"Three rocks... created during Jurassic times rise above the ocean like scars." "Three tiny islands... emerging away from the coast of French Guiana in South America:" "Royale," "Saint-Joseph, and L-Ile Du Diable." "They are called the Devil's Islands." "Lost to the rest of the world, now buried under an impenetrable jungle, lie the lost remains of what had been for a hundred years the most historic convict prison in history." "A place where the punishment was worse than the crime." "The Jules Verne Adventures team is about to leave on an unprecedented exploration to unveil these islands hiding from the world the relics of what was once called "the Green Hell."" "Whatever happened to the mighty walls that swallowed up so many human lives?" "Has the jungle erased them forever?" "Jean-Christophe Jeauffre and his team headed for Guiana's darkest region, in search of the secrets of a lost world where only the memories of doomed convicts survived." "An expedition to the dark times of history has set sail." "A journey into the jungle where wildlife is intermingled with devilish relics to create a new world." "Here is the ship-log of the exploration of the three islands inhabited by devils." "Paris, France." "The Oceanographic Institute, headquarters of the Jules Verne Adventures, the starting point of our voyage to the Devil's Islands." "Why should we go there?" "What islands could have such a name?" "We need to go, to see, to explore these islands." "They have become a distant dream." "We are preparing the first Jules Verne Expedition." "We must go the other end of the Atlantic Ocean in the hope to be able to film the islands that have been forgotten." "One man is bound to the Devil's Islands more than anyone else today." "His name is still linked to the most mysterious case of the 20th century." "Seznec." "Before we depart to South America, we'll meet with his grandson Denis Seznec in Paris." "Denis keeps on fighting to clear his grandfather's name." "Guillaume Seznec was sentenced to 20 years for murder without the slightest bit of evidence." "The first feelings you get when you see these islands in the distance after leaving Kourou," "American people keep calling them Devil's Islands." "But France has renamed them to Iles du Salut, the Salvation Islands." "The closer you get to the island the more convinced you are that it's a postcard." "If I didn't know a penal colony had been established in this place, well, I'd think it's heaven on Earth." "These islands sheltered the worst penal colony of them all." "The most dangerous and the most famous convicts would be immediately taken to these Devil's Islands on a small steamer." "It would take some time to reach the colony." "They would be bound hand and foot down in the hold." "If the boat sank, they would sink with the boat." "My grandfather was taken away to Ile Royale." "So he wrote a protest, because sending convicts to the islands are for those being punished." "My grandfather, Guillaume Seznec, is a unique case in the penal colony." "He ranks among the few convicts who spent a tremendously long time there and yet managed to come back alive." "It's typically French to build such a place for convicts where 80% were just relegated ones." "That is to say shoplifters, highwaymen, and so on." "France should be ashamed." "20% of these convicts were, so to speak, deportees." "They were the criminals, the rapists, the counterfeiters, murderers." "When I first came to French Guiana in March of 1987," "I had brought a virgin sachlet from Brittany and a plaque that I put on the semaphore where my grandfather spent over 14 years." "In all, he spent 20 years there." "Those three faces..." "that's awful, you know?" "They show my grandfather before leaving... and then in the colony." "It's a man's lifetime." "A completely wasted life." "It's a terrible injustice." "When you fly over, the Devil's Islands look as tiny as they do on the map." "They lie 7 miles away from Guiana coast." "In 1763, survivors of the doomed Kourou expedition took refuge there from epidemics and called them Iles du Salut, the Salvation Island." "Of the three rocks, only one is still called Devil's Island." ""The Devil" as they call it." "And Saint-Joseph, also known as "the Island of Silence,"" "both remain forbidden to visitors." "Ile Royale, the largest one, is the place chosen by the expedition to set up base camp for more than a month." "Though only inhabited by a dozen innkeepers and two policemen," "Royale is bursting with energy." "On the high plateau overlooking relics and lush vegetation, the inn welcomes the few tourists a year who are eager to see the remains of Papillon's prison." "As for the Guyanese, they have chosen this little heaven to spend weekends and holidays." "A strange heaven, actually." "For today, sweetness mixes with the ruins of a hell." "Devil's Island and Saint-Joseph are only a few hundred feet away from Ile Royale, but the crew can't satisfy their curiosity just yet." "So close and yet unreachable, since no ship may come alongside without a pass delivered by the new owner." "Located unto the Ariane space rocket trajectory when launched from Kourou Space Center, the Devil's Islands have belonged to the French National Center for Space Studies since 1965." "Jean