Ecology of Indonesian Papua Part One. Andrew J. Marshall
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Negros near Manus; but still the north coast of New Britain remained poorly known. This would be partially remedied in the next decade. In 1792 and 1793 another French world voyage—charged by Louis XVI with searching for the lost expedition of La Pérouse and under the command of A. R. J. de Bruny d’Entrecasteaux—was in New Guinea waters with La Recherche and L’Espérance. The two ships called at several points, including for the first time Huon Gulf (named after the Espérance’s commander, Huon de Kermadec); other important work was done in the Milne Bay region, southwestern New Ireland, around the Bismarck Sea, and on tiny Rawak off Waigeo. Many well-known and still-current geographical names were at this time introduced. D’Entrecasteaux’s naturalists were J. J. Houtou de La Billiardière, Louis Ventenat, L. A. Deschamps, and Claude Riche, with Félix de Lahaie accompanying them as a "gardener-botanist." Sadly, the commander died at sea west of Manus on 20 July 1793 and later, in Java, the expedition broke up in confusion over the consequences of the French Revolution (A. Hesmivy d’Auribeau, second in command, was a staunch royalist—but died in 1794 just before capture, while La Billiardière led the republican faction). La Billiardière’s collections (and those of others) were confiscated by the Dutch and sent to England, but through Banks’s good offices restored to him a few years later (his plants are now in Florence). Unfortunately for Papuasia, he published only on his Australian and New Caledonian plants (the former in 1804– 1807 as Novae Hollandiae plantarum specimen, the latter in 1824–1825 as Sertum austro-caledonicum). Lahaie’s own collections are in Paris (and Geneva).
REALITY, DISAPPOINTMENT, AND RENEWAL (1815-1875)
1815–1850
The wars and disruptions of the French Republican and Napoleonic eras were to restrict exploration for the next 20 years or so, but after 1815 a new flowering took place, associated with the growth of mercantile trade and the related development of detailed marine charts—the latter first undertaken on a large scale by Flinders in the Investigator.
In New Guinea and its islands the quarter-century from 1815 was dominated by several great French voyages—all with naturalists—which collectively added substantially to natural history knowledge and amassed considerable collections (now in the Natural History Museum in Paris, though many perhaps remain little-known or even undocumented). The voyages were part of a diplomatic and mercantile initiative, intended to show that after all its humiliations France still mattered—but, save for French Polynesia (and, somewhat later, New Caledonia), they did not lead much to new overseas territories (although the French claim to "Adélie Land" in Antarctica dates from the visit there by the last of these expeditions). Inspired by the example of von Humboldt, the collections, elaborated by professional naturalists, formed a basis for many sumptuous publications—these in turn inspiring the undertakings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
First into New Guinea waters were the Uranie and Physicienne under Louis de Freycinet in 1818–1819. His naturalists were Jean R. C. Quoy and Joseph Gaimard with Charles Gaudichaud-Beaupré. They called, however, only at Rawak (off Waigeo—earlier visited by d’Entrecasteaux’s expedition; see above)—en route to Guam. While returning to France, the Uranie was lost in the Falklands (also known as Malvinas) Islands, though many collections survived (and others were added).
Freycinet was followed in 1822–1824 by the Coquille under Louis Duperrey; accompanying him were Jules Sébastien Dumont d’Urville, Prosper Garnot, and René Lesson. That team collected insects, birds, other animals, and plants in the Solomons, Port Praslin (southern New Ireland), Rawak (see above) and Doré Bay (Manokwari, in the Vogelkop Peninsula), this last spot a new frontier for science—though first surveyed in 1775 by Thomas Forrest. Lesson in particular there collected and studied birds of paradise, and was the first to learn—three centuries on from when, in 1522, skins of Paradisaea minor had reached Seville with the Vittoria—that they had legs; but his collections (and, particularly, living individuals) then helped to create the more than half-century-long fashion in Europe (and elsewhere) for their feathers—and, in turn, contribute to popular conservation awareness.
