Silhouette Island’s Story

French navigator, Charles Ogier, comes ashore on the east side of the island at Anse La Passe. He names the island “Silhouette” after Etienne de Silhouette, the Controller-General of France between March and November 1759.

For decades, Silhouette is home to short-term settlements only. Arab sailors and traders anchor to rest and replenish their water.

Even notorious pirate, Jean-François Hodoul, is unable to make a permanent home on the island and settles on Mahe after only a few years on Silhouette.

The Treaty of Paris makes the Seychelles a colony of the British Empire after the Napoleonic Wars.

French emigrant families acquire property on Silhouette and establish coconut plantations. Slaves are sent to clear the land and work on the plantations.

Thanks to The Emancipation Act some freed slaves became owners of many of the properties on Silhouette.

The trajectory of Silhouette Island changes when 36-year-old Frenchman, Auguste Dauban, arrives from Mauritius with his wife, Catherine Young.

Auguste Dauban uses his inheritance to buy all the properties on Silhouette. By that fact, becomes the owner of the entire island.

Auguste Dauban dies aged 79. He’s entombed in the family mausoleum which was specially constructed for his two-year-old daughter, Marie-Louise Eva, who died in 1864.

Silhouette cements itself as an agricultural exportation empire thanks to the entrepreneurship of the Dauban family and the toil of liberated slaves and their descendants.

English etymologist, Hugh Scott, discovers the Portesia pectinata, an endemic large white moth, on the summit of Mount Dauban.

Edmee Aglaé and Gilbert Ernesta are the last couple to reside on Silhouette and harvest cinnamon for IDC (Island Development Company).

William Dubignon lives on the island for most of the 1970s, a time when a Dauban family descendant, Henry, is contemplating the sale of his island.

An independence vote and new constitution mean the Seychelles are now an independent republic within the Commonwealth.

IDC, the government parastatal, acquire the island. The uninhabited properties of past owners dot the landscape as a reminder of times gone by.

The only resort on the island, Hilton Seychelles Labriz Resort & Spa officially opens. Our tropical hideaway and takes proud position in Silhouette Island’s history.