Vanikoro in September 1827. While there he recovered items from the wrecks, including a ship's bell of French make. He also tried to learn more about the fate of the French explorers from the older inhabitants of the island. According to Dillon's account in his Narrative and Successful Result, he learned that both ships had been wrecked on the reefs during a storm, that some of the survivors had built a boat from the wreckage and sailed off in it, and that two survivors had remained on the island but had since died. Dillon eventually made his way to France, where he met Barthélemy de Lesseps, the only living survivor of the La Pérouse expedition. De Lesseps had served the expedition as a Russian interpreter; he'd left the expedition in Petropavlovsk, Siberia and made his way overland back to Europe. He identified the items brought back by Dillon as items that had been carried on the French ships. In 1829 Dillon published his Narrative and Successful Result. He also received a knighthood and pension from the French government. Much of the remainder of his life was spent in a disappointing search for greater recognition for his achievements. Although generally not recalled, he was one of the character witnesses called by Sir Fitzroy Kelly in the defence of John Tawell for the poison murder of Sarah Hart in March 1845. 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." Further reading Volume 1 , Volume 2 , especially chapter 7, "Narratives of the Self: Chevalier Peter Dillon's Fijian Cannibal Adventures." References 1788 births 1847 deaths 19th-century Irish people Irish sailors in the Royal Navy Irish explorers Irish explorers of the Pacific Cannibalism in Oceania Beachcombers Irish expatriates in Fiji 19th-century explorers