Among the residents at the Abbaye aux Bois when Rose de Freycinet’s mother was there was the famous (or perhaps infamous) socialite, Juliette Récamier. She was still there when, many years later, she was visited by Anthony Trollope’s mother.
Throughout the Astrolabe voyage, Gaimard kept his former captain, Louis de Freycinet, informed of its progress. In the first of the letters that he sent to him he described the relatively uneventful voyage as far as New South Wales
When the Uranie entered the roadstead of Port Louis, Mauritius, a British frigate was already there, and for Rose de Freycinet there was a surprise in store. She discovered the frigate captain’s wife often accompanied her husband on his voyages. Were French and British naval practices so very different in this respect?
Following his return to France in 1829 from serving on the Astrolabe during Dumont d’Urvilles’s first voyage as expedition commander, Gaimard continued to write to his former commander on the Uranie, Louis de Freycinet. Two of his letters described the July revolution in 1830 Paris and its aftermath.
In October 1825, Volume XX of the Asiatic Journal carried an announcement by Admiral Thomas Manby of the probable discovery of relics of the LaPérouse. expedition. But from where did Manby get his information?
In October 1827, a brief note appeared in the Bulletin de la Société de géographie, informing its readers of the contents of a letter, dated 17 January 1827 sent from the survey ship belonging to the Honourable East India Company. However, the 26-year-old author of the letter, Eugène Chaigneau, was French. How did he come to be on board?