Out of the Aeons 13: Le Grifon

Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.

- H.P. Lovecraft, The White Ship

Lo! The stars have been studied, the owl intestines consulted, the tea leaves sniffed, and the Arcane Horology has revealed a date to us one last time (for now at least). That date: August 31, 1715.  And it is meet and right that this final (or is it?) foray into the murky depths of history should be, in a way, about Time itself—and also that this should be the first of our OotA scenarios to be released as an actual play. That it is numbered 13, of course, adds an extra frisson...

Now stop, and consider this: For avoidance of doubt, this post contains significant ‘spoilers’ for the attached scenario seed and, of course, for the accompanying ‘actual play’ of the scenario. We do not recommend reading it before listening to the playthrough of Le Grifon (also available on Patreon), but as always...You do you.

Still from Richard Teschner’s puppet theater production Die Lebens-Uhr, (The Life Clock), 1935

Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras—dire stories of Celaeno and the Harpies—may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition—but they were there before.

- Charles Lamb, “Witches and Other Night-Fears”         

This is the story of many ships that sank, and one that didn’t. The first of them is:

The Griffin of the Baltic Sea, summer 1495

The Gribshunden (Griffin-hound) was the flagship of King Hans of Denmark* and the pride of the Danish fleet.  Built in 1486, it was one of the first of a new generation of warships, purpose-built to carry gunpowder weapons—and as such, an example of the sort of ship that enabled Europeans to dominate the globe from 1492 onwards (with fairly miserable consequences for the rest of the world, it must be said).

(Fun fact about King Hans (or John), he was the last ever King of Denmark not to rule as either Christian or Frederick. They alternate between the two to this day, and the Danes have had ten of each.)

King Hans of Denmark, unknown artist.

King Hans used the Gribshunden frequently during its decade-long lifespan, and the ship served as an important symbol of Danish military and economic might. It was sent to England with a delegation to negotiate with Henry VII in 1489, and it was on a similar diplomatic mission that the ship met its fate.

in the summer of 1495, King Hans had travelled to Sweden to try to convince Sten Sture the Elder to rejoin the Kalmar Union, and the Gribshunden was anchored in the natural harbour of Ronneby when disaster struck. According to contemporary accounts, an explosion rocked the ship, it caught fire, and sank, with many of those on board—King Hans not included in their number—either perishing in the smoke and flames or drowning.

The wreck of the Gribshunden lay untouched for nearly 500 years until it was discovered by a local diving club in 1970—although it was not until 2002 that the wreck was tentatively identified. When the spectacular figurehead (below) was recovered in 2015, any doubts that remained about its identity surely vanished.

The Gribshunden remains the best-preserved late medieval shipwreck ever discovered. 

Image Ingemar Lundgren, courtesy of Blekinge Museum.

The Griffin of the Great Lakes, 18 September, 1679

For those of us who live on this side of the Atlantic, it's easy to forget how enormous the Great Lakes are. A statistic that put their size into context for me is that there are an estimated 6,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. One of them, and one which has never been found, is Le Griffon, believed to be the first ship built by Europeans to sail the lakes above Niagara.

Built by the famed explorer and fur trader René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, together with Father Louis Hennepin, a Belgian priest and missionary, Le Griffon disappeared on the return trip of its maiden voyage across Lake Michigan on 18 September 1679.

Unfortunately, most of what we 'know' about Le Griffon comes from the accounts of Hennepin, who has been denounced by many historians as 'an arrant falsifier'. He apparently plagiarised many of Le Salle's journals, whilst embellishing them liberally, and claiming the explorer's accomplishments as his own. It cannot even be said for certain whether Le Griffon had one mast or two, although most researchers agree it was around 45 tons, with seven cannons.

Image by WJ Thompson - www.maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca/documents/Robert2/default.asp, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php

Le Salle's primary aim was to discover a Northwest Passage, and the building of Le Griffon seems to have been a step towards that end, both in terms of exploration, and establishing a fur trade to fund his superobjective. The ship was built on Cayuga Island—a troubled exercise in itself which saw the vessel survive an attempt to destroy it by burning (according to fibber Hennepin, the name 'Griffin' was given in an attempt to protect it from fire.)

