BEATING FRANCE TO BOTANY BAY

Australia and its relations with France go back a long way – they began with the British. The French had a jump start in the race for a Pacific empire, but English officials then launched their own pursuit around the globe. The contestants finally met in Botany Bay, with the French just five days too late. Behind the scenes, American explorers, spies and a future US President made contributions that assisted the winners and prevented the continent becoming a French possession. Historian Margaret Cameron-Ash has studied these early contests of the European pre-settlement of Australia and now has published Beating France to Botany Bay – The Race to Found Australia. On Tuesday 23 November 2021, Margaret Cameron-Ash addressed The Sydney Institute to speak about her discoveries.

BEATING FRANCE TO BOTANY BAY

MARGARET CAMERON-ASH

It’s nice to be back at The Sydney Institute – thank you for inviting me, Anne and Gerard. And thank you for coming tonight – and those watching at home.

Since speaking to you about my earlier book, Lying for the Admiralty, I’m happy to report that it has come to the notice of the CIA. A senior analyst in the CIA, Robert Clark, has just published a book titled: Geospatial Intelligence: Origins and Evolution. (2020 – Georgetown University Press) in which he cites my book in the context of Captain Cook’s fabricated maps.

Now, it’s funny how when you are young you accept some things that, on the face of it, do not make sense, but that acceptance stays with you until someone gives it a shake. A sailor gave me a shake many years ago. He was a veteran of several Sydney to Hobart Yacht Races and told me that he couldn’t understand how Cook had “missed” Bass Strait when he had sailed into it in 1770.

That spurred me to investigate – and I’ve been questioning the conventional stories of modern Australia’s origins, ever since. After sifting through the archives, I’ve found new and forgotten evidence. It’s time we threw out most of those implausible cover stories and replaced them with real ones – which are far more exciting.

Tonight, I’ll look at some of highlights of these real stories.

The remarkable meeting of Arthur Phillip and Jean Laperouse

I’ll begin at the end of the story, due to matters arising in Glasgow earlier this month. I want to assure Mr Macron that Australia has enjoyed a very warm entente cordiale with France since the dawn of modern Australia

In 1788, as soon as Governor Phillip moved into his portable canvas Government House at Sydney Cove, he immediately hosted a Vice-Regal reception for Rear Admiral Laperouse who was camping down in Botany Bay. As reported by Arthur Bowes Smyth, surgeon on the Lady Penrhyn, Phillip sent two horses to Botany Bay to collect Laperouse and his friends. The four Frenchmen arrived the following day – Wednesday 20 February and stayed in Sydney with the Governor for two nights – retuning to Botany Bay on the Friday.

I don’t know if Phillip uttered the immortal words: “Captain Laperouse, I presume?” – but this must be one of the most famous meetings in history.

Who dropped the bombshell that triggered the Botany Bay decision?

We now cross to London for the beginning of the story.

It’s the mid-1780s. Captain Cook had made his Australian discoveries about sixteen years earlier, but nothing had been done about them, much to the annoyance of Joseph Banks. Ever since his Endeavour voyage with Cook, Banks had worried that France would grab New Holland before Britain got around to it. He lobbied the British Government to occupy Australia, because that was the only way of getting a proper title to the place. Banks promoted Botany Bay at two parliamentary enquiries – in 1779 and 1785 – and suggested that Britain should send an occupation force consisting of convicts or American Loyalists or both.

Alas, Banks’s advocacy wasn’t enough. Botany Bay was rejected by the members of both parliamentary Inquiries. A Pacific colony was just too difficult – both financially and politically. If Banks was to bring the government on side, he knew he had to come up with a more compelling reason – and a few months later he did.

Suddenly, out of the blue, an emergency cabinet meeting was called for Friday 18 August 1786, in the middle of the summer vacation. It ran for 30 hours and, at midday on Saturday, a despatch rider was sent to Windsor to tell George III that he would soon be reigning over a new empire in the South Sea.

Who threw the bombshell that triggered such an audacious and costly campaign?

One is reminded of John Kennedy in 1961. Before entering the White House, he had little interest in rockets and thought space exploration was a waste of money. But, four months later, Kennedy undertook to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. What had happened?