Galfione has gathered historical data about the Devil's Islands, especially the precious testimony of famous journalist Albert Londres who carried out an amazing investigation into the penal colony in 1923." "Frederic Dieudonne is in charge of observing flora and fauna on the islands, and on two other remote islands for the route:" "Lilet-la-Mere and Le Grande-Connetable." "Michael Bez, a French navy painter, is a member of our voyage." "He's depicting the Devil's Island in his own way, a tradition inherited from the 17th century expedition artists." "He records the hundred faces of these mysterious islands in a different light." "The expedition has boarded the French navy ship Le Capricieuse." "Weighing 400 tons and with a crew of 30, this ship is ideal for dealing with Guiana's mighty waters and offers all facilities to welcome our 10-people team for several days." "The crew starts the journey to some other lost islands of Guiana." "About 50 nautical miles away from the Devil's Island's rise up Lilet-la-Mere and Le Grande-Connetable." "The area we intend to explore isn't well charted, and most of the underwater environment is unknown." "There, a year ago, a sister ship lost a propeller on a reef." "After a few hours, the ship approaches Lilet-la-Mere." "It is the largest rock in this small volcanic archipelago, which also consists of I'Ilet-Le Pere," "Le Deux Mamelles, and I'enfant Malingre." "Forbidden to visitors, the island is only inhabited by a caretaker, and yet the place appears to be overcrowded." "Frederic and Jean very quickly get acquainted with the leader of the squirrel monkeys who live on the island." "Duke, as the island caretaker calls him, is not very shy for a monkey living in the wild." "This island is managed by the Pasteur Institute." "The squirrel monkeys are former residents of the Cayenne Institute for malaria research." "They had already succeeded in stopping the deadly epidemics that once struck the Guyanese population." "The monkeys on the island are now finished with their experimentation period and healthy once again." "They are able to enjoy their well-deserved freedom." "Soon, they will return to the wild." "Now accustomed to human presence, the sweet creatures have made contact to their benefit." "They want to master the situation and take advantage of the landing party." "L'Ilet-La-Mere is not the only Guyanese Island to shelter wild life." "The ship is heading for Le-Grande-Connetable, a very unusual and totally protected island." "Back to the Cayenne Naval Base, the island's warden, Oliver Tostain, joins us on board." "This passionate ornithologist remains under the spell of the 60,000 seabirds that have chosen this tiny South American island to breed." "The Amazon waters, reaching all the way to the ocean, ring the entire Guyanese coasts with a large ribbon of mud that sometimes spreads 100 miles offshore." "On his way to Le-Grande-Connetable," "Jean-Christophe Jeauffre wants to attempt a dangerous dive in these unclear waters." "Violent currents might carry a diver off course and take him several miles away from his boat within a few minutes." "Visibility is even worse than expected, and the fight against the current is pointless." "We are getting lost, and yet curiosity is luring us on." "We feel as we were intruders in these impenetrable waters, as green as the jungle above." "Intrigued by our presence, a Remora fish observes Jean." "Usually bound to the shark's belly, this pilot fish seems to be alone for the moment." "Where's the shark?" "This encounter will end as soon as it has begun in the immensity of these opaque waters where no one ever dives, waters which are full of the fisherman's sea monster stories." "Back on board, now heading for the Bird's Island, divers share their feelings about their rough experiences and strange impressions caused by this short dive." "La Capricieuse drops anchor 500 meters from the island." "Landing is possible at only one spot." "If the sea happens to get rougher, the crew will be forced to remain the island's hostages." "A third of the world's Tern birds population uses the place for shelter." "The Royal, the Sooty, and Cayenne Terns," "Many magnificent frigate birds and laughing gulls frequented as well." "Frederic Dieudonne asks Olivier Tostain about the necessity of tagging young birds that nest from the island." "Tagging is an infallible way to follow the evolution of populations." "It has the advantage of revealing the bird's age when you meet up with it again, especially at nesting time." "They often nest very close to the place where they were born which enables you to follow their sexual maturity and different stages in their lives." "From then on you keep following the bird every year until death to see if it mates with a bird born elsewhere in the colony." "It gives them information about couple fidelity, nesting fidelity." "Fidelity may depend on breeding success." "If they fail to breed, the bird may go mate with another." "This ones a Brown Noddy." "It's feathers are growing." " Are there many on this rock?" " Oh, it's the rare species on the island." "Since there are only about a hundred couples in all." "That's not too bad." "No, but it's a very small colony compared to that of the greater Antilles." "He