Printable version (text Only)The Baudin Expedition of 1800-1804
Kate Pratt, Executive Director
Terra Australis 2001 WA Association Inc
prominent place in the history of Western Australia and France.As far back as the early 16th century, French navigators participated in the unsuccessful search for the Great Southern Land. When intensive exploration of the Australian coast began in the last third of the 18th century, France played a significant role. Between 1800 and 1804 a remarkable French voyage carried out one of the most fruitful maritime enterprises of all time.
The Baudin Expedition discovered and collected samples of 2,542 new animal species, which more than doubled those of the known world. The expedition secured the largest and most valuable natural history collection of its time - over 200 000 specimens, including more than 30 live animals. Baudin has never been given due credit for the amazing feat of charting nearly two thirds of the Australian coastline, some 600kms of it for the first time. He gave French names to hundreds of locations around the Australian coast, approximately 240 of which are still in use in Western Australia today. The cartographer Freycinet made the first detailed map of Australia.
At the turn of the 19th century, traditional enemies Britain and France were, once again, at war with each other. France was ruled by Napoléon Bonaparte, who had seized power after the Revolution had run its course. Napoleon sent out the Baudin Expedition to discover new lands and trading opportunities, to make and record scientific discoveries and to facilitate the operations of the astronomers and engineers and the research of the naturalists.
Baudin’s Expedition was, in many ways, the culmination of half a century of Enlightenment exploration of the Indian and Pacific Oceans by French and British navigators. Amongst his most eminent precursors were Bougainville and Cook.
Following the establishment by Cook of the colony at Port Jackson, British interest was focussed largely on the Pacific and on the Eastern seaboard of Australia.
In 1796, Post-Captain Nicolas Baudin, a native of Ile de Ré, submitted to the Institute of France, a proposal to circumnavigate the world and to explore the South West of Terra Australis Incognita. The project was later modified and authorized by Napoleon, who made available considerable sums of money and appointed as its commander, Baudin, a merchant navy captain, who had previously conducted successful scientific expeditions in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Two naval corvettes were converted and lavishly fitted out in Le Havre. Captain Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin was named second-in-command of the voyage and 23 scientists were engaged from the domains of astronomy, botany, mineralogy, zoology, horticulture and geography. One of the ship’s botanists, Leschenault, would give his name to a little blue West Australian wild flower.
On the 19th of October 1800, the two ships, aptly named the Géographe and the Naturaliste, set sail from Le Havre for the Great Southern Lands, via Tenerife and Ile de France (now Mauritius). After seven months of privation and illness - more than 20 sailors deserted at Ile de France - land was sighted at Cape Leeuwin on the 27th of May 1801. The ships anchored at present-day Géographe Bay and members of the ship’s company came ashore four days later. Many scientific excursions were conducted from this location, including several by François Péron, an ambitious young student of zoology and medicine. Numerous specimens were collected and encounters took place between the French sailors and the local Aborigines.
During a severe storm, a long boat or chaloupe was lost and an unfortunate sailor, Timothée Vasse was presumed drowned. According to local legend, however, Vasse may have survived and lived with an aboriginal tribe. To this day, the search continues for the missing long boat, as well as for a lost anchor from the Naturaliste.
Separated by inclement weather, the two ships charted independently elements of the coast from south to north. Hamelin, in the Naturaliste, anchored off Rottnest Island and sent parties to explore Cottesloe Beach, the Swan River and elevated areas of King’s Park. Heirisson Island is named after one of the ship’s officers, François Heirisson who went up the Swan River as far as Henley Brook and drew the first map of the river. There is a monument at Cottesloe beach commemorating a small party of explorers, under Milius, who were stranded there for five days.During this time Baudin spent two weeks at the Baie des Chiens Marins (later loosely translated as Shark Bay), missing Hamelin by just three days. The stopovers at Shark Bay were amongst the most fruitful of the voyage. Hamelin spent 6 weeks there drawing, charting and collecting specimens. His crew also found the pewter plate which had been left 100 years before by the Dutch explorer De Vlamingh. It was here that, in early 1998, a party led by M. Philippe Godard, dug up French coins believed to have been buried by the French navigator, St Aloüarn in 1772.
Baudin surveyed the coast from Shark Bay to Melville Island in Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, before heading to Timor, where captains, crews and ships were reunited.
After a period of rest, the vessels departed for Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania). The next 6 months were spent exploring Van Diemen’s Land, the neighbouring islands and parts of the coast of what are now Victoria and South Australia. Again the flagship was separated from her consort by bad weather. A celebrated chance meeting on the 8th of April 1802 between Baudin and the British explorer Matthew Flinders gave the name to Encounter Bay, South Australia. Baudin then sailed to Port Jackson (now Sydney) where the expedition, again reunited, rested for 5 months.
In December 1802, Baudin, concerned for the safety of the natural history collection, reluctantly ordered Hamelin to return home in the Naturaliste with its precious cargo of specimens, drawings and live animals. On the 8th of December 1802, Hamelin set sail for France from King Island and brought his ship safely back to Le Havre on the 6th of June 1803. An exceptional sailor and humanist, Hamelin was awarded the Legion of Honour and made a Rear Admiral and a Baron of the Empire before his death in 1839.
Baudin, in the Géographe, continued the voyage, accompanied by Louis-Claude de Freycinet, the expedition’s cartographer, in command of the Casuarina, a schooner purchased in Sydney by Baudin. They sailed again to the western coast of the continent, stopping at King George Sound, near present day Albany, and then northwards to Timor from where they set sail for Ile de France on the 17th July 1803.
Baudin, now seriously ill, having contracted tuberculosis several months earlier, died during the return journey, on the 16th September 1803, at Ile de France. Captain Pierre Bernard Milius took command of the expedition for its return to France where it arrived at the port of Lorient in Brittany, on the 25th March 1804.
Napoléon’s wife, the future Empress Joséphine, was so charmed by the flora and fauna brought back at her request by the expedition that she established a private zoo of emus, kangaroos, black swans and other Australian birds in the grounds of her summer palace at Malmaison, on the outskirts of Paris.
The official artists of the Baudin Expedition, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas-Martin Petit produced an exceptional collection of drawings and paintings. Lesueur and Petit, both in their early 20’s, were art students - Petit, a pupil of the great David - and had been officially enlisted as Assistant Gunners Class 4 Baudin appears to have been aware, however, of their artistic prowess, for he immediately entrusted to them the task of illustrating his personal journal and when the expedition’s three official artists abandoned the voyage at Ile de France, the two young men succeeded them. Under the guidance of the zoologist François Péron, they became accomplished naturalists - Petit recording mainly the indigenous people and the hostile landscape, Lesueur the strange new animal and plant life.
Petit died six months after returning to France, of gangrene. Lesueur died in 1846, just after receiving the Légion d’Honneur for his contribution to science.
Much of the work of these two artists survives to the present day- in the French National Archives, the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris and notably in the spectacular collection of thousands of exquisite drawings and watercolours of Terra Australis held by the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle at Le Havre in Normandy.
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