Chap. VI Departure From Rio Janeiro: Second Voyage to Montevideo
damage which the Etoile receives there.
The 14th of July we weighed from Rio Janeiro, but for want of wind we were obliged to come to an anchor again in the road. |1767. July.| We sailed on the 15th, and two days after, the frigate being a much better sailer than the Etoile, I was obliged to unrig my top-gallant masts, as our lower masts required a careful management. |Departure from Rio Janeiro.| The winds were variable, but brisk, and the sea very high. In the night between the 19th and 20th, we lost our main-top-sail, which was carried away on its clue-lines. |Eclipse of the sun.| The 25th there was an eclipse of the sun, visible to us. I had on board my ship M. Verron, a young astronomer, who came from France in the Etoile, with a view to try, during the voyage, some methods towards finding the longitude at sea.
According to our estimation of the ship’s place, the moment of immersion, as calculated by the astronomer, was to be on the 25th, at four hours nineteen minutes in the evening. At four hours and six minutes, a cloud prevented our seeing the sun, and when we got sight of him again, at four hours thirty-one minutes, about an inch and a half was already eclipsed. Clouds successively passed over the sun’s disk, and let us see him only at very short intervals, so that we were not able to observe any of the phases of the eclipse, and consequently could not conclude our longitude from it. The sun set to us before the moment of apparent conjunction, and we reckoned that that of immersion had been at four hours twenty-three minutes.
Entrance into Rio de la Plata.
On the 26th we came into soundings; the 28th in the morning we discovered the Castilles. This part of the coast is pretty high, and is to be seen at ten or twelve leagues distance. We discovered the entrance to a bay, which probably is the harbour where the Spaniards have a fort, and where I have been told there is very bad anchorage. The 29th we entered Rio de la Plata, and saw the Maldonados. We advanced but little this day and the following. Almost the whole night between the 30th and 31st we were becalmed, and sounded constantly. The current set to the north-westward, which was pretty near the situation of the isle of Lobos. At half an hour past one after midnight, having sounded, thirty-three fathoms, I thought I was very near the isle, and gave the signal for casting anchor. At half past three we weighed, and saw the isle of Lobos in N. E. about a league and a half distant. The wind was S. and S. E. weak at first, but blew more fresh towards sun-rising, and we anchored in the bay of Montevideo the 31st in the afternoon. We had lost much time on account of the Etoile; because, besides the advantage of our being better sailers, that store-ship, which at leaving Rio Janeiro made four inches of water every hour, after a few days sail made seven inches in the same space of time, which did not allow her to crowd her sails.
Second time of touching at Montevideo.
News which we hear at this place.
We were hardly moored, when an officer came on board, being sent by the governor of Montevideo, to compliment us on our arrival, and informed us that orders had been received from Spain to arrest all the Jesuits, and to seize their effects: that the ship which brought these dispatches had carried away forty fathers of that community, destined for the missions: that the order had already been executed in the principal houses without any difficulty or resistance; and that, on the contrary, these fathers bore their disgrace with resignation and moderation. I shall soon enter into a more circumstantial account of this great transaction, of which I have been able to obtain full information, by my long stay at Buenos Ayres, and the confidence with which the governor-general Don Francisco Bukarely53 honoured me.
1767. August.
As we were to stay in Rio de la Plata till after the equinox, we took lodgings at Montevideo, where we settled our workmen, and made an hospital. This having been our first care, I went to Buenos Ayres, on the 11th of August, to accelerate our being furnished with the necessary provisions, by the provider-general of the king of Spain; at the same price as he had agreed to deliver them to his Catholic Majesty. I likewise wanted to have a conference with M. de Buccarelli, on the subject of what had happened at Rio-Janeiro; though I had already, by express, sent him the dispatches from Don Francisco de Madina. I found he had prudently resolved to content himself with sending an account of the hostilities of the viceroy of the Brasils to Europe, and not to make any reprisals. It would have been easy to him, to have taken the colony of Santo Sacramento in a few days; especially as that place was in want of every necessary, and had not yet obtained, in November, the convoy of articles and ammunition that were preparing to be sent thither, when we left Rio-Janeiro.
The governor-general made every thing as convenient as possible, towards quickly making up our wants. At the end of August, two schooners, laden with biscuit and flour for us, sailed for Montevideo; whither I likewise went to celebrate the day of St. Louis. I left the chevalier du Bouchage, an under-lieutenant, at Buenos Ayres, in order to get the remainder of our provisions on board; and to take care of our affairs there till our departure; which, I hoped, would be towards the end of September. I could not foresee that an accident would detain us six weeks longer. |Damage which the Etoile receives.| In a hurricane, blowing hard at S. W. the San Fernando, a register-ship, which was at anchor near the Etoile, dragged her anchors, ran foul of the Etoile at night; and, at the first shock, broke her bowsprit level with the deck. Afterwards the knee and rails of her head were carried away; and it was lucky that they separated, notwithstanding the bad weather, and the obscurity of the night, without being more damaged.
