Part 1 · Chapter 18Vanikoro

Vanikoro. This whole scene was a bad omen, a sign of the disasters the Nautilus was heading toward. As long as we were in more common waters, we often saw the wreckage of sunken ships, just rotting away in the deep.

Even further down, there were cannons, bullets, anchors, chains, and tons of other iron stuff, all eaten away by rust. But on December eleventh, we spotted the Pomotou Islands, the old "danger zone" Bougainville warned about, stretching for nearly three thousand miles from the Ducie Island to the Lazareff Island.

This group covered about two hundred and thirty square miles, made up of sixty smaller island groups, with the Gambier Islands being the most well-known - France controlled them. These were coral islands, slowly rising from the ocean, built bit by bit by tiny polyps.

Eventually, this new island would connect to the nearby groups, creating a fifth continent stretching from New Zealand and New Caledonia all the way to the Marquesas.

One day, I was telling Captain Nemo this idea, and he replied, pretty much shutting me down:

"The earth doesn’t need new continents, it needs new people."

By chance, the Nautilus headed toward Clermont-Tonnere Island, one of the most interesting islands in the group, discovered back in eighteen twenty-two by Captain Bell of the Minerva. I could now study the madreporal system, which is responsible for creating these islands in the ocean.

Madrepores (which aren’t the same as coral) have a tissue covered in a hard, rocky crust, and the way their structure changes led M. Milne Edwards, my old mentor, to divide them into five categories. The tiny animalcules that the marine polyps secrete live by the millions in their cells.

Their rocky deposits become rocks, reefs, and islands, both big and small. Here, they form a ring around a small lake, which connects to the ocean through openings. There, they build reef barriers like the ones off the coasts of New Caledonia and the various Pomoton islands.

Elsewhere, like at Reunion and Mauritius, they create fringed reefs - high, straight walls near which the ocean is really deep.

A few cable lengths off the shore of Clermont-Tonnere, I was amazed by the incredible work these microscopic creatures were doing. These walls were mostly built by those madrepores called milleporas, porites, madrepores, and astraeas.

These polyps are found mostly in the rough seabed, near the surface, and that’s where they start building, gradually burying themselves with the waste from their secretions.

That's Darwin’s theory, anyway, and I thought it was a way better explanation than the idea that these madreporal structures are just the peaks of submerged mountains or volcanoes.

I could get a close look at these weird walls, because they went straight down over three hundred yards, and our electric lights lit up the limestone brilliantly.

Conseil asked me how long it took to build these massive barriers, and I totally blew his mind when I told him that scientists figured it was about an eighth of an inch every hundred years.

As evening approached, Clermont-Tonnere disappeared in the distance, and the Nautilus changed course. After crossing the Capricorn Tropic at one hundred and thirty-five° longitude, it sailed northwest, heading back towards the tropics.

Even though the summer sun was blazing, we didn't feel hot, because at fifteen or twenty fathoms below the surface, the temperature stayed between ten and twelve degrees.

On December fifteenth, we left behind the amazing Societies and the beautiful Tahiti, queen of the Pacific - heading east. I saw the island’s tall peaks in the morning, a few miles to the windward.

The water gave us some seriously good fish - mackerel, bonitos, and a few kinds of what looked like sea serpents.

On Christmas Day, the Nautilus sailed into the New Hebrides, discovered way back in sixteen oh six by Quiros, explored by Bougainville in seventeen sixty-eight, and given its current name by Cook in seventeen seventy-three.

It's made up mostly of nine big islands, forming a line about one hundred and twenty miles long, between fifteen and two degrees south latitude, and one hundred and sixty-four and one hundred and sixty-eight degrees longitude. We passed pretty close to the Island of Aurou, which at noon looked like a huge mass of green forest, topped by a really tall peak.

Christmas Day, and Ned Land seemed super bummed we weren't celebrating "Christmas" - the holiday Protestants love so much. I hadn’t seen Captain Nemo in a week, when on the morning of the twenty-seventh, he walked into the big living room, always acting like he's seen you five minutes ago.

I was busy tracing the Nautilus’s route on the world map. The Captain came up to me, put his finger on a spot, and just said this one word. "Vanikoro."

It was like magic! It was the name of the islands where La Perouse disappeared! I jumped up.

