Table of Contents for this Episode
Category: French History
[00:00:00]
Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 614, six cent quatorze.
Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today on the podcast: Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de Lapérouse
Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks about Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de Lapérouse, the Albi-born naval officer Louis XVI sent to finish Captain Cook’s mapping of the Pacific.
We cover his forbidden love story, his humane command style, and the 1788 cyclone near the Solomon Islands that ended his voyage and became one of France’s enduring [00:01:00] maritime mysteries.
Podcast supporters
Annie: Before we start, this show runs on listener support. If you want to work with me directly, I do itinerary consults, VoiceMap tours of Paris, and day trips around the southwest of France.
Everything’s at joinusinfrance.com/boutique. And if you shop on Amazon anyway, starting at joinusinfrance.com/amazon costs you nothing but helps the show.
Magazine segment
Annie: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Elyse today, I’ll revisit last week’s episode. That was about Nan and Marty finding ways to learn French, and many people responded to the newsletter going with this episode, including a gem that I hadn’t even heard of myself. It’s very cool.
Adventure Setup
Annie: Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse: Bonjour, Annie.
Annie: We are going on an adventure [00:02:00] today.
Elyse: Oh, yes we are.
Annie: A very fun adventure far, far, far away, but with a local person…
Elyse: Mm-hmm.
Annie: … Someone from Albi, not very far from where we live.
Why Lapérouse Matters
Annie: I recently visited his museum, a museum dedicated to him in Albi. It’s pretty small. They are making a bigger one, and I think he’s worth getting to know. He’s an interesting person, and so I thought, "Okay, this would make for a very good episode."
And I, I read a book about him, about his growing up and his naval activity and all of that. Anyway, just a great person. I’ll put a link to the book in the show notes of the… Because I didn’t bring it to tell you. But, it’s really a fascinating person.
Elyse: You’re absolutely right, and I have to admit that when you said it, I went, "Eh. Uh, okay, whatever. Let’s do this. You like him."
Every time you and I, or I, go and take people to Albi, I know that his family’s house is [00:03:00] right next door to the house where Toulouse-Lautrec was born, and I knew he was an explorer, and that was about all I knew about him. And so, I have to say thank you, because it was so much fun reading all this information about him and discovering all the things that he did. He was a fascinating, fascinating person, and from what I read, he sounds like a really interesting, nice human being, which isn’t always the case of military people.
Annie: That’s true, yeah.
Elyse: So, this is a great story. We’re talking about travels and exploring, but it’s also what turns out to be the story of this really intriguing human being.
Annie: Yeah, it was, it’s a great love story. It’s also interesting that it happened at the same time as the French Revolution, really-
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: … Because, Louis XVI was involved and all of that, so we’ll bring all of that in to, to get.
Elyse: American Revolution, and then the French Revolution, the [00:04:00] two of them. He was involved in both. Well, he was really involved in the American Revolution.
Annie: There you go, so.
Elyse: There you go. Uh?
Annie: Take it away, Elyse.
Origins in Albi
Elyse: So Jean-François de Galaup. But I don’t even know, but it’s Occitan, so I think you pronounce the P at the end, because that was his first language, Occitan. But I’m not sure.
Annie: I’m not sure either.
Elyse: That was his born name, Jean-François de Galaup. His father was a member of the nobility. Actually, both parents were, not even aristocrats. This is ancient, ancient nobility, going back to the 1300s in the south of France. His family apparently was always from the region around Albi, and in the early 1500s had made a huge fortune in the buying and selling of this famous thing called the plant called pastel that makes the blue dye. So not only were they nobility, descended from the Counts of Toulouse, but they were super rich.
Annie: That always helps.
Elyse: It always helps. And he was born in a building that I don’t [00:05:00] know, but I looked at the picture of it, and I think the next time we go to Albi we should sort of just go past it at least to see. And it’s called the Château du Gô (now turned into Chambres d’Hôte), and it’s on the outer edge of the city center in Albi. And I saw a picture, and so apparently it’s still standing. I don’t know at all if it’s visitable or inhabited or anything like that.
Annie: I’ll be going in a couple of weeks.
Elyse: See if you can find it. Yeah.
Childhood and Education
Elyse: And he was born in the year 1741, the oldest, first child of 11 children, who unfortunately, only three of whom lived to be adults. And it reminds me, it’s an aside pa– in relation to his life, but I mentioned this even to my husband, I thought, doesn’t… You didn’t escape from the infant mortality even if you were nobility. His mother had 11 children, and it must be amazing to have that many children and only have three actually survive to adulthood, you know?
Annie: And it was really common, and that’s what brought [00:06:00] down the average lifespan of people.
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: So when, you know, when we look at the average life of people back then, the 1700s, it’s much lower than today, which does not mean that nobody lived to be 70 and 80. It just means that they lost a lot of children.
Elyse: Yep.
Annie: And mostly to diseases that are now completely under control, thanks to vaccines mostly.
Elyse: Yep.
Annie: So let’s not forget that, you know, kids are very fragile if they’re not protected against many diseases.
Elyse: Exactly. So, being the oldest son, I guess he was considered to be destined for great things, and he was sent to a Jesuit school. He apparently was a brilliant student. He spoke fluent Occitan, which is what he spoke at home, interestingly enough. Even though the family was nobility, they spoke French.
