The name of Charlotte Dard, née Picard, would have remained buried in obscurity were it not for the notorious shipwreck of the Medusa in 1816. That event set off one of the great scandals of the Restoration and provided the impetus for the renewal of French efforts to enforce the abolition of the slave trade. La Chaumière africaine, Dard's account of the shipwreck and her life in Africa from 1816 to 1820, published in 1824, provides the basis of this chapter's analysis of fathers, daughters, and slaves. It tells two different stories. The story of an early colonizer, Charles Picard, whose reputation his daughter attempted to rehabilitate, is the first. Her efforts mirror those of Germaine de Staël and Isaac Louverture discussed in Chapter 1. Dard's defense of her father, although clearly not unbiased, is supported by material found in the extensive archival records of the shipwreck of the Medusa. Dard's own unique story of a woman who survived a shipwreck and put her experiences in written form is the second. It details her struggle to stay alive in early nineteenth-century Africa, living in wild and deserted places, enduring poverty and illness, and witnessing the demise of her parents and siblings. The Scottish translator of La Chaumière africaine, Patrick Maxwell, wrote in 1827, “There is not, on the records of misery, an instance of more severe and protracted suffering; and I trust there is not, nor ever will be any, where human nature was more foully outraged and disgraced.” Yet Dard's story, like that of the other women discussed in this book, is also one of empowerment. A traveler as a young girl and an educator later in life, she tells a tale of discovery: not in the sense of conquest or exploration, but rather in the sense of learning something new. Charlotte Dard discovered in Africa what it meant for a young woman and for blacks, with whom she lived and worked, to possess an independent subjectivity.