Category Archives: Le Butin Papers

In my efforts to work out exactly who the Commandant Hamon in the BN3 letter was, I found two recent issues of Outre-Mers filled to the gunwales with Eric Saugera’s somewhat epic archival research into French slaving ships during the tumultuous period 1794-1814.

Saugera has a good-sized section on Captaine Emmanuel-Hypolite le Joliff and his ship the Navigateur. Specifically, he says of Desvaux and Hamon that the first was “le second capitaine“, while the second “devant être un officier de l’État-major“. However, this notion that Hamon was an officer in the General Staff of the military seems (and I might be wrong) to be a presumption on Saugera’s part. So, while I initially got super-excited about this as a new lead on Hamon, I’ve kind of settled down a bit since.

Perhaps more interesting is that in Saugera’s section on l’Ile de France slave ships, he talks specifically about the Apollon. This was a 200-tonne three-master (30 men) that arrived from Brest in 1797 (Cap. Raoul?), going from there to Mozambique on 16 Jun 1802 (Cap. Moignot, maître d’équipage François Roguit). The name appears twice in Toussaint’s Route des Iles, firstly on p.295 for 1797:

…and p.265 for 16 Jun 1802:

This slaver Apollon would seem to be a different ship to the one (Cap. Louis le Vaillant) that was captured by HMS Leopard in 1798, which I once posted the crew list for. In fact, it seems likely to me that this Louis le Vaillant 1798 Apollon (which the famous corsair Jean-Francois Hodoul had received in May 1797 fitted up for privateering) was in fact the same 7 Jan 1797 Apollon with Cap. Raoul listed by Toussaint.

But was this 1802 slaver Apollon the one mentioned in the BN3 letter?

Dans ma vie aventureuse et avant de m’embarquer à bord de l’Apollon, j’ai fait partie du dernier corsaire de ces grand corsaires qui ont fait tant de mal à l’Espagne et à notre ennemie l’Anglais.

Even though the BN3 letter writer is talking about his “adventurous life”, note that he is talking about “before” embarking on the Apollon. So perhaps he flipped (as did Emmanuel-Hypolite le Jollif) from privateer ships to slave ships? But, in all fairness, without crew lists to hand, it’s hard to be 100% sure.

Regardless, this slaver Apollon appears to fit the BN3 timeline fairly well, so I wouldn’t bet against it right now. So… maybe/perhaps/maybe we’re starting to make some progress here (fingers crossed).

A while back, I noted that H. C. M. Austen mentioned (“Sea Fights and Corsairs of the Indian Ocean”, p.79) a ship’s surgeon called Hamon from 1796. This was on a pilot brig which the famous corsair Robert Surcouf had captured and renamed the Cartier on 28 Jan 1796: while Surcouf and the rest of his (small) crew had boarded the Diana, the ship’s Malouin surgeon (Hamon) and cook had stayed behind, shooting across at the Diana to help convince them that Surcouf’s Cartier had a much larger crew.

This story was most famously recounted in Charles Cunat’s often breathless “Histoire de Robert Surcouf, Capitaine de Corsaire” (p.52), though modern historians such as Alain Romain prefer to rely on Captain Tapson’s account of the same attack that appeared in the Calcutta Gazette.

Even though Surcouf was extraordinarily successfully, his ways of going about things drew sharp criticism (e.g. from Decaen) and his substantial corsairing prizes were initially withheld from him. However, after appeals to authorities in France, this was reversed: but part of this involved a letter being sent by many of the French crew recounting what happened. This letter dated 15 Vend. Ann. IV appears in Cunat (p.43), and includes a list of signatories: R. Surcouf, H. Hamon, Bourgoin, J. Croize, etc. So it seems almost certain that the ship’s surgeon’s first name began with H (e.g. Henri, Henri-Marie, etc), which is helpful.

But the reason I’m flagging this is that my last post briefly mentioned Emmanuel Hypolite le Joliff, captain of the slaver ship the Navigateur, which ferried slaves from Mozambique to Ile de France. I had a feeling I’d seen this name before but couldn’t think where: but it was on Capitaine le Joliff’s Navigateur that Robert Surcouf was famously the Lieutenant from 27 Aug 1792 to 17 Mar 1794.

Toussaint’s Les Freres Surcouf mentions two specific slave runs from Surcouf’s time on the Navigateur (though there were doubtless many others after that, including the one with the 1803 mutiny where two slaves owned by Messers Desveaux and Hamon were lost, presumed jumped overboard):

• 10 May 1793 -> Mozambique, returned 25 Sep 1793 with 362 slaves
• 10 Dec 1793 -> Mozambique, returned 04 Mar 1794 with 360 slaves

It would therefore surely not be a surprise if the Commandant Hamon mentioned in the BN3 letter was also the same H. Hamon who had served under Robert Surcouf in 1796. This might well explain his kindly ministrations to the letter-writer: “[…] je suis malade depuis la prise de Tamatave, malgré les soins de mon commandant et ami.” Though I’d need persuading about ship’s surgeons’ bedside manners: “Anyone lost any limbs? Hands? Feet? Eyes? No-one? OK, jolly good, if you need me, I’ll be dining with the Captain“.

Incidentally, a search of Gallica threw up a reference in “La medecine et les medicins a Saint-Malo, 1500-1820” by Dr H. Hervot (p. 219) to “Hamon, chirurgien navigant de Saint-Ideuc” in the proceedings of a St-Malo medical society dated 24 Oct 1791. Given that we know from Cunat that the Hamon on the Cartier was a ship’s surgeon from Saint-Malo (the famous “Corsair City”, and Surcouf’s and le Joliff’s home town), this could very easily be the same person.

Where Next?

I suspect Hamon’s full name will appear in one or more Mauritian crew lists from this time (though none of the ones I have here), and possibly also in records in the Saint-Malo archives and/or in Gallica. I’ve also looked in various other Surcouf-themed books but without any luck. But even so, I think it’s starting to feel as though these different research threads may well be converging on a single person.

The third letter of the Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang set mentions the writer’s close relationship with a certain Commandant Hamon:

• “[…] je suis malade depuis la prise de Tamatave, malgré les soins de mon commandant et ami.”
• “Quand je serai mort, le commandant Hamon te fera remettre le peu que je possède et que j’ai économisé dans ma vie aventureuse de marin.”
• “Le commandant te remettra les écrits des trésors, […]”

But who was this Commandant Hamon? Given that this letter seems to have been written not long after the Fall of Tamatave (20th May 1811), and that the letter writer was a seaman (“marin”), I think it seems likely that “commandant” here means a sea captain rather than an army captain or politician. So this is what I went a-looking for…

Auguste Toussaint’s “Route Des Iles”

One excellent source for Mauritian maritime history is Mauritian archivist Auguste Toussaint’s (1967) book “La Route Des Iles: Contribution a l’Histoire Maritime Des Mascareignes“. Usefully, you can borrow this online from the Internet Archive, which is a terrific help.

Searching this for “Hamon” yields two hits:

• Expédition, 25 Jul 1804, Cap. Hamon, French, goëlette, from Mozambique (possibly armed in Port Louis?)
• p.265: 05 Nov 1803. Two slaves belonging to Messieurs Desveaux and Hamon went missing after a mutiny on board the Navigator (the source says that they probably threw themselves into the sea), Captain Emmanuel le Joliff, returning from Mozambique.

Mozambique was the centre of the (thankfully by 1804 somewhat dwindling) slave trade in the South Western corner of the Indian Ocean, so it would seem fairly likely that this Hamon was a slave trader operating between Mozambique and Mauritius.

