The French
Connection
A tale of discovery and loss
BY ANTHONY BROWN
When French and British ships encountered each other in Botany Bay on January 26, 1788, both sides were
taken by surprise. Their reasons for being there were very different – the English to establish a penal colony,
the French on a great journey of maritime exploration and scientific discovery, but ever curious about British
plans for colonial expansion.
Louis XVI giving final instructions to the Comte de la Perouse (De Castries, Navy Minister, stands behind the King; Fleurieu is the
officer in shadow at extreme left), painted by Edouard Nuel and reproduced with permission from the Mitchell Library, State
Library of New South Wales.
Botany Bay, January 1788
“On the 24th we beheld an English fleet at anchor inside Botany Bay, of which
we could see the flags and pennants. Europeans are all compatriots at such a
great distance and we were most impatient to reach the anchorage, but the
weather was so foggy the next day that we were unable to see the land, and we
only reached the anchorage on the 26th at nine o’clock in the morning.”
(Journal of La Pérouse, 1788).
Australian Heritage 29
T
HE FRENCH SHIPS that
briefly interrupted the orderly
transfer of the First Fleet from
Botany Bay to Port Jackson
(Sydney Harbour) on the morning of
26th January 1788 were La Boussole and
the L’Astrolabe, under the command of
Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de la
Pérouse. Now in the fourth year of a
round-the-world voyage of geographic
and scientific discovery, La Pérouse had
been ordered south from the remote
Russian outpost of Petropavlovsk, on
Siberia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, to check
reports of a new British settlement on
the east coast of New Holland.
King Louis XVI nursed a passion for
maritime exploration, and was
determined that France should match, if
not exceed, the great achievements of
Britain’s ‘immortal’ Captain Cook in the
previous decades. He instructed his
Director General of Ports and Arsenals,
Charles-Pierre Claret, Comte de
Fleurieu – a noted navigator and
scientist – to draw up the plans and
itinerary for a major expedition to the
Pacific Ocean, and accepted Fleurieu’s
recommendation of his friend, La
Pérouse, as its commander.
La Pérouse was directed to undertake
a far-reaching survey of the northern
Pacific, including a search for the NorthWest Passage, and then to voyage south
to explore the northern, western and
unknown southern coasts of New
Holland, and to discover whether the
Gulf of Carpentaria was linked to the
southern ocean by a vast strait bisecting
the continent. He was also entrusted
with an extensive program of scientific
research, covering astronomy,
meteorology, physics, mineralogy, botany,
and zoology, and a team of naturalists
and scientists was recruited to carry out
the demanding program. In his own hand
the King wrote: “The sieur de la Pérouse
will treat the different peoples visited
with much gentleness and humanity”.
Leaving France on 1st August 1785,
La Pérouse rounded Cape Horn late in
January 1786 and headed north for
Easter Island, Hawaii and Alaska. On
7th September 1787, after 15 months
exploring the north Pacific and the
north-east coasts of Asia, he arrived at
Petropavlovsk, a planned stopping point
on the voyage. There he received
dispatches from Paris – which arrived
after a year-long journey by courier
across the wastes of Siberia – promoting
him to Chef d’Escadre (Commodore)
and directing him to investigate British
30 Australian Heritage
Portrait of Jean François de Galaup, Comte de la Pérouse, engraved by T. Woolnoth. Author’s
collection.
plans for a colony at Botany Bay,
discovered and named by Cook two
decades earlier. La Pérouse farewelled
his Russian hosts and sailed south on
30th September.
The surprise appearance of the two
ships offshore caused consternation
amongst the newly arrived colonists.
Some supposed them to be English,
carrying more convicts and supplies,
others that they were Dutch, sent to
oppose their landing. The consensus,
that they were the French ships “out
upon Discoveries in the South Seas”,
was confirmed when La Pérouse entered
the Bay on 26th January 1788 and
dropped anchor.
Lieutenant Philip Gidley King, sent
aboard the flagship to welcome the
visitors, was received “with the greatest
politeness and attention” by the
Commodore and his staff, and was
invited to dine with them. He returned
to Governor Phillip full of praise for the
work of the French scientists and for La
Pérouse himself. The Commodore’s
parting comment, he reported, was
remarkably generous: “Captain Cook has
accomplished so much, that he has left
me nothing to do but admire his work!”
