The voyage of the Boussole and the Astrolabe

Jean-François de La Pérouse · 1785 CE – 1788 CE · Earth

The voyage of the Boussole and the Astrolabe — Jean-François de La Pérouse · 1785 CE – 1788 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Complete the Pacific chart left unfinished by Cook, and survey its coasts for trade and science.

Historical context

Louis XVI wanted a French rival to Cook’s voyages, and annotated the instructions for this one in his own hand. Every coast was to be charted, every people described and every specimen preserved — and most of the scientists’ work was lost with the ships, except what was sent home from Macao, overland from Kamchatka and through the British at Botany Bay.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Two ships out of Brest

    1 August 1785

    On 1 August 1785 the Boussole and the Astrolabe sail from Brest roads with astronomers, naturalists, a gardener and three artists aboard.

  2. Port des Français

    July 1786

    In July 1786 the ships enter a spectacular Alaskan fjord, and on 13 July twenty-one men drown in the tide race at its mouth.

  3. The missions of Monterey

    September 1786

    On 14 September 1786 the expedition anchors off Monterey, where the Spanish have orders to receive the French as they would their own ships.

  4. A map drawn in the sand

    1787 CE

    Feeling his way up the Gulf of Tartary in July 1787, La Pérouse asks the Ainu and Nivkh of its shores what lies to the north.

  5. Through the strait

    August 1787

    In August 1787 the ships pass between Sakhalin and Hokkaido into the Sea of Okhotsk, through the strait that now bears his name.

  6. The massacre at Tutuila

    11 December 1787

    On 11 December 1787 a watering party is attacked on a Samoan beach; twelve men die, including Fleuriot de Langle of the Astrolabe.

  7. Six days after the First Fleet

    26 January 1788

    On 26 January 1788 the two French ships sail into Botany Bay just as the British convict fleet is moving to Port Jackson.

  8. The reefs of Vanikoro

    1788 CE

    According to islanders questioned from 1826 on, both ships struck the reefs of Vanikoro, in the Santa Cruz group, on a night of storm; survivors built a small vessel, sailed away and were never heard of again.

Outcome

Nearly three years of surveys from Alaska to Sakhalin, with journals sent home from Kamchatka and Botany Bay and published in 1797; then the loss of both ships on the reefs of Vanikoro in 1788, a fate traced only in 1826–27, and the survivors’ end still unknown.

Jean-François de La Pérouse

French naval officer sent by Louis XVI to complete the map of the Pacific, and lost with both his ships on the reefs of Vanikoro.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

Continue exploring