Note that a ship called the Expédition (also French, also coming for Mozambique, but marked up as a brick rather than a goëlette), Captain Bazin, arrived in Mauritius on 05 Jun 1805. There was also an Expédition (again French, again a goëlette), Captain Lesteine (?), that arrived in Mauritius from Bengal on 01 Aug 1801. These three similarly-named ships may or may not have been the same. Additionally, we can see Bazin listed as captain on numerous ships around the Indian Ocean from 1781 onwards, some of which were from St Malo.

However, this is as far as (the normally very reliable) Toussaint seems to take us on our journey here.

Slave Voyage Database

There’s also an interesting slave voyage database, that is generally more useful for West African slave journeys (my understanding is that Mozambique slavers tended to sell slaves via country ships travelling across the Indian Ocean, and often via middlemen in Mauritius).

This lists two separate slave ship captains from around this period with the surname “Hamon”:

• Hamon, Guillaume-Denis (active 1753-1755), Saint Philippe, Senegambia, Nantes
• Hamon, Jean Marie (1817), Elysée (a) Eliza, Saint-Louis, Nantes

Unfortunately, the first seems too early, while the second had not yet been certified for long-distance sailing prior to April 1820 (and, at only 38 years old, also seems too young):

So it doesn’t seem that we’re having much luck here.

National Archives

The National Archives have prize papers relating to a Charles Hamon, captain of “La Fanny” (no, I’m not making it up). On 16 Dec 1808, the corsair La Fanny (16 guns, crew of 80) was captured close to Noirmoutier by HMS Naiad and HMS Narcissus. (The prize papers are here, but have not yet been digitised.)

Some of the documents in NA (e.g. this) assert that this Captain Hamon had previously been captain of the frigate La Venus, but this is plainly false, confusing Hamon with Hamelin. This is presumably what H. C. M. Austen was referring to, but the fact that the Naiad and Narcissus captured Charles Hamon’s corsair La Fanny seems to have been correct.

The problem here is that this particular Hamon was presumably then escorted onwards to a prison (such as the new one nearby in Plymouth), where he presumably spent the rest of the war. Which would (I guess) argue against him then popping up in Mauritius in 1811, alas.

Where to look next?

Well… to be honest, I don’t rightly know. There are plenty of name hits for “Hamon” in the Memoire des Hommes (473 to be precise), but the date range there only really goes up to 1788 or so. This means that most of the seamen listed there seem to be too old to be still active in Mauritius circa 1811, but even so this meagre Venn diagram intersection still leaves a few possible candidates:

• Charles Marie Hamon (from Port-Louis or Lorient)
• Francois Hamon (from Saint-Malo)
• Germain Hamon (from Lorient)
• Joseph Hamon (from Pont-l’Abbé)
• Pierre Hamon (from Lorient, who “déserté à l’île de France le 20/04/1788”)

Am I confident that this will help? No, not really. But I thought I ought to mention that I’d looked under this particular rock, in case it helps anyone else attempting the same thing. For now I’m out of ideas.

Given the solid dating of Jean-Marie Justin Nageon de l’Estang’s birth to 1776, I decided to revisit the issue of whether the “richesses de l’Indus” refers to an actual ship. We’ve already seen a brig called “Indus” captured by the French in 1782 (though full of rice rather than treasure). Additionally, Jean-Marie Justin’s reported death date of 1798 would appear to give us a latest possible date. So let’s look for ships called “Indus“, 1783-1798…

Indus (1792-1792) – Calcutta

According to Hackman (2001) [which I can’t currently buy a copy of, bah], this Indus was a ‘country ship’ (i.e. only allowed to sail the Indian Ocean as far as the Cape of Good Hope). It was built in Calcutta in 1792, and lost in the same year.

According to Lloyd’s List No. 2417 (10th July 1792) p.1, “The Indus, a country ship from Bengal, loaded with rice, is supposed to be lost“. So even though we have two similar lost ships called Indus, both were reportedly stuffed with rice rather than treasure. (That joke’s not going to get old for a good while yet, sorry.)

Indus (1789-1794) – Amsterdam

This Indus was built in Amsterdam for the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Nederlandsche Geoctroyeerde Oostindische Compagnie, helpfully abbreviated as “VOC”) and launched in 1789. It was rated at 1150 tons.

In the VOC archives, we can see various sailors and carpenters (such as Samuel Steenveld, Pieter Lohee, Samuel Erhard Frenckler, and Johan Friedrich Schmidt) on this Indus, leaving Amsterdam on 27 Aug 1790, arriving at the Cape of Good Hope on 05 Jan 1791, leaving there on 01 Feb 1790, arriving in Batavia on 20 May 1791.

The end of this Indus was when it burnt and sank in Batavia Roads in 1794. Frenckler is marked as “deceased” on 15 Sep 1794, and Lohee as “missing” on 23 Sep 1794, so I think it’s fairly likely that this Indus caught fire on 15 Sep 1794.

Industan (1796), Captain Lewis – Philadelphia

I first posted about this ship back in 2016: Auguste Toussaint mentioned it in his (1967) “La route des Iles: contribution à l’histoire maritime des Mascareignes”.

• (p.306) 4th March 1796, the ‘navire’ “Industan” (Captain Louis) arrived from Philadelphia.
• (p.262) 22nd August 1796, the American ‘vaisseau’ “Industan” (Captain Lewis) arrived from Pondicherry.

Annoyingly, newspapers.com only returns useful results if you search for “Indoftan” (rather than “Indostan”). The earliest mention there of “the Indiaman Indoftan” is from 9 May 1794 (with Captain Mackintofh, *sigh*). On 11 June 1796, the Captain of the brig Rose reports having seen the Indostan at Ile de France a couple of months earlier. The Indostan later arrived at Newport (Rhode Island) on 14 Jan 1797, having taken 96 days to get back from Ile de France, “and 55 days to the coast”. So this all seems to tie up nicely with Toussaint.

As I noted in 2016, we can see Captain Jacob Lewis’ ship selling its goods from March 1797 to May 1797, so this doesn’t really seem likely to be the “Indus” we’re looking for:

In 1805, we can see the Indostan, 22 guns, Capt. Lewis, still going strong as part of Ogden’s fleet, so it doesn’t seem to have been lost along the way. Incidentally, the USA received a stiff letter from France in 1805 complaining that:

Considering that it is notorious that the America of 32 guns, the Connecticut of 22, the Indostan of 14, and several other American vessels of that description, are not only engaged in that execrable commerce, but actually transport the arms and ammunition of Dessalines’ army from one port to another, thereby becoming the auxiliaries of the black rebels against France.

I’m guessing that this was the same Indostan, but it’s hard to be 100% sure.

Indostan privateer (-1797)

The Philadelphia Inquirer of 07 Oct 1797 p.3 included a colourful extract from the logbook of the brig Alexander, which had been boarded by the Mayflower privateer on 12 Sep 1797:

The captain of the privateer informed Captain Whelan [of the Alexander] that the Indostan privateer of 15 guns was run ashore in the gulf of Bahamia and totally lost ; crew and officers saved. The sloop of war that chased the privateer was from Cape Francois, and had on board Santhonax, who made his escape from the Cape. Santhonax arrived at the Havanna the 5th September and saluted the ships and town with 21 guns. It was reported he had brought with him one million of dollars. The cause of his retreat from the Cape was not made public ; but it was thought he made his escape from Toussaint.

The snow Cleopatra, captain Christie, picked up part, or the whole of the Indostan’s crew. The Cleopatra was from Cape Francois bound to the Havanna.

