it now seems likely to me that “Captain Hamon” (not an obviously French name) was in fact Captain Jacques Felix Emmanuel Hamelin of the frigate Vénus (he was in command of the East Indies Station from 1808-1810) (Austen p.125), but mistranscribed and handed down to us as “Hamon”: he was certainly at the Fall of Tamatave, though was captured by the British not long after. (Austen p.169).
Though there was also a “Doctor Hamon” on board Robert Surcouf’s ship Cartier in 1795 (Austen p.79), I doubt he was the person we’re looking for.
It would be nice to see these documents in their original form, wouldn’t you say?
Nick : I got the information from the book “Seychelles Since 1770: History of a Slave and Post-slavery Society” by Deryck Scarr. The relevant pages are available for preview on google books. It looks like the author had access to the original Nageon family geneological records. He is an emeritus professor at the Australian National University, so it may even be possible to contact him directly.
I have found several captain Hamons around the time period, but have not been able to tie any of them to the Nageons. A captain Hamon was in charge of the Naiade in Villeneuves fleet in 1805, but the Naiade was captured later in the same year off of Barbados, and I dont know what happened to Hamon. A captain Hamon was second in command of the naval school in Brest around 1830, and yet another one figures in Novia Scotia historical records. There a few more where the data and/or my french are insufficient to draw any conclusions.
Patagon: I still don’t buy into the idea that BN3 was written by the same person who wrote BN1 and BN2, and I’m a lot more convinced by Hamelin (who was definitely at Tamatave) than any of the Hamons. H.C.M.Austen covers the whole Tamatave sequence very well, it’s kind of the climax of his book. 🙂
patagon: also, I should point out that Scarr seems to have got himself in a tangle with the Nageon letters – it’s not at all clear to me what he has evidence for, what he’s inferring from the letters, what the Nageon de l’Estang family has told him, and what he’s guessing at to try to resolve all the pieces that don’t quite fit together.
Nick
I agree that if the letters are real then L3 is a different author, but my gut feel is that they are the same author or authors pretending to be two different people.
Another angle I was looking at is the reference to nephew in L1. Justins paternal uncles appear to have all died as children, he had no paternal aunts, and he has only two maternal uncles alive around the relevant time period. I havent yet found out anything much about their lives, but as they werent Nageons its probably not relevant anyway.