That same evening Phillip proclaimed
the colony of New South Wales, and
began the laborious task of constructing
a settlement at Sydney Cove. The
French set up camp at Botany Bay,
refitting their ships while the crews
recuperated. The botanists planted a
garden nearby, which became known as
the ‘French Garden’ and served the
colonists for several years. Father
Receveur, chaplain and naturalist, who
had been wounded in an attack by
natives at Samoa in which twelve
Frenchmen had been killed, died of his
wounds and was buried in Australian
soil, in today’s suburb of La Perouse.
The refit completed, La Pérouse
departed on 10th March, bound for the
island archipelagos of the south-west
Pacific. His last act was to entrust his
dispatches and journals to the British
officers for delivery to the French
ambassador in London. They arrived in
June 1789, at which time the expedition
was six months overdue at Ile de France
(Mauritius) on the homeward voyage,
and unrest was festering in the streets of
Paris.
Events in France soon eclipsed
concerns for the fate of La Pérouse and
his ships. In mid-July the Paris mob
stormed the Bastille fortress, a
Constituent Assembly replaced
autocratic power, and King Louis found
himself a reluctant constitutional
monarch. As unrest spread, and order
and discipline collapsed in the army and
navy, many officers resigned or fled
overseas. The following year Fleurieu, a
man of known integrity, was appointed
Minister of Marine in an attempt to
stem the rot in the navy. Though he
could accomplish little in the prevailing
turmoil, there was one task in which he
received unqualified support from all
sides – organising the search for La
Pérouse.
It was now obvious that the
expedition had met with some disaster,
and, in February 1791, the Assembly
authorised a fully equipped search
mission. By April, Fleurieu had selected
two ships, La Recherche and L’Espérance,
naming Rear Admiral Bruni
d’Entrecasteaux as commander, and
drawn up detailed instructions for the
voyage – mirroring those he had
prepared earlier for La Pérouse. In
addition to his search for the lost
explorer, d’Entrecasteaux was charged
with a range of scientific studies,
including coastal surveys of New
Holland “as though it were being done
for the first time”.
The expedition sailed in September
1791, both ships doubling as floating
farmyards – with cattle and goats
tethered on the main deck, sheep in the
longboats, and caged poultry on the
poop.
D’Entrecasteaux, a veteran naval
officer, administrator and navigator, and
former chief of the East Indies squadron,
seemed an ideal choice. From the outset,
however, the new republican ideas were
a potent source of friction. The
commander and his senior staff, of
aristocratic origin, found their authority
questioned by the younger officers
stirred by talk of ‘liberté, egalité et
fraternité’. The scientists, the naturalist
Labillardière prominent among them,
embraced the new ideology, and at Cape
Town staged a mini-revolt, threatening
to abandon the expedition. In the event
most stayed, but disaffection worsened as
the voyage continued.
The two ships circumnavigated New
Holland in 1792–1793, but sailed at
such a distance from land that the feat
had little meaning. Only the continent’s
south coast, from Cape Leeuwin to the
head of the Bight, and the south-east
shores of Van Diemen’s Land were seen
and charted. Landings at Esperance Bay
(WA) and around D’Entrecasteaux
Channel (Tasmania) gave Labillardière
the chance to collect numerous
specimens of Australian flora and fauna.
La Haie, another botanist, planted
vegetable seeds at Recherche Bay, in the
hope that “they might in future furnish
supplies to navigators who will shelter in
this haven”.
The expedition revisited Van
Diemen’s Land in January 1793,
anchoring in Recherche Bay on the 21st
– the very day Louis XVI was guillotined
in the place de la Révolution for
treason. (Before his execution the King
is said to have asked his captors: “Is
there any news of La Pérouse?”).