Note that the same page has an extract from Lloyd’s List of August 4-11, noting that the other Indostan (Captain Lewis) had arrived at Hamburg from Philadelphia: so this would seem to be an entirely different ship.

The Philadelphia Inquirer of 20 Nov 1797 p.3 mentions that “The Nassau (late Indostan), Merchant, of this port, was ready to sail for Batavia, under Danish colours“. This name then seems to have changed back to Indostan by the next year: The North American of 13 Sep 1798 p.1 mentions: “Died at Batavia, 20th April, capt. Merchant of the ship Indostan of Philadelphia“. A diary of a ship’s lad (Charles Francis Waldo) has been preserved in Salem: in 1802, he sailed from Boston in the ship “Indus” for Canton and Batavia. This was mentioned in “The Ships and Sailors of Old Salem“, pp. 327-329: perhaps this was the same Indostan, it’s hard to say.

Any progress here, Nick?

Pfffft, not really, it has to be said. I don’t really buy into either of the 1782 or 1792 Indus prize ships, both full of rice rather than treasure; the Dutch Indus seems to have caught fire in the safe Dutch port of Batavia; I don’t see how it could have been Captain Jacob Lewis’ Indostan; and the privateer Indostan was in the wrong ocean completely.

I’m now wondering whether all the ‘action’ might have taken place after 1800. Is there any primary evidence that Jean-Marie Justin Nageon de l’Estang died on 09 May 1798? There’s an entry claiming this on ancestry.com (mentioned here), but my subscription has run out so cannot check it. 🙁

As the many journaux de bord listed in my previous post attest, the Marine JJ series of documents is where lots of good stuff is to be found. An appendix in a 974-page historical slavery report I found online includes a handy list of such journaux from this period at CARAN in Paris.

4 JJ

4 JJ is described as “nombreux journaux de bord (ou extraits) de la Compagnie des Indes ou voyages dans l’océan Indien en général”, a sentence which helpfully auto-translates itself. The ones listed for 1747 to early 1748 are:

• 4 JJ 77 38 – 1747 Journal du vaisseau le Triton commandant du Tertre de Saint-Malo aux iles de France et Bourbon retour à Lorient
• 4 JJ 77 39 – 1747 Journal du Vaisseau le Fulvy commandant de la Palisade de Lorient aux iles de France et Bourbon retour à Brest
• 4 JJ 77 40 – 1747 Journal du Vaisseau l’Argonaute commandant de la Londe de l’île de France à Lorient
• 4 JJ 77 41 – 1747 Journal du Vaisseau le Content commandant Joannisse de Lorient à l’île de France
• 4 JJ 77 42 – 1748 Journal de la frégate l’Anglesea commandant de Selle de Brest à l’île de France, Bourbon et retour
• 4 JJ 77 43 – 1748 Journal du Vaisseau l’Auguste commandant de Saint-Médard de l’île de France à Lorient

Similarly, 2 JJ 58 contains documents that relate to “voyages à Madagascar et à l’Île de France (1709-1753)”.

Pierre David

I also wondered whether there might be any archival sources for the Mascareignes Governor Pierre David: and so was pleased to see that archive COL C4‐5 for the years 1746‐1748 contains “Correspondances générales M. David, Gouverneur”. The specific letters listed for the period I’m interested in are:

• 1747 Affaire de M. Meygnier, chirurgien‐major, propriétaire d’un marais à sel à l’Isle de France
  • Lettre au Conseil Supérieur de l’Île de France
• Emploi des noirs, formés à faire le sel et à cultiver la saline
• 1748 M. de Rostaing, commandant la Frégate La Favorite
  • Lettre du 25 Mars 1748 au Conseil
• corvées des noirs pour les fortifications de l’Île et dédommagement

There’s also an article “Pierre David et la Compagnie des Indes, de 1729 à 1752” by Pierre Margry in in Revue maritime et coloniale, tome XVIII, 71e livraison, Octobre 1866, which includes a transcription of Pierre David’s own memoirs, “Réflexions sur l’Ile-de-France” (which I am about to read).

Andre Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang claimed to have been shipwrecked (very probably in Mauritius), which surely means that he was a crew member on board a French-controlled ship. Since my last post, I’ve changed my mind about the type of source for the “richesses de l’Indus” (in Bernardin’s testament).

Specifically, I’m now wondering if this was this a prize ship (probably, though not necessarily, called the Indus) captured by a French ship in the Indian Ocean, sent back to Mauritius with a skeleton crew, but which was then shipwrecked on Mauritius by the hurricane of January 1748.

However, any prize ship captured around that time of year would have wanted (with the start of monsoon season) to depart immediately for Mauritius. Hence I suspect that this means any such capture would have to have happened in the narrow window between early December 1747 and early January 1748.

So, this post attempts to work out the historical context for this one-month window, and hopefully tries to draw up a list of French ships that were close by during December 1747. It also tries to see what historical sources might be available for pursuing this search further (in future posts).

The First Carnatic War (1740-1748)

Notwithstanding its origins in the War of Austrian Succession, the First Carnatic War largely played out as a protracted fight between Britain and France for control over the (hugely lucrative) Indian coastal trading ports of Madras, Pondicherry, and Cuddalore.

By the end of 1747, however, France was (literally) in retreat. Previously, La Bourdonnais had sailed back from Madras (where things had got too, errrm, hot for him) to France, which all ended very badly for him. In India, this left the Compagnie des Indes traders under Dupleix with no maritime support.

Georges Lacour-Gayet’s “La marine militaire de France sous le règne de Louis XVI” (1910, 2nd edition) covers much of this in his chapter 13, though the precise period we’re interested in starts on p.215.

Precis-ing at speed: La Bourdonnais’ successor was former Antarctic explorer Bouvet de Lozier (discoverer of the unbelievably remote Bouvet Island), who reached Mauritius on 12 October 1848 with the Lys and four other ships. What had happened in the intervening period is that a new British admiral (Admiral Griffin) had gained almost complete control of the Coromandel Coast. Dupleix, faced with the possibility of losing control of Madras and ending up under siege in Pondicherry, sent a message to Port-Louis (then the capital of Mauritius), asking for help. Capitaine d’Ordelin reached Port Louis with Dupleix’s message in December 1747.

The governor of Mauritius (Pierre David) was already aware of a problem: he had heard that the British Admiral Boscawen was preparing a squadron of ships heading for the Indies (Boscawen’s squadron left on 28 November 1747). In response, Pierre David had armed all the suitable ships in Port-Louis, and ordered them to rendezvous at Foule Pointe in Madagascar (between Tamatave and Sainte-Marie). Yet despite all the governor’s activity, Bouvet de Lozier only actually left Foule Pointe on 23rd May 1748 with seven vessels – the Lys, the Apollon, the Anglesey, the Mars, the Brillant, the Centaure, and the Cybèle. (Capitaine de Kersaint’s Alcide wouldn’t reach Ile de France until June 1748.)

