20. Freycinet, Louis Claude Desaulses de (1779-1842).
Voyage autour du monde: entrepris par ordre du roi, exécuté sur les corvettes de S.M. l'Uranie et la Physicienne pendant les années 1817, 1818, 1819 et 1820 / par Louis de Freycinet.
Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1824-1844.
The stream of French voyages of exploration was interrupted by the Napoleonic wars, but in 1816, Louis Freycinet proposed a new circumnavigation of the globe. Freycinet had just completed Peron’s narrative of the Baudin expedition, after Peron died in 1811, and he was eager to continue what Baudin had begun. The French government gave its approval, and the Uranie departed in 1817, with Jean Rene Constant Quoy on board as surgeon and zoologist, assisted by Joseph Paul Gaimard. They sailed first to New Holland, then up through the East Indies to the Marianas, then to Hawaii, back to Australia, and finally on to South America. The phalanger, or cuscus, illustrated here, was picked up in Timor and later named after Quoy. The turbot was collected in South America.
The Uranie was wrecked in the Falkland Islands on the return home, and many of the specimens were lost. Freycinet acquired an American ship, renamed it the Physicienne, and continued on to France, arriving back in November, 1820. The Paris scientific establishment was most pleased with the surviving specimens, which included many previously unknown species.