WRECK OF THE DUROC.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XVI, Issue 62, 31 October 1857, Page 3

WRECK OF THE DUROC.

We copy from the Sydney Herald the following translation of an account (published in La Presse, Paris, June 20, 1857) of the wreck of the French steam corvette The Duroc, on the coast of Java, on her way from New Caledonia to Hong Kong. The narrative is written by Monsieur Mery:—

The wreck of the fine vessel Duroc will take its place of honour amongst the most memorable on the sinister page of maritime history. Never since the Medusa, has naval catastrophe shown itself more affecting; —although the story of the raft of this frigate wanted the touching character of the Duroc's raft, imparted by its two heroines —a* young and intrepid mother watching over her little girl through the long protracted peril of three months, resolute to save her, like the mother of Florence, from the wrath of a monster far more terrible than the lion.

1 have followed all the phases of this maritime drama with the feverish interest which I attach to narratives of distant oceans—to real victims and veritable mothers; to turns of fate not developed among the scenes of the theatre, and beneath a gas-lit sun, but where the eye of imagination may follow across the solitudes of the Southern Ocean, under stars unknown to our hemisphere, and the rays of the tropic and the equator. ■ So, on learning yesterday that the heroic wife of the captain of the Duroc, Madame de la Vaissiere de Lavergne, had arrived in Paris with her little girl, or rather her angel, Rosita, I wished, among the first, to hail this two-fold living miracle, these two touching naufrugees of the archipelago of rocks and of Timor. At an earlier period I had made a voyage to see the heroine of the disaster of Cabul, the courageous Lady Sale, who, like an equestrian amazon, traversed the valleys of Afghanistan, exposed to the fire of insurgent mountaineers —a woman who was not my countrywoman. The fact is that in extreme perils, either by land or by sea, the woman is a thousand times more interesting than the man. The soldier and the sailor, in danger of death, are playing their part; they are working at their trade. Their heroism is oftentimes no more than a praiseworthy ambition; an ambition which in the denouement of their courage presents an epaulette or a decoration; they read the order of the day which promises their names to a triumphal arch, or a crowu of brass —but for the poor women it is another thing. Produce a single name of those humble sisters of charity who died before Sebastopol, tending the wounded, or the choleriques. It is not possible for me to express the emotion which I felt this morning, when in an elegant and vast saloon of the faubourg Saint Germain—a saloon full of all the elegancies of the world, and the utilities of life—l beheld this mother and this pretty little Rosita, an angelic urchin (lutiri) of four years of age; those two miraculous beings saved from the deep. The mother still bears in her visage the traces of past sufferings' The child, with the happy thoughtlessness of her time of life, has forgotten everything already; repaired everything; she smiles to hear her mother recount with charming simplicity the dreadful scenes of the wreck, of captivity, and the canoe of deliverance.

It 13 n rare thing, and worthy to be remarked, that Madame de la Vaissiere de Lavergne seems to experience no desire to recount her lamentable history; she is so happy to be restored to Paris, in the midst of her beloved connections, and by the side of her dear Rosita, alive and well, that she asks no more, and would reserve with pleasure for her aged days the recital of her Odyssy. The dear Rosita will scarcely be separated from her mother, will never quit her. Madame de la Vaissiere de Lavergne for three months grasped her child upon her knees, in her lap, in her arms, without leaving her for an instant, amidst the most melancholy scenes of wreck, desert, and tempest; and Rosita, in her child-like thoughts, still thinks she sees those horrible things reappear, should her mother suddenly withdraw, and leave her in the room alone.

To learn the details, it was needful, therefore, to interrogate Madame de la Vaissiere de Lavergne j and you never want an obliging reply, however short, sober, concise, and stripped of emphasis and exaggeration. Altogether, the reality of this catastrophe surpasses all the dreams of romantic fiction. The fact simply told makes the hearer shudder; the effect would be diminished by any attempt to enhance it.

There are times when indiscretion may be permitted; I resigned myself to incur the charge even to some excess. I put many questions to Madame de la Vaissiere de Lavergne. The moment was opportune, it is true. She was in the height of joy; she had just learned that her noble husband, the commander of the Duroc, had been triumphantly absolved at Cherbourg, iu one of those proceedings agaiust the officers, always instituted on the loss of a ship on the part of the Admiralty, though sometimes a mere form. The decision of the court at Cherbourg is a new title of nobility .conferred upon the heroic commander of the Duroc. There are shipwrecks more glorious than victories. Monsieur de laVaissiere arrived in Paris from Cherbourg this day. His campaign of the isle of Timor is a maritime achievement more considerable than a long voyage of circumnavigation. Thirty-three persons owe their lives to him; and this great rescued family never cease to bless the commander of the Duroc, the father of his crew. Now let us enter into some of the details which are posterior to the wreck, and which belong to Parisian chronicles rather than ta history. I should find it impossible to reprcI duce it with the natural charm of the heroine, J but to do what one can in the recital is but natural. Beyond all question, the author of Heva of Florida and the War of the Nizam will not now indulge in those sumptuous decorations of magnificence with which he prepared those four Indian romauces in the same department of La Presse, followed by twenty editions in every variety of form. Here there is admissible nothing but the strict truth. Those who never write anything but history feel compelled to bring their tribute to the omnis homo mendax of the Bible ; it ia their only opportunitv, and

