Étienne Marchand

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Étienne Marchand
(engraving by Conrad Westermayr , 1805)

Étienne Marchand (* 1755 in Grenada , † May 15, 1793 in Réunion ) was a French captain, merchant and circumnavigator. He undertook the second French circumnavigation after Louis Antoine de Bougainville with the merchant ship Solide . Marchand claimed the first discovery of some islands of the Marquesas for himself, but later discovered that the American Joseph Ingraham had anticipated him.

Life

Étienne Marchand was born on the island of Grenada in 1755 when it was still a French colony. He served in the French merchant navy and achieved the rank of captain. On the return journey from Bengal in 1788 he met the British naval officer Nathaniel Portlock on St. Helena , who had sailed as a mate with James Cook on his third voyage (1776-1780). It was there that he got to know the possibilities of the fur trade in the North Pacific. Portlock was on his way back from a profitable trade expedition that had taken him to China from the northwest coast of America .

Once in France, Marchand won over the brothers Jean and David Baux, wealthy Huguenot traders from Marseille , for his plan to trade fur between Northwest America and China. In 1790, the Baux brothers equipped a ship for a trade voyage to the North Pacific at their own expense.

The Solide was a 23 m long merchant ship weighing 300 tons , shod with copper. She was provided with the necessary equipment as well as barter and trade goods in Marseille, because the journey of the Solide was a purely commercial enterprise. The command of the ship was given to Étienne Marchand.

On December 14th, 1790, the Solide left Marseille, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and sailed via Tenerife and the Cape Verde Islands into the South Atlantic. At the beginning of 1791, the Solide circled Cape Horn and sailed without touching the South American mainland to the Marquesas, which came into view on June 12, 1791. On June 14, 1791 the Solide anchored in the Madre de Dios Bay (Bay of Vaitahu) on the island of Dominica ( Hiva Oa ), which the Spaniard Alvaro de Mendaña de Neyra had discovered for Europe in 1595. Marchand stayed there for two days to take in water and food. On June 16, 1791 the Solide sailed west-northwest and Marchand spotted an island on the horizon, which he called Île Marchand ( Ua Pou ). He went ashore in Hakahau Bay and one day later in Hakahetau Bay and there was a peaceful encounter with the indigenous people. On June 21st Marchand reached Ua Huka , which he named Île du Solide after his ship, and on June 22nd another island came into view, which he named Île Baux ( Nuku Hiva ) after his shipowners . To the northwest of it was a small island with a rocky reef in front of it, which he named Les Deux Frères ( Motu Iti ) after the Baux brothers. Marchand discovered two more islands, which he named Île Masse ( Eiao ) and Île Chanal ( Hatutu ), after his officers Pierre Masse and Prosper Chanal.

On June 24, 1791 Marchand sailed from the Marquesas to the northwest coast of North America. On the North American west coast, on the Queen Charlotte Islands and Vancouver Island , he spent a few weeks trading furs that he brought to China via Hawaii . He reached Macau on November 27, 1791. There he met the seriously ill Joseph Ingraham , whom Claude Roblet, the ship's doctor of the Solid, was treating. Marchand discovered that Ingraham had already seen the Marquesas islands he had discovered two months earlier. Marchand drove back to France via Mauritius and arrived in Toulon on August 14, 1792 , after the Solide had circumnavigated the earth once.

Although the trip was not profitable as he could not sell his furs in China, his five-volume travelogue, published posthumously by Comte de Fleurieu in Paris in 1798, was a commercial success. Marchand died on May 15, 1793 on the island of Réunion .

Fonts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Académie de Marseille: Dictionnaire des Marseillais , Marseille, 2001
  2. ↑ Peter H. Buck: Explorers of the Pacific: European and American Discoveries in Polynesia , Honolulu 1953, p. 55
  3. ^ A b c John Dunmore: Who's who in Pacific Navigation , Honolulu 1991
personal data
SURNAME Marchand, Etienne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French captain, merchant and circumnavigator
DATE OF BIRTH 1755
PLACE OF BIRTH Grenada
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1793
Place of death Reunion