On this second visit the French
enjoyed many friendly encounters with
the indigenous people. One Aborigine,
bolder than his fellows, ventured on
board the flagship. Fascinated by the
poultry in their cages, he was given a
fine rooster which he clasped tightly,
making clear to his hosts that he looked
forward to a tasty meal. D’Entrecasteaux
wrote approvingly:
this small tribe seems to offer the most
perfect image of the first state of society,
where men are not yet stirred by
passions, nor corrupted by the vices
which civilisation sometimes brings
with it. ... Less advanced in civilisation
than the people of New Zealand, they
also lack their ferocious temperament.
The hatreds that divide the inhabitants
of that island appear unknown in this
part of New Holland.
The ships sailed in late February,
touching briefly at New Zealand before
heading north for the Friendly Isles
(Tonga). Here the French received a
warm welcome – too warm for the
STILL NO NEWS OF LA PÉROUSE?
The disappearance of La Pérouse has
fascinated explorers, navigators and
historians since d’Entrecasteaux’s illfated voyage in 1792–93, and
numerous expeditions have been made
to the reefs off Vanikoro Island in the
Santa Cruz group of the Solomon
Islands in the hope of answering Louis
XVI’s final question.
It was here, off the western coast of
Vanikoro, that the wreck of one of La
Pérouse’s two ships was discovered by
Irish captain, Peter Dillon, nearly 40
years after its disappearance. The
relics Dillon collected left no doubt
that this was indeed the final resting
place of the La Pérouse expedition.
However, the second wreck was not
found until 1964, although it lay just
two kilometres from the first, and
researchers have still not finally
determined which wreck is L’Astrolabe
and which is La Boussole.
In 1981, an organisation called the
Association Salomon was formed in
New Caledonia to try to solve the
mystery of what happened to La
Pérouse and has since organised a series
of diving expeditions to discover the
cause of the disaster. These expeditions
have retrieved many artefacts from the
ships, which are now housed in the
Musée de la Pérouse in Albi (La
Pérouse’s birthplace in the south of
France), the Laperouse Museum at
Botany Bay, NSW, and the Museum of
Maritime History in New Caledonia.
Confirmation that there had been
survivors from the wrecks was found in
1999, when archeologists working at a
site on Vanikoro Island where it was
believed the French castaways had
camped, unearthed a range of objects
including musket balls, nails, uniform
buttons and a small cannon.
The Association’s most recent diving
expedition, undertaken in April this
year, made the astonishing discovery of
a complete skeleton caught at a depth
of 15 metres in a crack of the reef and
preserved in a thick layer of sediment.
The healthy state of the teeth suggest
that this man was an officer or a
scientist with the expedition, but
forensic work in France on the DNA of
the skeleton has so far failed to reveal
its identity.
While hopes were raised that this
might have been the remains of La
Pérouse himself, a long-held theory
initiated by French navigator and
explorer, Jules Dumont d’Urville, who
visited Vanikoro in 1828, proposes that
La Pérouse was one of a group of
survivors who set out in a small twomasted boat constructed on Vanikoro
about nine months after the wreck,
only to disappear without trace. If that
were the case, then it is unlikely that
we will ever know the final resting
place of Jean-François de Galaup,
Comte de la Pérouse.
Australian Heritage 31
NK7415
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA, NLA.PIC-VN3525572
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA,
commander’s liking, as the islanders,
men and women alike, swarmed aboard.
Sailors, entranced by these Aphrodites
from the sea, cast aside their work, while
the young warriors roamed the ships at
will, picking pockets, stealing weapons
and anything else to hand, until a
semblance of order was at last restored.
With the aid of a Polynesian
dictionary compiled by Cook’s staff,
d’Entrecasteaux questioned several
chiefs about La Pérouse, but found no
evidence that he had called at the
islands. They recalled the visits by Cook
in the 1770s and by Bligh in 1789, but
none by French ships.
Leaving Tonga he sailed west for New
Caledonia, the New Hebrides
(Vanuatu) and the Santa Cruz group
(Ndende). Uncharted land seen southeast of the latter was named Ile de la
Recherche, after the ship, but it was
some 40 miles off his course and
d’Entrecasteaux decided not to
investigate.
Known today as Vanikoro, the island
was in fact the ultimate object of his
search – the final resting place of La
Portrait of d’Entrecasteaux.