The ship's first and only voyage, beginning on 7th August 1679, saw it make a remarkable journey through Lakes Erie, St Clair, Huron and Michigan. One has to admire the fearlessness of Le Salle and his crew: The charts they used were ten years old and very rudimentary, the ship had to take frequent depth soundings, and at times a dozen men were forced to disembark and tow it through rapids from the riverbank, as the Griffon made its way through waters that had previously only been traversed by canoe. Eventually, on 13th September, the ship anchored at Green Bay, where it took on around 60,000 francs worth of furs. It departed Green Bay on the 18th September, and was never seen again.

The fate of the ship remains a complete mystery to this day. At the time, many assumed (with little evidence) that it had been captured and burnt, or otherwise destroyed, by the Ottawa or Potawatomi people. Other contemporary reports suggested that the ship was wrecked after the pilot, a man named Luc, sailed into the centre of the lake with hubristic arrogance, failing to heed the warnings of those indigenous people who told him there was a storm coming. Supposedly the pilot's 'negligence' had already been in evidence earlier in the voyage, and Le Salle had been forced to take charge of the vessel himself in Lake Huron. Perhaps this story would have ended differently had Le Salle been on board for the return trip, rather than staying behind to explore Lake Michigan by canoe...

Perhaps the most curious theory is that held by Le Salle himself. He believed himself betrayed by Luc, who had apparently scuppered the ship deliberately. Le Salle had been convinced by a tale he was told a year later, that a white man fitting Luc's description had been captured by Indians while on his way towards the Sioux with four other men and canoes laden with goods.

If this was true, was Luc just a crook, or was Le Salle simply a bastard to work for? After all, in 1687 he met his own end at the hands of another of his men, during a mutiny, in present day Texas, while attempting to establish a French colony there...

17th-Century Engraving of Rene-Robert Cavelier de La Salle, Corbis

The Griffin of the Plate Fleet, 31 July, 1715

(There's little to say in defence of any transatlantic 'trade' of this period, it's right that today we recognise it as a terrible abuse of colonial power, stripping countries of their natural resources and at enormous human cost. This is NOT a story about that, but it's important for us to note that it takes place in that context.)

The War of the Spanish Succession was fought from 1701–1715, following the death of Charles II of Spain with no immediate heir, and saw the Bourbon dynasty—supported by France and most of Iberia—on one side, and the Habsburg claimants—backed by the Holy Roman Empire*, Austria, the Dutch Republic, and Great Britain—on the other. The conflict sprawled halfway across the globe, resulting in nearly half a million deaths from combat and many more from disease. (*As my history teacher used to quip, the main thing to remember about the Holy Roman Empire is that it wasn't Holy, it wasn't Roman, and it wasn't an Empire.)

Significantly for our purposes, this epic conflict also brought the flow of treasure from the Americas to Europe almost to a standstill—at precisely the time when Spain needed it the most—as the sea routes became the scene of vicious naval battles and opportunist pirates.

So it was that on 24th July 1715, a particularly heavily-laden treasure fleet of twelve ships set sail from Cuba, with a total cargo estimated at 14 million pieces of eight (mainly silver). The fleet had been sitting idle for nearly two years due to various delays, and the Spanish finances were growing ever more dire. It was in the context of these pressures that the fleet set sail...in the middle of hurricane season.

The day the ship left Havana was by all accounts a calm and beautiful day, but by the 29th, the weather had become threateningly sultry, and swells were growing higher. Most of the fleet had been tracking up the Florida coastline, and when the hurricane hit in the early hours of the 31st, their fate was already sealed, and 11 of the 12 ships were wrecked.

Captain Antoine D'Aire, however, of the French frigate Le Grifon, had elected to stay further out to sea, unfamiliar as he was with the Florida coastline, and on the 31st sailed directly into the storm. Arriving in France on August 31st, D'Aire and his crew were oblivious to the fate of the rest of the fleet.

