The Lazaretto according to Louis de Freycinet
Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 1817 · Authors: Louis de Freycinet
Henri Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet (Montélimar, 1779 - Saulce-sur-Rhône, Drôme, 1842) was a French naturalist, geologist and geographer who visited the Canary Islands several times during his various scientific voyages around the world.
Freycinet was in command of an expedition to the antipodes to determine the shape of the globe, to study terrestrial magnetism and to collect all natural history objects that could contribute to the advancement of science. Aboard the corvette L’Uranie, he arrived at the port of Santa Cruz on 22 October 1817. Several men on the ship showed upon arrival “general malaise and stomach pains”, so the port health authorities prevented disembarkation from the very moment the French ship anchored, especially since alarming news had been received about plague outbreaks in Mediterranean locations, the place of origin of Freycinet's expedition.
Given this circumstance, the French scientist took advantage of the imposed week of quarantine to carry out, as planned, astronomical observations in the only place where he was authorised to disembark: the lazaretto of Santa Cruz, which he refers to in the following terms:
«Through the French consul I got in touch with the Spanish governor, trying in vain to convince him that we were not plague-ridden, a very difficult task, since Santa Cruz had just gone through a yellow fever epidemic in which 1,332 citizens had died. […] I asked for and obtained permission to disembark at the Lazaretto and to carry out there the magnetic experiments which partly constituted the object of our journey [...]
As for this (lazaretto), located half a league south of the city, apart from having difficult and even dangerous access due to the waves breaking on the coastal rocks and the risk of the boat breaking to pieces, to reach the facilities one has to climb a very difficult slope […]
The lazaretto consists of a room where soldiers are housed in wartime, whose walls do not even have window frames to shelter from the weather. The courtyard was full of rubble and in the land surrounding the facilities, volcanic rocks marked the limits we were allowed to roam[...]»
Besides carrying out the experiments, Freycinet was able to acquire, always maintaining the required separation distance, various provisions intended for the long voyage he was about to undertake.
As a curiosity, it is worth mentioning that among the travellers was Freycinet's own wife, Rose, who kept a personalised diary narrating the journey. Women were not allowed on this type of expedition, but madame Freycinet had secretly embarked in Toulon dressed as a man. After several days playing the male role, she finally revealed herself as a woman while crossing the Atlantic, already in search of the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
After leaving the Santa Cruz roadstead on 29 October 1827, the Freycinet couple and the rest of those on board prepared to face a journey full of incessant dangers, the greatest example being the shipwreck they suffered in the Falkland Islands on their return from Australia. The crew, making a huge effort not to lose the valuable natural history material they had collected, were rescued by American whalers and taken to Montevideo on the Mercury , a three-masted ship which Freycinet ended up acquiring and renaming La Physicienne. They successfully arrived in France on 10 November 1820.
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