Background:
In 1783 the French government resolved to send an expedition to the Pacific to complete Captain James Cook\'s unfinished work, and in particular to explore the passages in the Bering Sea, which had been a mystery to Europeans since the sixteenth century. King Louis XVI himself took a hand in drafting the plan and itinerary, a copy of which is in the Municipal Library at Rouen, France, and when La Pérouse was selected to lead the fleet gave him an audience before he sailed. In command of two ships, La Boussole and L Astrolabe (Commandant de Langle), he left Brest on 1 August 1785 making for Brazil. Doubling Cape Horn he refitted in Chile, then sailed to the Sandwich Islands and thence to Alaska, where he turned south exploring and surveying the coast as far as California. After a short refit at Monterey, he sailed across the Pacific, discovered uncharted islands, and visited Macao and Manila. After six weeks reprovisioning and refreshing he left on 10 April 1787 to survey the coasts and territories north of Korea, which had been described and commented on by Christian missionaries. He sailed up the Gulf of Tartary, naming several points on both its shores and learned that Sakhalin was an island. In September he put in to Kamchatka to replenish his supplies. From there he dispatched an officer, Lesseps, overland to Paris with accounts of his discoveries, while he turned south making for New Holland. In December, at Tutuila, Samoa, which Bougainville had called the Navigator Islands when he explored them in 1768, natives suddenly attacked a party from L\'Astrolabe seeking water and killed de Langle and eleven others. La Pérouse left without taking reprisals and sailed through the Pacific Islands to Norfolk Island and to Botany Bay. He was sighted off the coast there on 24 January 1788 but bad weather prevented his entering the bay for two days. By then Governor Arthur Phillip had sailed to Port Jackson, but John Hunter had remained with the Sirius and the transports, and assisted La Pérouse to anchor. He established a camp on the northern shore, now called after him, and maintained good relations with the English during his six-week stay. He sailed on 10 March and was not heard of again. His disappearance led the French government in 1791 to equip another expedition under Bruny d Entrecasteaux to look for him, but the search was fruitless.

Laperouse, Jean François Galaup Comte de 1741 - 1788
Lapérouse was a French Naval officer and explorer whose expedition vanished in Oceania.
Lapérouse was appointed in 1785 by Louis XVI and by the Secretary of State of the Navy, the Marquis de Castries, to lead an expedition around the world. Many countries were initiating voyages of scientific explorations.
Louis XVI and his court had been stimulated by a proposal from the Dutch-born merchant adventurer William Bolts, who had earlier tried unsuccessfully to interest Louis s brother-in-law, the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (brother of Queen Marie Antoinette), in a similar voyage. The French court adopted the concept (though not its author, Bolts), leading to the dispatch of the Lapérouse expedition. Charles Pierre Claret de Fleurieu, Director of Ports and Arsenals, stated in the draft memorandum on the expedition that he submitted to the Louis XVI: the utility which may result from a voyage of discovery ... has made me receptive to the views put to me by Mr. Bolts relative to this enterprise . But Fleurieu explained to the King: I am not proposing at all, however, the plan for this voyage as it was conceived by Mr. Bolts .
The expedition s aims were to complete the Pacific discoveries of James Cook (whom Lapérouse greatly admired), correct and complete maps of the area, establish trade contacts, open new maritime routes and enrich French science and scientific collections. His ships were L Astrolabe (under Fleuriot de Langle) and La Boussole, both 500 tons. They were storeships reclassified as frigates for the occasion. Their objectives were geographic, scientific, ethnological, economic (looking for opportunities for whaling or fur trading), and political (the eventual establishment of French bases or colonial cooperation with their Spanish allies in the Philippines). They were to explore both the north and south Pacific, including the coasts of the Far East and of Australia, and send back reports through existing European outposts in the Pacific.
