Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
showed him an old statue he had recently dug up. To most naval cap-
tains one piece of Greek marble looked much the same as another
but D'Urville recognised the quality of this item and rushed to Con-
stantinople to make an excited report to the French consul. The res-
ult was that the world's most famous statue, the Venus de Milo, was
obtained for France. In the 1820s he took part in two important voy-
ages of exploration: a circumnavigation (1822-5) and an extensive
Pacific expedition (1826-9) during which he discovered more evid-
ence concerning the fate of La Perouse. (D'Urville had an immense
admiration for the unfortunate explorer, and even renamed his ship,
Coquille,
as
L'Astrolabe
in La Peórouse's honour.) Soon after his return,
the 1830 revolution deposed Charles X and D'Urville was chosen by
the ex-monarch to convey him into exile in England.
But the new regime of Louis-Philippe, the 'citizen king', had im-
portant work for the captain to do. In 1836 news reached Europe
that the United States was planning an Antarctic survey. D'Urville,
not wanting France to be left behind in the work of exploration
offered to lead an expedition. He was, however, still under something
of a cloud with the new regime and the idea met firm opposition.
But Louis-Philippe liked the scheme and, therefore, D'Urville sailed
in September 1837, with
L'Astrolabe
and
La Zélée.
He took the, now
little-used, Magellan's Strait and made a careful survey of it before
striking south-eastwards. He reached impenetrable pack ice in
63°29′, followed it eastwards for three hundred miles but failed to
find a way through. D'Urville turned round to see whether there
might not be a channel to westward. His search was rewarded, not
with an opening in the ice, but a landfall. He touched on a part of the
polar continent and shrewdly gave it the name Louis-Philippe Land.
Unfortunately, his crews were now suffering so much from disease
and cold that he was compelled to head for warmer climes.
In Chile D'Urville refitted the ships while his sick men recuper-
ated. The rest of 1838 and the whole of 1839 were spent on a Pacif-