(Historically there has been some confusion as to whether the Grifon actually survived the hurricane or not. There was no record of it having returned to Spain, so some accounts reported it lost like the rest of the fleet. This blog post explains the confusion better than I could:)

“The Griffon collected treasure in South America to settle debts owed by Spain to France and to French merchants, so it had a great amount of treasure onboard. However, once the cargo was signed for it was no longer Spanish treasure and did not sail to Spain. The Grifon arrived safely in Le Havre. Those claiming [otherwise] base this on the records in the Archives of the Indies in Seville, Spain [which] list the Griffon as being part of the fleet, but do not record [its] return to Europe. This is because the Grifon did not return to Spain and had no cargo or treasure which was bound for or the property of the Spanish Crown or of Spanish interests—in other words, they paid their debt in South America when they loaded the Griffon, and whatever happened to the Griffon was a French problem not a Spanish problem.”

 1734 copper print of a Spanish galleon. 'Por Golfos mas procelosos, con valor, aresto y zelo, hace gala de Neptuno, esta Nave con su vuelo' (Through the worst stormy waters, with courage, purpose, and zeal, this ship shows off its sails to Neptune).

Nearly 1,000 men were estimated to have been killed in the storm of 31st July, 1715, out of a total crew of around 2,500. But for those that survived, the nightmare wasn't over. Initial rescue efforts were focused not on saving the men, but on recovery of the treasure, and many more apparently died of thirst, starvation, or at the hands of hostile indigenous people.

By October of 1715, at least a third of the treasure had been recovered, but the salvage camp itself had become a target for pirates. In fact, the wreck of the 1715 Plate Fleet is credited with encouraging the growth of piracy during this period. The Spanish had largely abandoned the salvage camp by 1718, but it's estimated that perhaps another third of the treasure was recovered both by Spanish salvagers and buccaneers in the five or six years that followed the initial operation. After that, it seems the treasure was largely forgotten for 250 years.

But then, in the late 1950s, a single gold coin was discovered on a beach in Wabasso, and a new era of treasure hunting began—so much so that the stretch of land where the Plate Fleet was wrecked is today known as the Treasure Coast...

Photograph: 1715 Fleet - Queens Jewels LLC/Reuters

Please enjoy Le Griffon, which is attached—and do let us know if you attempt to play it!

There’s lots you could play around with and change. I am potentially more excited about this mini-scenario and its future life than I am about any of the others I've written for this project—and at the same time I feel there is the most scope for development. I have hinted at some of these options and possibilities in the scenario, but will flesh them out a little here:

• With a single investigator, the GM can really play around with the idea of the ‘time travel’ or whatever it is; does it happen only in 'dreams', or in reality? I played with two players and didn’t want to keep them apart for too long, especially with the pressure of a single short session, so I kept the visions short and simple. But with a single investigator, perhaps it’s a full body swap—do they have to convince their ‘new’ shipmates that they are who they appear to be? This would certainly be a quicker and more interesting way to gain information. I feel sure there is potential here!

• Does Antoine Dar need to sink the ship with everyone on board, or will a simple sacrifice be enough to open the gate? The sinking of the ship feels like it ought to be necessary, but it is rather final, and potentially harder to avert... However, it's the sort of thing that the investigators could discover evidence of, by means of explosives stacked up against the hull, perhaps?

• Potentially the most interesting thing to play with is the identity of the immortal King Hans. Is it Antoine Dar, or is it, in fact, Flasche the Dane?! Again I can see pros and cons to either setup. For my playthrough with Joseph and Danann, I decided there was more fun to be had with the idea that Flasche, as a Dane, would recognise King Hans from portraits and it gives him a reason to believe in his immortality and follow him to oblivion. But on the other hand, I love the idea that the puppet is, in fact, the puppet master. It offers all sorts of potential for intrigue and factions.

• Another bit of fun that I discovered a little too late: The records are confusing regarding the real Antoine Dar—sometimes he is recorded as Dar, sometimes as ‘D’Aire’… an ominous link to the Prince of Air, maybe?!

• Finally, I flip-flopped a little around the glowing shapes in the sea. Eventually I settled on the idea that they were some sort of interdimensional Yog-Sothothian orbs attracted by the soon-to-be-opened gate, but at one point they were going to be a type of frogspawn—indicating that the water must be freshwater, and therefore hinting that something odd is happening with the ship’s location... Perhaps there’s something in that? Perhaps not!

Have fun with it...if you dare. And if you have any thoughts or questions, feel free to drop me a line.