La Pérouse Expedition (1785-1788): The Lost French Voyage

The La Pérouse expedition (1785–1788) was a French scientific voyage of exploration around the Pacific, commanded by Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, with the frigates La Boussole and L’Astrolabe. Intended to rival the achievements of James Cook, it charted coasts from Alaska to Korea and Japan before vanishing after leaving Botany Bay in March 1788. Its disappearance became one of the great maritime mysteries of the age, solved only in the nineteenth century when relics were traced to the wrecks at Vanikoro in the Solomon Islands.

Background: France answers Cook

After the American War of Independence, King Louis XVI and his naval minister, the Marquis de Castries, planned a voyage to match Britain’s Pacific expeditions. The king took a personal interest, and the detailed instructions, drafted largely by the geographer Charles Pierre Claret de Fleurieu, covered geography, trade, natural history and relations with Pacific peoples.

The voyage was to fill the gaps left by Cook’s voyages, especially in the North Pacific, assess opportunities for the whaling and fur trades, and gather scientific knowledge. The instructions also urged humane treatment of local peoples and the use of force only in self-defence.

La Pérouse, born near Albi in 1741, was an experienced naval officer. He had fought in the Seven Years’ War and in the American war, during which he captured British forts on Hudson Bay in 1782. His second-in-command, Paul-Antoine Fleuriot de Langle, commanded the Astrolabe.

Ships, crew and scientists

The two ships, both converted storeships rated as frigates, carried around 220 men. The scientific staff included the astronomer Joseph Lepaute Dagelet, the physicist and naturalist Robert de Lamanon, the naturalist and priest Father Receveur, a gardener, and the artists Gaspard Duché de Vancy and the Prévost uncle and nephew.

The ships carried trade goods, scientific instruments and gifts, including plants and seeds intended to be introduced to the Pacific islands.

The voyage

The expedition left Brest on 1 August 1785, rounded Cape Horn early in 1786 and called at Concepción in Chile. In April 1786 it visited Easter Island, and in May the French landed on Maui, becoming the first Europeans known to set foot on that Hawaiian island.

In July 1786 the ships reached Lituya Bay in Alaska, which La Pérouse called Port des Français. On 13 July two boats sounding the entrance were swept into the tidal race and capsized, and 21 men drowned. The French then sailed down the coast to Monterey in Spanish California, where they were among the first foreign visitors, and crossed the Pacific to Macau and Manila.

In 1787 the expedition explored the little-known seas of north-east Asia. It passed Jeju Island and the coast of Korea, sailed into the Sea of Japan and along the coast of Tartary, and in August passed through the strait between Sakhalin and Hokkaido now named after La Pérouse.

At Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka in September 1787, La Pérouse sent the young interpreter Barthélemy de Lesseps overland with the expedition’s journals and charts. Lesseps crossed Siberia and Russia in about a year, reaching Versailles in October 1788, an epic journey in its own right.

Tragedy in Samoa and arrival at Botany Bay

In Kamchatka La Pérouse received new orders to investigate the British settlement planned for New South Wales. Sailing south, the ships stopped at Tutuila in Samoa in December 1787. On 11 December a watering party led by de Langle was attacked at a bay now known as Massacre Bay (A’asu). De Langle, Lamanon and ten others were killed. La Pérouse refused to take revenge on the island’s people.

After calling at Tonga and Norfolk Island, the ships arrived off Botany Bay on 24 January 1788. They found the First Fleet of Arthur Phillip there, preparing to move to Port Jackson, where the colony of Sydney was founded on 26 January.

The French camped at Botany Bay for about six weeks, built boats from parts carried aboard and maintained polite relations with the British. Father Receveur died there in February 1788. La Pérouse entrusted letters and journals to a British ship returning to Europe. On 10 March 1788 the expedition sailed and was never seen again by Europeans.

Searching for La Pérouse

When no news arrived, the French National Assembly in 1791 sent an expedition under Antoine Bruni d’Entrecasteaux with the ships Recherche and Espérance to search for the missing ships. In 1793 they passed close to Vanikoro but did not stop, and d’Entrecasteaux himself died of illness before the voyage ended.

The mystery was solved by chance. In 1826 the Irish trader Peter Dillon found a silver sword guard and other French objects on the island of Tikopia, which islanders said came from Vanikoro. In 1827 Dillon visited Vanikoro and collected relics, and in 1828 the French navigator Jules Dumont d’Urville, commanding a new Astrolabe, located wreck remains and built a memorial on the island.

According to islanders’ accounts, both ships had been driven onto the reefs during a storm. One sank in deep water with heavy loss of life; men from the other reached shore, built a camp and, after some time, a group left in a small vessel made from the wreck. Their fate is unknown.

Archaeology and legacy

Wrecks at two sites on the Vanikoro reef were found in 1964, and later French expeditions recovered cannons, anchors, instruments and personal items. In 2005 an expedition identified one wreck with certainty as the Boussole, partly from a sextant matching the ship’s records. A skeleton found in 2003 in the wreck has been studied by forensic scientists, though the individual has not been identified with certainty.

The expedition’s surviving journals were published in 1797 as Voyage de La Pérouse autour du monde, and the charts sent home added much to European knowledge of the North Pacific and East Asia. The Musée Lapérouse in Albi displays objects from the wrecks.

A well-known story claims that Louis XVI asked about La Pérouse on the morning of his execution in 1793. It is often repeated but is not firmly documented. La Pérouse greatly admired Cook and planned his route to fill the gaps left by Cook’s third voyage, especially along the coasts of north-east Asia. Together, their expeditions mark the high point of Enlightenment Pacific exploration, when navies carried scientists, artists and instruments as well as guns.

The expedition is also remembered in place names: the La Pérouse Strait, the Sydney suburb of La Perouse beside Botany Bay, where a monument and museum recall the French visit, and streets and ships named after him in France.

Timeline

• 1785, 1 August: The Boussole and Astrolabe sail from Brest.
• 1786, May: The French land on Maui.
• 1786, 13 July: Twenty-one men drown at Lituya Bay, Alaska.
• 1787, August: The expedition passes through the La Pérouse Strait.
• 1787, September: Lesseps leaves Kamchatka with the journals.
• 1787, 11 December: De Langle and eleven others are killed in Samoa.
• 1788, 24 January: The ships arrive at Botany Bay.
• 1788, 10 March: The expedition leaves Botany Bay and disappears.
• 1826–1828: Dillon and Dumont d’Urville trace the wrecks to Vanikoro.

Why it matters

The La Pérouse expedition was France’s most ambitious scientific voyage of the eighteenth century and added greatly to knowledge of the Pacific rim. Its disappearance, and the long search that followed, made it one of the best-remembered stories of exploration, still being investigated by archaeologists today.