Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse

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Jean François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse (August 23, 1741–1788?) was a French Navy officer and explorer whose expedition vanished in Oceania.^[1]

Contents 1 Early career 2 Scientific expedition 2.1 Alaska 2.2 Japan and Russia 2.3 Pacific 3 Epilogue 3.1 Rescue mission of D'Entrecasteaux 3.2 Discovery of the expedition 4 See also 5 External links 6 Notes 7 References

[edit] Early career

Jean-François de Galaup was born near Albi, France^[2]. La Pérouse was the name of a family property that he added to his name. He studied in a Jesuit college and entered the naval college in Brest when he was fifteen. He fought against the British off North America in the Seven Years' War.^[3] In the beginning of the war he was wounded in a naval engagement off the French coast and was briefly imprisoned.^[4] He was promoted to rank of commodore when he defeated the English frigate Ariel in the West Indies. In August 1782 he made his name by capturing two English forts on the coast of the Hudson Bay, but left the survivors with food and ammunition when he departed. The next year his family finally consented to his marriage of Louise-Eléonore Broudou, a young creole from modest origins that he met on Ile de France (present-day Mauritius).^[5]

[edit] Scientific expedition

La Pérouse was appointed in 1785 to lead an expedition to the Pacific. His ships were the Astrolabe and the Boussole^[6], both 500 tons. They were storeships, reclassified as frigates for the occasion.

One of the men who applied for the voyage was a 16-year-old Corsican named Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon, a second lieutenant from Paris's military academy at the time, made the preliminary list but he was ultimately not chosen for the voyage list and remained behind in France.

La Pérouse was a great admirer of James Cook, tried to get on well with the Pacific islanders, and was well-liked by his men. Among his 114 man crew there were ten scientists: Dagelet, an astronomer and mathematician, Lamanon, a geologist, La Martinière, a botanist, a physicist, three naturalists, and three illustrators, Duché de Vancy and the Prévosts (uncle and nephew).^[7] Even both chaplains were scientifically schooled.

[edit] Alaska

He left Brest on August 1, 1785,^[8] rounded Cape Horn, investigated the Spanish colonial government in Chile,^[9] and, by way of Easter Island (where he arrived April 9, 1786)^[10]and Hawaii,^[11] sailed on to Alaska, where he landed near Mount St. Elias in late June 1786^[12] and explored the environs. On July 13, 1786, a barge and two longboats, carrying 21 men, were lost in the heavy currents of the bay called Port des Français by La Pérouse, but now known as Lituya Bay.^[13] Next he visited Monterey, arriving on September 14, 1786.^[14] He examined the Spanish settlements and made critical notes on the treatment of the Indians in the Franciscan missions.

He again crossed the Pacific Ocean in 100 days, arriving at Macao, where he sold the furs acquired in Alaska, dividing the profits among his men.^[15] The next year, on April 9, 1787,^[16] after a visit to Manila, he set out for the northeast Asian coasts. He saw the island of Quelpart (Cheju), which had been visited by Europeans only once before when a group of Dutchmen shipwrecked there in 1635. He visited the mainland coast of Korea, then crossed over to Oku-Yeso (Sakhalin).

[edit] Japan and Russia

The inhabitants had drawn him a map, showing their country, Yeso (also Yezo, now called Hokkaidō) and the coasts of Tartary (mainland Asia). La Pérouse wanted to sail through the channel between Sakhalin and Asia, but failed, so he turned south, and sailed through La Pérouse Strait (between Sakhalin and Hokkaidō), where he met the Ainu, explored the Kuriles, and reached Petropavlovsk (on Kamchatka peninsula) on September 7, 1787.^[17] Here they rested from their trip, and enjoyed the hospitality of the Russians and Kamchatkans. In letters received from Paris he was ordered to investigate the settlement the British were to erect in New South Wales. Barthélemy de Lesseps, the French vice consul at Kronstadt, who had joined the expedition as an interpreter, disembarked to bring the expedition's letters and documents to France, which he reached after a year-long, epic journey across Siberia and Russia.^[18]

