Birds’ egg search
p. 69 · Read in the full issue
led to theory on La Perouse
The theory that some members of the La Perouse expedition may have ended their days on Walpole Island dates back at least 35 years .
An English writer, R. R.
Bellamy, who spent four years in the Pacific in the late twenties and early thirties, mentioned it in a book called “The Real South Seas”, published in London in 1933.
Bellamy said that an old New Caledonian friend of his, Mr.
Alfred Caporn, who had worked as a storekeeper and analyst on Walpole Island, had told him how some Loyalty Islanders had found some mouldering human skulls and bones and some but tons in one of the island’s caves while looking for birds’ eggs during his term on the island.
Mr. Caporn had wanted to get the islanders to take him to the caves so that he could examine the skeletons, but before he could do so a steamer arrived with orders that the whole of the work force at the guano deposits was to be evacuated.
“Those skeletons could easily belong to the luckless remnants of La Perouse’s ill-fated expe dition,” Bellamy added.