The ship left with a cargo of wine for Bombay and then headed on to Hong Kong where it picked up 317 Chinese labourers departing for work on the Australian goldfields.

Pelletier was hit by a rock and he and an apprentice were the only ones to escape after being picked up by the captain in a boat and returned to Heron Island.

They caught seabirds to eat and had to drink urine and seawater to survive on their 12-day journey across the Coral Sea in an open boat.

[6] A biography of Pelletier recorded after his return to France by Constant Merland contains details of the "social organisation, language, beliefs, treatment of illnesses, mortuary practices, bodily decoration, dances, conflict, punishments, subsistence activities and crafts" of the people who rescued and cared for him.

This provides a precious insight into the way of life of these people before they had sustained contact with Europeans, and broadly agrees with present understandings of the conditions at the time by both anthropologists and modern Aboriginal residents.

Those who are shown or taught about such matters are almost always placed under solemn obligations not to divulge them, and this, indeed, lends credence to Pelletier's story: "It is unlikely that a boy who was adopted by a clan member, grew to manhood and was betrothed would not be inducted into Uutaalnganu ways as an initiated man.... Donald Thomson found that the realm of belief and secret knowledge was not freely talked about by the Kuuku Ya'u, a language group contiguous with the Uutaalnganu people.

He was then taken to the small administrative outpost of Somerset, at the tip of Cape York, from where a report of his discovery was sent to the Colonial Secretary, Arthur Macalister.

His bodily markings (cicatrices) and piercings were noted and he apparently confided to one person that he had had three children during his stay with the Aborigines, but this claim has never been substantiated.

One of these photographs appears in the frontispiece of the book published about his experience, Dix-sept ans chez les sauvages : aventures de Narcisse Pelletier.

[13] After returning to France he was offered a job in a travelling show but, when he found out he was to be displayed as 'the huge Anglo-Australian giant,' he firmly refused.