As early as March 1785, Lapérouse proposed that Paul Monneron, who had been chosen as the expedition s chief engineer, go to London to find out about the anti-scurvy measures recommended by Cook and the exchange items used by Cook in his dealings with native peoples, and to buy scientific instruments of English manufacture.
The best-known figure from Cook s missions, Joseph Banks, intervened at the Royal Society to obtain for Monneron two inclining compasses that had belonged to Cook. Furnished with a list produced by Charles Pierre Claret de Fleurieu, Monneron also bought scientific instruments from some of the largest English firms, particularly Ramsden. He even surpassed Fleurieu s directives by acquiring two sextants of a new type.
Lapérouse was well liked by his men. Among his 114-man crew there were ten scientists: Joseph Lepaute Dagelet (1751–1788), an astronomer and mathematician; Robert de Lamanon, a geologist; La Martinière, a botanist; a physicist; three naturalists; and three illustrators, Gaspard Duché de Vancy and an uncle and nephew named Prévost. Another of the scientists was Jean-André Mongez. Even both chaplains were scientifically schooled.
One of the men who applied for the voyage was a 16-year-old Corsican named Napoléon Bonaparte. Bonaparte, a second lieutenant from Paris s military academy at the time, made the preliminary list but he was ultimately not chosen for the voyage list and remained behind in France. At the time, Bonaparte was interested in serving in the navy rather than army because of his proficiency in mathematics and artillery, both valued skills on warships.
Copying the work methods of Cook s scientists, the scientists on this voyage would base their calculations of longitude on precision watches and the distance between the moon and the sun followed by theodolite triangulations or bearings taken from the ship, the same as those taken by Cook to produce his maps of the Pacific islands. As regards geography, Lapérouse decisively howed the rigour and safety of the methods proven by Cook. From his voyage, the resolution of the problem of longitude was evident and mapping attained a scientific precision. Impeded (as Cook had been) by the continual mists enveloping the northwestern coast of America, he did not succeed any better in producing complete maps, though he managed to fill in some of the gaps.
Lapérouse and his 220 men left Brest on 1 August 1785, rounded Cape Horn, investigated the Spanish colonial government in the Captaincy General of Chile. He arrived on 9 April 1786 at Easter Island He then sailed to the Sandwich Islands, the present-day Hawaiian Islands, where he became the first European to set foot on the island of Maui.
Lapérouse sailed on to Alaska, where he landed near Mount St. Elias in late June 1786 and explored the environs. On 13 July 1786 a barge and two longboats, carrying 21 men, were lost in the heavy currents of the bay called Port des Français by Lapérouse, but now known as Lituya Bay. The men visited with the Tlingit tribe. (This encounter was dramatized briefly in episode 13 of Carl Sagan s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.) Next, he headed south, exploring the northwest coast, including the outer islands of present-day British Columbia.
Lapérouse sailed between 10–30 August all the way south to the Spanish Las Californias Province, present-day California. He reportedly observed the only historical eruption of Mount Shasta on 7 September 1786, although this account is disputed. He stopped at the Presidio of San Francisco long enough to create an outline map of the Bay Area, Plan du port de St. François, situé sur la côte de la Californie septentrionale ( Map of the port of San Francisco, situated on the coast of Northern California ), which was reproduced as Map 33 in L. Aubert s 1797 Atlas du voyage de La Pérouse. He arrived in Monterey Bay and at the Presidio of Monterey on 14 September 1786. He examined the Spanish settlements, ranchos, and missions. He made critical notes on the missionary treatment of the California indigenous peoples with the Indian Reductions at the Franciscan run missions. France and Spain were on friendly terms at this time. Lapérouse was the first non-Spanish visitor to California since Drake in 1579, and the first to come to California after the founding of Spanish missions and presidios (military forts).
Lapérouse again crossed the Pacific Ocean in 100 days, arriving at Macau, where he sold the furs acquired in Alaska, dividing the profits among his men. The next year, on 9 April 1787, after a visit to Manila, he set out for the northeast Asian coasts. He saw the island of Quelpart, in the Korean Peninsula, (present-day Cheju in South Korea), which had been visited by Europeans only once before when a group of Dutchmen shipwrecked there in 1635. He visited the Asian mainland coasts of Korea.