And he actually was fluent in Latin, because he did all, most all of his early studies in Latin. So he was destined to some kind of [00:07:00] great future. Why and how he was either given to the Navy or decided himself, I could not find out any information about how that choice was made. Was it made for him or by him? I do not know.
Naval Academy to First Battles
Elyse: But at the age of 15, he was sent to what was the equivalent at the time of what would be for us the Naval Academy in Brest. So that’s a long way from home, and of course it’s the sea, and in Albi you’re not really by the sea, so it’s a whole change of life.
And he went to this naval academy, as an enseigne, which is actually interesting because that’s the word we use even in English, to learn to be an officer for the Navy.
Annie: An ensign.
Elyse: An ensign. An ensign, yes, which basically comes directly from the word in French.
He apparently, immediately, showed skill both as a navigator, he was very interested in science, and just being a good sailor, and in general, a good character, so that he was taken under the wing [00:08:00] of one of the head officers at the time, a marquis named Charles d’Arsac de Ternay, who became his mentor and who actually helped get him his promotions because, very quickly he started having promotions. And believe it or not, he went off on his first campaign and first fights, first battles at the age of 17.
Annie: That’s insane.
Elyse: Well, you know, they had what they call, I think, isn’t that the word matelot? The ones who are not destined to be officers, who are the ones who are down below, you know, having visited the Hermione a few times, they’re the ones that, sitting by the cannonballs, you know. But, I guess at that age they did begin. I mean, he was considered to be an adult at 17.
North Atlantic Campaigns
Elyse: And so he went off, and in 1758 participated in battles, believe it or not, off the coast of North America. And in fact, a good part of his life as a naval officer was spent in and [00:09:00] around North America, and then of course eventually in the Pacific. This was a time when-
Annie: Fighting against the English.
Elyse: … against the English, exactly, and half of his life, which unfortunately was not that long, was fighting the English. I guess at, every time they turned around, it was, either them attacking the English or the English attacking them, you know.
First they had the Seven Years’ War, which had to do with who claimed what land in parts of North America, as well as parts of Europe, but he was not concerned with what was going on on land in Europe. And so he discovered places like Newfoundland. They all had different names at the time, but basically he explored the territories off the coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, went up the St. Lawrence River, and this was his initiation into great exploration.
Humane Commander Reputation
Annie: Right, and in the book that I read, there’s a lot of discussion of how difficult life on these ships was because they were, the men were on top of each other, and the sanitary conditions were very poor.
There were a [00:10:00] lot of people who would fall to disease and things like that. So that’s something that he took pride in later in his life, to take better care of the sanitary condition on his vessels, the vessels that he was commanding, because he didn’t want to lose the men.
Elyse: In fact, I was surprised, you’re right, I was surprised to read that several times along the way, there were men, there were even officers who were captains or commanders who died because of the disease that spread in the closed quarters on the ships.
And yes, he developed this reputation as being very humane and very considerate of his sailors, and that aided this incredible aura that developed around him.
He really, really had this quality, of being a human being. He lasted for a couple of years doing all of this and then went back, was sent back to the coast of France. He actually had an… He was fighting the British off [00:11:00] the coast of Brittany in the Bay of Quiberon, which is the Gulf of Morbihan, in fact. And there he actually was taken prisoner by the British, but it’s always interesting, maybe because he was an officer or maybe just that was the way it was with these battles between the French and the English.
He was wounded twice, apparently not seriously. He was taken prisoner. He was not a commander. He was not the captain of the ship. He was one of the sub officers. But then he was released almost immediately. They just ransomed each other off. I mean, if they took the British, they ransomed them off. If the British took the French, these are the officers, I’m not talking about the other basic sailors. So he was taken prisoner. Apparently developed a certain respect for the British, in terms of the contact he had with them, and knew that they had done a great deal of exploring and that the French were, one of the missions of the French Navy at the time, aside from the sort of perpetual fighting with the [00:12:00] English, was to compete with them in terms of preparing navigational maps and conquering parts of the world that they had not yet named and discovered and things like that. So in between, 1760 and ’62, he rose in rank. He basically spent those couple of years defending the coast of France from the British, going up and down the Atlantic coast.
Rivalry with Britain
Elyse: And then in 1762, he returned, he was returned to North America. They were still fighting. They were still fighting over fishing zones. They were fighting over territory. I know that it was serious at the time. It’s hard to realize just how much rivalry there was at that time between the French and the English, British, I guess I should use the word British, in terms of the seas. The English, were the, basically the masters of the sea for a long time.
Annie: Yeah. They were ahead.
Elyse: They were ahead.
Annie: They were far ahead, and they had even in terms of exploration, they started doing the major, like Cook and people like [00:13:00] that, much earlier than Lapérouse. So they were ahead, and the French were trying to catch up.
Elyse: They were trying to catch up, exactly. They were trying to catch up. And then at the age of 23, he was promoted. He was promoted again. He was made second lieutenant, and then in the beginning of the 1770s, he sailed to Haiti, it was called, I think, New France at the time, but, to now Haiti, to defend interests in the Caribbean when they were starting to develop their colonies.
And so he was constantly going back and forth between France and the new continent. And mostly at this point, in the Atlantic, he has not yet really done the world tour and gone into the Pacific.
Indian Ocean Expedition
Elyse: In 1772 things changed for him. So here he is… he is what? He’s 31. And he begins a mission that includes an enormous, long itinerary into the Indian Ocean.
Annie: Right.
