Pierre Marie François Pagès

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Pierre Marie François, Vicomte de Pagès (born October 16, 1740 in Toulouse , † January 11, 1792 in Saint-Domingue ) was a French naval officer, adventurer and explorer.

Life

Pagès Map of North America, 1782

Pierre Marie François, Vicomte de Pagès came from a noble family. He joined the French Navy in May 1757 at the age of 16, served on the Triton in the Mediterranean and took part in the capture of an enemy privateer . In 1759 he embarked on the Souverain and took part on August 17 of that year in a battle in Lagos and on October 10 in a battle fought off Rochefort ; he was wounded on both occasions. In 1765 he was on board the Gracieuse , which was intended to fight the Moroccan privateers of Larache . The next year he served on the Dédaigneuse , with which he fought at Saint-Domingue (now part of Haiti ).

Soon afterwards Pagès made the decision to go on a trip around the world. If possible, he also wanted to discover the Northwest Passage . In the description of his travels, he explains that it was his intention to wander through the northern coasts of Asia. He planned to familiarize himself with the way of life of the northern peoples, to follow them on their migrations and thus to move from place to place along the seashore. In this way he believed that he could either find the sea route in northern Siberia or convince himself of its impossibility if the connection of the coast had led him to North America . However, this plan never came to fruition.

In any case, on June 30, 1767, Pagès left the city of Cape Français on Saint-Domingue for Louisiana . On July 28, he arrived in New Orleans , followed the Mississippi and Red Rivers upstream to Natchitoches , crossed Texas , which was then almost completely desert, and arrived in Mexico City on February 28, 1768 . After a short stay in this capital, he went to Acapulco and embarked there on April 2nd. In Manila , the capital of the Philippines , he did not arrive until October 15, 1768 due to adverse winds and did not find the support he wanted to travel through China . He therefore decided to abandon his plan to migrate to northern Asia for now and to end the trip around the world by making the way back via East India. In 1769/70 he visited, among others, Batavia , Bombay , Muscat , Basra , Damascus and Lebanon one after the other . Finally, after sailing past Rhodes , Malta and Sardinia , he arrived in Marseille on December 5, 1771 . He had long been thought dead and now appeared so changed by the complaints of the long journey that his relatives and friends hardly recognized him.

Pagès resumed his position in the Navy. In 1773 he was appointed to participate in the Kerguelen expedition to the southern regions of the world. He accepted with pleasure and returned safe and sound from this dangerous journey. With the permission of his superiors, he sailed on a frigate from Toulon to Brest in the spring of 1776 in order to embark in Holland on a ship equipped for whaling near Spitsbergen for a research trip to the Arctic Ocean . The main purpose of this expedition was to compare the climate of high northern latitudes with that of the southern polar regions, which had seemed much colder to him on Kerguelen's expedition. On April 16, 1776, Pagès cast off Texel and reached latitude 81 ° 30 ′ north on May 16, where the sea was still relatively free of ice; but the ship came across a massive ice sheet a little further north. On August 16, 1776, Pagès landed again in the port of Amsterdam .

In the course of the American War of Independence Pagès took part on board the Fier on July 27, 1778 in the naval battle of Ouessant . On July 4, 1779 he was present at the conquest of Granada . He returned to France in January 1781 and was appointed correspondent for the Royal Academy of Sciences in August 1781. He retired from naval service in January 1782 with the degree of ship's captain, retired to his property, a plantation on Saint-Domingue, and was murdered here, like many of his compatriots, in the slave revolt in 1792. Among other things, he had been a knight of the Ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Louis . In 1781 he became a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences .

Pagès' travel description, Voyages autour du monde et vers les deux pôles, par terre et par mer, pendant les années 1767-1776 (2 vols., Paris 1782, with coppers and maps) gives, according to the judgment of Eyriès, a testimony to both Courage, patience and activity as well as the author's love of truth, openness and unpretentiousness. He only tells what he saw. Alexander von Humboldt , who 30 years later toured the part of Mexico that Pagès had touched and described, declares that he found Pagès 'statements to be true and accurate, but that the spelling of the Spanish and Mexican proper names in Pagès' cannot be relied on. Travel description is.

literature

Remarks

  1. ^ Directory of members since 1666: Letter P. Académie des sciences, accessed on January 30, 2020 (French).
  2. ↑ Eyriès: Pagès (Marie François, Vicomte de) , in: Louis Gabriel Michaud (ed.): Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne , 1st edition, vol. 32, p. 364.
personal data
SURNAME Pagès, Pierre Marie François
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pagès, Pierre Marie François Vicomte de (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French naval officer, adventurer and explorer
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1740
PLACE OF BIRTH Toulouse
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1792
Place of death Saint-Domingue