A way with words
Veteran historian and writer JOHN DUNMORE reflects on writing the latest of his many accounts of Pacific colonial history.
Editing a navigator’s journal is rather like sailing with him. The journal he is required to keep is an official diary, handwritten and soiled, which records the ship’s estimated location, the weather, what happened on board and what was glimpsed in the distance.
The appearance of land, of mountains and river mouths, as well as the attitude of the natives, if any, whether friendly or not, has to be noted and interpreted as best he can, and you feel as editor and, in my case, as translator as though you are looking over his shoulder, listening to the shouts of the crewmen and the general hubbub, and breathing the foul stench of his cramped quarters.
I found that working on ships’ logs soon led me to writing biographies of those on the expeditions.
When one looks at the officers and crew, one is tempted to search into their backgrounds. Each one brings a tale of his own, a family left behind struggling to survive in his absence, and a glimpse of a small town or village, where, today, some of them are remembered with a street name or a plaque screwed onto the wall of some old house. Their role in the exploration of the distant and dangerous Pacific still means a lot to their descendants and to the place they came from.
These written records remind us that, until radio, once a ship had left its home port and the land had vanished along the horizon, it sailed into the unknown. No news of it would reach home for weeks or months, sometimes for years.
This was the case with French explorer La Pérouse, whose expedition eventually vanished into the Pacific. Legend has it that the last words uttered by King Louis XVI when he was led to the guillotine were, “Any news of La Pérouse?”
Writing a biography, or editing a journal, with a constant flow of footnotes, brings to the surface a number of odd events and odd characters. And translating the journal from French to English creates even more problems and raises more questions.
But the main topic – the voyage and its role in developing and completing the map of the Pacific – cannot be buried by side issues.
The officers and the occasional scientists get their well-deserved biographical sections, but less so the crews whose fates would often involve death and burial at sea, their bodies being slid down a plank into the ocean to the accompaniment of a few muttered prayers.
As the Pacific became better known and settled by the English, French, Dutch and Spanish, strange and often crooked characters appeared: traders, blackbirders, missionaries, and people who hoped to create their own kingdom or simply make money. It’s these individuals who come to life in Scoundrels & Eccentrics of the Pacific.
Legend has it that the last words uttered by King Louis XVI when he was led to the guillotine were, “Any news of La Pérouse?”
Ninety-four-year-old former Massey University academic John Dunmore is a prolific author and authority on Pacific exploration who has been honoured for his work by both New Zealand and France. He was responsible for finding and translating the journals of La Pérouse, which had been lost in the French National Archives for more than 200 years. His latest book, Scoundrels & Eccentrics of the Pacific (Upstart Press), is out now.