The answer is Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. Russia was first out of the gate in the Space Race and now America had to dig deep – and quickly – if it wanted to overtake its Cold War rival.

Clearly, something similar happened in 1786, but no-one has ever discovered what it was. Who threw the bombshell on Thursday 17 August 1786 that triggered the emergency cabinet meeting the following day?

After several years of matching up calendars, I found that the bombshell thrower was John Ledyard – the brilliant and colourful man from Connecticut. Ledyard had sailed with Cook on his Third Voyage, then went to Paris where he became a close friend of the American Ambassador, Thomas Jefferson.

Now, the talk of Paris in mid-1785 was the imminent French expedition to the Pacific, to be commanded by Captain Laperouse. Thomas Jefferson, like many other foreign ambassadors, was worried about the hidden purpose of the French voyage. Few believed that Louis XVI was funding the campaign solely for the advancement of science. Jefferson didn’t want any French colonies on America’s west coast. So, he asked the American naval officer, John Paul Jones, who was also in France at the time, to spy around the French port of Brest – where Laperouse’s ships were provisioned.

Jones proved to be an excellent spy and he wrote a detailed letter to Jefferson. In brief, Jones reported that Laperouse was instructed to claim possession in two places. He was to build a seasonal base near Alaska for French fur-traders, and he was to establish colonies in New Holland.

Jefferson was perplexed, and so he showed the letter to his friend John Ledyard. Ledyard was the only man in Paris who had visited both New Holland (actually Tasmania) and Alaska. After Ledyard had read the letter, he told Jefferson not to worry. There would be no permanent French colonies on America’s coast. The French colonies were destined for Australia’s coast.

Jefferson relaxed and filed the letter away. That could have been an end to the matter.

But we fast forward ten months to early August 1786.

Ledyard is still in Paris where he meets the Marquis of Buckingham, first-cousin to the Prime Minister, William Pitt. Buckingham recruits Ledyard to head a gun-running operation to help the Spanish colonies in South America in their rebellion against Metropolitan Spain. The British ship transporting the weapons will sail from the Thames on Friday 18 August. So, Ledyard rushes to London – after obtaining yet another loan from Thomas Jefferson.

Ledyard arrives in London around 12 August and, by Wednesday 16 August, he has spent the money on two dogs, a tomahawk and a peace pipe. On Thursday 17 August, he meets Sir Joseph Banks, with whom he has much in common. Both men sailed with Cook – and Banks is always keen to meet other Cook alumni.

Now it has always been thought that Banks was not in London at the time of the Botany Bay decision. It was high summer and, like most wealthy Londoners, Banks had escaped the city and was now at his villa near Kew Gardens.

However, Banks was a clubbable man and always enjoyed a dinner party. So, I fossicked around in the Royal Society archives and found that, on Thursday 17 August, Banks (as always) joined his friends at the Crown and Anchor pub in the Strand for the weekly meeting of the Royal Society Dining Club. The Royal Society proper had closed for the summer, but the Dining Club met all year round. I’ve included a photograph of the Dining Club Register in the book

Banks would have left Kew early and arrived in London by mid-morning. The Club rules stated that the Dinner must begin at 4:30 pm., so there was plenty of time for the two Cook alumni to meet – which they probably did in Banks’ house at 32 Soho Square.

Here Banks, the charmer, and Ledyard, the show-off, probably spent an hour or two together. First, they reminisced about their own Pacific voyages, and then moved on to discuss the prospects of the new French voyage under Laperouse. Ledyard would have boasted about his friendship with Jefferson which inevitably led to his mentioning the detailed letter written by John Paul Jones.

Banks was flabbergasted when he heard about the proposed French colonies in New Holland. But he was also thrilled. At last, he had the evidence that would jolt Pitt’s cabinet out of its complacency. Banks extracted from Ledyard all the information he could. Then, as soon as the American departed to join his ship, Banks called for his carriage and raced over to Whitehall to tell William Pitt. Immediately, an emergency cabinet meeting was called for the following morning – and the rest is history.

Grabbing half a continent to control the transcontinental Channel

Now we move to George III’s Royal Instructions for Captain Arthur Phillip before he left England with the First fleet.