could potentially follow every one of these birds." "Navy painter Michael Bez joined us on the island that 19th century sailors named Bird's Island." "He feels at home here." "Seabirds are one of his passions." "But he gets from them an unexpected reception." "We are on a rock that offers the world's largest tern population, a major stop on their migratory journey to the south." "We walk on tiptoe, in fear of disturbing their harmony." "At the top of the island, a cone-shaped rock recalls former phosphate development managed by a 19th century New York firm." "Birds are light sleepers, and their secret chatting never stops at night." "The team is already thinking of Devil's Island." "It shall be open for exploration tomorrow, and access clearance from the island's owner was Telexed to the ship tonight." "At last." "When French reporter Albert Londres came to the Devil's Islands in 1923 to investigate the penal colony, he discovered an unexpected horror." "Before getting to Devil's Island, he thought the same as any other traveler observing this black rock from Royale Island." "Barely 200 meters separate the shores, and it would take only 3 minutes to cross by foot if there were a bridge." "But rough currents, sharks, and the impossibility to land ashore made Devil's Island an unreachable place." "As if it were necessary, rough crossings would remind the convicts that no one could escape from the Devil's Islands." "Today, nothing has changed except that the sharks have left." "Helicopter is the only way to reach this island which was exclusively meant for the internment of political prisoners." "Albert Londres never met Dreyfus, the most famous convict ever held on the island." "He had been "the Rock's" prisoner from 1895 to 1899." "The case of this man, wrongly accused of treason, split France in two and created a worldwide stir in public opinion." "However, Albert Londres met another man linked to Dreyfus' case." "A man who proved to be the real traitor:" "Naval officer Ulmo." "By a strange twist of fate," "Ulmo experienced the same punishment as Dreyfus and occupied the cabin built for the innocent victim." "Ulmo told Albert Londres that one day the governor paid a visit to his guards on Devil's Island." "In the presence of Ulmo, the governor asked the guard how long he had been at his post there." "The guard answered, "Six months."" ""Six months?" Replied the governor." ""How terrible." "How can you stand it?"" ""I've been there for 12 years." Said Ulmo." ""But I was a traitor and I had to pay for it."" "Ulmo remained in Dreyfus's former cabin for one year facing the ocean." ""I knew every shark." "I had named them." ""And I guess they would come each time I called them on days when I needed to speak to someone."" "When the reporter met Ulmo, the prisoner had become a real tramp, hanging around in Cayenne as a beggar." "Albert Londres had been the first to treat him like a human being and not as the scum of society." "Ulmo was surprised and was not able to hide his emotion." "On the verge of tears, he said to Londres," ""Forgive me, but it has been 15 years since someone held out his hand to me."" "Ulmo never returned to France, and France forgot Ulmo... as it did for the 73,000 men who would rot away in its colony's belly and would never see their homes again." "Pierced by the sunbeams, the Devil's Island's small cabins are still standing." "The last convicts imprisoned on the Devil's Islands were allowed to grow vegetables outside their cabins." "Another way of waiting for death to come." "No one gets here anymore." "Even the devil has abandoned the island." "The sound of the forest is washed by the ocean's waves breaking against the shores from which no one could ever escape." "Protected from curious visitors, the coconut palms have literally invaded the surface of the rock, leaving very little place for any other vegetation." "We are leaving Devil's Island, Ulmo, and the five men buried in a remote cemetery hidden in the forest." "The National Prison Administration still refuses to disclose their files." "Royale was the administration center for the three islands." "It sheltered the largest prisons." "Guard houses now turned into chalets make up a still solid complex." "By order of the prison authorities, the convicts built one of the island's most beautiful houses, destined for the nuns who looked after them." "It is now merely a shell." "On Royale, there are a few places that daylight never reached." "The lunatic asylum is the island's last place to venture." "It is very different from the other relics on Royale, which somehow appear dignified, even poetic." "Henri Charriere, better known as Papillon, portrayed by Steve McQueen on film, was here." "The best-seller author escaped from the Cayenne prison, and his extraordinary adventure remains in our collective memory." "Did he leave any marks here on the walls of his cells as many prisoners did?" "Staying in the asylum was indeed far better than being taken away to the guillotine." "Condemned convicts would experience the execution as punishment." "The few executions that took place here would affect the prisoners who tried to escape and repeat offenders." "The executioner would be chosen from among the convicts." "Hespell was one of them." "He