“To give you an idea, it is an island which is located between the 40th Roaring and the 50th Howling, 3,000 km from all coasts.” In his house in Bommes, in Sauternes, Barthélémy Lambert finishes packing his suitcase before the big departure. With his brother who lives on the island of Reunion, the liberal nurse who works in Langoiran begins this Friday, November 8 a journey to St-Paul Island, an 8km² rock located in the south of the Indian Ocean belonging to France, “.it is one of the most isolated points on the globe, an area with depressions of ten meters, and it is an island which is classified as an integral ecological zone so it is forbidden to disembark there“.
“Rubber boots to disinfect and avoid any contamination of the island”
If the two brothers aged 48 and 51 have obtained exceptional authorization to set foot on this protected island, it is because they wish to place a commemorative plaque there in memory of their great-great-grandfather, the Admiral Ernest Mouchez. “We will have the opportunity to go down there for 30 minutes no more“, explained Matthias Lambert. “A plaque will be screwed and there will be a ceremony in honor of our ancestor.“
Jules Brelaz
Their adventure aims to commemorate the exceptional odyssey of their ancestor. “It was 150 years ago, Admiral and astronomer Ernest Mouchez was commissioned by the Paris Academy of Sciences to try to observe the transit of Venussays Barthélémy Lambert, himself passionate about astronomy. In 1874, the passage of the planet in front of the sun was of capital importance for astronomy because it made it possible to deduce the astronomical unit (AU), the distance between the earth and the sun. All the scientific nations of the time sent missions around the world to calculate this value, knowing that this rare event only repeats once every 243 years.
“It was a crazy epic”
“Without GPS, with compasses, sextants and chronometers as the only navigation instruments“, Admiral Ernest Mouchez took three months to reach Saint-Paul Island aboard a sail and motor boat. The scientific expedition will stay there for three months, “without electricity or fresh water on site. It was a crazy epic because the weather there is terrible, there was very little chance of having a clear sky at the exact moment of the transit of Venus”.
Jules Brelaz
On this island where it rains more than 300 days a year, a much-hoped-for clearing finally allowed the Admiral to immortalize the passage of Venus in front of the sun, which earned him an appointment to the post of director of the Paris Observatory , a first for a sailor. “To go to Saint-Paul Island today, indicates Barthélémy Lambert, There is only one solution, you have to board a supply boat called the Marion Dufresne. This is the ship that supplies all the scientific bases scattered across the islands of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF). And it is also the rescue boat for the Vendée Globe. the race nicknamed the Everest of the Seas of which the start is given this Sunday November 9 from Les Sables d'Olonne in Vendée.
The liberal nurse from Bommes is flying this Friday, November 8 to join his brother in Reunion. From there, they will board the Marion Dufresne on November 19. “The ship will first head towards the Crozet archipelago and the Kerguélen, the southernmost lands, before sailing towards the island of Saint-Paul and finishing towards the island of Amsterdam“. “The arrival on Saint-Paul Island is scheduled for December 8 or 9, 150 years to the day after the scientific discovery of our ancestor, adds Matthias Lambert. We will arrive in a Zodiac with a small team made up of two technical workers who will screw the base and the commemorative plaque. A small ceremony will take place in the presence of Isabelle Autissier, the president of the Advisory Council of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands nature reserve.
Jules Brelaz
“If the sea is not good we will not be able to land there”
The two brothers have been thinking about their project for years. “Since we were very young, we have had a map in our living room in a golden frame, and it was only at the age of 40 that I began to be interested in this map, it was the hydrographic profile of the island. Saint-Paul and our mother told us the story of our ancestor. And we said to ourselves that it would be magnificent to be able to go to this little piece of rock.”
To make their dream come true, the Lambert brothers moved heaven and earth for more than four years. An online prize pool helps them cover the costs of their shippingthe two places on board the Marion Dufresne costing them 7,000 euros each. They also founded the Vénus en Vue association, which enabled the issue of a commemorative stamp for Heritage Days. An exhibition in honor of Admiral Mouchez will also take place on January 20 in Reunion, where the TAAF headquarters is located. A mirror exhibition will also be displayed on the gates of Parc Montsouris in Paris.
A few days before boarding the Marion Dufresne, the two brothers are impatient. “I've been sleeping badly these last few days with the excitement“, confides Barthélémy Lambert. This mountaineering enthusiast is an adventurer like his brother. These two travel enthusiasts crossed 17 African countries for eleven months in 2000, but this will be their first adventure on the ocean. “I hope I don't vomit for four weeks“, jokes the youngest.
Lobsters for lunch on Saint-Paul Island?
During their extensive research on the subject, the Lambert brothers learned that there is “no trees on St-Paul Island. The wind blows there constantly, which prevents any tall vegetation. There are very few animals apart from birds which come to nest there. On the other hand, there are a lot of lobsters there. It must be said that the crater of the volcano on which the island was formed still produces warm water. And these temperatures are ideal for the lobsters that abound there. Mouchez says in his chronicles that he was even tired of eating these lobsters all day long.
The members of the 1874 expedition simply threw the lobsters into basins of boiling water to cook them.
“There was even a fishery built in the 1950s to try to exploit this lobster breeding ground but it unfortunately gave rise to a tragedy, says Barthélémy Lambert. At the time, outside the fishing season, a team had to stay on site to maintain the equipment. These eight people, mainly Bretons, had to spend the winter there, but in the meantime the company was liquidated and they were forgotten there for nine months, and of the eight, three died. The descendants of these forgotten people of Saint-Paul have already placed a commemorative plaque on the island.”
