Gerard Hindmarsh05:00, Dec 11 2021
It always amazes me how deceptively one-sided and Eurocentric our historical record is.
Look at our take on French explorer Jules Sebastian Cesar Dumont D’Urville taking his corvette, Astrolabe, through French Pass in January, 1827. The entire accepted narrative comes from accounts written by D’Urville and his officers.
But weaving in the forgotten Maori side fills in the story, and I believe makes it far more compelling.ADVERTISING
Navigating the first ever sailing ship through narrow French Pass was a big gamble for D’Urville, who quite correctly surmised that he would be able to save the longer and more unpleasant voyage around the treacherously exposed and rock-strewn western side of D’Urville Island.
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Hugely experienced judging sea conditions, D’Urville quickly ascertained that on the flood tide the current passing through resembled not any simple swirlings, but a raging, roaring river reaching a ferocious nine knots as it equalised the differential levels of Tasman and Admiralty Bays.
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Even worse, deep holes created whirlpools which could take a ship and spin it endlessly around.
Their first attempt at negotiating the pass ended in near tragedy when their ship scraped rocks on the eastern side. D’Urville and his crew took further stock of the waterway which he said “resembled a narrow gorge running between two mountains.”
A reef of rocks plainly visible at low tide stretched along the entire northwest side, leaving a navigable passage only 60 to 80 metres wide.
Waiting for a favourable wind to push them through, the French waited it out in the relative safety of Current Basin, spending their time exploring and attempting to make contact with the local Māori inhabitants.
Their small settlements were plainly visible along both the island and mainland, but unlike the Māori of Torrent Bay, who paddled out to noisily accompany the Astrolabe as it sailed past, the Māori they observed at French Pass didn’t want a bar of them, always running into the hills when they approached or paddling furiously away from them in their canoes.
At a delightfully sparkling creek and waterfall at Ngamuka Bay, the ship’s artist, Louis August de Sainson, sketched his View Inside the Bush and Forest at the Basin of Currents. The original lithograph of his drawing would be purchased 145 years later, in 1972, by a New Zealand woman waiting for her husband to turn up at an outdoor market in rural France.
They did not recognise its significance at first, tucked as it was amongst some tattered maps.
On the second night, the weather deteriorated, causing the corvette to drag its anchor and forcing the crew to drop another anchor and let out more chain as they struggled to maintain their boat’s position.
After developing a sharp pain in his side that night, D’Urville wrote depressingly in his log; “It seemed an evil spirit took pleasure each day in destroying in an instant the fruit of our long prolonged efforts.”
Unbeknown to the French commnander and his crew, a powerful Maori Tohunga of the area named Pukuroa had been watching the ship almost from the time it turned up. Living at Whangapoto Point, he never missed anything going past, and when he had heard about the corvette moored in Current Basin, it is said he spat into his cooking fire and jumped into his canoe to paddle across the bay.
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Here he stashed his canoe under some branches and climbed the bluff overlooking the pass which the Maori called Te Aumiti.
From there he could plainly see the French corvette, secured by two anchors, guarded at both ends by armed sailors, while in between some crew sat splicing ropes, smoking tobacco and talking amongst themselves.
It is said Pukuroa stayed in this spot for days, staring intensely at the ship and chanting incantations to bring destruction not only on the boat, but all the men who sailed aboard her. To him, Europeans brought only disease and greed, and he was determined to drive them away.
As we know, his magic almost worked. After dragging two anchors around Current Basin for almost an entire week, there was at last some hint of favourable conditions.
At first light on 26 January, 1827, D’Urville got six of his sailors to row him over to the bluff overlooking the pass which he climbed to assess the situation. The very same piece of hillside Pukuroa was watching from. Who knows how close they came to each other that morning?
Back on his ship, D’Urville ordered his second kedge anchor raised at 7am and wasted no time getting the ship underway in the slack tide with wind steady and moderate from the West-sou-weast, just what they needed.
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For a start, the ship kept a safe course, D’Urville shouting out commands as it lined up to trim the mizzen sail, mizzen topmast staysail, foresail and fore-top sail.
But just as the ship came through the narrowest part of the channel, the wind suddenly dropped, putting the ship at the mercy of the swirling tide and turning it about. The corvette struck the reef twice, the first quite slight but enough to make the entire crew go silent.
The second, far stronger shock upon her submerged keel sent a sharp shiver up through the boat, before the keel caught on the reef, causing the ship to lean over to leeward, almost right on her beam ends. Water flooded into the scuppers as the crew hung onto the rigging, cabin and hatches, yelling out in terror as the boat seemed certainly doomed. But a big surge came through and pushed them over the reef and into the safely of Admiralty Bay.
“It is nothing, we have cleared it,” yelled a triumphant D’Urville to his cheering crew. Damage proved slight, only a few scraps of their keelson bobbing in their wake.
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Upon the urging of his officers, D’Urville’s name was bestowed upon the island, but the commander made it known that his name should only be used until the island’s Maori name became known, this being Rangitoto ki te Tonga.
But they all agreed that the pass they navigated should forever be called Pass de Francais so that their near miss should never be forgotten.
D’Urville retired a Rear Admiral with three world explorations under his belt including reaching the Antarctic to 64 degrees South.
For thousands of kilometres he sailed the ice banks and discovered new regions that now bear the names he gave them – Terre Adelie, Terre Louise-Phillipe, Terre de Joinville and Terre de Clary. Adelie Penguins even got named after his wife, and he was hailed by the Royal Geographic Society as one of the world’s greatest explorers.
Without a doubt, he was up there with Cook.
But D’Urville’s end was tragic. It happened on 8 May, 1842, when he (aged 52) with wife and daughter took the train on the newly installed Paris to Marseille line. Their carriage caught fire, burning them all alive, D’Urville and his family have the dubious distinction of being the world’s first ever railway fatalities.
The curse of Pukuroa still at work?
Pukuroa became well known to the first European settlers of French Pass, one describing him as “a little fat man with squinting eyes”. Never appreciated by them though was the man’s amazing spiritual powers. Just another missing link in a staid colonial story.
Maybe it’s time to tell more this way, break away from our European obsession with “primary research” – using only written down records.
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