Jean-François-Marie de Surville

Jean-François-Marie de Surville (1717 – April 1770) was a French trader and navigator.

In 1767, de Surville set sail in his ship, the St Jean Baptiste, to India to trade between the French settlements in India and China. In 1768, while in India, he heard rumours that the British had discovered a fabulously wealthy island in the South Pacific, and decided to try to find this island.

During the voyage, numbers of sick and dying crew members forced de Surville to find a safe anchorage. He followed Tasman's charts, and headed for New Zealand. On 12 December 1769 at 11:30am, the St Jean Baptiste sighted the coastline of New Zealand, soon passing James Cook's Endeavour, with neither ship sighting the other due to the bad weather. Surprisingly, both de Surville and Cook were navigating New Zealand waters at the same time, the only Europeans to do so since Abel Tasman, a century earlier. The chaplain on board the St Jean Baptiste was Father Paul-Antoine Léonard de Villefeix who conducted the first Christian services in New Zealand on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 1769, in Doubtless Bay.

Later, while at anchor, more bad weather damaged the ship. De Surville was forced to make substantial repairs. He ran afoul of local Māori, and was forced to flee, kidnapping Ranginui, one of their chiefs.

The St Jean Baptiste continued east across the Pacific and suffered further loss of crew through scurvy. De Surville drowned in heavy seas off the Peru coast, in April 1770 while seeking help for his dying crew. According to Alan Villiers, author of Captain Cook - The Seaman's Seaman (Penguin Books, 1967, page 154), de Surville was captured by the Maori of the Bay of Islands in May 1772 and eaten.^[1]

The Surville Cliffs, the northernmost point of New Zealand's North Island, are named after him.

See also

• Whatuwhiwhi, for de Surville's encounter with Māori.

References