Remains Of "Boussole"

Found In Deep Water

Mr. Reece Discombe, a diver and engineer of Vila, New Hebrides, whose discovery of the wreck of La Perouse’s ship Boussole at Vanikoro was reported in PIM in January (p. 11), gave me further details of his discovery when I visited Vila recently.

)ISCOMBE, who took part in two French expeditions to Vanikoro 1958 and 1959 to recover relics ! La Perouse, said he made his scovery when he went to the [and last June to investigate the issibility of salvaging a cargo of ass jettisoned from the motor issel Milos several years ago.

“Having studied the accounts of ;ter Dillon’s expedition of 1827 id Dumont D’Urville’s expedition 1828, he said, “I decided that le possible spot where the Boussole ay have sunk was on the outside the reef, near Bruat Passage, about 'o miles from Wreck Passage where e Astrolabe was lost.

“I went out in a boat to Bruat tssage with two Santa Cruz landers who work for the Kauri imber Company and began my arch wearing a mask, snorkel and ppers.

“After swimming about 300 yards »ove and on the outer side of the ef, I came to a chasm in the reef

where the water was about 40 ft deep. I was swimming over this chasm when I suddenly spotted an anchor on the bottom similar to those we had recovered from the Astrolabe.

“Then I saw another anchor several feet away standing on end against the wall of the chasm. Both anchors had a crust of coral over them. I swam back at once to the boat, put on my aqualung and dived down for a closer look.

“It was not until I reached the bottom that I realised the anchors were so big—the one on the bottom being about 10 ft long.

“Then I swam in towards the blind end of the chasm and saw the out lines of several other objects— cannons, more anchors, wheels and ballast blocks. I felt certain that I had finally found the remains of the Boussole.

“But it was not until I returned to Vanikoro in December to salvage the Milos’ brass that I was able to bring up an object that definitely

proved it. This was a lead ingot that had on it the same arsenal markings as ingots recovered from the Astrolabe.”

Discombe said that in December he used explosives to loosen or expose objects on the bottom. The blasting revealed five lead ingots, six anchors ranging from 15 to 8 ft (some broken by continual rusting), four brass wheels about 12 in. in diameter and weighing 60 to 70 lb each, a brass wheel about 6 in. in diameter, and a bundle of iron rods.

The smaller of these objects were brought to the surface and taken back to Vila.

Discombe said he had also re covered what appeared to be part of an officer’s sea chest and some of its contents, which had been embedded in the coral. These items included a silver shoe buckle, a gold coin, ah eyeglass, a pair of callipers, a bosun’s pipe chain, part of a bone knife handle, some copper nails and a piece of copper about half an inch wide. The piece of copper appeared to be the hasp of the sea chest.

Millstone Found “In December,” Discombe added, “I also had another look at the spot where the Astrolabe went down.

“When I had last seen it in 1959, there was a lot of rubble left by previous blasting.

“Since then the seas had washed the rubble away and many objects had been revealed that I had not seen before. Among these were pieces of broken glass, iron ballast blocks, iron rods, wooden planks, drums of some sort and a millstone about 2 ft across and weighing about a hundredweight. I brought the millstone back to Vila.

“The millstone, I think, positively establishes that the wreck at Wreck Passage is that of the Astrolabe as that ship is known to have had millstones on board, driven by a windmill, for grinding grain. There is no mention in the records of the Boussole having millstones on board.

“Until my discovery of the mill stone, nothing that had been brought up from the Wreck Passage wreck identified it for certain as the Astrolabe. It was merely presumed to be the Astrolabe.”

Robert Lang Don

Reece Discombe (left) examines two brass wheels that he recovered from the wreck of the "Boussole" in December. At right, his daughter Janet inspects the millstone from the "Astrolabe".