Jean-Marie Chelin’s “Histoire Maritime de l‘Ile Maurice”

As I previously reported, when the hurricane of 21 Jan 1748 struck Mauritius, the Brillant, the Renommée, and the Mars all ended up beached in Port-Louis harbour, while three other (unnamed) boats were lost. Daniel Krieg very kindly gave me updated information on the same time period from a more recent book, Jean-Marie Chelin’s “Histoire Maritime de l’Ile Maurice” (Volume 1):

• 16 Feb 1747: death of Pierre Boideau, a volontaire on the Phenix
• 02 Mar 1747: announcement of the death of Jean Tardivel, pilot of the Argonaute
• 14 Jun 1747: death of Etienne Laterre, second captain of the frigate Anglesey (720 tonnes, 48 cannons)
• 12 Oct 1747: arrival of Jean Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier on the Lys (64 cannons).
• Dec 1747: arrival from Pondicherry of a squadron under the command of d’Ordelin, comprising the Centaure, the Brillant, the Mars and the Saint-Louis. All four were in a pitiful state, and took several months to repair.
• 20 Dec 1747: the departure of the Apollon (Capitaine Baudran de la Metterie) and the Anglesey (Capitaine Gervais de la Mabonnays) for a cruise to the Cape of Good Hope.
• 22 Jan 1748: Jean Francois Fortier (volontaire on the Centaure) died, aged 21
• 3 Feb 1748: the Aimable, Capitaine de Surville, arrived from Foule Point having lost a cargo of 350 cows and “140 milliers” of rice in the hurricane at sea. He also had to throw his cannons overboard and cut down his masts to survive.
• 11 Feb 1748: arrival of the Princesse Amelie, an English prize from Pondicherry, commanded by Capitaine Julien Louis Litoust de La Berteche.
• 25 Feb 1748: the Lyon, Capitaine Rouille, arrived in a terrible state, having spent six months at sea: he advised that the rest of the squadron coming from France that his ship had been part of (under the Chevalier de Saint-Georges) had been lost.
• 28 Feb 1748: the departure of the Apollon (under Capitaine de La Porte Barre) and the Anglesey for another cruise to the Cape of Good Hope.
• 20 Mar 1748: death of Thomas Durant, first lieutenant on the Apollon.
• 21 Apr 1748: Governor David sent a squadron to the Indies, led by Bouvert de Lozier, made up of the Lys, the Apollon, and the Anglesey (all French Navy ships), plus the Centaure, the Moras, the Brillant, the Cybele, and the Princess Amelie (all Compagnie des Indes ships)

Memoires de Hommes

You can get a lot of information about Compagnie des Indes ships from this period by searching the Compagnie des Indes section of the Memoires des Hommes website. So what has this got to say about the ships named above?

• LYS – 1747-1749 – vessel, 850 tonnes, 64 cannons
  • Captain: Jean-Baptiste-Charles de Lozier Bouvet
  • Crew list
  • Journal de bord: 4JJ 102-98 and 4JJ 102-98 bis (in A.N.Mar)
  • 1747:
    • arrivée 12/10/1747 – île de France
    • départ 03/05/1748 – île Bourbon
  • See: Estienne 1423, 1445, 1580 ; Demerliac XV 2303 ; Roche I p. 290
• APOLLON – 1748-1750 – vessel, 44 cannons
  • Captain: Thomas-Herbert de La Porte Barré
  • Crew list
  • Journal de bord: 4JJ 144B-4 (extract)
  • 1748:
    • armement 28/02/1748 – île de France
    • départ vers le 29/04/1748 – île de France
  • See: Estienne 1497, 1594 ; Demerliac XV 2313 ; Roche I p. 44
• ANGLESEY / ANGLESEA – 1747-1749 – frigate, 720 tonnes, 48 cannons
  • Captain: Marc-Antoine Selle
  • Crew List
  • Journaux de bord: 4JJ 77-42, 4JJ 77-46, 4JJ 144B-4 (in A.N.Mar.)
  • 1747:
    • armement 28/02/1748 – île de France
  • See: Estienne 1496, 1576 ; Demerliac XV 2314 ; Roche I p. 42
• MARS – 1746-1751 – vessel, 700 tonnes, 32 cannons
  • Captain: Joseph-Jean-Baptiste Gardin Du Brossay
  • Crew list
  • 1747:
    • départ vers le 30/09/1747 – Mahé, Inde
    • arrivée avant 01/02/1748 – île de France
  • See: Estienne 1367, 1523, 1639 ; Demerliac XV 1852
• BRILLANT – 1746-1750 – vessel, 550 tonnes, 34 cannons
  • Captain: Jean-Théophile de Boisquesnay
  • Crew list
  • Journaux de bord are 4JJ 102-98 (“journal de l’escadre”), 4JJ 117-63, 4JJ 144B-4, 4JJ 144C-8
  • See: Estienne 1365, 1612 ; Demerliac XV 1855
  • Also: Estienne 1502 ; Demerliac XV 2316
  • Note: there was also a British ship “Brillant” captured close to Madras in 1746, that was subsequently recaptured back from the French in February 1747.
• CENTAURE – 1746-1750 – vessel, 1200 tonnes, 76 cannons
  • Captain: Alain Dordelin (deceased), and then Guillaume de La Butte Frérot
  • Crew list
  • 1747:
    • départ vers le 10/04/1747 – Mahé, Inde
    • /05/1747 – Mourmougon, Inde
    • /06/1747 – Goa, Inde
    • départ vers le 28/09/1747 – Mahé, Inde
    • /12/1747 – île de France
    • armement 20/04/1748 – île de France
  • See: Estienne 1366, 1505, 1528, 1589 ; Demerliac XV 1772
• CYBÈLE – 1747-1749 – frigate, 170 tonnes, 22 cannons
  • Captain: Thomas Rapion de La Placelière
  • Crew list
  • Journaux de bord are in 4JJ 102-99 and 4JJ 144B-4 (in A.N.Mar.)
  • 1P 302-60.6 (in S.H.D.L.) is “Cahier des expéditions des vaisseaux de 1746 à 1747”
  • See: Estienne 1426, 1566 ; Demerliac XV 2121
• SAINT-LOUIS – 1745-1748 – 600 tonnes, 32 cannons
  • Captain: Thomas Prigent de Penlan
  • Crew list
  • Journaux de bord: 4JJ 92-22, 4JJ 144B-4 (extract)
  • Estienne 1333, 1344, 1517 ; Demerliac XV 1861
• PHOENIX – 1745-1747 – vessel, 790 tonnes, 44 cannons
  • Captain: Jean-Jacques de La Chaise
  • Crew list
  • Condemned 15 Jan 1747
  • See: Estienne 1332, 1343, 1420 ; Demerliac XV 1838
• ARGONAUTE – 1746-1748 – vessel, 600 tonnes, 30 cannons
  • Captain: François Le Fol de La Londe
  • Crew list
  • Journaux de bord: 4JJ 71-38 (1747), 4JJ 77-40, 4JJ 102-98, 4JJ 144B-4
  • Estienne 1363, 1395, 1530 ; Demerliac XV 1847
• RENOMMEE – 1741-1748 – frigate, 400 tonnes, 40 cannons
  • Captain: Charles Gravé de Coligny
  • Crew list
  • Arrived at Ile de France, 12/1746 (having been disarmed on 28/03/1742?)
  • See: Estienne 1139, 1188 ; Demerliac XV 2028
• MORAS (not known) (there was a later Moras 1756-1761)
• AIMABLE – 1747-1750 – vessel, 550 tonnes, 30 cannons
  • Captain: René-Louis de Surville
  • Crew list
  • See: Estienne 1435, 1506, 1633 ; Demerliac XV 1854

The archives have many other incidental documents associated with these ships: one such document lists all the people from Ile de Bourbon (modern-day Reunion) boarding Bouvet de Lozier’s squadron in 1748: these were largely stone masons from Portuguese Malabar (the southwestern coast of modern India) going to Pondicherry. Also: B4 62 f°314 contains letters from Bouvet de Lozier about the state of the vessels in his squadron (in 1748), which sounds interesting.

However, the obvious first place to look for specific detail is in the journaux de bord.