Lapérouse then sailed northward to Northeast Asia and Oku-Yeso Island, present day Sakhalin Island, Russia. The Ainu people, Oku-Yeso Island residents, drew him a map showing: their second domain of Yezo Island, present day Hokkaidō Island, Japan; and the coasts of Tartary, Russia on mainland Asia. Lapérouse wanted to sail north through the narrow Strait of Tartary between Oku-Yeso Island and mainland Asia, but failed. Instead, he turned south, and then sailed west through La Pérouse Strait, between Oku-Yeso Island (Sakhalin) and (Hokkaidō), where he met more Ainu in their third domain of the Kuril Islands, and explored.
Lapérouse then sailed north and reached Petropavlovsk on the Russian Kamchatka peninsula on 7 September 1787. Here they rested from their trip, and enjoyed the hospitality of the Russians and Kamchatkans. In letters received from Paris, Lapérouse was ordered to investigate the settlement the British were establishing in New South Wales, Australia. Barthélemy de Lesseps, the French vice consul at Kronstadt, Russia, who had joined the expedition as an interpreter, disembarked in Petropavlovsk to bring the expedition s ships logs, charts, and letters to France, which he reached after a year-long, epic journey across Siberia and Russia
Lapérouse next stopped in the Navigator Islands (Samoa), on 6 December 1787. Just before he left, the Samoans attacked a group of his men, killing twelve, among whom were Lamanon and de Langle, commander of L Astrolabe. Twenty men were wounded. The expedition drifted to Tonga, for resupply and help, and later recognized the île Plistard and Norfolk Island.
The expedition continued to Australia, arriving off Botany Bay on 24 January 1788. There Lapérouse encountered a British convoy (known later as the First Fleet ) led by Captain Arthur Phillip RN, who was to establish the penal colony of New South Wales. While it had been intended that the colony would be located at Botany Bay, Phillip had quickly decided that the site was unsuitable and the colony would instead be established at Sydney Cove in Port Jackson. High winds – which had hindered Lapérouse s ships in entering Botany Bay – delayed the relocation until 26 January (later commemorated as Australia Day).
The French were received courteously and spent six weeks at the British colony (their last recorded landfall). While Lapérouse and Phillip did not meet, French and British officers visited each other formally on at least 11 occasions, and offered each other assistance and supplies.during their stay, the French established an observatory, a garden, held masses, and made geological observations. Lapérouse also took the opportunity to send journals, charts and letters back to Europe, with the British merchant ship Alexander. The chaplain from L Astrolabe, Father Louis Receveur, never recovered from injuries he had sustained in a clash with indigenous people in the Samoan Islands and died at Botany Bay on 17 February; Receveur was buried on shore at Frenchman s Cove.
On 10 March, after taking on sufficient wood and fresh water, the French expedition left New South Wales – bound for New Caledonia, Santa Cruz, the Solomons, the Louisiades, and the western and southern coasts of Australia. While Lapérouse had reported in a letter from Port Jackson that he expected to be back in France by June 1789. However, neither he nor any members of his expedition were seen again by Europeans.
Documents that had been relayed to France from Lapérouse s expedition were published in Paris in 1797, under the title Voyage de La Pérouse autour du monde ( The voyage of La Pérouse around the world ). In 1825, another French naval officer, Captain Hyacinthe de Bougainville, founded the Lapérouse Monument at Frenchman s Bay, near Receveur s grave. The bay later became part of the suburb of La Perouse. The anniversary of Receveur s death, Lapérouse Day (on varying dates in February/March) and Bastille Day (14 July) have long been marked at the monument (along with Bougainville).
