American Demons

Oceanic Bloodfest

"There are many kings in the world, but only one Michelangelo." Pietro Aretino

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"In the Renaissance ... talent (meant) the same as versatility." Egon Friedell

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"When the Milanese Francesco Sforza built a triumphal arch the honored man explained: 'These are superstitious installations of kings, but I am a Sforza'." Egon Friedell

In the old days of windjammers, violence on board was nothing unusual. A barbaric pecking order prevailed. I don't want to talk here about the sexuality of starved, mentally feral men who in many cases had never been touched by parental care, but it happened that the crazy Jesse assaulted a ship's boy with his genitals and the attacked person exaggerated his defense, so that Jesse was soon given a rude burial at sea. The commander, a young German-American by the name of Berman von Pechstein, handed the juvenile delinquent over to Philip Gidley King, the Royal Keeper of State, on Norfolk Island, an offshoot of the British colony Australia.                   

"Philip Gidley King (1758 - 1808) was a captain in the Royal Navy and colonial administrator in Australia. He is best known as the official founder of the first European settlement on Norfolk Island and as the third Governor of New South Wales." Wikipedia    

At dinner in Captain King's house - the only permanent building for miles around - Pechstein met the whaler and seal butcher Mayhew Folger. He had just managed to discover Pitcairn once again and meet the only white survivor of a series of murders, John Adams, who had become a believer to the point of madness at blood feasts, in the company of his nearest and dearest.   

Pitcairn - the island, which was initially thought to be deserted, is named after the European who "discovered" it. The first positioning by Philipp Carteret in 1767 was so inaccurate that the island was not found again and again. In 1789/90, Fletcher Christian, the leader of the Bounty mutineers, pinned his hopes on it. The crew wandered the seas for two months until their hiding place was revealed. They found it uninhabited, but not free of traces of settlement. Today it is assumed that an ecocide in the 16th century led to the sudden depopulation of Pitcairn.        

Folger showed off a pocket watch whose signature proved that it had once belonged to the legendarily lost Captain Jean-François de Galaup. Born a commoner, Galaup had fought for the renegade colonists in the American War of Independence and inscribed himself in George Washington's memory with his verve. When Louis XVI sent Galaup to Oceania in 1785 with the sister frigates Astrolabe and Boussole, America's first diplomat and Washington's closest confidant, the botanist and ornithologist Milton Jacob Thunderbolt, strengthened the scientific staff. Thunderbolt boarded the Astrolabe (under the command of Paul Antoine Fleuriot de Langle) in Brest. His biographer Margarete Mason classifies Thunderbolt as second in command. The expedition reached Port Jackson (Sydney) in March 1788. Thunderbolt resigned after a scandal in the captain's cabin. Galaup and Fleuriot set sail for New Caledonia. From then on, the world remained without news of the venture. The expedition vanished mysteriously, writes Mason.       

Les deux navires disparaissent - both ships disappear. In 1789, Thunderbolt crossed the strait between Australia and New Guinea named after Luis Váez de Torres. On an Admiralty island he frightened the descendants of Chinese people who had been stranded a hundred years earlier. "It's not just artifacts that prove the origin. The language of the new tribe also preserves words from another world. People go naked like their neighbors. What sets them apart seems to set them apart and inspire fear in others. No descendant of the castaways ever saw civilization, and yet it is in everyone."

In the third year of the French Revolution, Thunderbolt brought to mind the lost Galaup expedition in Paris. The Marquis de La Fayette, also a veteran of the American War of Independence, immediately put him in charge of the search operation. Thunderbolt hesitated, the French capital was the most exciting place on the planet. Apprentices played Cultural Revolution. They carried heads on pikes through the streets. The king had become a hostage in a ghost train of ideas; he had been invited to the National Assembly.              

Thunderbolt stood next to the Feuillants, he observed the royal artillery from Marseilles directed against the castle. As a precaution, the Swiss Guard, which was intended to defend the monarch and was sworn into a loyalty alliance that had been in effect for centuries, fraternized with the incited people. The Swiss grenadiers had their bearskin hats pulled off in mock good nature. Suddenly the fun was over. A gunfight accelerated Thunderbolt. He took his legs in his hands. It was later said that the Swiss Guard had opened fire in the Tuileries. Thunderbolt shrugged off his dramatic burgundy jacket. 

Red was the color of a Swiss division. To be mistaken for a Swiss now meant being dragged over stones by a volcanic, sulphurous mob. 

"The Feuillants were the members of a political club of the French Revolution, named after their meeting place, the Feuillants monastery in Paris." Wikipedia

The combatants refused pardon. They appeared as furies in the bloody theater. Such losers, who crawled before them to elicit pity, trampled them to the ground with dedication. They stabbed anyone who tried to restrict them from above, and their destructive rage reached for the Louvre. Royal loyalists flew out of palace windows so taut. 

"Cutting off heads has generally become a mania", Thunderbolt later noted.

A sansculotte burst open a cabinet. Chambermaids tumbled to the surface. Thunderbolt pushed past the revolutionary and saved a shock of mesdames from the mob. 

The following year he reached the Solomons, where an escaped convict told him about a white shipwrecked man who died soon after his rescue. The outlaw showed Thunderbolt objects of French provenance. It was quickly proven that the items were neither from the Astrolabe nor from the Boussole.

Thunderbolt discovered battle paintings on stripped human skin. He studied the scarification of oriental brigands. A thirst for blood and a thirst for revenge were considered noble in these latitudes. A face disfigured by rage was considered beautiful. Children were given the heads and limbs of enemies to play with. In battle, people drank the blood shooting from wounds in a hurry. Canoes were impregnated with blood. No missionary could feel safe with such people. This was the conclusion reached by John Hunter, the second governor of New South Wales, in his account of 1794. He referred to Thunderbolt, who, strangely enough, claimed Berman von Pechstein as his guarantor. Later travelers described the situation in the Solomon Islands quite differently. They describe peoples of paradisiacal goodness.

Under a New Heaven

One bell, which had undoubtedly been cast in Brest, was then sent to France as a souvenir of the disaster. Thunderbolt visited Bougainville. He traveled to the Îles de la Société. They too were discovered and forgotten several times. The first description was provided by Pedro Fernández de Quirós in 1606. The Portuguese took tough action against an easily appeased population. Quirós was disconcerted by the quick willingness to give in and forgive. In his depiction, the people appear reckless. (Thunderbolt also noted the proximity of good-naturedness and outbreaks of violence.)

"Pedro Fernández de Quirós (1565 - 1614) was a Portuguese navigator." Wikipedia 

Quirós felt that God had given him a duty to put an end to the unchristian behavior. He set off on a mission and believed himself to be within reach of the terra australis incognita that Ptolemy considered certain. Quirós founded Nova Jerusalem on an island in Vanuatu, and many land acquisitions in Latin America were coupled with the colonists' expectations of salvation. However, the idea of once again finding a world pleasing to God in the southern hemisphere (under a "new heaven") came from older sources. They had been surprised by America and expected to find Australia according to ancient sources.

"Claudius Ptolemy was an Alexandrian mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises." Wikipedia