Portrait of Charles Pierre Claret Fleurieu.
Pérouse and his ships. Perhaps some
survivors of the wrecks five years
earlier were still alive, hoping
desperately for rescue.
Now almost two years out from
France, sickness ravaged both crews.
Huon de Kermadec, captain of the
Espérance, died of fever in May 1793,
while d’Entrecasteaux himself fell
victim to scurvy and dysentery in July.
His successor too fell dangerously ill,
and it was left to the Chevalier de
Rossel, a lieutenant at the outset, to
take the remnants of the expedition to
Surabaya, Dutch Java, which they
reached in October 1793. Here they
learned of the King’s execution, the
Reign of Terror, and the outbreak of war
between France and its neighbours,
including Holland.
COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA.
Beautemps-Beaupre, C. F., 1766–1854, Carte réduite de la Nouvelle Hollande et des archipels, MAP PH5616, National Library of Australia. This
map shows the route taken by d’Entrecasteaux in 1792 and 1793, drawn in blue ink, and also shows additional pencilling by an unknown third
hand of the route of Baudin’s voyage to Tasmania. The previously missed coastline of South Australia and Victoria have been correctly drawn in, in
pencil, using a cartographic grid and some additional geographical notes and place names are included. Red ink has been used to highlight
places recognised by the d’Entrecasteaux expedition.
32 Australian Heritage
Baudin’s ships the Casuarina, Géographe and Naturaliste in line ahead leaving Port Jackson, November 1802. Watercolour by John Ford,
FASMA.
Ashore, the ships’ companies split
into warring camps, the officers mostly
declaring for the royalists and the
scientists, led by Labillardière,
supporting the republic. With the
officers’ connivance, the Dutch
authorities seized the ships, leaving the
survivors to find their way to Europe as
best they could.
In France, the Terror ended with the
overthrow and beheading of the
revolutionary leader, Robespierre, in
July 1794. Fleurieu, imprisoned for his
friendship with the royal family, was
released and joined the National
Institute of France. With his colleagues
he anxiously awaited news of the
expedition.
Labillardière was among the first to
return, in March 1796, but without his
natural history collections, which had
been seized by British warships on the
passage home. The naturalist appealed
directly to Sir Joseph Banks, President
of the Royal Society of London, seeking
their recovery. Banks generously
recommended the return of “the vast
Herbarium”, numbering 10,000
specimens: “the national character of
Great Britain will gain much credit for
holding a conduct towards Science and
Scientific men liberal in the highest
degree”. The collections were returned
to Paris.
Meanwhile the Institute, despite the
war with Britain, renewed its interest in
scientific voyaging. Nicolas Baudin, an
experienced seaman and leader of a
successful botanical expedition to the
Caribbean in 1796–1798, submitted a
plan for a world-wide voyage of
discovery, taking in the Americas, the
South Seas, southern Africa and New
Holland. Fleurieu and fellow members
of the Institute met the new head of
government, First Consul Bonaparte,
and received approval for a more
limited voyage “having for its main
object the exploration of the south-west
coast of New Holland where Europeans
have not yet penetrated”. For the third
time Fleurieu drew up instructions for a
French voyage which included the
survey of the continent’s unknown
south coast.
Baudin sailed from Le Havre in
October 1800 with two ships, the
Géographe and the Naturaliste, (the
names reflecting the large contingent of
22 geographers and natural scientists on
board) protected by a British passport
issued on Banks’ advice. Though the
best equipped and staffed ever to leave
Europe, his expedition too was beset
with political rivalry and personal
animosity. An unruly mix of civilian
scientists, insubordinate young officers
and a rigid, ageing commander
nourished disunity. Calling at the
Indian Ocean colony of Ile de France
for supplies, the local authorities
withheld support, several scientists and
officers deserted, and Baudin arrived off
the New Holland coast in late May
1801, months behind schedule.
From his landfall at Cape Leeuwin
Baudin headed north, charting the west
and north-west coasts before wintering
at the Dutch outpost of Kupang, in
West Timor. The three-month stay
proved disastrous – some twenty deaths
from fever and dysentery, the loss of
two officers (one wounded in a duel,
one under arrest), and worsening
friction between the commander and
his staff.