Conclusions

I suspect we can disregard the Centaure, Mars, Brillant and Saint-Louis (because all were being repaired during December 1747 to January 1748). The Renommee too was in Port-Louis harbour (but disarmed and docked), so that seems unlikely too: and there’s no sign the Lys left the island at all (though its journal de l’escadre might well turn out to be an interesting read for this period.)

The most likely prize-takers would therefore seem to be the Apollon and the Anglesey, who both went on a cruise to the Cape of Good Hope in December 1747 (in exactly the time window I’m interested in). Both have journaux de bord in the archives (though the Anglesey‘s seems more substantial than the Apollon‘s).

As an aside, arguably the most historically interesting ship mentioned above is the Princesse Amelie, a British prize sent from Pondicherry. It turns out that there is an entire chapter (pp.126-184) in Louis Mannory’s “Plaidoyers Et Mémoires: Contenant Des questions intéressantes” about how the Princesse Amelie was taken “by ruse” from Madras harbour at the start of March 1747 (with a hugely valuable cargo), and all the legal to-ings and fro-ings associated with that whole incident. But that’s a story for another day!

PS: there’s a very long list of lost East India Company ships here, that mentions (as well as the Princess Amelia):

• Anson (479 tons) – Captured off Bombay on 2 Sep 1747 by French frigates Apollo and Anglesea.
• Heathcote (498 tons, 29 cannons) – Lost 7 June 1747, in the Strait of Bab el Mandeb.

I’ve recently had some interesting back-and-forth email correspondence about the Nageon de l’Estang treasure documents with independent Swiss researcher Daniel Krieg. In recent years, Daniel has made his own fresh attack on this long-standing historical mystery, and his particular interpretation of many key aspects of those documents has led him to draw his own conclusions.

Even though I (personally) think these conclusions are probably wrong, I thought it would be good to work through some of his argument’s component pieces, because – whether he’s right or wrong – they all cast an interesting light on the whole subject, as well as available historical sources for the period.

So today let’s look at Daniel’s (1782) “Indus”…

The “Indus”

In the first of the three “Butin” treasure documents, we read (in Loys Masson’s version, but the other variants aren’t too far off) the following part-sentence:

LM:                        j’ai naufragé dans une crique près des Vaquois et
LM: j’ai remonté une rivière et déposé  dans un caveau   les richesses de l'Indus
LM: et marqué B.N. mon nom.

Because of this text, Daniel Krieg has spent (as many other researchers have done) a lot of time looking for the specific ship called the Indus from which B.N.’s “richesses” came. Crucially, he thinks that this was in fact the British ship Indus that was captured by the French frigates Bellone and Fine on 24th July 1782.

It would seem to be a historically-grounded claim, but does the evidence actually support it? Let’s have a look…

Suffren’s journal de bord

The Bellone and Fine were French frigates in the Bailli de Suffren’s squadron: this had been sent to control the Indian coastline during the Anglo-Dutch War in India that had started in December 1780. A brief description of the Bellone returning on 26th July 1782 appeared in Suffren’s journal de bord:

Dans la matinée, la Bellone a mouillé et a rendu compte que la Fine avait pris un brick, parti de Madras il y avait près de deux mois, portant le colonel Horn à Négapatnam, destiné à commander l’armée du Sud. Le capitaine du brick appelé l’Indou ayant eu ordre de gagner Négapatnam par le large pour nous éviter, n’avait jamais pu remonter.

In the morning, the Bellone anchored and reported that the Fine had captured a brig, which had left Madras nearly two months previously to try to carry Colonel Horn to Negapatam for him to take command of the Army of the South. Even though the captain of the brig (called the Indou) had received orders to reach Negapatam by sea to avoid us [Suffren’s fleet], he had never been able to get [past the sea blockade] to its destination.

In Suffren’s journal de bord entry for the following day (27th July 1782), we then see the Fine itself turn up with the aforementioned brig:

La Fine a rallié l’escadre avec la prise l’Indou.

The Fine rejoined the squadron with the prize ship Indou.

There is no further direct mention of the Indou in the journal de bord, which is – I presume – why Daniel thinks that this could have been the Indus of the letter. However, reading the next few entries forward from there, what happens next is that Suffren’s entire squadron sails away on 1st August 1782:

Au jour, signal de désaffourcher. Nous laissons au mouillage la Fortitude, qui doit aller au Pégou, et deux prises pour être vendues. A 11 heures, toute l’escadre a mis sous voile.

At daylight, signal to weigh anchor and leave. We leave behind at anchor the Fortitude, which must go onwards to Pégou [Bago in modern Myanmar], plus two prize ships to be sold. At 11 o’clock the whole squadron was under sail.

Obviously, I’m going to point out that I don’t think a prize brig would have sailed onwards with Suffren’s mighty French squadron: and also that I don’t think it would sailed onwards to the Ile de France.

Charles Cunat’s account

On p.192 of Charles Cunat’s (1852) book on the Bailli de Suffren, we read a couple of additional details (Cunat had access to many more maritime sources than merely de Suffren’s journal de bord):

En même temps, la Fine ralliait l’escadre avec un brick anglais, chargé de riz pour Négapatnam, qui avait à bord le colonel Horn, nommé au commandement de l’armée de Tanjaour, […]

At the same time, the Fine joined the squadron with an English brig, loaded with rice for Negapatam, which had on board Colonel Horn, appointed to take command of the army of Tanjaour, […]

The most important feature to note here is that, somewhat like a Spanish pepper, the brig Indou was stuffed not with treasure but with rice.

I should also perhaps add here that the capture of the brig Indou wasn’t a significant enough naval action to warrant a mention in H. C. M. Austen’s “Sea Fights and Corsairs of the Indian Ocean”.

But… was the Indus even British?

I suppose the biggest problem I have with this is the whole presumption that the Indus was some kind of British East India Company treasure ship. The letter writer tells us right at the start:

j’ai naufragé dans une crique près des Vaquois

That is, the writer himself was saying that he “was shipwrecked in a creek near to Vacoas” – he didn’t find a shipwreck, he was himself shipwrecked.

Given that the (so-called) Golden Age of Piracy had fizzled out nearly twenty years previously, it is an uncomfortably long hop, step and jump forward from “j’ai naufragé” to conclude that the (French) letter writer can only have been a pirate who had taken control of a British treasure ship, which had then been shipwrecked on the (presumably Mauritian) coast.

From my perspective, it is therefore vastly more likely that the ship to which the letter writer refers was actually a French ship upon which the letter writer was working: more specifically, it was (given its name) probably from the Compagnie des Indes heading back from the East Indies towards Lorient.

In fact, I’d suggest that the right place to be looking for the real Indus / Indou would be in the Compagnie des Indes archives in Lorient, for ships that were expected back from the East around February 1748 (but that were instead lost in Indian Ocean during the Mauritian hurricane of January 1748).

[Update: I think I was too hasty in dismissing the idea of a prize brig. 1748 was just before the end of the 1st Carnatic War, and news of the peace didn’t reach the Indian Ocean until very late in that year. So an English ship could very easily have been captured by French warships just before the Mauritian hurricane of January 1748, a research lead I’ll explore in my next post on the subject.]

If the Last Will and Testament written by Andre Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang is genuine (or, at least, perhaps only modestly embellished in the copying) and – as part of that – was indeed written by him, it can only have been written prior to his death in 1750.

I previously also wrote about the intrigue and politicking around La Bourdonnais’ fleet that he hustled together in 1745-1746 in Mauritius, and speculated that Bernardin – himself a lifelong sailor in the Compagnie des Indes – might well have got caught up with that whole operation. But all the same, that was just my guess: the fact that Bernardin died in Port Louis in 1750 provides a solid terminus ante quem regardless.

