Louis de Freycinet
Louis Claude Desaulces de Freycinet (born August 7, 1779 in Montélimar , † August 18, 1842 in Loriol-sur-Drôme , Département Drôme ) was a French explorer .
Freycinet entered the French naval service in 1794 and accompanied with his older brother, Louis-Henri (1777-1840), in 1800 the explorer Captain Nicolas Baudin to Australia , on the so-called Baudin expedition . On his return in 1804 he became a ship lieutenant and the following year he was employed by the navy depot for maps and plans. After the death of François Péron , he continued work on the publication of the official expedition report of the trip to Australia. Like his predecessor, he didn't mention the leader of the expedition, Nicolas Baudin, at all. Among other things, he also wrote an overview of the " kingdoms of the island of Timor ", an important source about the island at that time.
As captain of the ship Uranie he undertook a new voyage to the South Seas from 1817 to 1820 , stations were Gibraltar (the "Uranie" was the first French ship that docked in the British Crown Colony after the Napoleonic Wars), Santa Cruz de Tenerife on Tenerife , Rio de Janeiro , the Cape Colony , Mauritius and Réunion , Shark Bay on the west coast of Australia, Timor , Waigeo in the north of New Guinea , which benefited its measurements due to its proximity to the equator, Guam in the Mariana Islands , the Hawaiian Islands, Sydney and the Falkland Islands , where Uranie was shipwrecked in the French bay. After two months on the barren islands, they were rescued by the American ship Mercury , which was supposed to bring some South American revolutionaries to Valparaíso . De Freycinet bought the ship, renamed it Physicienne and had himself and his crew brought to Montevideo and then sailed back to France via Rio de Janeiro. Members of his expedition included ensign Louis Isidore Duperrey , the botanist Charles Gaudichaud-Beaupré and the painters Jacques Arago and Adrien Taunay (1803-1828). During the trip he met, among others, the Russian circumnavigator Otto von Kotzebue in Cape Town and the later Antarctic explorer James Weddell in the Falkland Islands. Gaudichaud-Beaupré later named the Freycinetia plant genus discovered on this trip after him.
After the trip, he was largely occupied with the publication of the multi-volume expedition report, which included the chapters of language studies, zoology, botany, pendulum observations, observations of magnetism, meteorology and hydrography. For his work in the field of cartography and the measurement of the earth's magnetic field, he was appointed a member of the Académie des sciences , the scientific results of his expedition were recognized by a high-caliber expert committee, which also included Alexander von Humboldt .
During his circumnavigation of the world he was accompanied by his wife Rose de Freycinet , who had secretly sneaked on board disguised as a man in the port of departure in Toulon. In letters to her friend Caroline de Nanteuil, she reports on the progress of the journey. These letters were published as a book by the historian Charles Duplomb in 1927 and are believed to be the first written account of a trip around the world by a woman.
In 1830 Louis de Freycinet retired to his country estate in Loriol, where he died on August 18, 1842.
The bay Henri Freycinet Harbor in Western Australia and the Freycinet National Park on the Freycinet Peninsula in Tasmania are named after the explorer.
Works
- FAPéron, L. Freycinet: Voyage de Découvertes aux Terres Australes, executé par ordre de Sa Majesté l'Empereur et Roi, sur les corvettes Le Géographe, Le Naturaliste, et la goelette Le Casuarina, pendant les Annés 1800, 1802, 1803 et 1804 . 2 volumes, Paris in 1807 and 1816, and Atlas 1811. [1]
- Voyage de découvertes aux terres australes pendant les années 1800-4 . 4 volumes u. Atlas (2nd edition Paris 1824–1825)
- Voyage autour du monde pendant les années 1817-20 . 13 vols. (Paris 1824-1844)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ History of Timor ( Memento of the original from March 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 824 kB) - Technical University of Lisbon
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Freycinet, Louis de |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Freycinet, Louis Claude Desaulses de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French explorer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 7, 1779 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Montélimar , France |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 18, 1842 |
| Place of death | Loriol-sur-Drôme , Drôme department, France |