Why was Arthur Phillip instructed to claim half the continent, when Cook’s purported claim was just the narrow coastal strip? The western boundary of Phillip’s claim stretched across to Longitude 135°E – which is almost as far as Alice Springs. By any measure, the claim was audacious and outrageous. The British government never attempted to explain or justify this claim, so we’re left to guess. In 1914, one historian suggested that the reason was that Whitehall was worried about the presence of Laperouse in the Pacific. – which I think is mostly correct.

Around the 1980s, however, some scholars developed an unrelated theory that had little to do with France. They said that Whitehall was following the ancient Treaty of Tordesillas, signed by Spain and Portugal in 1494 and blessed by the Pope. These scholars go on to say that the antemeridian of the Tordesillas line is the demarcation line that appears on that beautiful pre-Cook map of Australia drawn in 1747 by the English cartographer, Emanual Bowen.

Now, I think this theory is little more than romantic conjecture. For one thing, Queen Elizabeth of England said that the Tordesillas Treaty certainly didn’t apply to her. She declared that she did not recognise the prerogative of the Bishop of Rome or “that he should bind princes who owe him no obedience” and that “the use of the sea and air is common to all; neither can any title to the ocean belong to any person”. The King of France said much the same thing. He was Catholic of course, but he was miffed that the Pope had omitted him from the global carve-up.

For another thing, when you look at your school atlas, you’ll see that the demarcation line on Emanuel Bowen’s map does not run along Longitude 135. It runs down Longitude 136, which was too far east for the strategists in Whitehall.

Now one may think that one degree difference is neither here nor there, as there’s only 67 miles between these two meridians at that point. But there’s much more. There is the zig-zag western shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria, which contains a plethora of river mouths. Any one of those river mouths could be the entrance to the imagined Channel running from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Great Australian Bight – dividing the continent into two large islands.

This imagined transcontinental Channel or Strait was one of the three main strategic jewels that Britain really wanted in Australia. The other two were Port Jackson and insular Tasmania. Cook had found both of these and had quickly concealed them until they could be protected with garrisons. Cook had not explored the Gulf of Carpentaria, but London wasn’t taking any chances. The Gulf’s western shore may contain the entrance to the mythical Channel.

Consider the mighty Roper River, which discharges into Limmen Bight. On Emanuel Bowen’s map, it lies on the Dutch side of his demarcation line, not on the English side. This was no good to Whitehall. Laperouse would claim possession and control of that river mouth, enter the mythical channel, sail south to Adelaide and claim for France the western half of the now bisected continent.

So, William Pitt’s strategists ignored Bowen’s map. Instead, they shifted westward from Longitude 136°E to Longitude 135°E. Here they were well clear of the waters of the jagged shoreline and firmly on the dry land of the Northern Territory. Here they drew the new, unilateral Anglo-Dutch border.

Anglo-French rivalry

I interrupt these highlights to say how wonderful it will be when this story of Anglo-French rivalry is added to the school curriculum about the origins of modern Australia. There are many threads to that story and Anglo-French rivalry is only one of them. But it’s the thread that tells us why it all happened. It’s also a ripping yarn.

The Battle of Port Jackson was possibly the most significant naval victory in the era of Anglo-French rivalry. The Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 has received the most glorification of any naval battle in history but, while it boosted morale, it decided almost nothing

It did not prevent the invasion of England, because Napoleon had abandoned that plan months earlier. It did not end the Napoleonic Wars, which raged for another ten years.

The Battle of Port Jackson received no glorification, but Arthur Phillip’s victory gave this country the evolving parliamentary democracy of England instead of the absolutist monarchy of France. It also united the continent with a lingua franca, and it shaped the history of the eastern hemisphere.

Of course, there are many other issues that didn’t make much sense at school. For example: Why was the First Fleet sent to Botany Bay if it was Port Jackson they wanted? Or: Why did the French Government write new instructions for Laperouse and send them by courier across Siberia? Or: Why did Laperouse sail past the tempting Sydney Heads on his way south from Broken Bay?

As time is limited, I won’t single out any of those matters for now, but I’m happy to answer your questions.