It further seems likely (to me) that even five years would be an eternity to wait before returning to cached treasure, so the decade 1740-1750 seems a good basic search period to start with. So we might ask: can we find a historical source for Mauritian shipwrecks during the period 1740 to 1750? And if so, can we use that to steer us any closer to a likely source for Bernardin’s treasure?

“Maurice : Une Ile et Son Passé” (1989), by Antoine Chelin

I found a digitised copy of this book online: this runs from 1500 to 1750, and chronologically lists many (though of course not all) events in Mauritius’ history.

The author (who wrote in Mauritian newspapers for many years under the anagrammatic byline “HELNIC”) first published this book in 1973, then released a chunky supplement to it in 1982, before finally merging the two into a single larger book in 1989.

Here, we’re specifically interested in shipwrecks (“naufrages“) and hurricanes (“ouragans“) in the period 1740-1750 on Mauritius. In the following, I’ve used Chelin’s numbering system to make it easy to look up individual events in the original book.

298: 11 Jan 1740: hurricane which caused considerable damage in the bay of Port Louis

325a: 13 Dec 1743: violent hurricane which caused considerable damage to the whole island

337: 17-18 Aug 1744: the shipwreck of the Saint-Géran off the Ile d’Ambre, close to Poudre d’Or, subsequently made famous by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre by his fictionalised version of the event in his novel Paul et Virginie. The ship had a cargo of 54000 Spanish piastres plus machinery for a sugar factory that was being built.

354: 10 Dec 1746: return of Mahé de La Bourdonnais from Madras.

361: 21 Jan 1748: hurricane which caused great damage to boats in the harbour of Port Louis – the Brillant, the Renommée, and the Mars were all beached, and three other boats were lost. “The kilns of Isle aux Tonneliers were destroyed, houses in Port Louis were thrown down; Pamplemousses Hospital
was flattened, the wings of the Monplaisir building in Les Pamplemousses lost their roofs, bridges were washed away, shops in Port Sud-Est were knocked down, the newly-built battery at Trou-aux-Biches was flattened by the waves.“

377: 7 Nov 1748: “departure for India of part of the squadron under the orders of Capitaine de Kersaint. It is composed of the Arc-en-Ciel, Capitaine de Belle Isle, 54 cannons, crew of 400; the Duc de Cumberland, enseigne Mézidern, 20 cannons, crew of 179; and L’Auguste, enseigne de Saint-Médard, 26 cannons, crew of 130.”

378: 9 Nov 1748: “Departure of the rest of de Kersaint’s squadron, consisting of Alcide, captained by de Kersaint, 64 cannons, crew of 500; Lys, frigate captain Lozier Bouvet, 64 cannons, crew of 476; the Apollon, enseigne de La Porte Barrée, 54 guns, crew of 383; and of the Centaure, ensign de La Butte, 72 guns, crew of 522.”

379a: 26 Nov 1748: arrival of the frigate Cybèle from Pondicherry, announcing the news that the siege of that place by the British had been lifted.

389: 10 Jul 1750: shipwreck of the Sumatra at l’Ile Plate, which had left Port Sud-Est carrying a cargo of wood headed for Pondicherry (14 crew drowned).

A new Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang timeline?

Previously, I had speculated that Andre Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang might have been part of La Bourdonnais’ cobbled-together fleet that sailed to Madras in May 1745. It was certainly true that many Mauritians, rattled by the loss of the Saint-Géran in January 1744, didn’t want to take part: though as a former sailor in the Compagnie des Indes, I suspect Bernardin was unlikely to have been in that group.

In March 1748, (British) Admiral Boscawen arrived at the island with 28 boats en route to Pondicherry, angling for a fight: however, the only French ship he encountered was Capitaine de Kersaint’s Alcide at Port Louis. When Boscawen subsequently arrived off the Coromandel coast in August 1748 in his flagship the Monteran (after a detour to Bourbon in July 1748), his fleet was (according to H. C. M. Austen, p. 21) “the greatest European fleet ever seen in the East“.

Later in 1748, a small French/Mauritian fleet assembled itself under Capitaine de Kersaint. Maybe Bernardin could not say no to joining that small squadron that left Mauritius in November 1848 to try to relieve the siege of Pondicherry. However, they were not to know that the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had already been signed on 30th April 1748, making their journey pointless.

And so I can’t help but wonder: might the “treasures saved from the Indus” hidden by Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang have been from a ship wrecked by the huge cyclone that hit Mauritius on 21 January 1748? And might the enlistment Bernardin talks about in his Last Will and Testament have been the (actually unnecessary) squadron under Capitaine de Kersaint that left Mauritius on 7-9 November 1748?

“I’m about to enlist to defend the motherland, and will without much doubt be killed, so am making my will. I give my nephew the reserve officer Jean Marius Nageon de l’Estang the following: a half-lot in La Chaux River district of Grand-Port, île de France, plus my treasures saved from the Indus.”

Note: full letter here

It’s an interesting possible timeline, that (if true) would answer some of the questions I’ve had about timing that have long seemed very slightly off. Even so, the account does remain fairly hypothetical: though on the positive side, it does perhaps suggest some ideas about where to look next.

So… where next for this?

The first thing I’d like to see are contemporary accounts of the hurricane that hit Mauritius on 21 January 1748. The information Chelin reports must (surely) have come from somewhere, but from where? Mauritian newspapers only go back (very incompletely) to 1777 – Le Cernéen and Le Mauricien only started in 1832 and 1833 respectively.

I should perhaps add that the Wikipedia page on tropical storms in the Mascarenes only mentions two from the period 1740-1750 (though note that Grant’s book includes a long section on hurricanes on Bourbon compiled by the Abbé de Caille?):

• March 8, 1743 – A strong cyclone passed near Mauritius.
• February 1748 – A strong storm

Note that a letter discussing the 1743 cyclone is quoted in Garnier and Desarthe (2013):

Letter of the governor of the Ile-de-France (Mauritius) of March 8th, 1743:

We had a hurricane on March 8th. The big rashness of the wind lasted only from ten o’clock in the evening till two o’clock at night. Several vessels ran aground in the port because of very high waves which reached the store of the port. The harvest was almost completely destroyed, in particular the corn, the potatoes and the sugar canes. On the other hand, the rice and the manioc were protected. As soon as our port (Port Louis) will be repaired, I shall send to you by boat of the peas of the Cape (South Africa) and the beans which you can distribute in the poorest and to the blacks.

As far as the Jan/Feb 1748 Mauritian hurricane goes, I did find a (fairly miserable) letter from Baron Charles Grant de Vaux dated 10 March 1748 (pp. 293-294):

We have been informed that fifteen ships have been dispatched from the East, laden with provisions for our islands ; but unfortunately the English fell in with them, and, being superior in point of force, have taken them all, except a small vessel, which escaped to make us acquainted with our misfortunes. We live at present in a most wretched state of incertitude, in want of every thing ; and, to complete our misery, afflicted with a continued drought, which has known no interval throughout the year, but from an hurricane that visited us during the last month. It ravaged every thing, and occasioned many fatal accidents. Several persons were killed and wounded during its continuance ; and, to complete our distresses, it was succeeded by a cloud of locusts, which devoured whatever the hurricane had not laid waste. Such is our present situation, &c. &c.

