French ship Astrolabe (1781)

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For other ships of the same name, see French ship Astrolabe.

Career (France)

Namesake:	Astrolabe instrument
Builder:	Le Havre
Launched:	1781
Christened:	Autruche
Reclassified:	Frigate in 1784
Fate:	wrecked on Vanikoro 1788
General characteristics
Class and type:	Fluyt
Displacement:	c. 500 tonnes
Length:	38.7 metres
Beam:	8.5 m
Draught:	5 m
Propulsion:	Sail
Complement:	10 officers 100 men
Armament:	6 to 20 6-pounders
Armour:	Timber

The Astrolabe was a converted fluyt of the French Navy, famous for her travels with Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse.

She departed Brest on 1st August 1785 under Paul Antoine Fleuriot de Langle, along with the Boussole under La Pérouse.

The expedition vanished mysteriously in 1788 after leaving Botany Bay on 10 March 1788. The fate of the expedition was eventually solved by Captain Peter Dillon in 1827 when he found remnants of the ships the Astrolable and the Boussole at Vanikoro Island in the New Hebrides. The ships had been wrecked in a storm. Survivors from one ship had been massacred while survivors from the other ship had constructed their own small boat and sailed off the island, never to be heard from again. ^[1]