"The Nautilus has brought us to Vanikoro?" I asked.

"Yep, Professor," said the Captain.

"And I can visit those famous islands where the Boussole and the Astrolabe went down?" "If you want, Professor." "When will we be there?" "We’re there now."

Following Captain Nemo, I went up to the deck and scanned the horizon.

To the northeast, two volcanic islands rose up, different sizes, surrounded by a coral reef that was forty miles around. We were close to Vanikoro, also known as Isle de la Recherche by Dumont d’Urville, facing the small harbor of Vanou, located at sixteen° four' south latitude, and one hundred and sixty-four° thirty-two' east longitude.

The land seemed covered in greenery, from the shore all the way to the peaks inland, crowned by Mount Kapogo, four hundred and seventy-six feet high. The Nautilus, having passed the outer rocks through a narrow channel, found itself in shallow water where the sea was thirty to forty fathoms deep.

Under the shady mangroves, I spotted some locals, who looked totally surprised to see us. Did they see some huge sea creature moving between the waves, something to be wary of?

Just then, Captain Nemo asked me what I knew about the wreck of La Perouse.

"Just what everyone knows, Captain," I replied.

"And could you tell me what everyone knows about it?" he asked, sounding sarcastic. "Sure."

I told him everything the latest works of Dumont d’Urville had revealed - basically, this is a quick rundown.

La Perouse, and his second, Captain de Langle, were sent by Louis XVI in seventeen eighty-five, to sail around the world. They set off in the corvettes Boussole and Astrolabe, and neither were ever heard from again.

In seventeen ninety-one, the French Government, understandably worried about what happened to those ships, sent two large merchant ships, the Recherche and the Esperance, which left Brest on September twenty-eighth under the command of Bruni d’Entrecasteaux.

Two months later, they heard from Bowen, commander of the Albemarle, that pieces of wrecked ships had been spotted on the coasts of New Georgia.

But D’Entrecasteaux, ignoring that message - which wasn’t really reliable - headed towards the Admiralty Islands, mentioned in a report by Captain Hunter as being where La Perouse was wrecked.

They searched, but it was all for nothing. The Esperance and the Recherche sailed past Vanikoro without stopping, and honestly, this trip was a total disaster - it cost D’Entrecasteaux his life, and the lives of two of his lieutenants, plus a bunch of his crew.

Captain Dillon, a super experienced old Pacific sailor, was the first to find real clues about the wrecks. On May fifteenth, eighteen twenty-four, his ship, the St. Patrick, passed close to Tikopia, one of the New Hebrides.

There, a Lascar paddled alongside in a canoe and sold him a silver sword handle with fancy characters engraved on the hilt. The Lascar claimed that six years earlier, while at Vanikoro, he’s seen two Europeans who belonged to some ships that had run aground on the reefs a while back.

Dillon figured he was talking about La Perouse, whose disappearance had worried the entire world. He tried to head to Vanikoro, where, according to the Lascar, he’d find tons of wreckage, but the wind and tides just wouldn't let him.

Dillon went back to Calcutta. There, he got the Asiatic Society and the Indian Company interested in his discovery. A ship, named the Recherche, was given to him, and he set out on January twenty-third, eighteen twenty-seven, with a French agent.

The Recherche, after stopping at a few places in the Pacific, dropped anchor off Vanikoro on July seventh, eighteen twenty-seven, in the same harbor of Vanou where the Nautilus was at the time.

They collected a ton of stuff from the wreck there -

iron tools, anchors, pulley straps, swivel guns, an eighteen-pound cannonball, pieces of scientific instruments, a fancy crown detail, and a bronze clock with the inscription "Bazin m’a fait," the mark of the Brest arsenal foundry around seventeen eighty-five. There was no doubt left.

After asking around, Dillon stayed in that unlucky place until October. Then he left Vanikoro and headed towards New Zealand. He stopped in Calcutta on April seventh, eighteen twenty-eight, and went back to France, where he was greeted with a huge welcome from Charles X.

But at the same time, without knowing about Dillon’s movements, Dumont d’Urville had already set out to find the wreck site. They'd heard from a whaler that some medals and a cross of St. Louis had been found by some islanders in the Louisiade and New Caledonia.

Dumont d’Urville, commander of the Astrolabe, then sailed, and just two months after Dillon left Vanikoro, he arrived in Hobart Town.