they generally avail themselves of it somewhat overmuch. The Duroc went on shore by breaking her helix (screw) on an archipelago of shoals level with the sea, usual to that ocean to which 1 suppose the coral formation gives its name. They tell me these shoals are not distinctly marked on the charts, and it is quite credible. The map is not constructed for rocks on shore ns it is at sea. When Monsieur La Madeleine left them, thirty-two seamen, Monsieur (the commander of the Duroc), his wife, and the little Rosita were abandoned on an islet of 80 metres (260 feet) in circumference —a grain of sand in the midst of the boundless circle of the ocean. This islet has not a blade of grass, nor a drop of fresh water, nor a spot of shelter. It is level as a table, and almost wholly covered by the waves when the sea is raised by the wind. Close by was another shoal of the same size, which totally disappeared when the sea was high—a circumstance little calculated to encourage the people of the Duroc on their speck of sandy coral. There, upon that islet, they spent fifty-one days, a lifetime one might say, under the intolerable sun of the equator, the close encroachment of the sea, and all the horrors of hunger and thirst. The more hardy endured with courage; the weaker asked if life were worth preserving at such a price; but all were inspired with the elevation of manly energy, when they saw the young mother, in miserable garb, and the young child, bidding death avaunt with a smile.

The sailors, with the general voice, had given Rosita the rank of corporal. She mounted her badge of stripes with pride, and took her place in the ranks, when her father mustered for inspection his thirty-two shipwrecked seamen. "We may say that Rosita kept up the hearts of these afflicted strugglers; she was the protecting angel of all these living lost ones; she taught them to believe in an approaching resurrection ; and to save this adorable child, the most dispirited sailor was content to save himself, by one final effort. Hound about the shoal, those sea-tigers, the sharks, presented their terrible jaws, as though they waited instinctively for the dead. Many tears had these monsters already caused Madame de la Vaissiere and her daughter 4 aud thus it was : The seamen, in their devotion to their two passengers, had determined to save a pretty shegoat, Rosita's playmate, which had been presented to Madame de la Vaissiere in New Caledonia. They placed the goat in a canoe, but a canoe so small that it was named the Joujou. In crossing the breakers to reach the isle of Melish, the Joujou encountered great dangers; two sharks beset it, and held it more than once by the stern between their teeth. Thereupon the seamen with their boathooks compelled them to let go; but the sharks, scenting the goat as a savoury morsel, returned to the charge with the obstinate voracity of hunger. The poor goat, terrified as the gazelle at the approach of the lion, sprang from the boat in her fear; and, pursued by the sharks, she swam across a narrow channel, appearing and disappearing among the waves, and presenting to the spectators of the scene many a hope renewed and lost, the centre object of the mo3t poignant interest, in the midst of a limitless creation, where the sun alone conversed with the abyss! Alas! that Madame de la Vaissiere and her daughter should lose their darling goat, the infant's fostermother in the hours of famine. The sharks secured their prey; a wave dashed the victim's blood to the canoe, and you may judge of the despair of the two shipwrecked beings. But the seamen, in the midst of the urgent occupations of the moment, thought of nothing but revenge; and setting on the two monsters in their turn, they killed them after a long chase, and brought back to Madame de la Vaissiere two feet of the poor goat from the jaws of the shark. Parched by the sun and by thirst, and exhausted by want of food, the seamen resolved upon making a great effort in common to escape this dungeon of the islet, whereof the ocean was gaoler. The ablest undertook to do their own labour and the share of the feeble besides ; they established a shipyard on the sand of Melish; emulous of Thomas Selkirk, that true Robinson, they determined to build a canoe, big enough for thirty-four persons, and strong enough to traverse that vastest of seas, the Southern Ocean. " They went off to the wreck," as Robinson says. The masts of the Duroc were brought to the isle of Melish, and their timber served to construct the canoe. Industry, sufficient science of the shipwrecked, imparted her choicest inspirations to form everything necessary for a long voyage, without tools which ordinary workmen deem indispensable. They formed an enormous quantity of nails, such as the Romans called clair trabales or spikenails. It cost nearly two months to finish this canoe of hope. More ardent perspiration never flowed in dock or shipyard in our southern ports, and in the heats of July. Madame de la Vaissiere, with Rosita by her side, encouraged the sinking resolution of the weary men by a word or a smile: she was the queen of the islet; she personified France; she made the shipwrecked sailors think of their wives and mothers; she reminded them of Providence, who, without doubt, is a woman also; and the choicest materil of the court toilet was then less beautiful than the splendour of her ragged costume. At length the grand day arrived, and the canoe was launched into the deep; Madame de la Vaissiere stood god-mother, and named her the "Deliverance." The men demanded df their captain the withered flowers which still ■remained in the ruins of her bonnet, and therewith crowned the poop; after which, Mademoiselle Rosita, willing to add her present also, gave a small medal which hung from her neck, which the sailors nailed to the helm, as a relic or talisman, to bring them luck. Oftentimes Mademoiselle Rosita begged to have her medal restored to her at the end of the voyage. It would be difficult. to imagine what enormous importance this circumstance, bo insignificant to us, had in the imagination of the seamen. The little girl evidently never doubted to reach a port in safety; 6he had a providential revelation, merited by the innocence of her childhood. When they made the promise of restoring the medal, the sailors acquired an assurance that they should do so, and that was their safety.