Australian Heritage 33
More significantly, the delay allowed
Britain to pre-empt Fleurieu’s dream –
the discovery of the unknown south
coast lying between d’Entrecasteaux’s
Cape Adieu and Bass Strait.
Baudin was unaware that a rival
expedition was at sea. Nine months
after his departure the British Admiralty
had dispatched Matthew Flinders in the
Investigator with orders to survey the
south coast and complete the
circumnavigation of New Holland. An
unstated purpose of his voyage was to
forestall a French attempt to claim
sovereignty of any part of the continent.
When Baudin rounded Cape Leeuwin
on 3rd January 1802, bound for Van
Diemen’s Land to resume his
discoveries, the Investigator lay at
anchor in King George Sound.
The French remained in Tasmanian
waters for ten weeks, revisiting
d’Entrecasteaux Channel and exploring
the island’s east coast. Like their
predecessors, Baudin and his scientists
had friendly contact with the native
Tasmanians, and their observations,
enlivened by the sketches and portraits
of the artists Charles-Alexandre Lesueur
and Nicolas-Martin Petit, provide a
vivid record of Aboriginal life before
white settlement led to its destruction.
In an extraordinary letter to Governor
King later in the year, Baudin gave his
own views on native title:
To my way of thinking, I have never
been able to conceive that there was
justice or even fairness on the part of
Europeans in seizing, in the name of
their governments, a land seen for the
first time, when it was inhabited by men
who have not always deserved the title
of savages, or cannibals, that has been
freely given them ...
It was not a view that would have
found support in either London or Paris.
Within a year Governor King
established a British settlement (the
future Hobart) on the banks of the
Derwent River to forestall the French.
Flinders meanwhile began a detailed
survey of the south coast. When the
rival captains met at Encounter Bay,
South Australia, on 8th April 1802, he
had charted the mainland coast from
Cape Adieu to the place of meeting –
Baudin could only claim the stretch to
the eastward (unknown to either,
Lieutenant Grant in Lady Nelson had
made a running survey from Cape Banks
[south-west of Mt. Gambier] to Bass
Strait in December 1800).
They met again at Port Jackson, where
Baudin remained for five months. Before
departure he purchased a small colonial
schooner, the Casuarina, to assist with
AUSTRALIA’S FRENCH NAMES
Australia’s coastline is dotted with
names that recall the three French
expeditions. The area of Botany Bay
where La Pérouse made his camp is now
the Sydney suburb of La Perouse. The
Lapérouse Museum is close to the site of
his camp, while in the grounds lies the
grave of Fr Laurent Receveur, a
Franciscan priest and scientist who died
at Botany Bay after being wounded in
Samoa. A nearby monument to La
Pérouse was erected in 1825 by French
sailors commanded by Hyacinthe de
Bougainville, son of the circumnavigator
Louis Antoine de Bougainville. La
Pérouse never saw Tasmania, but Mount
La Pérouse, overlooking South Cape, is
nonetheless named for him.
The expedition of Admiral Bruny
d’Entrecasteaux in the Recherche and
L’Espérance in 1792–93, whose primary
mission was to find the missing La
Pérouse, visited the south-east shores of
Van Diemen’s Land. This led to the
naming of Recherche Bay, D’Entrecasteaux Channel and Bruny Island in
Tasmania’s south, where the remains of
the French garden and observatory
established by the expedition’s scientists
during their two visits were recently
discovered. Labillardiere State Reserve
on Bruny Island, named for the
naturalist Jacques Houtou de
Labillardière, commemorates their stay.
The expedition’s survey of the south
34 Australian Heritage
coast of Western Australia is
remembered in the names of the town of
Esperance, Esperance Bay and the
Recherche Archipelago.
Many of the French names along the
West Australian, Tasmanian and South
Australian coasts resulted from Nicolas
Baudin’s explorations in 1801 to 1803.
The names were not bestowed by
Baudin himself, who died at Mauritius
in 1803, but by the naturalist, François
Péron, and the cartographer, Louis de
Freycinet, who wrote the official history
of his voyage and compiled the charts of
their discoveries.
