18th C Indian Ocean Voyages

Cajory (Cachery/Khejari/Khajuri)

Port in South Asia.
Lat/long: 21.859665164864712, 87.95056469902683

The Prince de Conti was at Cajory on 27-28 February 1755.

Here, the ship hired six multinational European sailors (Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese, Flemish, Maltese) who had previously deserted their vessels. Four of them went on to desert the Prince de Conti. A fifth died at Port Louis. Only one completed the voyage.

Apparently, it was important that the ship to take on new crew at Cajory, because shortly before arriving at Cajory eight sailors had deserted the ship as it made its way down the Ganges (technically the Hooghly River). The "Inventaire et ventes des hardes des morts du Prince de Conti (1754-1756)" ("The inventory and sales of the worldly goods of the dead of the Prince de Conti") gives a brief account of this mass desertion. "Summary of the collective desertion of the night of 26 to 27 February 1755. The vessel being moored in the Ganges in the bay of "Cagery" of deserting sailors of diverse foreign vessels, having received advances at Chandannagar, including: Jean Morphy, Jacob Hervé, John Hathoun, James Sileiz, John Welscher, Jacob Crapthe, Francis Pearson, Richard Ellery." The eight men listed were Irish, English and Swedish sailors. As indicated, all had been hired at Chandannagar.

After the Prince de Conti left Cajory, it began its most hazardous leg of the voyage. The seasonal monsoons and their southwesterly winds make a spring crossing from India toward the Cape of Good Hope particularly treacherous. Whereas the Prince de Conti had travelled from Madagascar to Puducherry in 47 days, it took nearly three times as long—131 days—to make the reverse passage from Cajory to the Mascarenes. As a result, before the ship arrived at its next recorded stop, Port Louis on Île de France (Mauritius), an additional eight people had died at sea, doubling the voyage's fatalities. Nearly all of them died of scurvy, dysentery, rickets, venereal disease or "flux de sang."

Among those who died were:But it wasn't all bad news. Some of it was downright tragic. The eighth death that occurred during this leg of the voyage was a woman named Marguerite Silve (n° 297). Silve actually gave birth to a child on the ship on 13 May 1755. Fifteen days later, however, she seems to have succumbed to an infection or other complication from the birth, and died on 28 May 1755, leaving a newborn daughter, Jeanne Marguerite Verlé (n° 328), and also a 3-year-old daughter, Marguerite Verlé (n° 298). The girls' father, a pilot on the Ganges named Verlé (or Verlet), is not listed on the rôle, and seems to have stayed behind in Chandannagar.




------

This Port was difficult to track down. Found a reference to the Port at Cachery/Khejari here:
https://books.openedition.org/ifp/4120?lang=en#tocfrom1n12 + this map.

Also found this 1876 map showing "Kedjeree."

This page has paths:

This page references: