Louis Francois Marie Aleno de Saint Aloüarn (25 July 1738 – 27 October 1772) was a notable French naval officer and explorer.
St Aloüarn was the first European to make a formal claim of sovereignty — on behalf of France — over the west coast of Australia,[1] which was known at the time as "New Holland". While indigenous Australians had lived there for thousands of years, the European empires of the early modern era frequently did not recognise the sovereignty of indigenous peoples.
Much of the west coast had already been charted by mariners from the Netherlands, following a landing by Dirk Hartog in 1616. James Cook, in 1770, had charted and claimed the east coast for Britain. When St Aloüarn visited New Holland in 1772, neither British nor Dutch officials had issued a formal claim over the west coast. However, the French claim over Western Australia was never secured by a permanent settlement.
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St Aloüarn was born to a naval officer named François Marie Guénolé Pantaléon d’Aleno and Marie Josèphe Pélagie de Quillien, members of the aristocracy, at Saint-Aloüarn, near Guengat, in the Pays Bigouden of Brittany.[2]
The family had a history of naval service and St Aloüarn joined the Gardes de la Marine in 1754.[2] He was promoted to Lieutenant and joined his uncle, Rosmadec St Aloüarn, on the 74-gun warship Espérance.[2] In November 1755, as it returned from a campaign off Canada, Espérance was attacked and destroyed by HMS Oxford; St Aloüarn and his uncle became prisoners of war and were held in England for two years, before they were returned to France.[2]
The war continued and St Aloüarn was posted to Martinique on the 74-gun Défenseur.[2] His father and uncle were both killed when the Juste was destroyed in 1759, at the Battle of The Cardinals (also known as the Battle of Quiberon Bay).[3]
During 1759–62, St Aloüarn served in France on smaller vessels and on shore.[2]
In 1761, he married Marie Jeanne Corentine Drouallen, with whom he had a daughter and three sons.[4]
Between 1762 and 1767, St Aloüarn served on the 116-gun Royal Louis and the frigate Infidèle, at Martinique and Brest.[2]
St Aloüarn took command of the storeship Ecluse in 1767, followed by the Aber Wrac'h in 1770.[2]
In 1771, shortly after the death of his wife,.[5] St Aloüarn was approached by a colleague, Yves de Kerguelen, who asked him join an expedition to New Holland. This reflected a broader French drive to annex territories adjoining the Indian and Pacific Oceans.[6] Kerguelen and St Aloüarn first travelled to Port Louis, Île-de-France (later known as Mauritius).[4] On 30 April 1771, they left Port Louis in two small vessels: Kerguelen on board the 24-gun flute Fortune and St Aloüarn — still a Lieutenant — commanding the 16-gun storeship Gros Ventre.
On 11 February 1772, in the southern Indian Ocean, the expedition sighted a large mountainous island that Kerguelen took for Australia.[5] (The island was later named after him.) The two ships lost sight of each other during bad weather. After a party from Fortune had made a brief visit to the island, Kerguelen returned to France.[5]
After also landing a party on the island, St Aloüarn continued towards Australia and a rendezvous point at Cape Leeuwin, arranged earlier with Kerguelen.[7] On 17 March he arrived off a bay (later Flinders Bay), near the cape.[8] With no sign of Kerguelen, St Aloüarn followed the coast northward.
At Baie de Prise de Possession ("Bay of Taking Possession"; later Turtle Bay), Dirk Hartog Island on 30 March 1772, St Aloüarn became the first European to formally claim possession of Western Australia, on behalf of King Louis XV.[9] Members of his crew buried a bottle containing a document stating what had occurred, alongside two silver écu coins, worth six Livres tournois (Francs).[10] This occurred in sight of Cape Inscription, where in 1696 the Dutch mariner Willem de Vlamingh had left a commemorative plate recording his visit and that of Dirk Hartog in 1616.[11]
By the time of the annexation, many of the crew of Gros Ventre were exhausted and suffering from scurvy.[7] St Aloüarn made for Portuguese Timor, where he and his crew recuperated for a short period.[7] Gros Ventre then visited Batavia (Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies, where St Aloüarn and some of his crew contracted "tropical diseases".[7] On 5 September, they arrived at Port Louis, where they had been given up as lost.[7] St Aloüarn was hospitalised and dictated a letter to Kerguelen, advising that he had taken possession of western New Holland. St Aloüarn failed to recover from his illness and died on 27 October.
In 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip established a British colony on the east coast of Australia, at Sydney. However, other French expeditions followed St Aloüarn to Western Australia. In 1792, Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux named the St Alouarn Islands, south east of Cape Leeuwin after St Aloüarn. In 1800, Nicolas Baudin was the first to map the Western coast and a part of the Southern coast of Australia.
By 1826, following an expedition to the south coast of Western Australia by Jules Dumont d'Urville, British authorities were seeking to forestall French settlement in Australia.[12] A British Army force, under Major Edmund Lockyer, was despatched from Sydney, establishing a permanent British settlement at King George Sound, named Frederick Town (or Frederickstown), later known as Albany.
While there had been numerous earlier searches, some led by maritime historian Leslie Marchant, one of whose specialities was the French discoveries in Australia,[13] the location of St Aloüarn's proclamation was not confirmed until January 1998, when an expedition led by French/Australian adventurer and author Philippe Godard assisted by local shipwreck enthusiast Max Cramer visited Dirk Hartog Island and located an écu coin in a lead capsule, at Turtle Bay.[14] The site was inspected and confirmed by staff of the Western Australian Maritime Museum.[15]
Searches continued for a bottle known to have been buried by the French, containing a document proclaiming annexation. In April 1998 the site was examined by a team led by Myra Stanbury and consisting of archaeologists, museum staff and remote sensing specialists and a series of test excavations completed, without result. After that phase was completed a remote sensing team comprising R. Creasy, M.McCarthy and R. Sheppard located a bottle capped with a seal of lead surrounding another écu, although the bottle contained only sand.[10] A comprehensive excavation of the site failed to locate further artefacts.
There is anecdotal evidence that the proclamation was found decades earlier by a stock worker, was kept at the homestead of a sheep station operating on Dirk Hartog Island at the time and was later destroyed by fire.[16]
The proclamation site was later protected by State and Commonwealth legislation and a commemorative plaque was placed at the spot.