Thirty-four people, therefore, embarked in this nut-shell, called the Deliverance, and committed to their intrepid commander the care of guiding them to an unknown port. Then began anew such sufferings as pierce the heart and fill the eyes with tears whilst the heroine recounts them, beholding her child. The alimentary ration became an ironical resource presented to the exhaustion of hunger. They moistened their lips, parched by equatorical thirst, with the salt and heated sea water; and before their eyes there was ever the same limitless ocean—a liquid desert naming with the sun. In this immensity of desolation floated a frail boat, which a single wave might have overwhelmed with all its adventurous heroes. Each day presented its peculiar variety of danger. Sometimes the hurricane, rushing from the ends of the earth, swept away the canoe like a bit of straw; at times, when such was the caprice of an equinoctical sea, a dead calm succeeded to the tumult of the waters, and the boat seemed bedded like an island on the sapphire surface, as though it were fixed for ever with rock-like immobility. At other times, the tropic sky, source of all the electric energy of the world, was spread with brazen clouds, and in the darkness her crew gazed upon the cupola of heaven flashing with the lightnings, and their hapless boat driven undirected through a cataract of thunders. Then, then, if the heavy drops of rain came on amidst the storm, our noble sufferer, regardless of the throes of nature, collected the precious element, and saving it for her infaut's thirst, ministered to her existence a supply as welcome as a mother's breast. In scenes like these, equally unlike but all alarming, one man watched over all, and for all; the captain of the Duroc—master of the calm stoicism which constitutes safety in the extreme of danger—with his hand on the tiller, and his ear open to the whispers of the wind, stole a glance now and then at the child sleeping in her mother's lap, from the sun which guided his course by day, or from the Southern Cross by night, God's compass which by night leaned over the solitudes of the ludian Ocean. Throughout this enduring agony of twentyeight days, one sailor only gave utterance to an evil suggestion and expression of despair—|He wished he were dead. We hope to live; — [To Live, exclaimed the trusting mother, clasping her daughter to her breast. The mother's hope was heard; they lived. The frail canoe deserved her name, Deliverance. A nut-shell fought against the Ocean and gained the victory. The brave Captain de la Vaissiere de La Vergne conducted his boat to Timor. Little Rosita demanded her medal, and wore it on her neck; she had the goodness to let me look at it for an instant, yesterday; and the still greater goodness to permit me to kiss her glorious little hand. All honour to the Cherbourg Court-martial, which bestowed a crown of triumph on the captain of the Duroc! Traits of heroism like these confer an honour upon man, and reconcile the revilers of their race to human nature. We may pronounce on the wreck of the Duroc what a poet said of the Vengeur, "It is a victorious wreck."

I had nearly forgotten a charming story which Monsieur the Commandant of la Vassiere de Lavergne related at table that evening, to enliven the dessert, after a dinner full of distressing narratives. "When the Duroc first grounded, and all hope of getting her off" was gone, all the crew landed on the speck of coral called Melish, and among them, Mademoiselle Rosita, all joyous, sprang upon the providential strand, and found a collection of the sea-birds' nests; you may guess the delight of the adorable child. "What was the wreck to her! she had found some nests. In haste her little fingers caught as many birds as her lap could hold, and she ran to show them to her father, who could not help smiling in the midst of the horrible catastrope which afflicted his noble heart. Whilst listening to the recital, Rosita seemed to regret the charmiug isle where such little birds were found. Happy infancy! What could have been Heaven's intention when it condemned us to grow up!