NavList:

Ah, La Pérouse…

As a bored fourth-grader I picked up a book about this expedition.  The first part of the book was a translation from La Pérouse's journals, the second part was the recounting of the centuries-long attempts to discover what had happened to him.  I was totally captivated by the whole story at that time and was bored no more.  Part of that initial impression remained with me to this day.  Therefore, in 1997 when I got to attend a physics conference in Monterey, California (one of La Pérouse's stops), I made sure to visit the local historical society and ask questions.  They have no La Pérouse artifacts there but I did buy a paperback with a translation of the Monterey-relevant portion of his journals.

In 2000 I decided to take an introductory French course ("Bonjour, je m'appelle Pierre.").  The professor gave as a project, in which we had to pick any France-related subject, write a report and make a brief in-class presentation (all in English) about it.  One he said it, I knew EXACTLY what I would be reporting about.  George's comment stirred up my memories, both biological and electronic, so here I attach my ten years old term paper on La Pérouse and the associated PowerPoint.  Perhaps some of you may find the documents interesting or amusing.  I suppose that La Pérouse played the some role for me that Amelia Earhart played for some other members of this list.

Now the explanation that was given for this tragedy was not faulting La Pérouse's navigation skills.  After all, he found his way around the Pacific quite well.  Instead, they blamed it on his unfamiliarity with the seasonal weather patterns in the area into which sailed after leaving Australia.  And thus, being an explorer in still rather uncharted waters dutifully following the King's instructions, he sailed into an area unaware of the high probability of running into powerful storms and perhaps even typhoons.

Now I would like to take this opportunity to address some language-related issues.
For English native speakers: In the report I use the word "naval" but that really should be "maritime," since this was not a military campaign, correct?
For French native speakers: perhaps you can put to rest a decade-old mystery of my own.  Notice that I spell his name as one word (Lapérouse) following the spelling from that very first book I had read about him.  Now today everywhere I turn it's separated into La Pérouse; and yet we still write Laplace, Lagrange, Lavoisier, Lamarck…  I'd be glad to be enlightened to the subject.


Peter Hakel