1767. September.
This accident greatly enlarged the leaks in the Etoile, which she had had from the beginning of her voyage. It now became absolutely necessary to unload this vessel, if not to heave her down54, in order to discover and stop this leak, which seemed to lie very low, and very forward. This operation could not be performed at Montevideo; where, besides, there was not timber sufficient to repair the masts; I therefore wrote to the chevalier du Bouchage, to represent our situation to the marquis de Buccarelli; and to obtain, that by his leave the Etoile might be allowed to come up the river, and to go into the Encenada de Baragan; I likewise gave him orders to send timber and the other materials, which we should want thither. The governor-general consented to our demands; and, the 7th of September, not being able to find any pilot, | Navigation from Montevideo to Baragan.| I went on board the Etoile, with the carpenters and caulkers of the Boudeuse, in order to sail the next morning, and undertake in person a navigation, which we were told was very hazardous. Two register-ships; the San-Fernando and the Carmen, provided with a pilot, were ready the same day, to sail for Montevideo to Encenada; and I intended to follow them; but the San-Fernando, which had got the pilot, named Philip, on board, weighed in the night, between the seventh and eighth, purely with a view of hiding his track from us; and left her companion in the same distress. However, we sailed on the eighth in the morning, preceded by our canoes; the Carman remaining to wait for a schooner to direct her route. In the evening we reached the San-Fernando, passed by her; and, on the tenth in the afternoon, we came to an anchor in the road of the Encenada: Philip, who was a bad pilot, and a wicked fellow, always steering in our water.
In this road I found the Venus frigate of twenty-six guns, and some merchant-ships; which were bound, together with her, to sail directly for Europe. I likewise found there la Esmeralda, and la Liebre; who were preparing to return to the Malouines, with provisions and ammunitions of all sorts; from whence they were to sail for the South Seas, in order to take in the Jesuits of Chili and Peru. There was likewise the xebeck55 el Andaluz; which arrived from Ferrol, at the end of July, in company with another xebeck, named el Aventurero; but the latter was lost on the point of what is called the English-Sand; and the crew had time to save their lives. The Andaluz was preparing to carry presents and missionaries to the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego; the king of Spain being desirous of testifying his gratitude to those people, for the services they rendered the Spaniards of the ship la Concepcion, which was lost on their coasts in 1765.
The Etoile goes to be repaired there.
I went on shore at Baragan, whither the chevalier du Bouchage had already sent part of the timber we wanted. He found it very difficult and expensive to collect it at Buenos Ayres, in the king’s arsenal, and in some private timber-yards; the stores of both consisting of the timbers of such ships as were wrecked in the river. At Baragan we found no supplies; but, on the contrary, difficulties of many kinds; and every thing conspired to make all operations go on very slowly. The Encenada de Baragan is, indeed, merely a bad kind of bay, formed by the mouth of a little river, which is about a quarter of a league broad; but the depth of water is only in the middle, in a narrow channel; which is constantly filling more and more; and, in which, only ships drawing no more than twelve feet water can enter. In all the other parts of the river, there is not six inches of water during the ebb; but as the tides are irregular in Rio de la Plata; and the water sometimes high or low, for eight days together, according to the winds that blow, the landing of boats was connected with great difficulties. There are no magazines on shore; the houses, or rather huts, are but few, made of rushes, covered over with leather, and built without any regularity, on a barren soil; and their inhabitants are hardly able to get their subsistance; all which causes still more difficulties. The ships, which draw too much water to be able to enter this creek, must anchor at the point of Lara, a league and a half west. There they are exposed to all the winds; but the ground being very good for anchoring, they may winter there, though labouring under many inconveniences.
1767. October.
I left M. de la Giraudais, at the point of Lara, to take care of what related to his ship; and I went to Buenos Ayres, from whence I sent him a large schooner, by which he might heave down as soon as he came into the Encenada. For that purpose, it was necessary to unload part of the goods she had on board; and M. de Buccarelli gave us leave to deposit them on board the Esmeralda and the Liebre. The 8th of October the Etoile was able to go into port; and it appeared, that her repair would not take so much time as was at first expected. Indeed, they had hardly begun to unload her, when her leak diminished considerably; and she did not leak at all when she drew only eight feet of water forward. After taking up some planks of her sheathing, they saw that the seam of her entrance was entirely without oakum for the length of four feet and a half, from the depth of eight feet of her draught upwards. They discovered likewise two auger holes, into which they had not put the bolts. All these faults and damages being quickly repaired, new railing put on the head, a new bowsprit made and rigged, and the ship being new caulked all over, she returned to the point of Lara on the 21st, where she took in her lading again, from on board the Spanish frigates. In that road she likewise stowed the wood, flour, biscuit, and different provisions I sent her.
Departure of several vessels for Europe, and arrival of others.
From thence, the Venus and four other vessels laden with leather, sailed for Cadiz, at the end of September, having on board two hundred and fifty Jesuits, and the French families from the Malouines, seven excepted, who having no room in these ships, were obliged to wait for another opportunity. The marquiss of Buccarelli transported them to Buenos Ayres, where he provided them with subsistence and lodgings. At the same time we got intelligence of the arrival of the Diamante, a register ship, bound for Buenos Ayres, and of the San-miguel, another register ship, bound for Lima. The situation of the last ship was very distressing: after struggling with the winds at Cape Horn during forty-five days, thirty-nine men of her crew being dead, and the others attacked by the scurvy, and a sea carrying away her rudder, she was obliged to bear away for this river, and arrived at the port of Maldonados seven months after leaving Cadiz, having no more than three sailors and a few officers that were able to do duty. At the request of the Spaniards we sent an officer with some sailors to bring her into the port of Montevideo. On the fifth of October the Spanish frigate la Aguila arrived there, having left Ferrol in March. She touched at the isle of St. Catherine, and the Portuguese had arrested her there at the same time that they stopped the Diligent at Rio Janeiro.