Location: Upper Deck
The Ship
A 380-ton corvette launched in 1811 as La Coquille, she charted the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea under the command of Lieutenant de Vaisseau Duperrey. La Coquille made her first scientific voyage around the world in 1822. Renamed L’Astrolabe in 1825 in memory of famed explorer Jean Francois de Galaup La Perouse, the corvette sailed for a second voyage of discovery under the command of Captain Dumont d’Urville.
On February 26, 1828, Captain Dumont d’Urville found the lagoon at Vanikoro Island, an island north of the New Hebrides, where the ships of the long-missing La PEROUSE had been wrecked.
After long preparations, L’Astrolabe, accompanied by Zelee, sailed on September 7, 1837, toward Terra del Fuego and the Antarctic Ocean. But it was only during his second expedition in 1840 that Dumont d’Urville discovered a land in the Antarctic to which the gave the name of his wife, the “Terre Adelie,” or “Adele Land.”
Concurrently, Captain Charles Wilkes, USN, in Porpoise and subsequently in command of Vicennes, was exploring other parts of Antarctica. As a consequence, discovery of Antarctica, which did not come until 1840, is attributed to both d’Urville and Wilkes.
The Model
By J. Stephen Murray Scale 1/8”
H 37” L 43” W 16 ½” (c)