[edit] Pacific

His next stops were in the Navigator Islands (Samoa), on December 6, 1787.^[19] Just before he left, the Samoans attacked a group of his men, killing twelve of them, among which were Lamanon and de Langle, commander of the Astrolabe. Twenty men were wounded.^[20] The expedition continued to Tonga and then to Australia,^[21] arriving at Botany Bay on 26 January 1788, just as Captain Arthur Phillip moved the colony from Botany Bay to Port Jackson. The British received him courteously, but were unable to help him with food as they had none to spare. La Pérouse sent his journals and letters to Europe with a British ship, the Sirius^[22], obtained wood and fresh water, and left for New Caledonia, Santa Cruz, the Solomons, the Louisiades, and the western and southern coasts of Australia. Although he wrote that he expected to be back in France by June 1789, neither he nor any of his men was seen again. Fortunately, before he set sail, La Pérouse had sent the valuable written details of his expedition to Paris where it was published posthumously.

[edit] Epilogue

[edit] Rescue mission of D'Entrecasteaux

On September 25, 1791, Rear Admiral Joseph Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux departed Brest in search of La Pérouse. His expedition followed La Pérouse's proposed path through the islands northwest of Australia while at the same time making scientific and geographic discoveries.

In May of 1793, he arrived at the island of Vanikoro, which is part of the Santa Cruz group of islands. d'Entrecasteaux thought he saw smoke signals from several elevated areas on the island, but was unable to investigate due to the dangerous reefs surrounding the island and had to leave. He died two months later.

[edit] Discovery of the expedition

It was not until 1826 that an Irish captain, Peter Dillon, found enough evidence to piece together the events of the tragedy. In Tikopia (one of the islands of Santa Cruz), he bought some swords he had reason to believe had belonged to La Pérouse. He made enquiries, and found that they came from nearby Vanikoro, where two big ships had broken up. Dillon managed to obtain a ship in Bengal, and sailed for Vanikoro where he found cannon balls, anchors and other evidence of the remains of ships in water between coral reefs. He brought several of these artifacts back to Europe, as did Dumont d'Urville in 1828.^[23] De Lesseps, the only member of the expedition still alive at the time, identified them, as all belonging to the Astrolabe. From the information Dillon received from the people on Vanikoro, a rough reconstruction could be made of the disaster that struck La Pérouse, which was confirmed by the find and search of the shipwreck of the Boussole in 1964.

Both ships had been wrecked on the reefs, the Boussole first. The Astrolabe was unloaded and taken apart. A group of men, probably the survivors of the Boussole, were massacred by the local inhabitants.^{[verification needed]} According to natives, surviving sailors built a two-masted craft from the wreckage of the Astrolabe, and left westward about 9 months later, but what happened to them is unknown. Also, two men, one a "chief" and the other his servant, had remained behind, surviving until 1823, three years before Dillon arrived.

The La Perouse Strait between Hokkaidō and Sakhalin is named in his honour, as is La Perouse, a Sydney suburb and the northern headland of Botany Bay both in New South Wales, Australia, and La Perouse Pinnacle, in the French Frigate Shoals.

[edit] See also

• Age of Discovery
• History of the French Navy
• Explorers
• La Perouse Strait
• List of people who have disappeared

[edit] External links

• André Engels, Jean-François de Galoup (sic), Comte de La Pérouse
• John Robson, La Perouse, Eighteenth Century French Sailor and leader of a Voyage into the Pacific

[edit] Notes

• Dunmore, J. (ed.) The Journal of Jean-François de Galaup de la Pérouse 1785–1788. Published by the Hakluyt Society. Volume 1; 1994, ISBN 0904180387. Volume 2; 1995, ISBN 0904180395.
• Reader's Digest, Great Mysteries of the Past. Published by Reader's Digest in 1991. Section "They Vanished Without a Trace". Article "Destination: Great South Sea". Pages 12-17.

[edit] References