''Boussole'' was a former flûte of the

French Navy The French Navy (french: Marine nationale, lit=National Navy), informally , is the maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the five military service branches of France. It is among the largest and most powerful naval forces in t ...

, famous for its exploration of the Pacific under Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse. She was built in 1781–82 at

Bayonne Bayonne (; eu, Baiona ; oc, label= Gascon, Baiona ; es, Bayona) is a city in Southwestern France near the Spanish border. It is a commune and one of two subprefectures in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine r ...

as the flûte ''Portfaix'' for the French Navy. In May 1785 she and her sistership ''Astrolabe'' (previously the ''Autruche'') were renamed and rerated as frigates, and fitted for round-the-world scientific exploration. It departed Brest on 1 August 1785 under Lapérouse, accompanied by the ''Astrolabe'' under

Paul Antoine Fleuriot de Langle Paul Antoine Fleuriot de Langle (1 August 1744, château de Kerlouët at Quemper-Guézennec, Côtes-d'Armor – 11 December 1787, Maouna, Samoa) was a French vicomte, académicien de marine, naval commander and explorer. He was second in c ...

. The expedition vanished mysteriously in 1788 after leaving

Botany Bay Botany Bay ( Dharawal: ''Kamay''), an open oceanic embayment, is located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, south of the Sydney central business district. Its source is the confluence of the Georges River at Taren Point and the Cook ...

on 10 March 1788. Captain

Peter Dillon Peter Dillon (15 June 1788 – 9 February 1847) was a ship's captain engaged in the merchant trade, explorer and writer. Dillon discovered in 1826–27 the fate of the La Pérouse expedition. Early career Peter Dillon was born in Martinique, the ...

in solved the fate of the expedition when he found remnants of ''Astrolabe'' and ''Boussole'' at Vanikoro Island in the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capit ...

. Local inhabitants reported that a storm had wrecked both ships. Survivors from one ship had been massacred while survivors from the other ship had constructed their own small boat and sailed off the island, never to be heard from again. The fate of Lapérouse and his two ships at Vanikoro is the subject of a chapter in ''

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas'' (french: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) is a classic science fiction adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne. The novel was originally serialized from March 1869 through June 1870 in Pierre- ...

'' by

Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the '' Voyages extra ...

. Objects recovered from the wreck are held in the collection of the

Maritime Museum of New Caledonia Maritime Museum of New Caledonia, also Musée Maritime de Nouvelle Caledonie, is a maritime museum in New Caledonia. It is largely dedicated to the history of French colonial exploration in the Pacific and the collection includes objects retrieved ...

References

Exploration ships Maritime exploration of Australia Maritime incidents in 1788 {{ship-stub