For other sources, I haven’t yet found any journaux de bord covering 1748 (the Achilles’ only goes up to 1747), nor any prize papers, and the Log of Logs starts from 1788, alas. I’ve also asked Professeur Garnier if his researchers found any sources on the 1748 hurricane. Myself, I haven’t yet found anything relevant in gallica.fr, though the chances that something useful is there are surely quite high. The French maritime archives are similarly daunting and huge.

But at least I’m looking for something now. 🙂

In Part 1 and Part 2, I looked at how early British ‘geophys’ technology and Mauritian treasure hunting dreams converged in the 1920s. But once the Liverpool firm of W. Mansfield & Co had been persuaded by the Klondyke Syndicate to jump into the Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang treasure-hunting fire, I think it’s safe to say that just about all outcomes were going to be bad.

So what did happen next? And who exactly was “Captain Russell”, Mansfield’s main man in Mauritius?

The Death of the Dream

From a short article in the The Daily News (4th February 1927, p.10), we can see almost exactly to the day when Mansfield’s expensive treasure-hunting collaboration with the Klondyke Syndicate ended up:

After several unsuccessful attempts to locate what is known as the “Klondyke Treasure” on this island, Captain Russell, of Liverpool, is returning to England.

It is understood that Captain Russell was sent out by a large Liverpool firm for the purpose of prospecting for precious metal. A staff of 50 men and women, under his control, have been engaged for the past 18 months in elaborate excavations. Each successive attempt has ended in failure, and the expedition has finally decided to abandon the treasure hunt.

The last attempt alone is said to have cost £15,000.

But who was he? For several years, I and others have been trying to find out more about Captain Russell: apart from a few brief newspaper articles (such as the Daily News article above), he seemed to have been almost as hard to find as the Klondyke Treasure itself.

Well, that was the situation until this weekend, when my latest attempt to rake keyword phrases through the British Newspaper Archives at long last yielded what seem to be interesting results…

The Lusitania!

In the Linlithgowshire Gazette of 17th May 1935 p.3 (don’t say I don’t spoil you), I found an article discussing a particularly hi-tech sea expedition to locate the wreck of the Lusitania:

An expedition will set out from the Clyde next month to the wreck of the Lusitana [sic] to attempt to retrieve documents and other valuables locked in her strongroom.

Cinema pictures and still photographs of the liner will be taken to show the world how the former pride of the Clyde lies shattered under the waves.

The venture is being organised by the Argonaut Corporation, Ltd., of London and Glasgow.

A ship named the Orphir is now being fitted out in the Beardmore Dockyard at Dalmuir.

The equipment embodies all the latest contributions of modern science and engineering to deep-sea exploration. One of the most valuable units is a flexible metal diving suit, fitted with mechanical hands, which will enable divers to work safely and comfortably in depths hitherto unattainable, with the mobility of the ordinary rubber dress.

Wonderfully, the (actually very fascinating) Coast Monkey website has some pictures of this state-of-the-art diving suit from 1935 being lowered into the water with intrepid diver Jim Jarrett inside, which you really need to see here to appreciate:

The metal dress was tested in Loch Ness by experts, who testified that at a depth of about 450 feet they had the same freedom of movement as was possible at only a few feet down.

With the new dress, divers will be able easily to reach the Lusitania, lying 280 feet deep, and work their way freely into the wreck, if necessary burning a passage through the steel hull with oxy-hydrogen burners.

Locating the Wreck

The article continues:

It is known that the Lusitania lies approximately ten miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland, and it will be necessary to scour about 15 square miles of the ocean bed to find her.

To eliminate the hit-or-miss element in the search, the organisers of the expedition will divide the area into squares, each of which will be explored in turn until the ship is located or the entire area covered.

A buoy will be anchored in the centre of the square, and measuring with a rangefinder the distance of the ship from the buoy, in conjunction with compass bearings, the invisible sea furrow ploughed by the ship will be accurately traced on a specially made chart. The chart will show the area covered each day, and make it impossible for the navigator to duplicate his tracks.

NOTHING FANTASTIC

Captain Henry Russell, marine superintendent of the expedition company, explained on Monday the method of operation in detail.

Captain Russell emphasised that there was nothing hare-brained or fantastic about the expedition. “I might emphasise that we are not going to make any attempt to refloat the Lusitania – a project which would be absurd,” he said.

“Nor do we expect to find any bullion on board. This is not a treasure-hunt. It is a practical demonstration of what can be done to explore the hitherto unrevealed secrets of the ocean bed with our modern apparatus.

“After the Lusitania we intend to explore other wrecks.”

Now, I can’t yet definitively prove that this Captain Henry Russell setting off to the Lusitania in 1935 with hi-tech sounding gear was the same Captain Russell who had previously gone to Mauritius on behalf of William Mansfield. But… I think it’s overwhelmingly likely.

His “Romantic Quest”

The Motherwell Times of 19th July 1935 (p.8) wasn’t fooled: this trip to the Lusitania was indeed “Captain Henry Russell’s Romantic Quest”:

Captain Henry Bell Russell, commander of the salvage vessel Orphir, which left Dalmuir on Monday afternoon on the first lap of her epic-making expedition, as a result of which it is hoped to raise the treasure of the Lusitania, the great Atlantic liner sunk off the Old Head of Kinsale on May 7, 1915, by a German U-Boat, is a Wishaw man.

His residence is in Coltness Road, Wishaw. Captain Russell has considerable experience of deep-sea diving work in the Persian Gulf as one of the masters employed by the Indo-Burma Petroleum Company, which has released him temporarily to command this unusual expedition.

So we now know that his full name was Henry Bell Russell, and that in 1935 he was living in Coltness Road, Wishaw. What do the archives have to tell us about this no-longer-unnamed man?

About Captain Henry Bell Russell

Thanks to the very useful ScotlandsPeople website, I was able to quickly find that:

• Henry Bell Russell was born in 1897 (in Govan, ref 646/2 1505)
• His first wife was Mary Eveline Arthur, they married in 1929 (in Kelvin, ref 644/13 246)
• Another Henry Bell Russell was born in 1933 (probably Captain Russell’s son?)
• Henry Bell Russell had a house and a cottage in Cardross in 1940
• His second wife was Mary Meehan Hamilton, they married in 1946 (Maryhill, ref 644/12/51)
• Henry Bell Russell died in 1989 (mother’s surname Imrie) aged 91 (Glasgow, ref 605/ 455)

Patrick O’Neil was able to confirm much of this (though via quite different databases):

• Henry Bell Russell was born 8th October 1897 in Govan
• His parents were Henry Russell, a commercial traveller born in 1869, and Margaret Russell, born 1871
• In the 1901 census, he had older sisters Margaret I (Imrie?) born 1896, Marion B (Bell?) born 1894, and Mary Mci (Macintosh?) born 1893.
• He joined the Navy on 12th December 1916 as a student: he became a quartermaster rating
• At that time, he was: 5 ft 4½ tall, 33 inch chest, black hair, blue eyes, fresh complexion.
• His first wife (according to the Shetland Times) was Mary Eveline “Queenie” Arthur, and they married on 2nd September 1929
• He later formed a metallurgy / chemistry company called United Compositions (Ltd), 108 Douglas Street, Glasgow, with Charles Norman Exley, a chemist of 16 Elie Street, Glasgow.

And, rather nicely, here’s a fetching picture of our fellow as a young man in his pre-Captain days:

I further found that from 1914 to 1916, he was enrolled at The Glasgow School of Art studying Drawing and Painting, leaving his course in December 1916 to sign up for the Navy. His address then was 9 Minerva Street in Glasgow.

Captain Russell’s Mysterious Second Wife

There’s one final scrap to throw to any genealogical wolves whose previous mild interest in Captain Russell hasn’t by now been utterly sated: a series of slightly confused posts from 2011 on GenesReunited by a poster called “Big” (whose account has since expired).

