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TITLE: DUMONT d'URVILLE; MAROONED IN TORRES STRAIT
1999 11 X 23 INCHES
JULES DUMONT D’URVILLE:
1790-1842, French naval officer, explorer, botanist, linguist.
Born in Calvados France, Jules-Sebastian Cesar Dumont
d'Urville was accepted
into the French navy at age 17. His intellect was keen. And though he
was
described as aloof and unlikable, he graduated at the head of his class
in 1811.
In 1814 he became an ensign. His interests were wide ranging including
astronomy, languages (he mastered English, German, Spanish, Greek, Italian
and
Hebrew), geology, entomology and his favorite, botany.
In 1819 aboard the hydrographic survey vessel Chevrette
anchored off the
island of Milos, Greece, Dumont d'Urville learned of a statue recently
unearthed
on the island. He visited the site and was captured by the beauty of the
statue. He pleaded with the French Government to purchase it. With great
speed
the authorities instructed Dumont d'Urville to purchase the statue "for
what
ever it might cost". The Statue, called the Venus de Milo, stands
in the Louvre
Museum in Paris. Dumont d'Urville received the Cross of St. Louis and
a
promotion to lieutenant de vaisseau , from King Charles X.
From 1822 to 1825 he sailed on a voyage that circumnavigated
the world
in the vessel Coquille which was command by his good friend Captain Louis-Isadore
Duperrey. On this voyage he undertook botanical and hydrographic research.
In
1826 to 1829 he explored the Pacific in the Astrolabe, formerly theCoqulle
searching for the wreck and remains of La Pérouse who had vanished
40 years
earlier.
In 1830, after the revolution in France, he escorted
the King from the
country, and by 1837 he was back to lead a voyage of anthropological study
to the
Pacific in the Astrolabe and Zélée. During this voyage,
gout and migraine
afflicted the cantankerous Dumont d'Urville as he sailed into Antarctic
waters and
in 1840 discovered the land which he named Terre Adélie for his
wife. It was
on this voyage that his ships were marooned in Torres Strait, May 1840.
In
1842 he perished with his wife and son in a train wreck returning from
a
picnic at Versailles.
