From Venus to Antarctica: The life of Dumont d'Urville

Jules-Sebastien-César Dumont D’Urville (1790–1842) undertook three global voyages of exploration and is the navigator who made the single greatest contribution to perfecting the map of the Pacific in the nineteenth century. He explored the Pacific from Guam to Antarctica, and from New Guinea to Chile, collecting a vast number of natural history specimens and recording extensive hydrographic information. His qualities as a navigator and explorer brought him national recognition in the form of the Legion of Honour, while his scientific contributions earned him the gold medal of the Société de Géographie.

Yet despite his undoubted intelligence, energy, navigational expertise and scientific knowledge, D’Urville was not an easy or likeable man. He took offence easily and was touchy to the point of paranoia. A classic workaholic, he often seemed cold and aloof, yet he earned the respect of his men through his humane and fair leadership. Always sympathetic to the island people he met, he became interested in the languages of the Pacific peoples and even wrote a novel about the New Zealand Maori. In 1841 he began to write a detailed account of his final voyage, which was eagerly awaited by the public. However, it had to be completed by others when he, his wife and son were tragically killed in a railway accident in 1842. With his death the age of the great naval explorers came to an end.