Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Chevalier Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni d'Entrecasteaux
Portrait in Voyage to Australia and the Pacific 1791–1793
Born	(1737-11-08)8 November 1737 Aix-en-Provence
Died	21 July 1793(1793-07-21) (aged 55) off the Hermits
Cause of death	Scurvy
Nationality	French
Years active	1754–1793

Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni, chevalier d'Entrecasteaux (French pronunciation:

Bruni d'Entrecasteaux was born to Dorothée de Lestang-Parade and Jean Baptiste Bruny, at

In September 1791, the French Assembly decided to send an expedition in search of

When the expedition left

However, when Bruni d'Entrecasteaux reached Table Bay, Cape Town on 17 January 1792, he heard a report that Captain John Hunter (later to be Governor of New South Wales) had recently seen – off the Admiralty Islands – canoes manned by indigenous people wearing French uniforms and belts. Although Hunter denied this report, and although the Frenchmen heard of the denial, Bruni d'Entrecasteaux determined to make directly to the Admiralty Islands, nowadays part of Papua New Guinea, taking water and refreshing his crew at Van Diemen's Land. On 20 April 1792, that land was in sight, and three days later the ships anchored in a harbour, which he named Recherche Bay. For the next five weeks, until 28 May 1792, the Frenchmen carried out careful boat explorations which revealed in detail the beautiful waterways and estuaries in the area.

Bruni d'Entrecasteaux was fortunate in having good officers and scientists, most importantly from the exploration point-of-view the expedition's first hydrographical engineer, C.F Beautemps-Beaupré, who is now regarded as the father of modern French hydrography. The work this officer did in the field was excellent, and his charts, when published in France as an Atlas du Voyage de Bruny-Dentrecasteaux (1807) were very detailed. The atlas contains 39 charts, of which those of Van Diemen's Land were the most detailed; they remained the source of the English charts of the area for many years.

Beautemps-Beaupré, while surveying the coasts with Lieutenant Crétin, discovered that

While the Frenchmen were still in that dangerous area, on 12 December a violent storm descended upon them, and both ships were nearly wrecked. Fortunately, however, they found an anchorage where they were able to ride out the worst of the gale. Landings took place here on the mainland, and the locality was named in honour of Legrand, who had spotted the anchorage, and of the ship he was on, Espérance. Beautemps-Beaupré made a hasty survey of the off-lying islands of the archipelago. No water was found, and on 18 December the ships continued eastward to the head of the Great Australian Bight, but here the coast was found to be even more arid, and the water position more serious.

On 4 January 1793, Bruni d'Entrecasteaux was forced to leave the coast at a position near Bruni d'Entrecasteaux Reef and sail direct to Van Diemen's Land. In this decision the French explorer was unfortunate, for if he had continued his examination of the southern coast of New Holland, he would have made all the geographical discoveries that fell to the lot of Bass and Flinders a few years later. Then, indeed, a French "Terre Napoléon" might well have become a fact.^{[citation needed]}

The ships anchored in Recherche Bay on 22 January, and the expedition spent a period of five weeks in that area, watering the ships, refreshing the crews, and carrying out explorations into both

It was probably no coincidence that the d'Entrecasteaux expedition should have spent time investigating that part of Van Diemen's Land, as that region had been recommended for colonization by Henri Peyroux de la Coudrenière in his c.1784–85 "Mémoire sur les avantages qui résulteraient d'une colonie puissante à la terre de Diémen".^[3] Although Peyroux’s proposal fell on deaf ears at the time, it may have influenced d'Entrecasteaux's choice of the location to investigate. An inset map of Frederick Henry Bay, the place recommended by Peyroux for a settlement, was included in the map of Van Diemens Land prepared by C. F. Beautemps-Beaupré, the hydrographer with the d'Entrecasteaux expedition.^[4]

On 28 February d'Entrecasteaux sailed from Van Diemen's Land towards Tonga, sighting New Zealand and the Kermadec Islands en route. At Tonga, he found that the local people remembered Cook and Bligh well enough, but knew nothing of La Pérouse. He then sailed back to New Caledonia, where he anchored at Balade. The vain search for La Pérouse then resumed with Santa Cruz, then along the southern coasts of the Solomon Islands, the northern parts of the Louisiade Archipelago, through the Dampier Strait, along the northern coast of New Britain and the southern coast of the Admiralty Islands, and thence north of New Guinea to the Moluccas.