There, he learned about Dillon’s findings and discovered that James Hobbs, second lieutenant of the Union of Calcutta, after landing on an island located eight° eighteen' S. lat., and one hundred and fifty-six° thirty' E. long., had seen some iron bars and red cloth used by the locals.

Dumont d’Urville, totally confused and not sure how to believe what low-class newspapers were saying, decided to follow Dillon’s trail.

On February tenth, eighteen twenty-eight, the Astrolabe showed up off Tikopia and took a deserter found on the island as a guide and interpreter. They made their way to Vanikoro, spotted it on the twelfth, and stayed among the reefs until the fourteenth.

It wasn't until the twentieth that they dropped anchor inside the barrier in the harbor of Vanou.

On the twenty-third, several officers explored the island and brought back some random, unimportant things. The locals, using a bunch of denials and dodging, refused to take them to the unlucky spot.

This weird behavior made them think the islanders had mistreated the shipwreck survivors, and they seemed to fear that Dumont d’Urville had come to avenge La Perouse and his unfortunate crew.

However, on the twenty-sixth, they were calmed down by some gifts and realized there’s nothing to worry about. They then led M. Jacquireot to the wreck site.

There, in about nine to fifteen feet of water, between the reefs of Pacou and Vanou, lay anchors, cannons, and heavy iron balls, all stuck in the limestone rock.

The big ship and the whaling boat from the Astrolabe were sent to this spot, and their crews had a tough time hauling up an anchor that weighed over a ton, a bronze cannon, some iron balls, and two copper swivel guns.

Dumont d’Urville asked the locals, and learned that La Perouse, after his two ships got wrecked on the reefs of this island, had built a smaller boat, only to be lost again. Nobody knew where.

But the French Government, worried that Dumont d’Urville didn’t know what Dillon was up to, had sent the sloop Bayonnaise, commanded by Legoarant de Tromelin, to Vanikoro. It had been stationed off the west coast of America.

The Bayonnaise dropped anchor off Vanikoro a few months after the Astrolabe left, but found no new documents. However, they said the locals had respected the memorial to La Perouse. That's the gist of what I told Captain Nemo.

"So," he said, "nobody knows now where the third ship went down - the one the castaways built on Vanikoro?" "Nobody knows."

Captain Nemo didn't say anything, but motioned for me to follow him into the main lounge. The Nautilus sank several yards below the surface, and the panels opened.

I rushed to the opening, and through the coral, covered in fungus, tiny sea anemones, sponges, and tons of cool fish - parrotfish, trunkfish, butterflyfish, jacks, and deep-sea fish - I recognized some wreckage that the trawls couldn't pull up - iron stirrups, anchors, cannons, cannonballs, parts of a capstan, and the bow of a ship.

It was all proof of a shipwreck, now covered in living coral. While I was looking at this sad scene, Captain Nemo said, in a mournful voice:

"Commander La Perouse set out December seventh, seventeen eighty-five, with his ships La Boussole and the Astrolabe. He first anchored at Botany Bay, visited the Friendly Isles, New Caledonia, then headed towards Santa Cruz, and put into Namouka, one of the Hapai islands."

Then his ships ran aground on the unknown reefs of Vanikoro. The Boussole, which went first, ran aground on the southern coast. The Astrolabe went to help, and ran aground too. The first ship was destroyed pretty much right away. The second, stranded against the wind, held out for a few days.

The locals welcomed the survivors. They settled on the island and built a smaller boat from the wreckage of the two big ones. Some sailors stayed willingly at Vanikoro; the others, weak and sick, set out with La Perouse.

"They headed towards the Solomon Islands, and there they perished, along with everything, on the western coast of the main island of the group, between Capes Deception and Satisfaction." "How do you know that?"

"Because I found it on the spot where the last wreck occurred."

Captain Nemo showed me a metal box, stamped with the French crest, and corroded by the saltwater. He opened it, and I saw a bundle of papers, yellowed but still readable.

They were the orders from the naval minister to Commander La Perouse, with notes in the margin in Louis XVI’s handwriting.

"Ah! it's a good way for a sailor to die!" said Captain Nemo, at last. " A coral tomb makes a quiet grave; and I hope that I and my crew will find no other."