The arrival

On 24 January 1788, French navigator Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse arrived at Gamay / Botany Bay on the eastern coast of New Holland, which James Cook had visited and charted eighteen years earlier. This port of call was not in La Pérouse’s original itinerary: four months earlier, instructions from the King had reached him in Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s far east, asking him to stop at Botany Bay to ‘look over the new English settlement which should have been formed by the time [they] go to the eastern coast’.

It was the third year of La Pérouse’s circumnavigation – an undertaking sponsored by King Louis XVI to explore the Pacific regions of North and South America, Asia and Australasia. Before reaching Botany Bay, the French expedition had rounded Cape Horn, measured the megalithic statues on Rapa Nui / Easter Island, charted the northwest coast of America, anchored in Southeast Asia, crossed the water between Japan and Russia (Sōya Strait, also known as the La Pérouse Strait), and reached far eastern Russia in autumn. They were sailing back into the South Pacific.

In December 1787, the expedition reached Maouna in the Navigators Islands, now known as Tutuila in Samoa. On the eve of their planned departure, La Pérouse’s second-in-command, Paul Antoine Fleuriot de Langle, requested to replenish water supplies on the island due to concerns about scurvy. De Langle then led a watering party ashore, and among them was the ship’s chaplain, Père Receveur, who was himself suffering from the effects of scurvy. The party was received with stones and clubs near shore, which destroyed the ship’s longboats. In this violent encounter, de Langle and eleven crew members were killed. Receveur received a ‘violent contusion on the eye’ but managed to swim back to the barges and returned to the ship. This sorrowful event was recorded in La Pérouse’s journal and depicted in Plate 66 of the Atlas du voyage de La Pérouse.

For six weeks the French expedition camped at Botany Bay, where the First Fleet had recently arrived and was in the process of relocating to Port Jackson.

During this time, Receveur wrote to his brother, reassuring him that his wounds were ‘very trifling’ and ‘had healed within seven or eight days’. Over three years at sea, serving as chaplain as well as a naturalist and astronomer, he had never felt bored – so he wrote in the letter – but perhaps the capsize at Lituya Bay and the skirmish in Samoa reminded him of the dark side of maritime explorations. Now, he was looking forward to returning home, which he believed would not be long now.

The young priest died shortly afterwards. Whether from complications related to his injuries, the sequela of scurvy or other causes remains uncertain. He was buried on 17 February 1788 at the headland, more than 16,000 kilometres away from home.

The grave

Receveur was buried on the headland that now bears the French navigator’s name. The original grave was marked by a headstone and a board nailed to a tree, bearing a Latin inscription,

Hic jacet L. Receveur E. F.F. Minoribus Galliae Sacerdos, Physicus in Circumnavigatione Mundi Duce D. De La Peyrouse. Obit die 17 Febr. Anno 1788

(Here lies Father Ex F.F. Minoris French Priest, physicist in the circumnavigation of the world of La Peyrouse, died 17 February 1788)

After La Pérouse’s departure from Botany Bay, the grave markers were lost or destroyed. Governor of NSW at the time, Arthur Phillip then engraved the original epitaph on a copper plate and installed it on a tree nearby, but this too disappeared at some point.

Back in France, the whereabouts of La Pérouse and his expedition remained a mystery until the 1820s. In the meantime, the site of the French encampment and Receveur’s tomb became a destination for French visitors to Sydney from the early nineteenth century.

The first recorded visit took place in March 1824, when the crew of the French ship La Coquille, under the command of Louis Isidore Duperrey, came ashore. Guided by the garrison stationed at the watchtower, they located the site of the French garden and Receveur’s grave, which at this point was no more than a grassy mound with no markings. On the trunk of an enormous eucalyptus tree shading the site, the officers from La Coquille carved a new inscription:

Prés cet arbre reposent les cendres du père Reçeveur, visité en Mars 1824

(Near this tree lie the remains of Father Receveur, visited in March 1824)

The permanent tomb of Receveur is directly associated with French navy officer Hyacinthe de Bougainville, who arrived at Botany Bay with Thetis and Esperance in 1825 during his circumnavigation. He noticed that Receveur’s burial site was marked by ‘some stones, surmounted by a cross roughly outlined’, along with the inscriptions on the tree trunk carved by the crew of La Coquille the year before. Without hesitation, he proposed to Governor Thomas Brisbane that permanent memorials be erected for both La Pérouse and Père Receveur.

On 6 September, Bougainville laid the foundation stone of the La Perouse Monument and left funds for construction. Both the monument and the tomb were completed in the subsequent years, to designs attributed to colonial architect George Cookney.

These newly established structures were featured in a sketch by Sir Oswald Brierly dated 1842, which shows the tomb in a form close to what we see today, seated next to the inscribed eucalyptus tree. The obelisk in honour of La Pérouse is visible in the background, surmounted by an orb resembling a spherical astrolabe, likely an homage to one of La Pérouse’s frigates, L’Astrolabe.

From the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, the tomb underwent repairs, including the replacement of the heavily eroded iron crucifix with a French-style bronze cross now in place.

The pilgramage

Receveur’s tomb has long been a site of private prayer, pilgrimage and commemoration. In 1993, as many as 5,000 people reported joined a pilgrimage to the site.

Now, annual Masses in Latin and French take place at the tomb to commemorate Père Receveur. The site is a reminder of the area’s association with La Pérouse’s expedition and the Roman Catholic Church in Australia.

Back to 7 February 1788, Receveur wrote to his brother from Botany Bay with much optimism. As one of the English boats were leaving for Europe soon, he said, ‘I chance this letter, uncertain if you will receive it before my arrival … Our return to France will take place in the spring of 1789 and perhaps even earlier… You have no idea of the eagerness I have to see my dear fatherland again, and to have news of my parents and friends… Goodbye, my dear brother, love me as I love you.’* He died ten days later.

*Transcriptions by Abbe Prosper-Fulgence Verdot, curate of Vesoul, Haute-Saone, translated by Edward Duyker