When he reached Calcutta, Dillon wrote an account of his discovery in a letter to the government of Bengal, and suggested that he should be sent in command of an expedition to search the Vanikoro cluster in the hope of finding some old survivor of Laperouse’s unhappy company, or at all events further remains of the ships.  He had prevailed upon Martin Bushart to accompany him to India, and hoped, through this man’s knowledge of the native tongue, to elicit all that was to be known.

The Government of British India became interested in Dillon’s discovery, and resolved to send him in command of a ship to search for further information.  At the end of 1826 he sailed in the research, and in September of the following year came within sight of the high-peaked island Tucopia.  The enquiries made on this voyage fully confirmed and completed the story, and left no room for doubt that the ships of Laperouse had been wrecked and his whole company massacred or drowned on or near Vanikoro.  Many natives still living remembered the arrival of the French.  Some of them related that they thought those who came on the big ships to be not men but spirits; and such a grotesque bit of description as was given of the peaks of cocked hats exactly expressed the way in which the appearance of the strangers would be likely to appeal to the native imagination:—­” There was a projection from their foreheads or noses a foot long.”

Furthermore, Dillon’s officers were able to purchase from the islands such relics as an old sword blade, a rusted razor, a silver sauce-boat with fleur-de-lis upon it, a brass mortar, a few small bells, a silver sword-handle bearing a cypher, apparently a “P” with a crown, part of a blacksmith’s vice, the crown of a small anchor, and many other articles.  An examination of natives brought out a few further details, as for example, a description of the chief of the strangers, “who used always to be looking at the stars and the sun and beckoning to them,” which is how a native would be likely to regard a man making astronomical observations.  Dillon, in short had solved the forty years’ mystery.  The Pacific had revealed her long-held secret.

It happened that a new French expedition in the astrolabe, under the command of Dumont-D’Urville, was in the southern hemisphere at this time.  While he lay at Hobart on his way to New Zealand, the captain heard of Dillon’s discoveries, and, at once changing his plans, sailed for the Santa Cruz Islands.  He arrived there in February, 1828, and made some valuable finds to supplement those of the English captain.  At the bottom of the sea, in perfectly clear water, he saw lying, encrusted with coral, some remains of anchors, chains, guns, bullets, and other objects which had clearly belonged to the ships of Laperouse.  One of his artists made a drawing of them on the spot.  They were recovered, and, together with Dillon’s collection, are now exhibited in a pyramid at the Marine Museum at the Louvre in Paris, in memory of the ill-fated commander and crew who perished, martyrs in the great cause of discovery, a century and a quarter ago.