The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, The High Seas, and The First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe

2011

Hocken Library G440.B225 RH78 2011

Pymble, N. S. W.: Fourth Estate

In 1765, Joseph Philibert Commerson was appointed naturalist on board Bougainville’s L’Etoile on the recommendation of Comte Buffon. Commerson’s ‘assistant’ was Jeanne Baret, who cunningly disguised herself as a teenage boy. Suspicion about her gender and true identity was widespread on board, but it was only in Tahiti that Bougainville discovered that Baret was a woman. She became the first woman to encircle the globe.