Elyse: This is the beginning [00:14:00] of the exotic part of his life, and this incredible adventure that includes going to the coast of India. There were, what the French like to call the comptoir, which is basically trading settlement. These are not colonies.
The biggest difference, of course, in many of these instances between what the French were doing and the English, is that the English were sending people to settle and take the land, and the French were interested in the trade in most of these places, which was true even in Canada, which is part of what happened. It was that they didn’t settle enough to compete with the English.
And so, he touched the coast of India. He went to Madagascar. He went to parts of Southeast Asia. He went to the island of Mauritius, and all of these places were claimed by the French. This was the beginning of the French expansion into the Indian Ocean and parts of the world that they had not been in before, you know.
Annie: Right, and the rest of Europe was doing the same thing. England was also colonizing [00:15:00] places. Belgium was colonizing places, et cetera, the Dutch, et cetera.
Elyse: It’s interesting, too, that the others were colonizing inland, and the French were really doing coastal things. I found this fascinating, you know, in terms of where they stayed, and they took a lot of islands. The Germans and Belgians, of course, went into Africa, and the Spanish had already taken a big chunk in colonization of South America, which included inland.
But the French, at this point, not including parts of what eventually became colonial Africa, but they were really concentrating on places along coastlines, and places they could trade for minerals and whatever goods were valuable, you know?
Annie: Right.
Elyse: So in the midst of all of this, the Navy, settled on the Island of Mauritius, and he became stationed there. He was stationed there.
He was, at this point, made into a subcommander. He was already moving up the ranks very quickly.
Forbidden Love Eleanor
Elyse: And while [00:16:00] on the island of Mauritius, he met and fell in love with this young woman named Eleanor, who was the sister, the young sister of one of his naval officers.
Annie: Okay. And she was also in India?
Elyse: She was also in India, but she was, now, she was French. But she was not like, from there. I mean, she was a colonial, from a colonial family.
Annie: Right, right.
Elyse: I mean, she was actually French.
Her family was originally from Nantes, and her father was one of the people who was in charge of the commerce there. So they were from a wealthy but not noble family.
Annie: Okay.
Elyse: For us, that makes no difference.
Annie: But to them.
Elyse: But unfortunately, to them, and that is to people like the family he came from, this became a problem.
Annie: Sure.
Elyse: And he apparently, I was trying to figure out, if you travel around the world in the 1770s, how long does a letter take to get home?
I mean, you know, [00:17:00] between a WhatsApp internet and the satellites up above, we forget what communication must have been like in those days.
So he writes back to his family. He’s in his mid-30s. He has never been engaged to anyone. He’s been traveling around the world as a naval officer since the age of 15, and he suddenly finds someone that he is in love with, really in love with, and he wants to marry.
And he writes back to his family, and his father sends him a message telling him that under no circumstances can he marry this young woman. She is not noble.
Annie: Right, yeah.
Elyse: That’s all. She’s not nobility. They’ve chosen someone for him who’s waiting, with question, you know, italics around it. She’s waiting for him. They’ve picked up some young woman that they decide is from the right kind of background and family.
He has spent several years courting this young woman named Eleanor, and they are really in love with each [00:18:00] other. She’s 14 years younger than him, so when he’s 35, she’s 21. She’s at the age for a young woman to get married. And he is desperate to get approval, but when his father says no, he doesn’t disobey him. So this is where being too modern doesn’t help me understand this kind of thing, you know?
Annie: Yeah. Yeah, but that, I mean, that was a normal reaction back then.
Elyse: I mean, it was just, you know, it was Daddy said no, and that’s the end of that.
And the next year he was sent back to France as part of his mission as a naval commander.
And when he went back to France, apparently he had made some kind of arrangement so that this young Eleanor, she and her mother, set sail for Nantes very soon after he went back to France, and they reconnected, on purpose obviously, it was some kind of planned thing. But it took five more years [00:19:00] before he could get approval for this marriage. He must have been so insistent and so, "I am not marrying anybody unless she is the one," that by the time they got married she was 28 and he was 42.
Annie: Hmm. Yeah.
Elyse: But this was the one woman, this was the love of his life.
And it’s interesting that it took up that much space in his existence while he was still becoming famous as an explorer and as a naval officer.
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American War Heroics
Elyse: In the meantime, he joined the French fleet in fighting against the British, during the American War of Independence.
Annie: Mm-hmm. Lots and lots of young French officers were doing that, by the way. It’s not just Lafayette.
Elyse: Not just Lafayette, exactly.
Annie: Many, many, yeah.
Elyse: He was sent back to North America, and interestingly, perhaps because of the experience he had had with Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, the Saint [00:20:00] Lawrence River, they asked him to basically take his ships, because by this time he was in charge of a whole fleet, and go up to the Hudson Bay, which is actually incredible when you think about it.
I mean, I don’t, I’m not an expert, but I don’t think there was really a lot of fighting up there, but it was an excuse to explore that part of what is now, of course, Canada.
And he managed to get as far as Manitoba. He went into parts of what is now Canada that had not been explored before. I’m assuming that he had ships that could get through the ice because there’s a good half of the year when it is totally frozen up there.
And along the way, he was able to fight against a whole slew of British ships that were stationed either on the Great Lakes or on Saint Lawrence River or the Hudson River.
And by the time he got to Manitoba with his fleet, he was able to surround a group of British frigates and ships, and they [00:21:00] immediately surrendered, and it made him a national hero.
