Four stowaways at Lorient
One of these was a tall, 24-year-old Scot named Lovell Buck (n° 264) who must surely have stuck out like a sore thumb. Buck remained on the ship until it reached Pondichéry.
Pierre Audrain (n° 266) was a 16-year-old from Pluvigner. He was discovered on board after the ship left Lorient. He remained on the ship until it reached Pondichéry, at which point he transferred onto the Gloire. He was hired as a sailor on the Gloire, earning a monthly wage of 12 livres. By March 1755 he had returned to Lorient.
Jean Nougay (n° 268) was a 12-year-old from Duerfort near Nîmes. He was discovered on board after the ship left Lorient. He remained on the ship until 24 February 1755, when he disembarked at Chandernagore. And that's the last we heard of Jean Nougay.
The final stowaway has the most intriguing story. Jean Magnien dit Chalons (n° 265), a 29-year-old from Châlons, was discovered on board after the ship left Lorient, and he was promptly offered a job as a 3rd pilot at the respectable wage of 24 livres per month. Not bad for a stowaway. This was not his first time on an East India Company ship. He is listed as a soldier on the rôle of the Mars ten years earlier. On that voyage he travelled from Lorient to Île de France earning a wage of 7.10 monthly. He then falls off the record for a decade, but apparently made his way back to France.
On the Prince de Conti, after his transition from stowaway to navigator, he stayed on the ship until its layover in the Mascarene Islands on its return voyage. He disembarked at Île de France in September 1755. He seems to have stayed on the island for the next three years, because next he was hired onto the Centaure on which he served as 1st pilot at at the very good wage of 60 livres per month. On the Centaur he travelled all over the Indian Ocean, crisscrossing from the Mascarenes to India, back to the Cape of Good Hope and Madagascar, back to India where the ship engaged in a battle with the English squadron of Admiral Pocock in the Bay of Cuddalore, and finally disembarking back at Île de France after sixteen months in this role.
The Centaure seems to have been damaged in battle, because it sank not long after is was decommissioned. According to the Centaure's rôles, Chalons boarded the Duc d'Orléans the day after he got off the Centaure. The Duc d'Orléans had fought alongside the Centaure in the recent battle against the British, but it proceeded to serve as a coastal vessel in the Mascarenes. Between 1 December 1759 and 25 October 1760, Chalons served as 1st pilot still at a monthly wage of 60 livres.
He then transferred onto the Lys, again as 1st pilot at 60 livres. The Lys skirted around the Mascarenes and the Cape of Good Hope for eleven months before it ended its voyage at Île de France on 15 September 1761.
At this point, Chalons disappears from the record. Amazingly, he had gone from an ordinary soldier and then a stowaway to a highly valued navigator on the Indian Ocean. This was certainly not a typical career trajectory, but it reveals how seafarers could take advantage of the permeability of the East India trade and in some cases leverage their skills to make great strides in their careers.