Baudin’s ships, the Géographe and
Naturaliste, are remembered at several
places, including Cape Naturaliste and
Geographe Bay south of Bunbury, and
the Geographe and Naturaliste
Channels into Shark Bay, WA. The
Vasse River, near Busselton, is named for
one of Baudin’s seamen, Thomas
Timothée Vasse, who was presumed
drowned when a ship’s boat capsized in
heavy surf. However, in 1834 British
settlers were told by local Aborigines of
a lone white man who many years before
had spent his days gazing out to sea
awaiting rescue – perhaps this was
helmsman Vasse.
Perth’s Heirisson Island takes its name
from Midshipman François Heirisson of
the Naturaliste, sent to explore the Swan
River. Faure Island and Cape Boullanger
in Shark Bay are named after Pierre
Faure and Charles Pierre Boullanger, the
expedition’s geographers; their names
recur on Schouten and Maria Islands, off
Tasmania’ east coast. The expedition’s
astronomer, Pierre François Bernier, is
recognised by Bernier Island in Shark
Bay, and Cape Bernier on the
Tasmanian mainland opposite Maria
Island.
Given his position, it is perhaps not
surprising that the name Freycinet
occurs several times in Western
Australia and Tasmania – Freycinet
Estuary and Freycinet Reach in Shark
Bay, Cape Freycinet in the south-west,
and Freycinet Peninsula on the east
coast of Tasmania (now the location of
the Freycinet National Park). Navigator
and cartographer, Lieutenant Louis de
Saulces de Freycinet was a junior
lieutenant in the French Navy when he
joined Baudin’s expedition, later taking
command of the schooner Casuarina.
His older brother Henri was senior deck
officer on the Géographe.
The name of the naturalist François
Péron, Freycinet’s collaborator in the
nomenclature of the charts and the
official historian of the voyage, is
widespread – from the Peron Islands
south-west of Darwin, to Cape Peron,
Peron Peninsula and today’s Francois
Peron National Park in the midst of the
Shark Bay World Heritage Area, to
coastal surveys on the return voyage. He
died at Ile de France in September 1803,
ravaged by tuberculosis, and his ships
returned to a France planning the
invasion of England and a First Consul
about to proclaim himself Emperor. The
expedition’s achievements in
geographical discovery, oceanography
and the natural sciences were largely
ignored.
The scientific objectives of the rival
French and British expeditions – drawn
up by scientists on both sides imbued
with Enlightenment values – became
fatally compromised by the strategic
imperatives of wartime. For the two
commanders, each tainted by allegations
of espionage, their voyages ended in
personal disaster.
Baudin died in disgrace on Mauritius,
while Flinders returned to London after
61/2 years’ detention by General Decaen,
Cape Peron near Rockingham south of
Perth, and yet another Cape Peron on
Maria Island.
Baudin’s second-in-command and
captain of the Naturaliste, Emmanuel
Hamelin, is also commemorated at
Shark Bay by the town of Hamelin and
Hamelin Pool – now a marine nature
reserve famous for its marine
stromatolites. His name recurs at Cape
Hamelin and Hamelin Bay, to the north
of Cape Leeuwin in the south-west.
The names of other members of the
Baudin expedition are scattered along
the WA coast, particularly around Shark
Bay, including Cape Levillain on Dirk
Hartog Island named after Stanislas
Levillain, a zoologist who died on the
Naturaliste; Lharidon Bight, named for
Dr Lharidon de Cremenec, surgeon on
the Géographe; and the Bellefin Prong,
after Dr Jerome Bellefin, surgeon on the
Naturaliste. The expedition’s artists,
Charles Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas
Martin Petit, and the gardener
Guichenot also have features in the Bay
named for them. Cape Cuvier, north of
Shark Bay, is named after Professor
Georges Cuvier, the founder of
vertebrate palaeontology and Péron’s
mentor before he joined the expedition.
Missing from this honour roll are the
names of Baudin himself and that of his
successor as expedition commander,
Pierre Bernard Milius. During the
voyage Péron developed a corrosive
hatred for Baudin, so much so that in
the island’s governor, almost forgotten
by his countrymen and with his health
broken.
