Talk:Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse

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[edit] LP's death

Did anyone confirm how La Perouse died in 1828?

News is being bruited about that La Bousolle has only just been found, rather than in 1964 as is mentioned in this article. See, for example http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/05/10/laperouse.wrecked/

It's worth noting that the details here jibe with the details in the article (notably, the placement of the wreck off the island of Vanikoro in the Solomons). I suspect it's just a case of the media misunderstanding the story, and that this was just an expedition to recover some of the already-known wreck. Can anyone shed any light on this?

CNN are confused. The Hakluyt society's edition of La Pérouse's journals (published in 1995) give a brief history of the searches that have been carried out over the years, and they record a visit by the French patrol boat Dunkerquoise in 1964, to bring some items to the surface. The French mapped the sites of other items, and it seems to have been a regular habit of the French Navy to periodically send expeditions to Vanikoro to recover items and check on the state of the monuments: this report is about the results from the latest of them.

Conférence de presse Expédition Vanikoro 2005

Ecb 19:39, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Which ship was de Langle captain of?

As I was going through and referencing this article, I noticed that, when discussing the death of de Langle, one of the officers on the expedition, it claimed he was the captain of the Astrolabe. My source (Novaresio, Paolo (1996). The Explorers) claimed he was captain of the Boussole, the other ship. I changed this in the article(as I felt a sourced fact superceeds an unsourced one) but I suspect it may be a controversial or unknown point, so further reasearch would be appreciated. Thanks! JesseW 22:12, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

After looking into my copy of La Pérouse's journals (see the comment above), I'm sure that de Langle was captain of L'Astrolabe until his death, although he was promoted afterwards (odd though that might seem!). Here's the source, for future reference.

Appendix II of volume 2 of "The Journal of Jean-François de Galaup de la Pérouse, 1785–1788" (ISBN 0904180395) gives the muster rolls of the two ships. It includes all the various promotions that occurred on the voyage, and shows that:

  • La Pérouse was 'Capitaine de Vaisseau' of La Boussole (as well as holding other ranks).
  • de Langle was 'Capitaine de Vaisseau' of L'Astrolabe until he died on 11 December 1787.
  • de Langle was promoted to 'Chef de Division' on 14 April 1788.
  • L'Astrolabe's Lieutenant, (Anne-Georges-Augustin de Monty) was promoted to 'Capitaine de Vaisseau' of L'Astrolabe on 14 April 1788.

Perhaps your source mistakenly assumed that de Langle's promotion in April 1788 was to the captaincy of La Boussole.

Reading between the lines, it appears that ranks were assigned back in France, on the basis of comments by officers sent from foreign ports (Manila, Macao & Kamchatka). Dispatches took months, perhaps years, to get back. In de Langle's case, he was promoted in April 1788 because La Pérouse had sent back favourable comments about him and because France hadn't heard of his death: the first news of it was carried from Port Jackson to France by four of the redundant transport ships of the First Fleet, all of which set sail in July 1788.

Ecb 19:37, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the vote was move. David Kernow 21:01, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

Jean-François de Galaup, count de La Pérouse → Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse : Consistent use of French; more accurate.

[edit] Voting

Please add  * Support  or  * Oppose  followed by a brief explanation, then sign your vote using "~~~~"

  • Support : For the sake of consistency; the first line of the article could then link "comte" with "count" thus: Jean-François de Galaup, comte (count) de La Pérouse, ... —the preceding unsigned comment is by David Kernow (talk • contribs) 11:15, 23 January 2006 (UTC+11 hours ) (Nominator of move)
  • Support : It's slightly jarring to come across the anglicised term count in the middle of a French name.Ecb 19:49, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support as per comments above--A Y Arktos 20:42, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support I normally would opt for english names, but it does sound a tad bit odd in this case. Gryffindor 03:43, 24 January 2006 (UTC)


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

[edit] Footnote overkill?

Bearing in mind it's an article in a general encyclopedia, anyone else feel this article suffers from footnote overkill? I suggest a single acknowledgement of the Novaresio book suffices, perhaps under a "Sources" heading. I wouldn't delete the work done to detail the references, however; I'd transfer it to a subpage. What do people think?
Thanks, David Kernow 11:25, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I think you've got a point. I, too, am unhappy to discard the obviously painstaking work by JesseW, but I think we'll have to.
Firstly, earlier edits to the article record that much of the information on it is from André Engels' book and website (the website is still linked in the section headed "See also" of the article). We're doing Engels a disservice by paraphrasing his work then quoting Novaresi as the primary source for our Wikipedia article.
Secondly (this is a personal view) I was taught that footnotes are there to give extra, supporting information to the reader when s/he reads a sentence and thinks, "That can't be right!" or "where did they get that idea from?". The footnotes on this article are to fairly trivial items, such as La Pérouse's date of birth, names of his exploration ships, the fact that the Prévosts were uncle and nephew. What researcher with access to a decent academic library would have doubts about them?
With apologies to JesseW, I say we delete the footnotes and put in a reference to Novaresio's book under the heading "see also". Ecb 20:42, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

It is stated in the french wiki ("Exécution de Louis XVI" under wiki-fr) that among the last words of Louis XVI prior to his execution (21 January 1793) was a question to a naval officer inquiring of any news of the La Pérouse expedition. Anyone have any info regarding this? -- Mille Sabord

[edit] Details of PacNW Coast visit to be added

I don't have time at the moment, but there are details concerning La Perouse's visit to Nootka Sound and the rest of the NW Coast in Derek Pethick's books on the marine exploration/fur trade in that area; a mountain on one of the Queen Charlotte Islands is also named for him; I'll get its location refs and be back later.Skookum1 17:47, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

It seems there is spelling mistakes in this article:

1) "Lapérouse" in word word instead of "La Pérouse" in two words (as it should be it seems)

2) "Galaup" instead of "Galoup"

can somebody fix it ? the 2nd mistake is in the article title even ...

--OC 08:24, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Two picture captions wrong, it seems; I'll correct them. The only "Galoup" is in "See also", where it echoes the spelling in the title but not the body of the text it links to. "Galaup" seems correct (I've just checked other encyclopedias etc.).qp10qp 22:42, 12 October 2006 (UTC)


Is his original name "Jean-François Galaup" or "Jean-François de Galaup"? The title of the article includes the "de", but the text just calls him "Jean-François Galaup". JackofOz 04:40, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

ADB and other refs say "de Galaup". I'll correct the text. JackofOz 02:53, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too casual

Where is the evidence that a masscre occurred?GhostofSuperslum 14:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I changed the tag from NPOV to verify source. It is one statement that requires verification not the whole article that is NPOV. This is more appropriate. SauliH 21:44, 19 January 2007 (UTC)