knew his mates very well and even felt affection for the ones he would take to the guillotine." "After every execution, he would hold his condemned friend's head by the ear and show it to the kneeling convicts." "Then he would put it down gently and go the shore opposite Devil's Island." "There here would keep shouting for a week," ""I am Hespell, known as the jackal!"" "A few meters above the sea lies the small and unique Royale cemetery." "There are only children here." "Stricken by numerous infant diseases frequently fatal at the time, penal colony families were often plunged into mourning." "The small graves have been forgotten for a long time." "Elize Echard, one of the nuns who devoted her life to teaching and healing these children is the only adult to be buried among them." "Most of the names engraved on the stones have vanished forever." "The unusual convict, Francis Lagrange, left his own particular mark on the colony." "Royale's church shelters the convicts." "His religious inspiration adorns a little church lost in Devil's Den." "The gifted Lagrange had been sentenced for counterfeiting stamps." "He became a friend of Guillaume Seznec." "When my grandfather met Francis Lagrange, a counterfeiter knows as "Flag,"" "he drew his portrait." "It's now a listed painting known as" ""One of the Seven Apostles in the Sea of Galilee"" "in the scene with Jesus Christ when he was walking on water." "Judas' face is that of the island's commander." "Lagrange's testimony ranks among the colony's most precious relics." "By giving colors to darkness, he presented the faces of hundreds of anonymous convicts who formed this doomed society." "Armand Ider first came to Royale in 1948." "He was one of the holiday camp boy scouts a few years after they had shut down the prison." "I asked Armand if it is true that the sharks used to eat the prisoners." "To reach the Devil's Island from Cayenne, we would travel 45 kilometers on a ship named Maria Alice." "We would get up very early to leave at 6 A. M." "And put on our scout uniform, because all the colonists wore the same khaki uniform." "Convict-eating sharks were often mentioned at school, and this was the scoop." "We wanted to see these sharks." "And we would wonder "How could they do that?" "How could they throw people into the sea?"" "Convicts corpses would be thrown to the sharks at 5 P. M." "The church's bell would be rung." "A legend says that sharks would come for dinner as soon as the bell would ring." "The dead convict's corpse would be put in a coffin with a removable bottom." "The shroud-wrapped corpse would be thrown into the water." "Then sharks would immediately emerge to devour it." "It was a terrible ritual, and it would upset even the most hard-hearted convicts who were used to row the canoe." "We knew the bell, which is gone now." "We rang it for fun, since the penal colony was no more." "But the five convicts left on the island explained to us how things would go, and we rang the bell." "Now, I rang the bell and I saw sharks' fins emerge." "Sharks of all kind and sizes." "If you ring the bell, do not expect sharks to come along anymore." "They also chose to forget the colony and this gloomy ritual." "For centuries, the Devil's Islands have been a sailor's nightmare." "Mighty currents sweep over the archipelago." "And until the '60s, lots of ships would break up against Saint-Joseph's black shore." "Tonight, we'll scout Saint-Joseph Island." "We need to have a first look at the cells of the damned, the colony's worst place." "So many would end up there." "To reach Saint-Joseph, the French Foreign Legion boat takes barely two minutes." "The two Legionnaires who live on Saint-Joseph are the only ones to stay there all year long." "The Jules Verne team will set up camp on Saint-Joseph's shore for several days." "Despite Guyana's rough waters," "Amerindians, before Christopher Columbus, were the first to find their way to the islands and take refuge there." "Traces of natives were recently discovered on Saint-Joseph." "This engraving of a small monkey has been miraculously preserved." "The most spectacular remnants of these first inhabitants are hidden on top of a cliff." "A mysterious stone face." "A legend says that a monster would haunt the continental rain forest." "Once a year, it would devour villages." "On the islands, however, the tribes were out of reach." "Man had been interested in these tiny islands long before France turned them into a penal colony in 1854." "The only well-preserved cemetery spreads over a hectare along the only beach of Saint-Joseph." "Here lie naval officers and guards." "Decade after decade, careless amateur sailors kept on plundering memorial stones and statuettes." "We are moving through the cemetery in search of names." "Only the ocean echoes." "As night envelopes the Devil's Islands, the sound of the forest changes." "The moonlight has disappeared, and we're plunging into total darkness." "Tonight, torches enable the Jules Verne team to recognize for the first time the prison of Saint-Joseph." "The recalcitrant and rebellious convicts, the ones who had tried to escape, were transported to the prison for solitary imprisonment." "The prison looks like a huge cemetery that would bury men alive, doomed to be