Fleurieu outlived all three exploring
captains. Scarred by his near-fatal ordeal
during the Terror, he supported
Napoleon as the saviour of France,
serving him loyally until his own death
in 1810, at the age of 72. The Emperor
in turn rewarded him with various high
offices of state, including Administrator
of the Imperial Household and
Governor of the Tuileries Palace. His
services to exploration and science were
overlooked – along with the
achievements of the three expeditions
dispatched to the South Lands between
1785 and 1800.
Further Reading
Brosse, Jacques. Great Voyages of Exploration:
the Golden Age of Discovery in the Pacific.
Doubleday, © 1983.
his history of the voyage he did not
once mention his captain by name.
Milius in turn shared the loneliness of
command, and found it necessary to
discipline his subordinates. The requital
for both men was exclusion from the
naming process.
Baudin at least has won some belated
recognition on the map. Following the
recent Encounter 2002 celebrations in
South Australia, Baudin Rocks, off
Robe (first named by Flinders in honour
of his rival, but later expunged) has
been reinstated, Baudin Conservation
Park and the township of Baudin Beach
on Kangaroo Island have been
recognised, and a previously unnamed
islet off Eyre Peninsula has been named
Nicolas Baudin Island.
While blacklisting Baudin and Milius,
Freycinet and Péron had no such
inhibitions about the newly created
Imperial family of France. Freycinet’s
1808 chart of the south coast named the
region stretching from Wilson’s
Promontory to Cape Adieu Terre
Napoléon. Although the name (perhaps
unfortunately for tourism), along with
Golfe Bonaparte, Golfe Josephine and
other Imperial nomenclature, has not
survived, many other features still bear
the names of outstanding Frenchmen –
statesmen, generals, scientists and
writers – such as Murat Bay (for
Joachim Murat, King of Naples, Marshal
of France, and Napoleon’s brother-inlaw), Cape Rabelais (for the celebrated
Horner, Frank. Looking for La Pérouse:
D’Entrecasteaux in Australia and the South
Pacific 1792–1793. Miegunyah Press,
1995.
Horner, Frank. The French Reconnaissance:
Baudin in Australia 1801–1803. Melbourne
University Press, 1987.
Brown, Anthony J. Ill-Starred Captains:
Flinders and Baudin. Rev. edn. Fremantle
Arts Centre Press, 2004.
The Author
Anthony Brown is the author of IllStarred Captains: Flinders and Baudin, a
narrative history of the rival French and
British voyages of discovery 1801–1803,
and is co-editor with Gillian Dooley of
Matthew Flinders Private Journal,
1803–1814, published by the Friends of
the State Library of SA in October
2005. He is a visiting fellow in the
History Department at Flinders
University. ◆
satirist), and Jussieu Bay (for Antoine
Laurent de Jussieu, a noted botanist).
The pattern is repeated on Australia’s
remote north-west coast, charted by the
expedition in 1801 and again in 1803.
The Bonaparte Archipelago, Joseph
Bonaparte Gulf (for Napoleon’s brother
and King of Spain), Cape Voltaire and
Pascal Island (for the philosophers
Voltaire and Blaise Pascal), Cape
Bougainville (noted explorer and
admiral) and the Institute Isles (“in
honour of [the Institute of France], the
pride of our country”) and many other
features on this coast are a legacy of the
French explorers.
For many years Fleurieu’s role in
planning the voyages of La Pérouse,
d’Entrecasteaux and Baudin went
unrecognised. Although Freycinet
named the large bay west of the
Freycinet Peninsula in Tasmania for
Fleurieu, the English maps substituted
Great Oyster Bay. In 1911 his greatnephew, Count Alphonse de Fleurieu,
visited Adelaide and met with the
Council of the Royal Geographical
Society of SA, which recommended
that the unnamed peninsula
terminating in Cape Jervis be given the
name Fleurieu Peninsula “in honour of
one who is worthy to be remembered in
the annals of Australian geography”.
The state government approved the
name later that year. The honour was
well-deserved.
Australian Heritage 35