Annie: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Elyse: And he came back in absolute glory from this trip, and he was considered, not only did he manage to get this British fleet to surrender, but he did not lose one man either to injury, to disease. And when he came back, he was in his glory, and this is when they actually gave him the Chevalier and he made him the highest order and grade in the Navy as a supreme commander. He was considered to be one of the most loved and respected naval officers that had ever been around, and they could not get over the treatment that he gave to his sailors, that how humane he was, how considerate he was, and how he always tried to avoid injury no matter what.
Annie: Which is really smart. I mean, you know, you don’t want to be a… an unreasonable commander that ends up getting people killed over nothing.
Elyse: Yes, but I don’t [00:22:00] think there were that many that were like that.
Annie: Yeah. I hear you. I hear you.
Explorer Mindset and Maps
Elyse: He wrote a book of his travels to India, interestingly.
He was actually interested in writing more. Apparently, his plan was to finish basically exploring as much as he could and then write several more books on the places that he went.
And he was interested, interestingly enough, in ethnology. He was fascinated by different cultures and different societies. He was very unusual, let’s put it that way. He was very different.
Annie: Yeah. It sounds like he was intellectual and just interested in learning and writing down the things that he saw because it was all new. To regular people back in France, they had never seen any of this and probably never would, so…
Elyse: And probably never would, right?
Annie: …no TV, no photography, no… I mean, you know, if you carried a painter with you, maybe the painter could paint the scene, but I don’t know if they did that.
Elyse: They had usually, [00:23:00] well, I don’t think they had a huge expedition, like Napoleon did, but they did always have with them somebody who did drawings.
Annie: Okay. Sketch or drawings, yeah.
Elyse: Yeah. They would have somebody who was establishing the maps as they were exploring, and somebody who did record things and did drawings, which is kind of interesting. They equipped themselves with at least a few people who were able to do things like that as a way of, because…
Annie: Yeah, we take maps for granted today. I mean, we all have fantastic GPS devices in our pockets. But maps were a luxury, were something extraordinary, and if you visit the Bibliothèque Richelieu in Paris, that’s one of the things you’ll see is some of these old maps.
Elyse: They’re wonderful.
Annie: They’re beautiful. They’re wonderful. And that’s what people looked at to understand the world. That’s what they had, you know? From antiquity on, they had to go and map out the world [00:24:00] in a very manual way. I find it just fascinating that they had to do that. We’re so remote from that today.
Elyse: But you know what it made … Reading about him, it made me think of the Artemis mission. You know?
Annie: Ah.
Elyse: That just came back. I mean, we are still exploring, but in a different kind of way.
I mean, let’s face it, this is the first time that humans have seen the dark side of the moon. It isn’t very far in the scheme of things, but still, there’s this need to explore that humans have. It fascinates me because I think once you get done with exploring everything on this wonderful ball that we call Earth, there’s this need to keep finding new things, you know?
Annie: Well, I think the new frontier, of course it’s space, but it’s also the oceans.
Elyse: Yes.
Annie: Which are largely unexplored because they are so dang difficult to explore. It’s so dangerous.
Elyse: It’s dangerous, and let’s hope that they don’t mess them up and kill everything in it [00:25:00] trying to explore them at the same time, you know? But that’s …
Name La Pérouse Explained
Elyse: So Mr. Lapérouse, ah, I forgot to mention. His official baptism name was Jean-François de Galaup, but he added the Lapérouse when he was just 17, 18 years old because his father had given him an estate that was called Lapérouse.
Annie: That’s a good reason, yeah.
Elyse: And he was a count, he added it officially to his name. And I don’t know if it was just for the prestige or because he liked the idea or whatever. So that is when he came to be known as the Count de Lapérouse.
Annie: Okay. All right.
Elyse: It was just a gift from his daddy, you know?
Marriage and Royal Mission
Elyse: So he comes, he came back from this incredible expedition in triumph from North America, and he gets married finally.
Annie: Yes. So by now he’s-
Elyse: He’s 42. It’s [00:26:00] 1783. And for two years he is in the Navy, in France, and he has this nice domestic life, whatever you want to call it, you know? Two years-
Annie: Yeah, yeah.
Elyse: … Considering all of this. And then this is what happens.
The king is Louis XVI. And Louis XVI, one of the things that is interesting about him is that he was extremely interested in science and in exploration.
Annie: Right.
Elyse: And it was one of the few areas where he really, really was very, very interested.
Annie: And he loved, like, all technical things. He liked clocks. He liked locks. He liked all of the, you know, all these things that move, that seem a little mysterious from the outside. He loved those.
Elyse: He loved them, and inventions and everything. And whether he, this is an idea of his or whether his advisors, I don’t know, but he was in great admiration of Lapérouse, who was admitted to the court at Versailles. He was a [00:27:00] nobleman.
He frequented the court at Versailles.
And Louis XVI decided that he was going to have Lapérouse do something to bring the reputation of the French up in relation to the British, and that is finish the cartography of the Pacific Ocean that James Cook had started.
Annie: Uh-huh. Yes, yes.
Elyse: And so he was brought to the court, and he apparently, it was, he knew… he knew the king. I mean, Lapérouse had actually, he’s had other contacts with him.
And Louis XVI gave him a mission. He gave him a book of 45 pages that had detailed instructions of what he wanted him to do and how he wanted him to behave, and he wanted Lapérouse to become the example of the perfect gentleman naval explorer in the Pacific Ocean.
