page_title: Rose de Freycinet
section_title: Aboard the Uranie
hierarchical_section_title: Rose de Freycinet / Biography / Aboard the Uranie
caption_attribution_description: English: Shark Bay, 1818, reproductions of original water-colours painted on Freycinet voyage by J. Arago and A. Pellion, Campagne de l' "Uranie"(1817-1820), journal...d'après le manuscript original accampangé de notes, Charles Duplomb, 1927 English: Campagne de l' "Uranie"(1817-1820), journal...d'après le manuscrit original accampangé de notes / par Charles Duplomb, State Library of New South Wales Q980/F
context_page_description: Rose de Freycinet, born Rose Pinon, was a Frenchwoman who, in the company of her husband, Louis de Freycinet, sailed around the world between 1817 and 1820 on a French scientific expedition on a military ship, initially disguised as a man. While not the first woman to circumnavigate the world, she was the first to record her experiences, in a diary. Being not intended for publication and being both frank and personal musings about people, places and events, her writings represent an important anthropological resource.
context_section_description: Louis de Freycinet had earlier participated in the Baudin voyage that produced the first map of the Australian coastline in the period 1801-3. It is on that voyage he would have been aware of his leader Nicolas Baudin's meeting with Matthew Flinders and of their virtually simultaneous proving that  New Holland of the Dutch and New South Wales of Cook was part of one island continent Australia. Displaying considerable cartographic skill, when  Baudin's second ship was sent home under Jacques Hamelin laden with specimens and records, de Freycinet was elevated above others to command Casuarina, a small vessel purchased in order to continue the surveys. 
  After the death of both Baudin and the voyage anthropologist François Peron who attempted to complete the account, and finalising an account of the voyage, in 1817 he was given command of the Uranie on an expedition under the auspices of the French Navy and the Ministry of the Interior, in which Louis Isidore Duperrey, Jacques Arago, Adrien Taunay the Younger, and others went to Rio de Janeiro to perform various scientific measurements and to collect specimens in natural history. Rose Pinon and he were newly wed; perhaps aware of  Flinder's imprisonment and his enforced separation from his wife Ann, they conspired to avoid a similar fate aboard. Dressed in men's clothes; Rose de Freycinet became the first woman to write an account of her experiences circumnavigating the world.
  To prepare the ship for his wife's presence, de Freycinet had the living quarters of the corvette renovated (they were refurbished and extended, even at the expense of the ship's navigability), and much attention was paid to hygienic standards aboard the ship, food safety, and health. Apparently, becoming a stowaway was Rose's own idea; she may have hatched the plan as early as 1815, and probably solidified her scheme after her husband received approval for the expedition, in October 1816. She went on board on 16 September 1817; report of her presence reached the French media soon after, leading to sensational reports in the press and "indignation in official circles." 
  The presence of women aboard Navy vessels was illegal, and it is possible that the Navy, the Ministry of the Interior, and the press learned of Rose's presence from an officer who was removed to make way for her. At any rate, Rose initially dressed as a man, and even visited the governor of Gibraltar dressed in "a blue frock-coat with trousers to match."
  The Navy was powerless since the first French port of call for the Uranie was Réunion, in the Indian Ocean, which was not reached until 1818. When the ship did land there, the local governor was unable or unwilling to act, swayed as he was, according to Rose, by her husband's arguments and her charm. A court-martial that investigated the shipwreck, in 1820, never mentioned Rose's presence.
  The expedition brought back a great number of scientific specimens, including minerals, plants, insects, animals, despite the shipwreck of the Uranie in 1820 in the Falkland Islands. According to Jacques Arago, the artist who had been hired to do botanical and other illustrations and who was the only civilian on board, during the shipwreck Rose de Freycinet behaved herself admirably. Her diary, however, was not published until 1927.
caption: Rose in front of the tent to the right of the observatory, Shark Bay, Western Australia, 1919
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "5312", "Image ImageLength": "2988", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "samsung", "Image Model": "SM-G920I", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC 2017 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2019:04:23 13:36:53", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "300", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "S", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[33, 52, 0]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "E", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[151, 12, 45]", "GPS GPSAltitudeRef": "0", "GPS GPSAltitude": "66", "GPS GPSTimeStamp": "[2, 52, 30]", "GPS GPSDate": "2019:04:23", "Image GPSInfo": "764", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1066", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4550", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/50", "EXIF FNumber": "19/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "160", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2019:04:23 12:52:31", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2019:04:23 12:52:31", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "141/25", "EXIF ApertureValue": "37/20", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "207/100", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "37/20", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "43/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4352", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2844", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "28", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "A16LSIA00VM A16LSJL02SM"}