Later Dumont d’Urville led two more expeditions through the region: the first during 1826–1829 in L’Astrolabe (ex-Coquille), with Quoy, Lesson, and Gaimard as naturalists, calling at New Ireland, the present Astrolabe Bay off Madang, Doré Bay, and Waigeo as well as—for the first time after Dampier—sailing along the south coast of New Britain (naming, among other places, Cape Merkus and Jacquinot Bay, the latter after his second-in-command Charles Hector Jacquinot); and the second in 1838–1839 and 1840 as part of his voyages to the South Pole in L’Astrolabe and (under C. H. Jacquinot) La Zélée with naturalists Jacques Hombron, Honoré Jacquinot, and Elie J. F. Le Guillou—respectively specializing in zoology, botany, and entomology. Around New Guinea they called at various points: Triton Bay (where the Dutch settlement had then been recently abandoned), the Louisiades (to complete d’Entrecasteaux’s surveys), and also sailed along the southeastern coast (naming the Varirata ridge near present-day Port Moresby as the Astrolabe Range).
Other nations, however, were not inactive. In 1820 the Dutch, with the Indies restored to them (and accorded international recognition from 1824), set up under Willem I a "Natural Sciences Commission" (Natuurkundige Commissie). Over the next thirty years they were to make extensive expeditions, inland as well as coastal, in the still poorly-known archipelago—but mortality was high. Among these was, in 1828, a visit to New Guinea. In connection with a projected settlement, A. J. van Delden with the Triton and Iris led a surveying expedition along much of the southwest coast. Accompanying van Delden were Commission members Heinrich C. Macklot, Alexander Zipelius, and Salomon Müller, the last the first to document the marked zoological differences between the western and eastern parts of the Indies. They were accompanied by two artists, P. van Oort and G. van Raalten. The settlement—known as "Merkusoord" after then then-Governor of the Moluccas and one of the promoters, Pieter Merkus—was established in the lands of the Lobo at Triton Bay (not far east of present-day Kaimana) and protected by a fort, "du Bus" (after the then-Commissar-General of the Indies, Leonard du Bus de Gissignies). All these names have been used in collections and literature and here are set out for convenience. But the settlement did not last long; and of the naturalists and artists only Müller was to survive early death or (in Macklot’s case) murder. Their collections—the first significant lot from this part of New Guinea and for decades one of the few available—made their way to Leiden in the Netherlands and were variously written up by Temminck, Blume, Müller, and others.
From 1840 the British returned, but—like the Dutch—were now concerned as much with detailed coastal and hydrographic survey as with primary exploration. This continued a tradition begun with the Investigator under Flinders and skillfully developed over the middle decades of the nineteenth century (and since, with modifications). Such surveys—tedious but essential in a new and increasingly global age of commerce and settlement—did, however, continue to provide opportunities for natural history research. Indeed, it was on such a voyage that the young Charles Darwin sailed with Robert Fitzroy in 1831–1836. After 1850, however, surveys of Australasia and the western Pacific were largely conducted from Sydney rather than London.
The first of the Royal Navy vessels to sail through New Guinea waters were the Sulphur (with the Starling) under Edward Belcher (who had succeeded F. W. Beechey on what had become an "interminable voyage"). Himself strongly interested in natural history and assisted by R. B. Hinds and A. G. Barclay, respectively as naturalist-surgeon and gardener-botanist, Belcher called in to the Solomons, Port Praslin (southwestern New Ireland), Kairiru off the north coast, and Yapen, collecting some animals and plants (now at London: BMNH, Kew)—though with rather less profit than in the eastern Pacific and the Americas, the voyage’s main objectives. The Sulphur was soon followed by two more focused voyages to the south, reflecting the increasing importance of the future Australia and the passage between it and New Guinea, the treacherous Torres Strait—now becoming a key route between India, Southeast Asia, and New South Wales. The 1842–1846 voyage of the Fly and Bramble under F. P. Blackwood with, as geologist, J. Beete Jukes and a naturalist-artist, John MacGillivray, focused in particular on the Torres Strait and the northern Australian coast, but also (in 1845) examined the western Gulf of Papua and discovered the Fly and Turama rivers, sailing some ways up the Fly. Blackwood’s work was continued by the Rattlesnake under Owen Stanley in 1846–1850, with particular attention