On 25 September 1791, Rear Admiral Bruni d Entrecasteaux departed Brest in search of Lapérouse. His expedition followed Lapérouse s proposed path through the islands northwest of Australia while at the same time making scientific and geographic discoveries. The expedition consisted of two ships, La Recherche and L Espérance.
In May 1793, he arrived at the island of Vanikoro, which is part of the Santa Cruz group of islands (now part of the Solomon Islands). D Entrecasteaux thought he saw smoke signals from several elevated areas on the island, but was unable to investigate due to the dangerous reefs surrounding the island and had to leave. He died two months later. The botanist Jacques Labillardière, attached to the expedition, eventually returned to France and published his account, Relation du voyage à la recherche de La Pérouse, in 1800.
During the French Revolution, Franco-British relations deteriorated and unfounded rumours spread in France blaming the British for the tragedy which had occurred in the vicinity of the new colony. Before the mystery was solved, the French government had published the records of the voyage as far as Kamchatka: Voyage de La Pérouse autour du monde, 1–4 (Paris, 1797). These volumes are still used for cartographic and scientific information about the Pacific. Three English translations were published in 1798–99.
It was not until 1826 that an Irish sea captain, Peter Dillon, found enough evidence to piece together the events of the tragedy. In Tikopia (one of the islands of Santa Cruz), he bought some swords that he had reason to believe had belonged to Lapérouse or his officers. He made enquiries, and found that they came from nearby Vanikoro, where two big ships had broken up years earlier. Dillon managed to obtain a ship in Bengal, and sailed for the coral atoll of Vanikoro where he found cannonballs, anchors and other evidence of the remains of ships in water between coral reefs.
He brought several of these artifacts back to Europe, as did Dumont d Urville in 1828. De Lesseps, the only member of the original expedition still alive at the time, identified them as all belonging to L Astrolabe. From the information Vanikoro inhabitants gave Dillon, a rough reconstruction could be made of the disaster that struck Lapérouse. Dillon s reconstruction was later confirmed by the discovery, and subsequent examination in 1964, of what was believed to be the shipwreck of La Boussole.
Both ships had been wrecked on Vanikoro s reefs, La Boussole first. L Astrolabe was unloaded and taken apart. A group of men, probably the survivors of La Boussole, were massacred by the local inhabitants. According to the islanders, some surviving sailors built a two-masted craft from the wreckage of L Astrolabe and left in a westward direction about nine months later; but what happened to them is unknown. Also, two men, one a chief and the other his servant, had remained behind, but had left Vanikoro a few years before Dillon arrived.
Sven Wahlroos, in his 1989 book, Mutiny and Romance in the South Seas, suggests that there was a narrowly missed chance to rescue one or more of the survivors in 1791.
In November 1790, Captain Edward Edwards—in command of HMS Pandora—had sailed from England with orders to comb the Pacific for the mutineers of HMS Bounty. In March of the following year, Pandora arrived at Tahiti and picked up 14 Bounty men who had stayed on that island. Although some of the 14 had not joined the mutiny, all were imprisoned and shackled in a cramped cage built on the deck, which the men grimly nicknamed Pandora s Box . Pandora then left Tahiti in search of Bounty and the leader of the mutiny, Fletcher Christian.
Captain Edwards search for the remaining mutineers ultimately proved fruitless. However, when passing Vanikoro on 13 August 1791, smoke signals were observed rising from the island. Edwards, single-minded in his search for Bounty and convinced that mutineers fearful of discovery would not be advertising their whereabouts, ignored the smoke signals and sailed on.
Wahlroos argues that the smoke signals were almost certainly a distress message sent by survivors of the Lapérouse expedition, which later evidence indicated were still alive on Vanikoro at that time—three years after La Boussole and L Astrolabe had foundered. Wahlroos is virtually certain that Captain Edwards, whom he characterizes as one of England s most ruthless, inhuman, callous and incompetent naval captains, missed his chance to become one of the heroes of maritime history by solving the mystery of the lost Lapérouse expedition.

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