And he gave him this job, and [00:28:00] Lapérouse apparently was told that he had to accept.
There was no chance that he could just say no. My guess is that he probably did not want to say no anyway. I’m sure he had exploration in his blood, in spite of the fact that he’d finally gotten married.
And so, he accepted the mission. And the mission was detailed so much so, that he knew exactly where he had to go and what he had to do.
Unfortunately, his wife was not very happy about this. Apparently, they say that she cried and cried and cried because it meant at least a couple of years of absence, at least.
Annie: It’s far away!
Elyse: It’s far away.
Annie: Australia is still far away today, so imagine then.
Elyse: Oh, yeah. Can you imagine then?
But he clearly took on this project with a certain amount of pride, and even wrote some very interesting things. And I tried translating one of the paragraphs, but it [00:29:00] turned out to be a little bit too difficult for me to translate.
Lapérouse kept a journal, and he apparently wrote, because he wrote all the time.
He said, "I have read the instructions that the king has given me, and I am going to adhere to it to the letter. I do not believe…" I think this is fascinating. "I do not believe that it is necessarily a wonderful thing for peoples of other civilizations to have European ways forced upon them, that European culture or religion should be what they have to do, that it is better to have an exchange with people and let them live their lives in the harmony of their culture." This is remarkable, absolutely remarkable.
Annie: People didn’t think like that very much.
Elyse: They really did not think like that. European explorers did not think like that very much, yeah.
Epic Pacific Route
Elyse: So he goes off in 1785, and I’m just going to list the places because this is absolutely incredible. He [00:30:00] goes from, obviously he leaves from Brest.
So Lapérouse leaves from Brest with two ships, the Boussole and the Astrolabe.
Annie: Okay, so that’s like the Compass and the Astrolabe.
Elyse: And the Astrolabe.
With a trusted other officer on the other ship, and he is of course in command.
And within a very short time, this is 1785, he manages to circle Cape Horn. He’s already gone down to the bottom of the Atlantic.
In 1786, he is in Concepción Bay in Chile, so he’s coming around, up, down that, the point of basically Patagonia and up the other side.
By April of ’86, he has visited the Easter Island, and he goes to Hawaii. He’s going back up north, and he discovers Maui, which is interesting because originally Hawaii was called the Sandwich Islands, and apparently, because that was the English, it was this Duke of [00:31:00] Sandwich, actually. But they hadn’t discovered Maui, so Maui was actually discovered by Lapérouse. The bay is called Bay of Lapérouse in Maui. And he continues up north, goes all the way up the west coast of North America, stops in Monterey, California, goes all the way up to the bay of, above what is now Seattle, comes back, crosses the Pacific, goes to Macau, then to China, goes up the sea that separates Japan from China.
He actually is the first European to go to the island of Hokkaido, which is the northest-most island of Japan. And then he goes all the way to Siberia to Kamchatka, which he has actually been to before when he was exploring Northern Canada. Then he stops there for a while, and then he goes back down towards the Southern Pacific.
Annie: Now, okay, I have [00:32:00] only done a long crossing on a boat on a cruise ship, which is completely different. But when you’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean especially, it’s very intimidating.
Now, a lot of this is in the Pacific Ocean, which is called the Pacific because it is much calmer than the Atlantic. The Atlantic is a fierce ocean. The Pacific is calmer, but still, it’s big. It’s very big, and going through all of this must have been… It takes a special kind of person to just continue on like this, and on and on to the next thing, and yeah. Yeah. Respect. Respect.
Elyse: Respect, exactly. And the size of it. I mean, so, but imagine every single one of these places, there are people on the ships who are mapping everything out and placing everything in the midst [00:33:00] and where they are in the Pacific Ocean. And he has basically done all of this.
Annie: By the beginning of 1788, he has arrived in Sydney, in Botany Bay, Australia, which is when it… I don’t remember exactly the first colonies, but it was Botany Bay. Now it’s Sydney, but it was Botany Bay. And now we know, he was there in January of 1788. Everything was fine. In March, he heads northeast to try and find and map out more of the, what we call the Polynesian Islands, all of those scattered, tiny little islands that are all in the southern part of the Pacific, which is immense, okay? Yeah, some of these places, a flight takes an hour.
Elyse: Yeah
Annie: … between these islands, so it’s, it is enormous, yes.
Elyse: It’s enormous.
Annie: It’s a scale that we Europeans can’t fathom very easily, and I’m sure Australian listeners will make more sense to you. But to me, it’s like, uh, that far?
Elyse: That far.
[00:34:00] And in fact, that far, you’re right, because I looked on the map, because I have a vague idea where Tahiti is, and a couple of the other bigger parts of, you know, these islands. But there are so many, and they’re so far spread apart. I mean, it’s just, who would even imagine that these things exist, right?
Cyclone And Disappearance
Elyse: And somewhere in June of 1788, the Boussole and the Astrolabe are caught up in a cyclone. And they disappear.
Annie: Yeah.
Elyse: And they disappear off of, now they know, off the coast of an island called Vanikoro, which is part of the Solomon Islands. Don’t even ask me where they are. I mean, they’re in the Pacific. They’re not exactly French Polynesia, but they’re somewhere out there, these tiny little islands in the middle. They were populated. There was a group of people that lived on these islands, but when they disappeared, [00:35:00] they really disappeared.
Annie: Yeah, yeah.
