"Almost at once things began to go wrong, sometimes spectacularly so. In Quito, the visitors somehow provoked the locals and were chased out of town by a mob armed with stones. Soon after, the expedition’s doctor was murdered in a misunderstanding over a woman. The botanist became deranged. Others died of fevers and falls. The third most senior member of the party, a man named Pierre Godin, ran off with a thirteen-year-old girl and could not be induced to return.
At one point the group had to suspend work for eight months while La Condamine rode off to Lima to sort out a problem with their permits. Eventually he and Bouguer stopped speaking and refused to work together."
"Why didn’t the French make their measurements in France and save themselves all the bother and discomfort of their Andean adventure?
The answer lies partly with the fact that eighteenth-century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available..."
~Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
As I read this, all I could think was "this sounds like my friends playing D&D".
My husband (who is not a Redditor or a historian) is researching some background on a larger-than-life figure from Bath Maine: Francois de Loche (died 1889). Fascinating as his later history is, his early life reads something like a Kipling novel. He appears to have been the subject of a “secret mission” given to a well-known French naval commander, that took some 20 months to accomplish (with murder getting mixed in along the way).
The family concerned were Freemasons, but I am doubtful that association could have resulted in such an order being given. There are other questions, as it’s a fascinating story, so any insight or background would be vastly appreciated.
Possible areas of expertise that could help: French navy of the late 1800s; the Lautrec Family; French Freemasonry; French Revolution of 1848; Whaling in the South Pacific and Japan/Java seas late 1800’s; French presence in Macau and Manila; French consulate in Sydney NSW (1840’s); Jurien de la Graviere; ships la Bayonnaise (the second, less famous one) and/or l’Enterprise and l’Nil.
The facts of the story as we know them are below. All dates and details are from official sources such as ships logs and court reports or Graviere’s book mentioned below and linked at the bottom. Where we have connected information or are speculating (e.g., from plotting the ships’ voyages) I’ve italicized it.
13 October 1847, the French whaler l’Entreprise, under the command of Captain Briancon arrives in Sydney harbor.
- Roughly half of the crew deserts immediately, and several more did so over the next 2 weeks.
- Amongst the later deserters is Francois Alexander Deloche, a 16-year-old mousse (the ship's arming records have him as a mousse serving as a mousse; his personnel records have him as a novice serving as a mousse), who is the son of a French Chevalier (Charles Deloche). Charles Deloche’s grandfather was Guillaume de Lautrec de Vieussan (Viscount, Captain and Chevalier).
- Another crew member, Louis Choammeau – 25, an M2-rated sailor departed and returned to the ship on the same dates as Francois. Note: according to l’Enterprise’s disarming sheet, it appears that Louis’s mother may have been a noblewoman (cannot fully decipher the last name).
- As this was the last time Francois could have sent any communication in the relevant timeframes, it seems possible that Francois went to the French consul while in Sydney IF his desertion was to ask for assistance
5 November 1847, Francois
... keep reading on reddit ➡
You used to be able to bypass the ridiculous 15% autonomy of the mission by restarting the game, but it seems it's no longer working, is there any other way to complete the mission now ? I have a lot of TC and it's impossible to bring the autonomy under 35%.
How can I find the geodesics on the cylinder x^2 + y^2 = 1?
