L'Esperance

The full index of our ship stamp archive
Post Reply
shipstamps
Posts: 0
Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2009 8:12 pm

L'Esperance

Post by shipstamps » Wed Sep 03, 2008 9:47 am


Another artists impression of an Expedition ship, circa 1600, showing St Malo in the background. SG468

Online
aukepalmhof
Posts: 7771
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:28 am

Re: L'Esperance

Post by aukepalmhof » Fri Aug 02, 2013 8:36 pm

On this stamp of St Pierre et Miquelon is depict the L’ESPÉRANCE. Not much on the vessel, when or where built but I found a French web-site which give that the L’ESPÉRANCE was owned by Pierre Chavin and that she sailed from Honfleur in 1600 to New Foundland and Canada under command of Captain Guillaume Duglas. Probably she visited St Pierre et Miquelon in 1600.
Her fate is unknown.

Wikipedia has of the owner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_de_ ... _Tonnetuit

Pierre de Chauvin de Tonnetuit was born in Dieppe, Normandy of a wealthy merchant family. In 1583 he was serving under admiral Aymar de Chaste in the Azores, and in 1589 he was captain of the important Huguenot garrison at Honfleur. By 1596, Chauvin had developed an interest in commercial and maritime enterprises. He now owned four vessels, the DON-DE-DIEU, the ESPÉRANCE, the BON-ESPOIR and the SAINT-JEAN, and he was regularly engaged in the fur trade and cod-fishery of Canada and Newfoundland.
A Calvinist, he had given illustrious service in the wars against the League, and was soon rewarded with a position of influence in the new king’s court. Chauvin, along with François Gravé Du Pont, obtained a fur trading monopoly for New France in 1599 from Henri IV.
Chauvin embarked from Honfleur in the early spring of 1600, with his four ships and the intended colonists, and Gravé as his partner and lieutenant. Against the advice of Gravé, Chauvin chose Tadoussac as his destination. Basque and Norman whalers were already using Tadoussac as a stopping point. Strategically situated on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River at the junction with the Saguenay River, with a harbour adjacent, Tadoussac had long been a Montagnais summering place for barter, and for half a century a fur-trading and fishing resort for Europeans. But with the arms they received the Montagnais had ousted the Iroquois from the region; they were soon to be visited by a revenge of equal horror, and driven far into the interior. Tadoussac was to suffer; and as allies of the Montagnais, and soon of the Algonkins and Hurons too, all enemies of the Iroquois, the French and their fur trade were distressed for many years. The area was ill fitted for settlement because of the rugged terrain and poor soil, and because of the cold in winter.
A house was built at Tadoussac, which Champlain saw and described as being "twenty-five feet long by eighteen wide and eight feet high, covered with boards with a fireplace in the middle," encompassed by a wattle palisade and a ditch. Champlain's map of Tadoussac in 1608, depicts this structure on the east bank of a stream which enters the harbour; underneath are the words "abitasion du Cappn chauvain de lan 1600" (habitation of Capt. Chauvin of the year 1600). After the colonists were settled, the Chauvin and his companions devoted their energies to the traffic in pelts until the autumn, when they sailed for France with a cargo of beaver and other furs. At Tadoussac they left 16 men to face the unknown northern winter; only 5 survived, and these owed their lives to Indian hospitality.
Chauvin sent only one vessel, the ESPÉRANCE, to the Saguenay the following spring, but did not sail himself.
Chauvin died in 1603, after two years of successful trading and was briefly succeeded by Aymar de Chaste.
St Pierre et Miquelon 1969 200f sg468, scott?

Post Reply