Qualla: Tromelin Island: The Forgotten Enslaved People of the Isle of Sand

Tromelin Island: The Forgotten Enslaved People of the Isle of Sand: Introduction

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean-Claude Hanon, CC BY-SA 3.0. Fifteen years. That is how long they waited. In July 1761, the French frigate Utile wrecked on the reefs of a tiny, flat island in the Indian Ocean while illegally transporting 160 enslaved Malagasy men, women, and children from Madagascar to Mauritius. The French crew and about sixty of the enslaved people made it to shore. The rest - locked in the hold because the ship carried no shackles, being a frigate rather than a purpose-built slave vessel - drowned. The crew salvaged timber and built an escape boat. They sailed away, promising to send rescue. On November 29, 1776, when the corvette Dauphine finally arrived, the rescuers found seven women and an eight-month-old baby. Everyone else was gone. The island is now named for Jacques Marie Boudin de Tromelin de La Nuguy, the captain who brought them home. It was once called, simply, the Isle of Sand.

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Image: Jean-Claude Hanon | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tromelin Island: The Forgotten Enslaved People of the Isle of Sand: The Wreck of the Utile

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Le secrétaire d'état aux forces armées de l'air, Public domain. The Utile departed Bayonne, France, with 142 crew members and stopped at Mauritius - then called the Isle de France - before sailing to Foulpointe on Madagascar's east coast. There, the captain, Jean de La Fargue, took aboard 160 Malagasy people to be enslaved on Mauritius, in di...

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Image: Le secrétaire d'état aux forces armées de l'air | Public domain

Tromelin Island: The Forgotten Enslaved People of the Isle of Sand: The Promise That Took Fifteen Years

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brocken Inaglory, CC BY-SA 4.0. The crew built a small boat from the wreckage and departed for Mauritius, leaving the surviving Malagasy people behind with a promise to return. A junior officer named Castellan made it back to Mauritius, then sailed for France in 1762, never abandoning hope of organizing a rescu...

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Image: Brocken Inaglory | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tromelin Island: The Forgotten Enslaved People of the Isle of Sand: An Island Reclaimed by Birds

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean-Claude Hanon, CC BY-SA 3.0. The rats that arrived with the Utile's wreckage devastated Tromelin's ecology for over two centuries, decimating seabird populations until only two booby species remained. In 2005, a rat eradication program began. The results have been remarkable. Seventeen years after the rats w...

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Image: Jean-Claude Hanon | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tromelin Island: The Forgotten Enslaved People of the Isle of Sand: Sovereignty and Memory

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean-Claude Hanon, CC BY-SA 3.0. Today, Tromelin is claimed by both France and Mauritius. France counts it among the Scattered Islands in the Indian Ocean, administered as part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands with a weather station and landing strip built in 1954. Mauritius argues that the island shou...

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Image: Jean-Claude Hanon | CC BY-SA 3.0