French naturalist and naval surgeon. Hombron participated in the French expedition to Antarctica of 1837-1840, travelling aboard the Astrolabe. The expedition was the third undertaken by Jules Dumont d'Urville in the South Seas, among its aims being to take the French flag as far south as possible in the Weddell Sea in the Antarctic Ocean. As an incentive, crew members were offered 100 francs if the ships reached 75º S, and 10 francs for every degree further. D'Urville was also to make observations on hydrography, natural history and information useful for whaling. Two ships sailed from Toulon in 1837: the Astrolabe, commanded by d'Urville, and the Zelée, under Captain Charles Jacquinot. Hombron was appointed surgeon and botanist on d'Urville's vessel, and Honoré Jacquinot (younger brother of Charles), junior surgeon on the Zelée, would also make botanical collections.
Sailing via Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro and Patagonia to the Antarctic Ocean, the goal of 75º South became unattainable when both ships were trapped in pack ice for most of the first quarter of 1838. Prior to this, some exploration had been attempted in the Magellan Straits, where Hombron climbed part of Mount Tarn in the Brunswick Peninsula. Though it exhausted him the climb yielded only a few alpine plant species. D'Urville gave up on penetrating any further south in March 1838 and the expedition withdrew north to Polynesia via Talcahuano and Valparaiso in Chile. The Frenchmen explored the Pacific and East Indies for more than a year and a half, with many men falling ill by the time they reached Hobart, Tasmania, in December 1839. Spurred on by news of the concurrent British and American polar expeditions (led by James Ross and Charles Wilkes, respectively), d'Urville took off for the Antarctic again, but Hombron was among the sick and was left in Tasmania to be picked up again in mid-February. The expedition then set its course for home via the Torres Strait, Réunion and the Cape of Good Hope, landing back at Toulon in November 1840.
D'Urville had overseen just a couple of volumes of the official account of the voyage when he was killed in a rail accident. Joseph Descaine and Camille Montagne took charge of determining the voyage's botanical collections, with Hombron and Honoré Jacquinot supervising their two volumes on botany in the official account, Voyage au Pole Sud et dans l'Océanie sur les corvettes l'Astrolabe et la Zelée. Montagne's text on the lower plants was published in 1845, while Decaisne took over the completion of the section on flowering plants after Hombron passed away in 1852. According to Descaine, Hombron and Jacquinot found 16 species of fern and 84 spermatophytes; perhaps a disappointing harvest from such a long journey. However, he only listed the plants that had been illustrated in Hombron and Jacquinot's accompanying Atlas of plates; some collections may have been lost. Hombron also published a two-volume work, Aventures les plus Curieuses des Voyageurs (1847), recounting his own and other explorers' adventures.
Sources:
E.J. Godley, 1965, "Botany of the Southern Zone: Exploration to 1843", Tuatara, 13(3): 165-168
E.J. Godley, 1967, "A century of botany in Canterbury", Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 1(22): 243.
