Devils Island, French Guiana – by Gary

 

I reckon there would be few people my age that hadn’t heard of, or read the book, or seen the film adaptation starring Dustin Hoffman called Papillon by Henri Charriere.  The book was first released in 1970 and sold almost a million copies just in the first few months.  It is a powerful story, brilliantly told, and its ‘anti-establishment’ themes had powerful resonance with my anti-Vietnam/flower power generation.

The book purports to be the true story of Charriere’s experiences, after being sentenced in 1931 to hard labour for life and transported to French Guiana.  In the tough, savage world he describes, Charriere is driven by the injustice of his wrongful conviction, his hatred of the ‘system’ that grips him, and a burning passion for escape.  After successive unsuccessful escapes he ends up in solitary confinement in Ile Saint-Joseph and according to one of his translators, the esteemed Patrick O’Brien, Charriere writes:

a deeply moving account of the silence, the heat and the utter loneliness of that dim, timeless, underground cage – two years of it.  When at last he was over and he was out in the light again, he began to make a raft for another break, but a fellow convict informed upon him, and having killed the informer he went back to solitary – an eight years sentence cut to nineteen months for rescuing a little girl from the sharks.  Another attempt at escape; transfer to Devil’s Island and then the final break at last, riding two sacks of coconuts through the shark infested sea to the mainland.

Papillon ends with Charriere finally a free man after fourteen years of imprisonment.

Naturally enough, our time in French Guiana simply had to include a visit to the tiny archipelago Iles Du Salut, with its three islands, Ile Saint-Joseph, Ile Royal, and Ile Du Diable (Devils Island).  The compact little group lies about 10nm off the South American coast, adjacent the town of Kourou.  And indeed the ruins of the Bagne, a vast penitentiary complex spreading across the archipelago, is a grim, compelling reminder of man’s ability to visit inhumanity upon his fellow man.  The first shipment of convicts arrived in 1852, the last in 1938, and it wasn’t until 1954 that the last prisoners were repatriated to France.  The museum on Ile Royal pulls few punches in describing the harsh treatment, tropical diseases, poor nutrition and appalling death rates visited upon inmates.

Mojombo anchored off Ile Royal.

Top left:  Devils Island from Ile Royale.  Bottom right: Ile Royale from Ile Saint-Joseph with Devils Island far right.

The Director’s house on Ile Royal, restored and now a museum.

Church on Ile Royal.

Hospital on Ile Royal, stabilised but not restored.

Restored semaphore station on the highest point of Ile Royal.

Part of the penitentiary complex on Ile Saint-Joseph, urgently in need of stabilisation.

The jungle steadily reasserting itself, Ile Saint-Joseph.

Cell block, Ile Saint-Joseph.

The cells are pretty compact.

This inmate is attempting a breakout.

Cells afforded little privacy, with rows arranged down a corridor and back to back with an adjacent row, they had grated ceilings and guards patrolled down a central, elevated spine (seen crossing a corridor, bottom left), looking down on their captives.

A windowless solitary cell (illuminated with our camera flash) on Ile Saint-Joseph – perhaps the one where Charriere spent two years plus of his life.....

The museum on Ile Royal includes a brief profile of the lives of several of the inmates, and it has this to say about Charriere:

Henri Charriere, alias Papillon
Despite his success in the bookshops and on the screen, Papillon never was an outstanding figure of the Bagne.  Sentenced for an unpremeditated murder in 1931 he had a bad relationship with the other convicts with whom he frequently quarrels. He flees from Cayenne, not from Devil’s Island as he later will claim in 1944. 

He would become famous after the publication of his book, in which he lays claim to many adventures and glorious actions actually accomplished by others.  He does not describe the Bagne as he knew it, but as it existed 20 years earlier.

Whom should we believe?  Patrick O’Brien was no fool – amongst others he was Simone de Beauvoir’s translator.  Could it be the establishment still running for cover???

_ _ _