By this time, the affairs of the expedition had become almost desperate, largely because the officers were ardent royalists and the crews equally ardent revolutionaries. Kermadec had died of tuberculosis in Balade harbour, and on 21 July 1793, d'Entrecasteaux himself died of scurvy,^[1] off the Hermit Islands, part of the Bismarck Archipelago in Papua New Guinea.

Commands were re-arranged, with Auribeau taking charge of the expedition, with Rossel in Kermadec's place. The new chief took the ships to

Australian places named after him

• Western Australia
  • Point D'Entrecasteaux34°50′S 116°0′E / 34.833°S 116.000°E / -34.833; 116.000
  • D'Entrecasteaux National Park 34°36′S 115°56′E / 34.600°S 115.933°E / -34.600; 115.933
• South Australia
  • D'Entrecasteaux Reef 31°58′S 131°55′E / 31.967°S 131.917°E / -31.967; 131.917
• Tasmania
  • Bruny Island 43°22′S 147°17′E / 43.367°S 147.283°E / -43.367; 147.283
  • D'Entrecasteaux Channel 43°15′S 147°15′E / 43.250°S 147.250°E / -43.250; 147.250
  • D'Entrecasteaux Monument Historic Site 43°16′S 147°14′E / 43.267°S 147.233°E / -43.267; 147.233
  • D'Entrecasteaux River 43°28′S 146°50′E / 43.467°S 146.833°E / -43.467; 146.833
  • D'Entrecasteaux Watering Place Historic Site 43°34′S 146°53′E / 43.567°S 146.883°E / -43.567; 146.883^[5]

Eponyms

D'Entrecasteaux is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of lizard endemic to Australia, Pseudemoia entrecasteauxii.^[6]

See also

• European and American voyages of scientific exploration
• Middle Island (Western Australia)

Notes

Citations

References

• Douglas, Bronwen, Fanny Wonu Veys & Billie Lythberg (eds). Collecting in the South Seas; The Voyage of Bruni d"Entrecasteaux 1791–1794. Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2018
• ISBN 0-522-85232-7
  ].
• Duyker, Edward (2003). Citizen
  ISBN 0-522-85160-6
  , pp. 383 [Winner, New South Wales Premier's General History Prize, 2004].
• Horner FB (1995). Looking for La Perouse: D’Entrecasteaux in Australia and the South Pacific, 1792–1793. Carlton South, Victoria: Miegunyah Press.
  ISBN 0-522-84451-0
  .
• Marchant, Leslie R. (1966). "Bruny D'Entrecasteaux, Joseph-Antoine Raymond (1739–1793)".
  ISSN 1833-7538
  . Retrieved 20 August 2009.
• McLaren, Ian F. (1993). La Perouse in the Pacific, including searches by d’Entrecasteaux, Dillon, Dumont d’Urville : an annotated bibliography. (with an introduction by John Dunmore). Parkville, [Victoria]: University of Melbourne Library.
  ISBN 0-7325-0601-8
  .
• Roche, Jean-Michel (2005). Dictionnaire des bâtiments de la flotte de guerre française de Colbert à nos jours, 1671 - 1870. Group Retozel-Maury Millau. pp. 325–6.
  OCLC 165892922
  .
• Van Duuren, David; Mostert, Tristan (2007). Curiosities from the Pacific Ocean. A remarkable Rediscovery in the
  ISBN 0-522-84932-6
  .

External links

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux

• Voyage to Australia and the Pacific