A French warship discovered seven women and one baby in the Indian Ocean, on a small, isolated island of Tromelin, hundreds of miles from Madagascar.

Fifteen years earlier, the L'Utile, a slave ship, suffered an accident. The ship, built in Baiona, was mostly Basque, as documented by genealogist Bernard Harni-Cousseau.

They improvised a boat and fled, leaving 60 slaves abandoned on an island that had not a square kilometer. This slave journey began on behalf of Joseph d’Labord, Bayona Commissioner of the Compagnie des Indes Orientales.

UNESCO has carried out archaeological excavations in Tromelin demonstrating the survival capacity of these kidnapped persons.