This is an absolutely fascinating novel about the 1785 French naval expedition of the Astrolabe and Boussole, two ships outfitted, manned and sent to the Pacific for the purpose of filling in the blanks left by the Cook expeditions. They achieved a farthest north and explored the Pacific coasts of what are now Canada and Siberia. In 1788, they sailed from Botany Bay in Australia and were never heard from again.
The story is an imagining partially based on the letters and documents that were sent to France by the men in command, Laperouse and Langle. They penned home from Concepcion, in Chile their plans and hopes for the expedition. July of 1786 was spent in Lituya Bay, Alaska, where they found and stored the most perfect water that anyone had ever tasted. But the very tricky currents of the bay took 21 men and three boats away without a trace of their whereabouts. Burdened by their losses, the two ships sailed south to Monterrey, New Spain. The reports by the Spaniards to Mexico City and in personal letters emphasized the despondency among the French caused by the recent loss of colleagues. The two ships then transversed the Pacific, stopping at Easter Island, Hawaii, Manila and Macao before sailing to Petropavlovsk in Siberia. There, they received orders directing Barthelemy de Lesseps, the Russian translator, to travel overland to St. Petersburgh and for the ship to advance to Botany Bay, Australia, the site of a rumored new British colony. de Lesseps headed east, carrying the dispatches from the expedition, with thirty-five guides, dozens of sleds and 300 dogs. It took two months heading north to reach the end of the Kamchatka Peninsula and mainland Siberia. Months more of dreadful travel brought de Lesseps to Irkutsk, where he was able to engage carriages to make the trans-continental trip. On the way to Botany Bay, the expedition lost 11 men, including the Vicomte Langle, while watering on a tropical isle.
Forty years later, the world would bestow fame upon an Irish mariner, Peter Dillon. He returned from the Solomon Islands with a considerable amount of material that native lore said came from two ships sunk in a violent storm. None other than a 63-year-old de Lesseps confirmed they were from the Astrolabe and Boussole.
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