[page 11]

7.

7.

Many of our ships have already lost their masts! Some of them signaled that they would not be able to follow the flotilla and they must head to the nearest port, something the commander of the flotilla refused, ordering that repairs should be made at high sea as soon as the storm had ended[16].

fahren in diesem mühseligen Leben; viele von unseren Schiffen hatten schon ihre Mäste verlohren ! Einige gaben Zeichen sie könten unmöglich mit der Flotte fortkommen, sondern müßten sich in den nächsten Hafen begeben, welches der Comandant von der Flotteaber nicht erlau-ben thäte, sondern mußten sich nach Endigung des Sturms auf dem hohen Meer reparieren lassen.

On the 14th, we sailed off the coast of Cape Finisterre[17]; we were still thinking that we would approach the 2 Spanish ports of Ferrol and Corunna in the province of Galicia in the Spanish Kingdom[18]. We did not stop tacking along the coasts of Galicia. On the 19th we passed near Portugal and Cadiz.

Den 14ten schwebten wir noch beym Caap Finister herum, wir glaubten noch allezeit in die 2 spannische Meer-Häfen einzulaufen mit Namens Ferol und Carogné, in der Profintz Gallitzien, im König-Reich Spanien. Wir labrierten noch stets bey den gallitzischen Küsten herum. Den 19ten kamen wir in die Höhe von Portugall und Cadix.

On the 20th, we tacked up to Lisbon.

Den 20ten labrierten wir bey Lissabon auf und ab.

On the 21st, we set course for America.

Den 21ten nahmen wir unsren Weg nach America,

On the 22nd, we passed the Azores[19] and came to the Atlantic Sea[20] where we had better winds, post nubila phoebus[21], that remained nearly the whole month long.

Den 22ten passierten wir die Azorischen Inslen und kamen auf das Atlantische Meer, allwo wir den besten Wind bekamen Post Nubila Phaebus. Welcher fast einen gantzen Monath anhielte.

The afternoon of the 23rd, we were able to see two enormous fish that astonished everyone; they were 38 to 40 feet long[22] and their fins that emerged were the size of a man[23].

Den 23ten nach mittag liessen sich 2 ungeheure grosse Fische sehen, worüber sich jederman verwunderte, ihre Grösse ware zu sehen 38 biß 40 Schuhe lang, ihre Fluß Federn sahe man, mannshoch übers Wasser heraus gehen.

All the marine officers and sailors said straightaway that this certainly heralded a storm, which did not fail to appear after several days[24].

Worauf gleich alle Schiff Offiziers und Matrossen sagten daß das unvermuthlich ein Sturm bedeutet, welches auch nicht gefehlet hat, einige Täge darauf.

https://gallica.bnf.fr/iiif/ark:/12148/btv1b10110846m/f6/pct:50,0,100,100/,700/0/native.jpg

Strasbourg, Médiathèque André Malraux, ms f 15, p. 11.

[agrandir]

 Notes

16. Concerning this storm, in Mes Campagnes en Amérique (p. 4) Guillaume de Deux-Ponts does mention that several ships were damaged, among them La Provence, the frigate with 64 cannons, which incurred damage that was impossible to repair at sea.
17. This does not refer to the Breton cape, but rather Cap Fisterra in Galicia.
18. Galicia is one of the Spanish regions situated on the Atlantic seaboard on the northwest extremity of Spain, to the north of Portugal. The ports of Corunna and Ferrol, as well as Santiago de Compostela, are located in Galicia.
19. Note the author’s lack of geographical precision: sailing south, on the 19th the ship is near “Portugal and Cadiz” whereas the next day it tacks “up to Lisbon”, which is much farther north. On the 22nd, Flohr mentions that they passed the Azores, whereas on June 9th he mentions having passed the Canary Islands. Even if the convoy followed the southern route in its Atlantic crossing, a stopover in the Azores, the Portuguese archipelago in the middle of the Atlantic, is highly unlikely. For that matter, if Flohr’s description of the Atlantic journey is compared to that given by Guillaume de Deux-Ponts (Mes Campagnes en Amérique, p. 5), it appear that on May 21 the flotilla sailed off the coast of Madera, and not past the Azores. In his campaign diary, Claude Blanchard confirms that the flotilla was off the coast of the Isle of Madera on the 22nd Claude Blanchard, Guerre d’Amérique 1780-1783, Journal de Campagne, L. Baudoin and Co., Paris, 1881, p. 19.
20. At that period the most widely used term was the Atlantic Ocean, which was considered to start west of Africa and the Straight of Gibraltar.
21. “Post Nubila Phoebus” is a Latin saying that means: “After clouds, the sun”. Flohr uses this expression a second time during the account of the return journey, for May 19, 1783 and that day’s good wind, on page 299 of the manuscript.
22. Before the metric system was adopted, numerous units of measurement were borrowed from human morphology. In Germanic lands, the value of a foot varied from region to region. In the land of Deux-Ponts, the length of a foot was 0.289 meters. Depending on the author, the “foot of the Rhine” equaled between 11 inches, 5 lines, and 3 parts and 11 inches and 7 lines.
23. On reading this description, we can suppose it is the description of an orca, since Flohr reports a dorsal fin the size of a man. The orca is one of the rare cetaceans to have a dorsal fin of this size. Cf. Dauphin Orque, Dauphin Nésarnack, Dauphin Ventru, estampe, début XIXe siècle, dans Lacépède (Bernard Germain Étienne de), Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, des cétacés, ouvrage faisant suite à l’Histoire naturelle..., Paris, Plassan, an XII [1803], pl. 15 en reg. p. 298 [catalogue de la médiathèque Malraux]
24. Seeing certain marine animals can actually be a bad omen. These recurrent omens are part of the imagination of sailors, they show the vulnerability of men at sea. Not being in control of their destiny, they look for the meaning of things they cannot explain. Here, these fish mean that a storm is coming, but if we follow Tzvetan Todorov speaking about Christopher Columbus: “he knows in advance what he is going to find; the concrete experience is only there to illustrate a truth we already possess”, Tzvetan Todorov, La conquête de l’Amérique, La question de l’autre, Paris, Seuil, 1982, p. 25. Returning to the sight of those fish after the fact, Flohr sees the herald of a storm, which does not fail to happen.