devoured by walls and sharks." "I think of Roussenc, Paul Roussenc." "Number 37,664." "The greatest rebel of all." "3,779 confinement days." "A record never beaten." "At the age of 17, he was arrested for vagrancy." "Then he was sentenced to 20 years for burning his mattress." "Tonight, we are in his home." "He lost his youth here, in this dark jungle Alcatraz." ""I can't stand myself anymore." ""The prison has entered me." ""I am not a man anymore." "I'm a prison." ""I can't believe I was a child once." ""I know I'll end up in a shark's belly." "But I want to see the sunshine once more."" "It has been raining for three days." "And then suddenly, it has stopped... at last." "We are now entering Saint-Joseph jungle, much thicker and with so much more humidity here." "On the Saint-Joseph map, a small group of cells in the prison is mentioned." "This site has been incompletely described for decades." "The first collection of scattered relics appears behind the island's giant trees." "Six small roofless buildings spring up from the forest, a tangle of roots has invaded half-collapsed jail cells." "Some of the jails have kept the iron structures, known as "justice bars"" "which convicts would be tied up to." "In the small dormitories, men would fight and would play the Marseillaise, a card game invented by the prisoners themselves." "You can easily realize that this was an inward-looking world." "There was a jail called "the Red Cabin"" "where the most dangerous and famous convicts used to be locked up for one month." "Convicts used to call it "the Red Cabin"" "because lots of murders were committed inside there." "During the first month, there were many gangland-type killings." "Iguanas are abundant on the Devil's Islands." "On Saint-Joseph, they are not disturbed by visitors." "They took possession of the colony's ruins, but they don't care much about them." "It's a nice place to hide." "Iguanas are not the only ones to rule Saint-Joseph." "Hard labor has been instituted again by the ant colonies." "Manioc ants, an new army of convicts." "Sometimes a half inch long." "They pick up leaves and cut them into pieces used to build their underground fortress." "Nothing can stop the tireless workers determined march." "By following their impressive line, we reach the 125-foot high steps that were built by the prisoners." "They'll lead us to the island's highest plateau where the silent prison appears to us in the daylight for the very first time." "We discover a huge building never mentioned on maps." "An enormous dormitory." "From the former roof, there remains only an Eiffel Tower style skeleton." "Iron sheets have vanished, replaced by invasive vegetation." "A fight to the death has broken out between ruins and forest." "Trees, roots, and lianas meander through bars and girders." "Guards used to watch over the convicts from the tops of the cells." "They would climb with slippers on so that no one would hear them coming." "Convicts would be given permission to sleep on their side from 6 P. M. To 5 A. M." "For the rest of the time, they had to remain standing in their cell." "They called Saint-Joseph "the Island of Silence."" "For here to speak was forbidden." "Young prisoner Paul Roussenc wrote one last letter to the prison authorities." ""Commander, after 15 years of an unfair fight," ""I realize I cannot go on," ""for my body is too deeply affected." ""Like a loyal jester who falls flat on the ground at a jousting tournament," ""I have met my defeat." ""I don't wish to increase my punishment," ""but I feel the effects of weakness." ""I'm asking you the favor of being transferred" ""to Saint-Joseph's solitary confinement." "There, the chattering is impossible because vaulted walls echo too much."" "After years serving his sentence, Roussenc returned to France at last." "In Paris, he was often asked to tell his story, which he did." "Then one day he threw himself into the River Seine." "You can never escape from the Devil's Island." "We strained our ears trying to catch the whispering voices of those who would never remain silent, the ones that everybody forgot, devoured by penal administration, digested by history." "Thanks to Albert Londres' investigation," "French President Herriot ordered the colony's closure, but it took 20 years to become effective." "It all stopped in 1946." "The last of the convicts left the islands in 1953." "The vestiges of the colony inspire fascination and shame." "France is torn between remorse over an institution that continued ruining human lives for a hundred years and the duty of preserving this historical heritage." "Though disgraceful, it holds the memory of 73,000 men, some guilty, some innocent." "The year after Jean-Christophe Jeauffre first met with Denis Seznec, the French Ministry of Justice declared the reopening of the Seznec enquiry, an unprecedented event." "But now, the forest commands the prison's ruins." "Sooner or later, the penal colony will return its last stones to the three small islands' dust." "It will then be man's responsibly to keep its memories alive." "Two giant fig trees overlook the cells." "As the prison shuttered 50 years ago, they were born." "Deeply rooted in stones and memories, they remain silent, stretching out to the sky... and to liberty."