Louis-Claude de Saulces de Freycinet

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Louis de Freycinet
Born
Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet

(1779-08-07)7 August 1779
Montélimar, Drôme, France
Died18 August 1841(1841-08-18) (aged 62)
Château de Freycinet, Saulce-sur-Rhône, Drôme, France
AllegianceFrance
Branch
French Navy
Rank
Captain
Known forCircumnavigating the Earth, drawing the first map to show the full Australian coastline
SpouseRose de Freycinet

Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet (French pronunciation: [lwi d(ə) fʁɛsinɛ]; 7 August 1779 – 18 August 1841) was a French Navy officer. Following the 1800–1803 Baudin expedition to Australia, he published in 1811 the first map to show the full Australian coastline. He later circumnavigated the Earth, and was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1825.

Biography

He was born at Montélimar, Drôme. Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet was his full name; many called him Louis de Freycinet. His mother was Élisabeth-Antoinette-Catherine Armand.[1] He had three brothers, Louis Henri de Saulces de Freycinet (a fellow naval officer after whom Louis named Henri Freycinet Harbour, who was also part of the Baudin expedition), André Charles de Saulces de Freycinet and the youngest, Frédéric Casimir de Saulces de Freycinet (father of Charles de Freycinet). Louis Claude was the second oldest.

In 1793 amid the French Revolution he joined the French Navy as a midshipman, and took part in several engagements against the British. In 1800, he was appointed to an exploration expedition to southern and south-western coasts of Australia under Nicolas Baudin, on Naturaliste and Géographe. Freycinet's brother, Louis Henri de Freycinet, was also part of the expedition.

Between September 1802 and August 1803, Freycinet captained the schooner Casuarina, surveying the Australian coastline. He then transferred to Naturaliste, and returned to France in 1804.[2] Matthew Flinders was being held captive by the French on Mauritius, thus many of his discoveries were revisited and unintendedly claimed by François Péron, and new names were given by this expedition. In 1824, it was remedied in the second edition of Voyage découvertes aux terres australes.[3] In the end, Freycinet managed to have his map of the Australian coastline published in 1811, three years before Flinders published his.[4] An inlet on the coast of Western Australia is called Freycinet Estuary. Cape Freycinet between Cape Leeuwin and Cape Naturaliste and the Freycinet Peninsula with Freycinet National Park in Tasmania also bear the explorer's name.

Depiction of Freycinet's exploration to the Southern territories.

In 1805, he returned to Paris, and was entrusted by the government with the work of preparing the maps and plans of the expedition. He also completed the narrative, and the whole work appeared under the title of Voyage de découvertes aux terres australes (Paris, 1807–1816).[5]

The plant genus Freycinetia (Pandanaceae) was named in his honour,[6] as was the Hawaiian native tree/shrub Santalum freycinetianum.[7]

Circumnavigation on Uranie

French soldiers, priest, Hawaiians on ship
Baptism of Hawaiians on the Uranie in 1819

In 1817, he was given command of the French corvette Uranie (1811), especially reconfigured to a new exploration voyage. Uranie carried the marine hydrologist Louis Isidore Duperrey, the naturalists Jean Quoy and Joseph Gaimard, the artist Jacques Arago, and his junior draughtsman Adrien Taunay the Younger.[8]

Uranie sailed to Rio de Janeiro by December 1817, taking a series of pendulum measurements gather information in the fields of geography, ethnology, astronomy, terrestrial magnetism, meteorology, and for collecting specimens in natural history.[5] Freycinet also managed to sneak his wife Rose de Freycinet aboard.[9][2]

For three years, Freycinet cruised about the Pacific, visiting Australia twice (1818 and 1819), New Guinea (1818–1819), the Mariana Islands (early 1819), Hawaiian Islands (August 1819) other Pacific islands, South America, and other places. Notwithstanding the loss of Uranie on the Falkland Islands during the return voyage, Freycinet returned to France with fine collections in all departments of natural history, and with voluminous notes and drawings of the countries visited.[5][10]

The results of this voyage were published under Freycinet's supervision, with the title of Voyage autour du monde fait par ordre du Roi sur les corvettes de S. M. l'Uranie et la Physicienne, pendant les années 1817, 1818, 1819 et 1820, in 13 quarto volumes and 4 folio volumes of plates and maps.[5]

Freycinet was admitted into the French Academy of Sciences in 1825, and was one of the founders of the Paris Geographical Society.[5] He died at the family's Château de Freycinet[11] near Saulce-sur-Rhône, Drôme in 1841.

