Peter Dillon

Peter Dillon (15 June 1788 – 9 February 1847) was a French sea captain engaged in the merchant trade, explorer and writer. Dillon discovered in 1826–27 the fate of the La Pérouse expedition.

Early career Peter Dillon was born in Martinique, France, the son and namesake of an Irish immigrant. Not much is known of his early life. He claimed to have joined the Royal Navy at one point and to have served at Trafalgar. He left the Royal Navy and made his way to Calcutta as a young man, eventually becoming a trader in the South Seas.

In 1813, he sailed to Fiji as third mate in the Hunter under Captain James Robson to look for sandalwood. While there, tensions between the Europeans and the Fijians escalated into violence that cost the lives of many on both sides. Dillon recounted the events of this battle in his Narrative and Successful Result of a Voyage to the South Seas (1829). In it he describes holding out with five other people, including Charles Savage, on a rock later called "Dillon's Rock" while native Fijians prepared a cannibal feast of Dillon's fallen comrades.

During his time as a trader, at least two of his ships were wrecked: Phatisalam on 9 July 1821, and on 10 June 1825.

Discovery of La Pérouse wrecks In 1826, Dillon had command of the St. Patrick By all accounts a passionate and complex individual, Peter Dillon by turns charmed and alienated the people he encountered. He died in Paris on 9 February 1847.

Modern criticisms

Gananath Obeyesekere, a Sri Lankan professor at Princeton, in 2005 attempted a "radical reexamination of the notion of cannibalism" and deconstruction, particularly as it pertains to "Western eyewitness accounts, carefully examining their origins and treating them as a species of fiction writing and seamen's yarns."