On this day, 7th August 1779, Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet, the French naval officer and cartographer who explored parts of Australia and islands in the Pacific Ocean, was born..
In 1800 he joined Captain Nicholas Baudin on a voyage of exploration to Australia and Tasmania. After his return to Paris in 1804, he completed an account of this expedition, Voyage de découvertes aux terres australes (1807; “Voyage of Discovery to Southern Lands”), for which he also drew maps.
In 1817 he took command of l’Uranie to conduct magnetic and oceanographic research in the Pacific. His wife, Rose, disguised as a sailor, was smuggled aboard and accompanied the voyage, which she described in a journal published in 1827. (Original held in the State Library of New South Wales)
On the return voyage from Sydney to France, via Cape Horn, l’Uranie was wrecked in the Falkland Islands, but the scientific data and specimens aboard were saved. Freycinet purchased an American whaler, renamed la Physicienne, and in it returned to France.
The State Library of NSW has recently acquired - Louis de Freycinet - papers relating to measurement of longitude, with particular reference to Joseph de Mendoza y Rios, ca. 1795-ca. 1820. This collection was probably compiled between these two voyages, while Freycinet was working in Paris on an account of the Baudin expedition and involved at the Ministry of Marine. It is possible this group of manuscripts travelled with Freycinet on the Uranie voyage, along with the astronomical instruments he references. Accurately measuring longitude was vital for navigation on extended ocean voyages and these papers focus on improvements made in measuring longitude at sea, including Freycinet's own translation from English to French of an essay by the Spanish astronomer Joseph de Mendoza y Rios, published in London in 1801.
The State Library of New South Wales holds editions of Voyage de découvertes aux terres australes : fait par ordre du gouvernement, sur les corvettes le Géographe, le Naturaliste, et la goëlette le Casuarina, pendant les années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803, et 1804 : historique / rédigé par Péron et continué par M. Louis de Freycinet.
These images have been digitised from the 2nd edition, provided for research purposes only and must not be reproduced without the prior permission of the State Library of NSW.