Journals of the 1817–1820 voyage

See also

Taxa named in his honour

Notes and references

Notes

References

  1. Annuaire de la noblesse de France et des maisons souveraines de l'Europe available at Gallica (Directory of the nobility of France and the sovereign houses of Europe), André Borel d'Hauterive.
  2. Taillemite (2002), p. 196.
  3. Fornasiero, F. J.; Peter Monteath; John West-Sooby (2004). Encountering Terra Australis: the Australian voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders. Wakefield Press. pp. 296ff. ISBN 978-1-86254-625-7. Retrieved 12 January 2011.
  4. "The French Connection". International League of Antiquarian Booksellers. Retrieved 12 January 2011.
  5. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Freycinet, Louis Claude Desaulses de". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 211–212.
  6. "Freycinetia cumingiana - Plant Finder". www.missouribotanicalgarden.org. Retrieved 2020-02-26.
  7. Agriculture Handbook. U.S. Department of Agriculture. 1989.
  8. Freycinet, Louis de (1824). Voyage autour du monde, entrepris par ordre du roi. Exécuté sur les corvettes de S.M. l'Uranie et la Physicienne, pendant les années 1817, 1818, 1819 et 1820 (in French). Vol. 1. Paris: Pillet Aîné. p. xi-xii, xxxv.
  9. Sayers, Stuart (28 April 1962). "A French Wife's Voyage Around the World in Defiance of Orders". The Age. Retrieved 12 January 2011.
  10. Arago, Jacques (1823). Narrative of a voyage round the world, in the Uranie and Physicienne corvettes, commanded by Captain Freycinet, during the years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820 : on a scientific expedition undertaken by order of the French government : in a series of letters to a friend. Oxford University. London : Treuttel and Wurtz : Treuttel, Jun. and Richter. pp. ii–iv.
  11. Château de Freycinet.
  12. Christopher Scharpf & Kenneth J. Lazara (22 September 2018). "Order ORECTOLOBIFORMES (Carpet Sharks)". The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database. Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J. Lazara. Retrieved 7 March 2022.
  13. Christopher Scharpf; Kenneth J. Lazara (24 July 2018). "Order GOBIIFORMES: Family OXUDERCIDAE (p-z)". The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database. Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J. Lazara. Retrieved 13 August 2018.

Bibliography

  • Edward Duyker François Péron: An Impetuous Life: Naturalist and Voyager, Miegunyah/MUP, Melb., 2006, ISBN 978-0-522-85260-8,
  • Fornasiero, Jean; Monteath, Peter and West-Sooby, John. Encountering Terra Australis: the Australian voyages of Nicholas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, Kent Town, South Australia, Wakefield Press, 2004. ISBN 1-86254-625-8
  • Frank Horner, The French Reconnaissance: Baudin in Australia 1801–1803, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1987 ISBN 0-522-84339-5.
  • Marchant, Leslie R. French Napoleonic Placenames of the South West Coast, Greenwood, WA. R.I.C. Publications, 2004. ISBN 1-74126-094-9
  • Hordern House, Captain Louis de Freycinet and his Voyages to the Terres Australes, Hordern House, Sydney, 2011 ISBN 978-1-875567-62-1
  • Federico Motta, Sous des cieux inconnus - Le voyage autour du monde de Rose de Freycinet (1817-1820) - Le journal annoté, l’analyse de Rose en femme de son époque, et les questions historiques du voyage de l’Uranie, July 2026.
 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18865062 ; 10.6084/m9.figshare.31496554.[1]
  • Rose de Freycinet (patronymic Pinon) and Federico Motta (curator), Una viaggiatrice clandestina a bordo dell’Uranie negli anni 1817–20, Verona, June 2017. Italian translation of Rose’s original journal, fully annotated and accompanied by new documents.[2]
  • Taillemite, Étienne (2002). Dictionnaire des Marins français. Tallandier. ISBN 2-84734-008-4. OCLC 606770323.
  • Rare Freycinet map. Ile Decrès, or Kangaroo Island, 1803, held by the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia
  1. This edition is not a revision of the 2017 Italian book, but a new critical edition offering a renewed conceptual interpretation of Rose de Freycinet.
  2. Motta, Federico (2017). Rose de Freycinet. Una viaggiatrice clandestina a bordo dell'Uranie negli anni 1817-20. Il Frangente. ISBN 9788898023806.