These relate to Captain Russell’s mysterious second wife Mary Meehan Hamilton: I additionally found a record of them travelling on the motor ship (MS) “Patella” from Curacao to New York in March 1947, which one might suspect was part of their honeymoon.

The poster “Big” seemed to think that Mary Meehan Hamilton was born in 1912, married a Mr Adams in 1924 (yes, really), had seven children (sadly some of whom died from diptheria), was with child when marrying Captain Russell, but married him bigamously under the surname “Cunningham” (her second husband’s surname).

Maybe inside all this morass of detail there’s a four-hour Snyder Cut of Captain Russell’s epic life just itching to be made, who knows?

And next…

Will there be a Part 4 to this story? Right now, I’m kind of hoping there won’t… but still, “never say never“, as they say in showbiz, amiright?

In Part 1, we saw the outlines of how technology converged with Mauritian treasure hunting mania in the 1920s. But what was that technology, and how ultimately did it link in with Mauritius?

“Listening for Coal”

The person behind the sounding technology was a Mr W. Mansfield, and the story behind it appeared (very appropriately, it has to be said) in The Liverpool Echo, 12th June 1924, page 7, under the title: “Listening for Coal / How Liverpool Inventor Finds Seams / Treasure-Hunters Agog. / Story of Hoard Buried by Pirates“. Tiresomely long title aside, I think the article bears quoting in full:

An invention by Mr William Mansfield, of W. Mansfield and Co., engineers, of Liverpool, by means of which not only the position, but the actual shape, of metalliferous deposits deep in the ground may be indicated on the surface, has aroused widespread interest, especially in the mining industry, for which it was particularly intended to apply.

This instrument follows the automatic water and oil finders of the same company, which are being used, it is claimed, with 100 per cent. of success in all parts of the world, and which are supplied on the principle of “no full supply, no pay.”

So, what Mansfield was offering was a kind of echo-sounding technology, which he claimed could be used for many types of prospecting & searching.

In seeking for metals or coal deposits, a very simple electrical device is set up on the surface of the ground, sending a curious musical note through the earth, and a couple of assistants – a man and a boy can carry out the tests – can indicate the presence or absence of what they seek by means of sounders.

Wherever the note is clearly heard the ground is sterile so far as metals or coal are concerned, but when the note diminishes greatly or ceases entirely the indications are that they are walking over deposits. By stepping on and off this cone of partial or complete silence and driving pegs they can outline the form and extent of the deposit, and a simple calculation gives the depth.

News of the invention has greatly increased the enthusiasm of those who believe they know, roughly, where treasure lies buried, and Mr. Mansfield has had many calls from such people.

One treasure hunter had the instrument tested on a piece of ground in Cheshire, where a quantity of metal was buried some twelve feet below a ploughed field. Two men who were entirely ignorant of the position of the “treasure” located the place with precision by means of the automatic finder.

The treasurer[sic]-hunter bought the instrument, and he and a party have taken it to the Spanish Main confident that if they don’t find the doubloons they seek it will be because they are not there.

OK so far: but it’s the final section below that’s arguably the most interesting, because it makes a direct link to Mauritius a couple of years before Captain Russell travelled there (on his doomed treasure hunt):

Mr. Mansfield told an “Echo” reporter that it was child’s play to find a chest of metal a few feet down, and he was too busily occupied with the serious work of which the apparatus was capable to accept all the offers he received to join in expeditions for the discovery of hidden gold and silver which might not exist except in the minds of the seekers.

A letter from the magistrate on the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, is being looked into, however.

This gentleman, Mr. H. E. Desmarais, and a number of influential friends believe there is £30,000,000 worth of treasure buried on the island, representing booty seized by pirates from British and Spanish vessels well over a hundred years ago.

The proposal made to Mr. Mansfield is that he should locate the treasure for them, and receive a quarter of the find.

In view of the influential backing, Mr. Mansfield is making inquiries. As he points out, if nothing is found, a one-fourth share would not go far to meet his expenses in going out to Mauritius!

By the way, who was H. E. Desmarais?

The above article refers to H. E. Desmarais as a “magistrate”: and indeed Google helpfully supplies links where H. E. (Henri Eugène) Desmarais appears in the Colonial listings as Moka Magistrate for Mauritius (with a salary of 7,000 rupees in the 1890s), having been first appointed there on 1st August 1884.

A family tree on MyHeritage says that Desmarais was born 11 March 1843, and died 22 August 1928. He married Wilhelmina Sophia Henriette Ferdinandine Dancker on 2nd September 1868 in Melbourne: they had ten children. He was the third son of Jean Baptiste Evenor Desmarais, of Port Louis, Mauritius, who himself had been an attorney-at-law. His own law training was as a student of the Middle Temple (18th August 1863): he was called to the bar 30th April 1866.

There is a (paywalled) mention in Alfred North-Coombes’ (1971) book “The Island of Rodrigues” that suggests one of Desmarais’ early appointments was as Rodrigues’ Police Magistrate in 1876.

And finally: in the 1922 Blue Book of the Colony of Mauritius, H. E. Desmarais was listed as receiving (as a retired District Magistrate) a 4,216 rupee pension (79%) since 1913, having then retired “of Old Age”.

All in all, it seems entirely reasonable that Desmarais would have been a member of the Klondyke Syndicate. Incidentally, the mention of his “influential friends” was without doubt a heavy-handed (and deliberate) reference to the “Par nos amis influents, fait toi envoyer dans la Mer des Indes et rends-toi à l’Isle de France, à l’endroit indiqué par mon testament” sentence that appears in letter BN2.

W. Mansfield’s Company & Technology

The 1914 “Who’s Who In Business” includes the following description of W. Mansfield’s company:

Mansfield, W., and Co. Consulting Engineers and Well Boring Engineers, Creewood Buildings, Brunswick Street, Liverpool. Hours of Business: 9.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Established in 1900 by W. Mansfield, the present principal. Premises: Extensive. Branches: Yenangyat, Promo and Eastern Boronga. Business: Consulting Engineers for many important irrigation projects. Pioneers of Long Staple Cotton Growing in Burma. Owners of Oil and Mineral properties; Well Boring Engineers. Patent: Mansfield’s Automatic Water and Oil Finders. Connection: United Kingdom, Foreign and Colonial. Telephone: No. 1392 Central, Liverpool. Telegraphic Address: ” Mantles, Liverpool.” Codes A B C, Engineering and Private. Bankers: National Provincial Bank of England, Ltd. Mr. W. Mansfield is a member of several Engineering and other Societies. He is interested in Educational questions and has travelled throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa.

From the Grace’s Guide entry on the company, you can see that it was selling its water finder technology by at least 1911. Mansfield’s company later hit the papers in 1931 (10^th October, Liverpool Echo, p.13) when a 30-year-old employee sadly got hit on the head and died: and it was still advertising in 1934 (18^th July, Liverpool Echo, p.13).

So, what did its metal-finding device look like? Luckily, we don’t have to rely on mere verbal descriptions of Mansfield’s echo-sounding technology, because there are a number of advertisements and articles that contain actual pictures (even if the endorsements that go with them do sound somewhat made-up, it should be added). Here’s a W. Mansfield advert from Chambers’s Journal that sits above an advert for a Dulcitone (which is why the Royal College of Music has a scan of the page on its website):

Coming up next…

In Part 3, I hope to tell a little of the story behind Captain Russell, who led Mansfield’s treasure hunting expedition to Mauritius…