Probing the oven Credit : Max Guérout

On that day, the sky was low and the wind was so strong we couldn’t dive. The attempt on the previous day showed how difficult it was to access the site when there was a swell. However, diving at high tide was conceivable,we could get into the water by using the furrows on the sea bed perpendicularly to the coastline. This appeared to be the most suitable method but we had to wait until there was a little less wind.

So the team took their shovels and trowels again. We continued to probe the oven site and discovered a series of brick fragments wedged by an iron rod. Located 40 cm down in the soil, they hadn’t been moved by the turtles laying eggs. Under the bricks, there was a coral base assembled by a mortar. It seemed to be the oven base.  

Red-footed boobies in a nest Credit : Max Guérout

At the eastern end of the area we probed the day before, we discovered at the same level a layer composed of sand and ashes, where we could see some bone fragments and little iron nails. Obviously the castaways had thrown the oven ashes there and they had made a fire with wooden boards from the wreck that they had picken up on the beach.

In the Compagnie des Indes archives, we found two handwritten documents. One of them tells the stay of the Utile’s crew on the island and gives indications about the oven use. It was made to cook biscuits in order to cross Madagascar. The wheat came from 22 barrels saved from the wrecking.The oven was built around 15 August and they cooked bread first. They cooked biscuits between 24 August and 4 September.

Stones mounds supposed to be a grave Credit : Max Guérout

The other team bustled about the supposed crew camp, they made several  50x50 cm probings with no results, under the watchful eye of the red-footed boobies (Sula Sula) which were nesting very close, in the bushes. Near the runway we identified a series of stones mounds which might be graves, but we weren’t sure of that. We just took photographs.

In the evening, François Le Gall gave a message in the name of the students from the Cuers school in France. We were delighted with this first contact. We were just talking about the other book by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, titled « Voyage à l’île de France » (Trip to Paris and its surroundings), in which he strongly criticizes the planters’s attitude. In his manuscript available at the Bibliothèque du Havre, he also talked about the Utile and strongly criticized the governor who refused to go and save the Malagasy castaways. This book would never be published. Fortunately, we received a digital photograph of the document.