Elyse: This is the great mystery of Lapérouse.
Annie: You know, a shipwreck, but, like, what happened?
Elyse: We don’t know. It was devastating.
So, this is the third year that they’re traveling around. I kept thinking last night, did he ever send letters back to his wife? I mean, if he stopped at different places in all of these different countries, was there any way for her to even know where he was?
I mean, they didn’t even have telegraph. You know, they didn’t have da, da, da, Morse code at this time, and there was… there was just nothing. It’s just, it’s like you’re lost in space in a sense. It’s the equivalent.
Annie: I think some places must have had mail service, but not very many, and not very often.
Elyse: So it would’ve taken months for information to get back, right?
Searches And Legacy
Elyse: So by the time the news got back to France that they had been lost, we’re at the French Revolution.[00:36:00]
Annie: Yeah.
Elyse: And Louis XVI is more worried about whether they find Lapérouse than whether he’s going to lose his head.
Annie: Well.
Elyse: They say that up until the last minute, he kept asking, "Is there news of Lapérouse? Is there news of Lapérouse?"
They were so devastated by the loss of this man and these ships, and the first search parties went out in 1791, then there was one in 1792, and then 1793. By 1793, they did discover remains of one of the ships on this island, Vanikoro, but they have never, ever, ever found anything directly related to him personally.
And there were two more expeditions in 1825 and 1826, which was under the Restoration. They believe that several sailors did survive, but there was never, and there has never been anything to indicate what actually happened to him. And so I’m thinking, everything we know about this [00:37:00] man says that he would’ve been the last one off the ship.
Annie: Probably, yes.
Elyse: And therefore, making sure that whoever can be saved is saved, the captain is always supposed to be the last one off the ship, and that’s probably what happened to him.
The number of search parties has continued into the 20th century, and the 21st century. There are still explorations to try and figure out where he might have died, and if there are other pieces that they can find that put everything together.
Annie: Yeah, I mean, if they could find the shipwreck, if they could find the remnants of… But I’m sure there were, there are a lot of ships down at the bottom of that sea, and how do you find them? Like, I don’t know.
Elyse: I don’t know. It just seems like such a strange and sad and sort of anticlimactic ending for this great, great explorer.
(Mid-roll ad spot)
Eleanor Waits In Vain
Elyse: Now, his wife, poor Eleanor, she actually lived to [00:38:00] be 52, and spent the rest of her life waiting to see if there was any news, even to find out where his remains were.
Annie: By then he would’ve been 75 or something.
Elyse: Yeah, exactly.
Annie: If he had survived.
Elyse: If he had survived. She was apparently taken under the wing by a couple of women of the nobility, and she didn’t have what we could call an uncomfortable life, but she was lonely, and she never remarried. I don’t know if they ever, and when they officially declared him dead. But she spent her life in, rest of her life waiting for news from him, and it’s really so, so, so sad.
Now, there’s a 20th century naval historian named Étienne Taillemite who just died recently. He died just a few years ago. And this little section, I actually, I did translate. He says, "Lapérouse is an example of the most accomplished of naval officers of the 18th century. Excellent navigator, brilliant soldier, a leader who was very humane, with a [00:39:00] spirit open to all the sciences and discoveries of his time. He knew how to combine audacity and carefulness, experience and theory. Brilliant tactician, tireless leader, agreeable but firm. He knew how to be admired and was liked by all."
Annie: Wow.
Elyse: I would’ve loved to have met him.
Annie: Oh, me too. Yeah, I think he would’ve been a very interesting person, definitely.
Elyse: And so the things you saw in the museum, what do they actually have there?
Annie: First of all, where the museum is today is on the, you have to go across the bridge, the old bridge in Albi, and you get a beautiful view to the cathedral, to the basilica, and the palace from there. So it’s worth going just to see the view-
Elyse: Mm-hmm
Annie: … honestly. And the museum, the new museum is going to be a very different part of the city. The new museum is not going to be opening for another three or four [00:40:00] years-
Elyse: Ah, okay.
Annie: …after we put out this episode. But it’s worth going just to see that.
So you’ll see, like, old globes. You’ll see letters that were sent back and forth. You see a lot of things like old ropes, naval ropes, things that they use to steer the ship. It’s just a very naval sort of drawings of the Boussole and Astrolabe as they sail away. You see maps that show where all he went, because like you mentioned, he went all over the place.
Elyse: He went all over the place.
Annie: … All over the creation. You see things that show how the ships were organized, like the different levels on the ship. You see instruments, old instruments.
Astrolabe Navigation Tech
Annie: An astrolabe is an interesting… You know, you have the sextant, but the astrolabe is trying to put all together a lot of different instruments that are very useful to navigation. I was telling you that [00:41:00] with an astrolabe, you can see, you can tell the time, any day of night. You can find your latitude. You can identify the stars and the constellations. You can work out sunrise and sunset. So it, you know, it was like a technological marvel, and they look very fancy because they are, they’re made of brass usually. They’re circular. They have rotating parts. They are covered in engraved lines and symbols, perfectly the sort of thing that Louis XVI would have been fascinated with.
Elyse: Right.
Annie: So the astrolabe was first developed in ancient Greece. Then they were perfected in the Islamic world in the Middle Ages, and they were widely used in Europe, from about the 12th century, so that’s the 1100s.
