Welcome to another episode of the History Islands by Paul Darroch. This month's episode tells of a tragedy associated with one of Jersey's most beautiful bays, Portelet.
We meet Captain Philippe Janvrin of the Esther, moored in nearby Belcroute Bay, in September 1721.
Death crept into Europe on a bright Spring morning, draped in the finest of silks. By the time the Grand-Saint-Antoine docked in Marseilles, its sailors were already pale and listing, as frail as old men. The harbourmaster quarantined the ship, penning it in the lazaret until the foul humours blew over, and the seasons turned afresh.
Yet the city fathers coveted the silks, thick and plush and lavish, that lay within its hold. Eyes bulging with greed, they over-ruled the sanitation board and commanded its wares to be unloaded at once. It was a fatal decision. Within days, a fierce pestilence burned through the city like wildfire. The people were sickening fast, their limbs horrifically swelling, and the graveyards were soon overflowing with corpses.
Too late, the authorities realised their grievous error. In desperation, the King of France and the Pope ordered a plague wall to be built - the mur de peste - to seal off the afflicted region. This defence was soon breached, a feeble sandcastle in the face of the incoming tide.
The news of the advancing plague fell like a shroud over the taverns of St Aubin, and the counting-houses of St Helier. I shivered when I heard the stories. For I am captain of the trading ship Esther, and France is my backyard. The sea will not shield us from her fate.
Jersey lies fearfully exposed, bound to the Continent by bonds of blood and money. We are an Island of sharp-eyed traders, the sea pulsing in our veins and a dozen deals jostling in our heads. We merchants are jugglers of costs and margins, quick to calculate livres and sous, able to sell our wares in any port. Our secret is simple - we provide exactly what the French desire; namely gorgeous woollen stockings, whose provenance is a byword for quality. Indeed, our Island and its knitwear are one and the same in the customer’s mind; they call our produce “jerseys”. We repay the geographical homage, and cart home fat barrels of Bordeaux.
Summer would soon be ending. We risked one final, precious sally down to France, unloading our cargo at Nantes and stuffing our hold with a last batch of wine to carry home. It felt as if we had stumbled across a city of the night. Inns were bolted shut; doors were locked and barred. Solemn bells tolled above the rooftops, and priests directed the parades of coffins along the streets. This was a city cowering in its cloisters, a land that had gone to seed. I witnessed hordes of black rats, as fat as piglets, gorging themselves on the grain in the dockside storehouses.
The customs and formalities dragged tediously on, due to the want of men, and my crew grew hot and restless. At last, we weighed anchor, relieved to be heading home to Jersey, into the arms of my wife Elizabeth. Yet as we crawled down the Loire estuary towards the Bay of Biscay, my forehead was already drenched in sweat.
By our second night at sea, I was bedridden. As we approached Jersey, I was weakening fast. Now my ship lies quarantined by Belcroute Bay, beside the bleak shingle beach and the dark, wooded cliffs.
My wife and children have been forbidden to visit me; even the crew tiptoe outside my cabin in hoods, leaving food and water by the door. I am burning up in a terrible fever, and my armpits are swollen and black. I was a fool to set out on this fatal venture, and I will die here alone rather than risk the lives of those I love. Jersey must be spared from my inevitable fate; that is all that matters to me now.
The hour has come. The dying sun slips behind Noirmont, and the ship hangs in the darkness. Elizabeth’s prayers whisper in my ears, and moonlight falls upon the water. Through the porthole, I see the lights of St Aubin, scattered like stars across the bay. Somewhere beneath them is everything I love, everything I have known, everything that I now must leave behind.
Captain Philippe Janvrin died that night. He was forty-four years old. His sacrifice, in submitting to isolation to protect his beloved Island, was not in vain. Aboard the Esther, the fever soon burned itself out, and the shadow of infection lifted from Jersey. The terror of the bubonic plague would soon fade from the pages of history.
Elizabeth Janvrin, bereft with grief, petitioned the Lieutenant-Governor to allow her husband a Christian burial. The authorities looked upon her with pity; but they were fearful to carry the body ashore. Instead, they decided Captain Janvrin should be laid to rest on the remote tidal islet of Ile au Guerdain, nestled in the heart of Portelet Bay. On the twenty-seventh day of September, three sailors rowed his body to this rocky outcrop, and scrambled up to its summit. Then Janvrin’s plague-ravaged body was lowered into his lonely tomb.
The sailors gave a signal, and the funeral service began. The Reverend Philip Messervy, Rector of St Brélade, officiated divine service from the hilltop, as the parishioners remembered one of their own. From that day on they would call it Janvrin’s Tomb, set high upon the rock, joined to the shore at low tide by an isthmus of golden sand.
Some say his body was eventually exhumed and re-interred in the ancient church of St Brélade. Yet no-one can say for sure. Though the dreaded plague had gone, revolution and war would follow in the century to come. In the fearful days of Napoleon, the tomb was covered up by a military tower, built to defend the bay. A small detachment of soldiers bunkered down on the desolate rock, waiting for an invasion that never came. In a still later age, the bay would become a much-loved holiday beach, a cradle of childhood memories.
Yet the name of Janvrin’s Tomb endures, remembering the plague ship and the sacrifice of its captain. Twice daily, the tides encircle his grave, sweeping in across the sands, running homewards towards the shore.
You can read more of my Jersey writing in Jersey: The Hidden Histories and Jersey: Secrets of the Sea, which are widely available across Jersey and on Amazon.
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(c) Paul Darroch/ The History Islands 2022. Published by Open Page Learning Ltd, 9 Bond Street, St Helier JE2 3NP. Registered in Jersey with company number 141338.