En 1761, a ship of the French East India Company, loaded with 160 Malagasy slaves, was shipwrecked on a tiny islet in the Indian Ocean. Of the 90 survivors, eight survivors will be saved fifteen years later. This story is the subject of a comic strip.
In July of the year 1761, a ship of the French East India Company, "L'Utile", leaves Madagascar. On board, more than 140 crew members and passengers, as well as a few holdings 160 Malagasy slaves torn from their land. The captain of the boat, Jean Lafargue, has only one desire, to deliver his "goods" as soon as possible to make a maximum profit. At the expense of safety, he takes an unusual and difficult road. And this is the drama. On July 31 at around 22 p.m., the ship was wrecked near Sable Island, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. There are survivors: 122 crew members and 90 slaves, the others, locked in the holds, drowned. The island is in fact a tiny, desolate islet, 1,7 kilometers long and about 700 meters wide, located 500 kilometers from the nearest coast. There are only a few shrubs.
The survivors finally discovered drinking water after three days, by digging deep. In the meantime, to survive, they drink wine, which had escaped the shipwreck. Food was also recovered. Deprived of drink and water during this time by the crew, a dozen slaves died of thirst and exhaustion. The others feed on birds and turtles caught there.
After two months, the sailors, with the help of the slaves, rebuilt a boat with all that they could recover from the wreck, wood, carpentry, sails, ropes, etc. All the white crew members embark, leaving the slaves on the ground to whom they had yet secured freedom against their help in rebuilding a ship. Nevertheless, they promise to return to them and leave them food for three months.
Promise never held
But this promise will never be kept. It was not until November 1776, fifteen years later, that the corvette commander Tromelin returned to the islet, to which he bequeathed his name. Of the 80 slaves left to their sad fate in 1761, there are only seven women and an eight-month-old baby, born in the meantime, who will finally be saved. The story of the abandoned slaves would fuel the anti-slavery cause in France, and almost two and a half centuries later scientific expeditions would take place to understand how the slaves of Tromelin were able to survive and reconstitute a semblance of community on this desolate island of the Indian Ocean, frequently ravaged by cyclones.
The Forgotten Slaves of Tromelin - Volume 0 - The Forgotten Slaves of Tromelin (Man Museum Edition)
Release Date | 2019-03-01T00:00:01Z |
Edition | Collector's Edition |
Language | Français |
Number Of Pages | 128 |
Publication Date | 2019-03-01T00:00:01Z |