So this is an old instrument, but it was really essential for navigation at sea before modern instruments. It was used by astronomers, scholars, and travelers. So it was the most important tool, it’s a portable computer for the [00:42:00] sky, I guess, it’s really fun. And you get to see one of those, so it’s not the one that he had on his ship, obviously-
Elyse: Right.
Annie: … because that’s gone. But you get to see the sort of compasses that they had, the sextants that they had. Anybody interested in naval history would love this museum, and it’s just a very nice… It’s not very big, so you know, you can see the whole thing in an hour, even if you read all of the displays. I made people laugh because I was there with my daughter earlier this year, and we were looking at one of the, one of the paintings, and it was a painting that showed the genealogy of the Lapérouse family, well, the Galaup family. And I looked at that, and I said, "Wow, these guys were something special," because they managed to have all these generations without a single woman because they don’t show any of the women-
Elyse: No!
Annie: … On the thing.
Elyse: No!
Annie: Just, just the men.
Elyse: Just the men.
Annie: Just the men. It’s like, wow. And I said that out loud, and the people who were in this [00:43:00] small room just had a good laugh about that because it’s true. It’s, like, striking. How did you manage?
Elyse: Well, also, they’re the ones that… they’re the ones that keep the name.
Annie: Yes, yes, yes, yes. There’s some documents that he wrote about California and about colonization, thoughts he had, you know, things that you can see the cross-sections of the ships and where everything was on the ship. I thought that was really interesting to see the little bits at the bottom there of the ship, what they stored and what they did. I’ll try and put some photos on the website. I’m not sure how I’m going to do that. Maybe I’ll post them to Instagram or something because photos do well on Instagram.
Elyse: Yeah, they do.
Annie: So I probably will do that. You can see some naval officer uniforms, the different uniforms that they used, the swords, all the, you know, the parade sort of uniforms that they had, the hats. They also have a big replica of a [00:44:00] large kind of, a ship that would have been used by the native people, that I found very interesting. And it tells you the story of his life with a few artifacts. He had such a rich life. It’s hard to tell the whole thing.
I really recommend people, before you go, listen to this episode because Elyse has summarized it very well. It will make it easier for you to…
And it talks about the city of Albi at the time of Lapérouse. It was much smaller, but it already had the basilica, it already had a lot of this beautiful stuff, the old bridge and all that. But you do see some sketches of the city of Albi. You see some cannons obviously. You see some busts.
Elyse: An old anchor that’s like all eaten up by the seawater. Some paintings of ships, and just a lovely museum to go spend an hour and learn about Lapérouse I thought was [00:45:00] excellent.
Visiting Albi And Paris
Annie: Now, when we left, the lady at the desk told us that they were going to build a much bigger museum in a different part of the city. She told me where, but I don’t know Albi well enough outside of the, you know, the UNESCO World Heritage City Center that we all know and love. I’ve never lived in Albi, but it’s going to be a little bit outside of that. But I think it’s going to be very worthwhile because he was really one of the most important people, and that and Toulouse-Lautrec obviously, is also another very important person from Albi. And then in Albi you also have the whole history of the repression against the Cathars, the Albigensian Crusade. There’s a lot to do and see in Albi, and I’m taking people soon.
I recommend… I, most of the time when people tell me they want to go to Albi, I tell them, "Go with Elyse. Take the train, go with Elyse," because you do a great tour there.
Elyse: It’s my baby. It’s my baby.
Annie: Yes. [00:46:00] Yes. She loves it there.
Elyse: I love that place. Yeah.
Annie: But of course, sometimes people want to go in the car, and in that case, that’s more my jam.
But, Albi is a lovely city. Lapérouse is a fantastic person, and so well worth a visit. It doesn’t take more than a day really to see most of Albi. I mean, if you want to spend longer, there’s stuff to do that there’s a lovely market, there’s a Saint-Salvy church. The church itself is not that interesting, but the cloister is interesting. Yeah, the cloister is.
Elyse: No, the cloister is, yeah. Do you have any idea whether there’s anything about him in Paris?
I wonder.
Annie: So there’s a new naval museum in Paris that I went to, but I don’t remember if they have stuff specifically about Lapérouse, but that might be where I bought the book.
Elyse: Hmm. It’d be interesting if there is. They’ve got to be someplace.
Annie: Because this is not a book I ordered on Amazon. I saw it at a bookstore in a museum. So maybe it was at the Naval Museum in Paris. That’s the one on the [00:47:00] Trocadero.It’s a section, it’s the Museum of Le Musée de l’Homme, so the Museum of Man.
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: The entrance is right there, and it’s a really lovely place to visit. In Paris, that one takes maybe two hours. It’s not one of the bigger ones.
Elyse: Yeah. I think the next time I go I’m going to try and go there.
Annie: Yeah. No, it’s really worth it. They have some stuff about Jacques Cousteau, which I appreciate. They have a lot of interesting stuff there in Paris. But the one in Albi is worth it. It’s really… I look forward to see the modernization-
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: … and how they’re going to, Because museums are getting better. I mean, honestly, museums used to be like the one in Albi, with the Lapérouse Museum. It’s, you know, they just show you a lot of stuff, but that one doesn’t have any kind of interactive anything. But museums these days, they can do so much.
Elyse: They can do so much.
Annie: That it’s going to be lovely to see a new version of this museum.
Final Recommendations
Annie: But [00:48:00] I really think, it gave me a fondness for this person who was foolish enough to go all these all over the world and well, fool, I mean, I say foolish because I’m a scaredy-cat.
