French frigate Boudeuse (1766)
The frigate La Boudeuse was the first French ship that sailed around the world. The journey under the guidance of Louis Antoine de Bougainville lasted from 1766 to 1769. On the escort ship L' Étoile drove among others, the botanist Philibert Commerçon.
The suitability of a frigate as a circumnavigator has been critically questioned in the preparations. Typically, robust cargo ships were preferred, which could accommodate larger amounts of cargo and required less staff. For those responsible for the Boudeuse but speed was more important than load capacity, a view that was confirmed during the trip.
On November 15, 1766 started the journey in the port of Nantes. After just three days broke the La Boudeuse the masts during a gale storm. The commander Louis Antoine de Bougainville realized the error in the structural analysis of vessel:
"Our masts are much too high. The shape of the ship itself allows enough width for the angle formed by the shrouds with the poles. This deficiency is compounded by our cargo (food), which lies deep under the center of gravity of the ship, causing the pole plant is in danger even at the slightest lurch. "
Then the masts were shortened in Brest and exchanged the 12 - pounder guns against 8- pounder.
The route ran from France across the Atlantic through the Strait of Magellan into the Pacific Ocean. On April 2, 1768 La Boudeuse landed on a year earlier discovered by Samuel Wallis island of Tahiti. Bougainville called Tahiti New Cythera, to the island in Greek mythology, at the beach, the goddess of love and beauty Aphrodite rose from the sea. With his trip report he made to the South Seas in Europe a symbol of equality, free love (the women of the islands were extremely liberally ) and the bliss of the " noble savage ". He supported so that the revolutionary theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and believed to have found the natural state of man described by this.
From Tahiti from the Boudeuse sailed further west to Samoa, the New Hebrides, to the Great Barrier Reef, then north to the Solomon Islands, New Britain according to the Moluccas and finally to Batavia to a longer stop, where the ship was maintained and the team was able to recover.
In March, 1769, after two years and four months in La Boudeuse ran one in Saint- Malo. Seven sailors died on the way, at that time a relatively small number. The maritime power of Bougainville and his crew was hardly acknowledged appropriately in the stories of seafaring, Jules Verne mentioned in the first volume of his anthology The Great Navigators of the 18th century, the circumnavigation of the Boudeuse. He draws particular attention to the performance of their captain, Nicolas- Pierre Duclos - Guyot. The classification of this strange journey is still to some extent controversial and difficult. But it seems to have been the first circumnavigation of the globe in which a woman, Jeanne Baret, - disguised as a man - was on board.