1811, France
Astrobale is famous for her travels with Jules Dumont d’Urville.
Originally known as La Coquille (The Shell), she served as a horse barge in the Mediterranean along the North African and Spanish coasts.
She was then refitted as an exploration ship and with her three masts, 14 cannons and 380 tonnes ...
1811, France
Astrobale is famous for her travels with Jules Dumont d’Urville.
Originally known as La Coquille (The Shell), she served as a horse barge in the Mediterranean along the North African and Spanish coasts.
She was then refitted as an exploration ship and with her three masts, 14 cannons and 380 tonnes displacement she was reclassified as a corvette. She undertook her first scientific circumnavigation from 1822 to 1825 under the command of Louis Isidore Duperrey.
She was then renamed Astrobale as a tribute to the famous sailor La Pérouse (one of his two ships also being called Astrobale). As such she left Toulon in 1826 under the command of Jules Dumont d’Urville (botanist and cartographer, former second in command of Duperrey) to undertake her second circumnavigation with 13 officers and 66 men. Apart from the scientific aspect of the voyage, one of her tasks was to try to find out about La Pérouse’s disappearance in 1788. Indeed Dumont d’Urville discovered evidence of La Pérouse’s shipwreck at the island of Vanikoro (part of Solomon Islands). Dumont d’Urville’s own scientific mission was very successful on several aspects: hydrographic charts of great precision were brought back as well as many observations of a scientific, astrologic and ethnographic nature, many biological specimens were collected and over 60 islets/islands were discovered.
In 1830, Astrobale took part in the capture of Alger and was subsequently used to ferry the army between France and Algeria until 1832.
From 1837 to 1840, she undertook her third circumnavigation with La Zélée, again under the command of Dumont d’Urville, for a mission in Antarctica which brought about the discovery of Adélie Land.
Her last voyage under the command of Louis-Marie-François Tardy de Montravel (former member of the Dumont d’Urville expedition in Antarctica) was to join the French naval base off the Argentinean coast during the blockade of the Rio de la Plata.
After this last mission, the old ship was scrapped in 1852.