Elyse: He was a real, a real explorer.
Annie: He was an explorer, right.
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: And there’s, it shows an old book of his, Voyage de Lapérouse Autour du Monde, The voyage of Lapérouse around the world.
Elyse: Right.
Annie: Go. When you’re in Albi, take an hour and go to the Lapérouse Museum. I think you will enjoy it.
Elyse: And listen to this story. You’re absolutely right. Listen to this ahead of time because it gives you a good idea of who he was. Yeah.
Annie: Exactly. And it helps you understand better what you’re looking at, because if I hadn’t read the book, I wouldn’t have understood the chronology. And so this episode can help you understand the chronology without reading the whole book, which I thought the book was great, but sometimes not everybody wants to read a historical book about some guy that they had never heard of before.
Elyse: No.
Annie: Yeah.
Anyway, thank you so much, [00:49:00] Elyse. That was fun.
Elyse: That was fun. Thank you, Annie.
Annie: Merci beaucoup.
Elyse: Au revoir.
Annie: Au revoir.
Thank you Patrons
Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus.
And a special shout-out this week to my new Join Us in France champions, Amy, my old Patreon Zoom friend Christy R., And also Susan L. Blough.
Would you join them too? You can do it for as little as $3 a month, but if you can afford it, I would love to have you pledge more so you can have access to more of the rewards. And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.
Someone left this review of my Marais [00:50:00] VoiceMap tour.
"I highly recommend this tour. It’s wonderful to be able to do it at your own pace, stopping for shopping, eating or snacks, and then getting right back on track with the tour. The amount of information was just enough and not too much. Very well done."
And about my Latin Quarter tour, "This was amazing. I’m a savvy traveler, but this turned my walking and exploring into an educational experience.
I learned history, unique facts, pop culture tidbits, and was led to some beautiful side streets I might have missed on my own."
You know, human-guided tours absolutely have their place, and there are some sites you simply cannot visit without a human guide. But hear me out. I know many of you have never tried a GPS self-guided tour, but I want you to try one.
The technology really does make things wonderful. Start when you want, pause when you want, take a break when you want, and hear my voice clearly in your ears instead of trying to hear a [00:51:00] guide over traffic and city noise. And once in a while, I say something interesting or funny or, who knows, perhaps intelligent.
French summer camp for adults.
Annie: So what about this wonderful tidbit I heard of? This is not something I had heard ever before. Jennifer Hodge Jerzyk, she did an episode with me, and she spends part of the year based in France, in Montpellier. She’s very serious about her French. She spent a week this summer at a very unusual kind of French immersion experience, a French summer camp for adults.
The program, organized by Faites Tes Vacances … Okay, so I, I’m sure they didn’t, they couldn’t find the URL they wanted, because that’s wrong. It should be Faites Vos Vacances or Fais Tes Vacances, one or the other. Anyway, it’s called Faites Tes Vacances.
They bring together around [00:52:00] 450 French participants, plus Jennifer. And the week included workshops, activities, and three meals a day, all in fully French-speaking environment. Participants could stay for a week or longer. This year, the camp took place in Prapoutel, a ski resort in the Alps. The location may be used again next year, but organizers sometimes choose a different site.
Jennifer says the highlight was the people. Because the participants had come specifically to learn something new, she found them usually open and friendly. There was always someone to meet at meals, and the workshops tended to be small enough for people to get to know each other. She says the mountain settings also offered plenty of outdoor activities.
She’s not particularly fond of steep hiking trails, so she skipped some of the forest hikes. But she was still able to enjoy the Alps by taking a ski lift to a higher elevation, where they stopped [00:53:00] at a restaurant for a drink and a snack while enjoying the view. For someone looking for serious French immersion without enrolling into a traditional language school, it sounds like a fascinating option, because you’re going to be surrounded by French people, folks, and you’re going to have to learn to speak French all week.
Because this is not something that is usually even discussed with visitors. So something to consider. I’ll put a link in the show notes to faistesvacances.fr
Annie’s Updates
Annie: So I don’t know why I have been, like, low energy all week. I hope it doesn’t sound like that too much on this recording, but I’m like, I’ve been like, I think it’s the heat. I think it’s this heat that’s just getting to me.
Tomorrow, Elyse and I are going to visit a, well, visit again, we’ve been there before, but there’s this one place near us where we’re thinking about taking the boot camp.
We have to make a switch one of the days [00:54:00] because the chateau we wanted to visit, they’re starting their roof renovation early, and so oops. We have to find a plan B, and we think that one’s very good. So hopefully by tomorrow I’ll be all pumped up and ready to go enjoy this town.
If you want a short recap of what came out this week in France, travel, you know, news, my new episodes, what I’m paying attention to, you can sign up for my free weekly newsletter at joinusinfrance.com/newsletter.
And my thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produced the transcripts.
Next week on the podcast
Annie: Next week on the podcast, an episode about spending four weeks in the Loire Valley and pairing that with a language school, with boot camper alumni Rowena Sjovall, and she’s a lot of fun.
You’re going to enjoy the episode. She shared a lot of really good tidbits.
Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France [00:55:00] together. Au revoir.
Copyright
Annie Sargent: The join us in France Travel Podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and copyright 2026 by Addicted to France. It is released under a Creative Comments, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.[00:56:00] [00:57:00]
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Episode PageCategory: French History