The slight figure boarding Louis de Freycinet’s Uranie hardly attracted a second glance. Ship’s boys as young as ten were not uncommon in the early nineteenth century. But this ‘boy’ was the beautiful wife of the captain dressed as a man. The year was 1817 and 23 year old Rose and 35 year-old Louis had just married. It was a truly romantic marriage for love. Rose was a commoner and de Freycinet an aristocrat. So helplessly in love were the couple that they could not bear to be separated and Louis broke every rule of the French navy to have her with him on what they knew would be a very long journey.

De Freycinet needed to modify his ship to cater for a female passenger and it was not long before word escaped ashore, causing great official consternation. But by then Uranie had sailed. The story delighted the French public and the de Freycinet’s became celebrities in their absence. The authorities decided to allow the romantic voyage to proceed. They were bound for the great south land via the Cape of Good Hope and Mauritius on a round-the-world voyage of scientific discovery. 

A year after leaving France the expedition anchored in Shark Bay to conduct scientific observations and map the area. But Rose’s husband also had some unfinished business in this part of the great south land. In 1802 de Freycinet had been with the Baudin expedition when they discovered the plate left by Willem de Vlamingh to mark his visit to the unknown land in 1697. De Freycinet and other officers wanted Baudin to remove the plate and take it back to France. But Baudin refused. De Freycinet swore that he would one day return and take the plate. His justification for doing this was ‘that such a rare plate might again be swallowed up by the sands, or else run the risk of being taken away and destroyed by some careless sailor, I felt that its correct place was in one of these great scientific depositories which offer to the historian such rich and precious documents. I planned, therefore, to place it in the collections of the Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres de L’Institut de France …’ ^[i], which he duly did. The plate immediately disappeared and was not seen again until 1940 when it was found in the basement of the Académie, reportedly in a box of old junk.

Rose kept a journal of her travels, recounting the sights she saw and the adventures she experienced with her husband. She also wrote many letters home. Her first view of New Holland, as the west coast of Australia was known at the time, did not impress her. She saw a ‘low and arid coast’ with ‘nothing in the sight to ease our minds, for we knew we would find no water in this miserable land…’ She would later go ashore with Louis and spend a few nights under canvas but‘That stay on land was not a pleasant one for me, the country being entirely devoid of trees and vegetation…’ In the cooler part of the day she collected shells and read in her tent.

Here Rose had her first contact with Indigenous people. She went ashore in a small boat but was unable to land because the water was too shallow. A couple of sailors had to carry the captain’s wife to the beach in all her finery. When they reached it a group of ten or so Aborigines approached, making strong signals for the intruders to return to their ship. ‘I was afraid, and would willingly have hidden myself’, she wrote home. The Aborigines retreated, leaving Rose, Louis and some officers to picnic on the beach beneath a canvas shade they had brought from the ship along with food. This they supplemented with some local oysters ‘far tastier than all those I had, sitting at a table in comfort, in Paris.’ 

What the people of the region might have made of this strange scene is not recorded. They may have thought that the strangers picnicking on their beach, Rose in her fashionable finery and the sailors in their colourful uniforms, did not present a very serious threat. In any case, just a few days later, friendly contact with the locals was established when they exchanged some of their weapons in return for tin and glass trinkets. Not likely to have been a fair exchange, setting the tone for much that was to come.

The French sailed north to Timor, then to the Moluccas, the Carolines, the Marianas and the Sandwich islands. In November 1819 they arrived in the growing colony at Port Jackson. Here the de Freycinet’s were welcomed enthusiastically by almost everyone. The Governor sent a military band to play them along the river to meet him at his Parramatta residence. There were endless parties and the French were provided with a house and facilities to pursue their scientific work. But on their first night in the house they were robbed of their silver service, table linen, the servants’ clothing and other items. Rose wrote home: ‘You know the purpose of this colony and what sort of people are to be found here in plenty; you will therefore not be astonished at this misdeed: might one not say it is roguery’s classic shore.’

Rose departed on the Uranie on Christmas morning. Aboard were two merino rams, adding to the black swans and emus they had already collected on their journey. Also aboard was a convict stowaway suffering the effects of too much Christmas cheer. He was handed over to the pilot but when they got out to sea another ten escapees were found. They joined the crew and one lady on board as they set a course for the Falkland Islands in search of an abandoned French settlement. 

Here the Uranie was wrecked, though the expeditioners managed to save their notes and around half of their samples. They eventually made it back to France where Louis was court martialled for losing his ship. He was cleared of the charge and then feted for his scientific achievements. Rose and Louis were a celebrated couple until Rose died of cholera in 1832. Louis died in 1841. The de Vlamingh plate was gifted to Australia in 1947. ^[ii]

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^[i] De Freycinet, Voyage Historique, Vol. I, 449.

^[ii]  Marc Serge Rivière (trans & ed), A Woman of Courage: The Journal of Rose de Freycinet on her voyage around the world 1817-1820, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 1996, pp. 51-52.