Who remembers Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse?

I asked myself this question after having read one of his biographies by Anne Pons.

One day, about five years ago, I attended a seminar where I heard Pascal Brioist, a historian specialised in French maritime history of the 18th century. He talked about compass, sextant, and several other instruments I had only heard about.

He also talked about the great discoverers and I heard about Cook, Béring, Drake...and Lapérouse.

I had heard the name beforehand but never really looked into the story behind.

An yet his life has been so rich in fascinating events that it was worth digging a bit deeper. I promised myself I would take time to read about him; it took time, but ben I opened his biography I felt like Alice falling into the tree.

There is a very well informed wikipedia page about him, so I would feel bad repeating it all, but while reading the book, I felt I had been missing out a whole chapter of my country's history.

Lapérouse was born in 1741, a well educated noble, and participated both to the Seven Years War (French and Indian War) and to the American War of Independence. He participated to a number of battles, including that of Quiberon (1759).

But he is mostly known for having led a scientific expedition around the world, on board of La Boussole and L'Astrolabe, which vanished in 1788. To this day, we don't know the exact date of his - and his men's - death, nor what exactly happened to them. Only in 1827 did the Irish explorer Peter Dillon find the remainings of one of the two boats, L'Astrolabe, which had sunk near Vanikoro (Santa Cruz Islands) about forty years earlier. La Boussole had also sunk nearby but was only discovered a couple of years later. It then appeared that while some of the men instantly died in the sea, others managed to reach the shore, only to get massacred by natives. Other managed to survive the shipwreck and established a camp which was found during a 2005 search and some men - according to natives - escaped aboard a little ship they built. But no one ever heard about them again. This is history.

But the men who went aboard L'Astrolabe and La Boussole shouldn't only be famous for their tragic end, but for what they achieved between 1785 and 1788. By all means, the expedition was most ambitious and should the company have come home safely, the discoveries made would have enriched our country, and increase the opinion we have of Louis XVI, who appointed Lapérouse in order to try to match James Cook's genius on the sea. Instead, the king was beheaded, and the expedition long forgotten by citizens too busy making a revolution to care about science.

Crossing the globes, sailing the most dangerous seas, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from a frozen Alaska to the muggy Pacific Islands and the much loved Kamtchatka, Lapérouse and his men spent the last four years of their lives trying to bring science and glory to their country, and encountering new civilisations.

Far from being a new Cortes, Lapérouse left in his travel diaries, which we are lucky to have till his departure from Botany Bay, his impressions on several populations of natives. Each stopover was devoted to exploration and scholars aboard managed to send back to France treasures of knowledge, despite the obvious waste of what we'll never get back after the shipwreck.

This is the expedition depicted in this biography, which as such wasn't that great, for we know more about his career than about the man, but the book is very well informed on the "mystery expedition" and it decidedly is a good start for one interested into knowing more about one of our greatest discoverer.