Landing of the Three Fishing Boats

The Landing of the Three Fishing Boats (: Le débarquement des bateaux de pêche) is an important event in the history of the Kerguelen Islands.

The event happened on 13 November, 1852 and saw the landing of the French fishing vessels Mérie, Le dauphin bleu and La dent-de-lion at the fishing settlement of Port-Joffre on the Presqu'île Joffre, carrying a total of seven families comprised of 19 individuals in total, who travelled to the Kerguelen Islands to permanently settle there. The settlement of Port-Joffre consisted of a mere three houses and a similar number of inhabitants before the arrival; after the arrival, the number of houses was increased to twelve and the total number of inhabitants to 22, thus making Port-Joffre the largest settlement of the archipelago at the time.

The landing is an important part of the Kerguelen as it is considered the first batch of the influx of migrators from to permanently settle on the Kerguelen Islands and with that strengthening and effectively safeguarding the basis of what later was to become the Republic of the Southern Indian Ocean Islands.

The families
The seven families who arrived in the boats were the Ferrard, Multroux and Fêlé families on the Mérie, the Brearc'h and Ducreux families on the Le dauphin bleu, and the Ferdinand and Paurieaux families on the La-dent-de-lion.

Their numbers totalled 19, 11 of which were male and eight female. Fourteen of these people were adults, and there were five children. The families with children were the Multroux, Brearc'h and Paurieaux families.

La Réunion
French colonists on the island of gained knowledge about the the discoveries of the islands in the southern, about which the rumours spoke of uninhabited and uncharted lands with plenty of living space and access to fish as well as agricultural soil. These rumours were in almost every case brought to the island by the whalers and sealers who had their base on these islands towards the end of the 18th century.

As early as 1798, fishing vessels from La Réunion sailed southwards towards the Kerguelen Islands, where they founded several bases of operations. Although these bases were technically permanently inhabited as there were always fishers present, there were no permanent inhabitants, as fishermen would return from their base to La Réunion after having stayed on the island for four months.

In 1832 the first families from La Réunion settled on the Kerguelen in what is known as the First Contraction. Although these families did create the foundations of a number of villages, they are not historically considered as the first viable population of the Kerguelen Islands, as most of these villages only had one family living at the location, and the locations themselves were often dozens of kilometres apart.

Plans to emigrate to the Kerguelen
The events surrounding the emigration of the seven families are reasonably well-document due to the existence of the diary of one of the family members, Henrique Paurieaux. On 7 August, 1832, he wrote, in French:


 * Aujourd'hui nous avions une assemblée de sept familles: les Ferrards de La Possession, les Multroux et les Fêlés de Le Port, les Méries de La Saline, les Brearc'hs (une famille brétonne) de Saint-Louis, les Ducreux de Sainte-Suzanne, les Ferdinands qui habitent sur leur bateau, et nous, les Paurieaux de Saint-Denis.


 * Nous rencontrions sur le bateau des Ferdinands, tous le familles, les enfants inclus. Nous discutions notre départ de cette île pour habiter aux îles nouvellement découvertes de Kerguelen.


 * Les baleiniers et les phoquiers qui retournent de ces îles avent nous narré des histoires d'une île très grande, plus grande que la Réunion, et presque complètement désolée. Ils disaient que les Anglais qui visitaient là avent nommé l'île "L'Île de la Désolation" !


 * Je croyais que ce fait en seule est assez d'épreuve que l'île est une mine d'or pour nos chances, et les autres agréaient . Nous décidions que nous rencontrerons encore le 14 août pour la décision d'une date à laquelle nous déparons d'ici.

On the meeting on 15 August, he wrote:


 * Nous avons agréé d'une date de notre départ ! Nous nous écarterons d'ici le 19 Septembre [1832], avec tous les sept familles, les enfants inclus.

No further comments were written in his diary, so there is no further historical documentation on the preparations by the families. It is however confirmed that they left on the 15th of September, as Paurieaux wrote on that day:


 * Nous sommes partis.