Biography

French naval officer, explorer, and naturalist. Born in 1790 in Cond⟩-sur-Noireau in Calvados, he was the second youngest child of the seigneur d'Urville. In 1793, despite being an invalid and almost paralysed, his father was accused by the Revolutionary government of conspiring with foreigners and escaped the guillotine only through the pleading of d'Urville's mother; he died instead from natural causes in 1796.

D'Urville's early years were spent on the family estate of Feuquerolles, near Saint-Germain-de-Grioult, where he was taught by his maternal uncle, a young priest who later became the abbott of Croisille. When this uncle was appointed as a teacher at Bayeux, d'Urville went with him and later completed his education at Caen, where he was mentored by Pierre-Aim⟩ Lair, director of the botanical garden, who encouraged him to start a herbarium.

In 1807, having been refused entry to the ⟉cole polytechnique, he joined the French Navy. Passionately interested in archaeology, natural history, and the explorations of James Cook and Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, d'Urville resolved to devote his naval career to scientific rather than military expeditions, but it was not until 1819, under the reign of Louis XVIII, that he participated in his first expedition, a hydrographic mission to the Greek islands on La Chevrette, commanded by Gauttier-Duparc. In addition to numerous botanical collections for the Mus⟩um national d'Histoire naturelle, d'Urville made archaeological observations and played a role in acquiring the Venus de Milo for France. In 1822, he delivered a paper on the flora of Greece to the newly-formed Soci⟩t⟩ linn⟩ene de Paris.

Promoted to lieutenant, he applied successfully, with fellow officer Isidore-Louis Duperrey, for a circumnavigation that would complete the scientific observations made by the Uranie under Captain Freycinet. Their vessel, La Coquille, departed Toulon, under Duperrey's command, on 11 August 1822, returning to France 32 months later, at Marseilles on 26 March 1825, after completing an itinerary that included Cape Horn, Chile, Peru, Polynesia, Australia, New Guinea, R⟩union, and the Cape of Good Hope. D'Urville kept the ferns and the Falkland Island plants for his private herbarium but gave the rest of his collections to Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent and Adolphe Brongniart.

The next year he was given command of La Coquille, rechristened L'Astrolabe, for another expedition to the southern Pacific, which departed Toulon on 25 April 1826. Confining his scientific contributions this time to cartography and hydrography, he appointed two physician-naturalists, Pierre-Adolphe Lesson and Joseph-Paul Gaimard, to collect specimens. Not a circumnavigation, the expedition followed a route south via Cap-Vert, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and explored the coasts of Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, Tonga, Fiji, New Caledonia, North New Guinea, the Caroline Islands, the Torres Strait Islands, Tasmania, the Solomon Islands, Vanikoro, the Marianne Islands, Amboine Island, Djarkarta, Mauritius, and R⟩union, and returned via the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Marseilles on 25 March 1829. The plants collected on the voyage were studied in Paris by Achille Richard. D'Urville, meanwhile, oversaw the publication of the expedition account, Voyage de d⟩couvertes de L'Astrolabe (13 volumes, 1830-1835), and, following the July Revolution, was entrusted with the delicate mission of transporting the deposed king, Charles X, to his exile in Great Britain.

In 1837, he received orders from King Louis-Philippe I for an expedition to the Antarctic region, last explored for France in 1823 by James Weddell, who reached the 74th parallel. Along with L'Astrolabe, he was given a second ship, La Z⟩l⟩e, captained by his friend Charles Jacquinot, whom he had known since his time aboard La Chevrette. Jacques-Bernard Hombron and Honor⟩ Jacquinot, the younger brother of Charles, were appointed as physician-naturalists. The expedition sailed south to Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro, and Patagonia, and spent January to March 1838 on the Antarctic Ocean, trapped in the ice packs, unable to proceed beyond the 64th parallel. They were, however, the first people to see the rocky coast of Antarctica, not suspecting that it belonged to a continent, which d'Urville named Terre Ad⟩lie, in honour of his wife. The voyage then proceeded via Talcahuano, Valparaiso, Gambier Island, the Marquise Islands, Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, Vanikoro, the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, the Caroline Islands, the Marianne Islands, the Straight of Torres, R⟩union and the Cape of Good Hope, and made landing at Toulon on 7 November 1840. The botanical collections were given to Joseph Descaine and Camille Montagne for identification.

At the end of 1841, his health broken by the voyage, d'Urville retired to Paris with his wife and last surviving child. A few months later, on 8 May 1842, they were all killed, along with 56 other passengers, in one of the first rail disasters, when fire broke out on a train en route to Versailles for a party hosted by the king. The accident was used by opponents of the new form of transportation and was memorialized by Alfred de Vigny in his poem 'La Maison du berger'. It was therefore left to Charles Jacquinot to publish the 28 volumes of the Voyage au P⟴le Sud et dans l'Oc⟩anie (1841-1854).

Sources:
B. Dayrat, 2003, Les botanistes et la flore de France: trios siécles de dècouvertes: 331-342.