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I'm rather surprised, and pleased, that my casual reference to La Perouse 
(in regard to Antoine) has triggered such from Peter Hakel.

Let me quote from a backstage posting to me from Antoine, a couple of weeks 
back, which had this nice postscript-

"PS : And by the way, on Jan 21, 1793 and just minutes before he was 
beheaded, our King Louis XVI asked "Avons-nous des nouvelles de Monsieur de 
La P�rouse ?" Do we have news about M. de La P�rouse ?"

==========================

Peter Hakel suggested-

"It makes me want to start digging through the primary sources of this 
voyage, like you have done with those 19th century whaling expeditions. 
Maybe someday."

That would not be easy, for the La Perouse expedition. His journals 
survive, up to his departure from Port Jackson, because copies were sent 
back to France from various stopping-points. They have since been 
translated into English by John Dunmore, and published in two volumes by 
the Hakluyt Society in 1994 as-
"The journal of Jean-Francois de Galaup de la Perouse 1785-1788".

They are very much traveller's accounts of the places he visited. Although 
he provides quite a bit of navigational information along the way, it is by 
no means a log of the voyage. There would have been a detailed ship's log 
kept aboard each vessel, which would presumably stay with the vessel, and 
not be copied to send back to Paris: as the vessels didn't survive the 
voyage, neither would those logs. The savants would presumably keep their 
own accounts of detailed observations, presumably lost as well.

One reason why we have such detailed information from Cook's voyages is 
that the ships always returned (even if, on the last, Cook didn't), with a 
mass of well-recorded data.

Another work, related to the topic, that may interest Peter, is "Looking 
for La Perouse", by Frank Horner (1995) which is not about La Perouse 
himself, but about the expedition that went out in search for him under 
d'Entrecastaux in 1792-3.

==================

That French sextant, of which Frank linked a picture, is rather interesting 
in itself. See-
http://www.marine-marchande.net/FM/Laperouse_Expo-2008/index_Laperouse_Expo-2008.htm

It does indeed look like a sextant rather than an octant, but it's of 
composite construction; a wooden frame with pinned-on brass arc and index 
arm. A recipe for thermal instabilty, in my opinion. Most sextants were 
being made in brass by then; in England, anyway. Note also that it 
possesses an extra mirror for taking backsights, to extend its range beyond 
120�, just like some of the sextants that Cook was carrying a few years 
earlier. It's a feature that we tend to associate with octants, to extend 
their more-limited range, and only rarely, with (early) sextants.

George.

contact George Huxtable, at  george@hux.me.uk
or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK. 

   

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