Looking For La Pérouse

In the third year of the French Revolution the National Assembly sent the d'Entrecasteaux expedition to the Pacific to search for the missing explorer La P�rouse. Like the nation itself the expedition was divided by politics; there were both republicans and monarchists aboard. And besides servicemen there were civilians—the naturalists, whose interests often cut across those of mariners.
The archives of the expedition, which include a wealth of candid and amusing private journals, reveal how...