In 1817, While Napoleon Was Mewed Up In St. Helena, And A Bourbon Once
More Occupied The Throne Of France
As Louis XVIII, the ships Uranie and
Physicienne were sent out under the command of Captain Louis de
Freycinet, the
Cartographer of Baudin's expedition.* (* Voyage autour du
Monde, entrepris par ordre du Roi, par Louis de Freycinet, Paris 1827.)
They visited some of the scenes of former French exploits, and Freycinet
took advantage of his position on the west coast to pull down and
appropriate for the French Academy of Inscriptions the oldest memorial of
European presence in Australia. That is to say, he took the plate put up
by the Dutchman Vlaming in 1697, in place of that erected in 1616 by Dirk
Haticks on the island bearing the name of "Dirk Hartog," to commemorate
his visit in the ship Eendraght of Amsterdam.* (* Ibid 1 449.) Freycinet
had desired to take the plate when he was an officer on Le Naturaliste in
July 1801, but Captain Hamelin, the commander, would not permit it to be
disturbed. On the contrary, he set up a new post with the plate affixed
to it, and expressed the opinion that to remove an interesting memorial
that for over a century had been spared by nature and by man, would be to
commit a kind of sacrilege.* (* "Il eut pense commettre un sacrilege en
gardant a son bord cette plaque respectee pendant pres de deux siecles
par la nature et par les hommes qui pouvoient avant nous l'avoir
observee." Peron, Voyage de Decouvertes 1 195.) Freycinet was not so
scrupulous.
Again, in 1824, the Baron de Bougainville, a son of the older navigator,
and who as a junior officer had sailed with Baudin, took out the ships
Thetis and Esperance on a voyage to the South Seas, for purely
geographical purposes;* (* Journal de la Navigation autour du monde de la
fregate La Thetis et de la corvette L'Esperance, pendant les annees
1824-1826; publie par ordre du Roi. Par M. le Baron de Bougainville.) and
still later, in 1826 to 1828, during the reign of Charles X, Dumont
d'Urville, in the Astrolabe, did valuable exploratory work, especially in
the Western Pacific.* (* Voyage de la corvette L'Astrolabe, execute par
ordre du Roi, pendant les annees 1826-1829, sous le commandement de M. J.
Dumont D'Urville, Paris 1830.)
The whole of these expeditions, with the partial exception of that of
Marion-Dufresne, were conducted in ships of the French navy, commanded by
French officers, supported by French funds, and their official records
were published at the expense of the French Government. A certain unity
of purpose characterised them; and that purpose was as purely and truly
directed to extend man's knowledge of the habitable earth as was that of
any expedition that ever sailed under any flag.
To attempt, therefore, to isolate Baudin's expedition from the series to
which it rightly belongs, simply because it was undertaken while
Bonaparte was at the head of the State, is to convey a false idea of it.
If there were any evidence to show that it differed from the others in
its aims, it would be quite proper to make it stand alone.
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