Friday 14 August 2015

Swapping skirts for trousers: the price for a trip around the world

It is 1766. A French expedition has been sent to circumnavigate the globe. In a world dominated by men, a rumour starts spreading . . . There is a WOMAN on board!




While I was doing research for my previous post, I came across this article talking about the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. I found it really interesting and decided to look for more information about that. It turned out that a book had already been written: The discovery of Jeanne Baret by Glynis Ridley.

Jeanne Baret was born in France in 1740 and came from a working class family. This is the first striking fact about her: In those times, how come someone who came from low origins ended up in a trip around the world?

Research about Jeanne’s life places her as an “herb woman”, someone who collected plants and used them for medicinal purposes. This is how she was supposed to have met the man who made her voyage possible: Philibert Commerson, a botanist who lived around the same area. In her book, Ridley imagines their meeting during one of the collecting trips.

The story tells us that Jeanne became Commerson’s lover and moved to his place after his wife passed away. This is the second striking fact about Jeanne: Why would someone with a high status would need a woman like her? It is quite obvious that this must have been due to her great knowledge of plants.

At the time, trips around the world were the way to claim new lands. The French organised such a trip in 1766. The purpose of the trip was to expand their territory and their scientific knowledge by collecting new specimens. Commerson was invited to join as the expedition’s botanist and took an assistant with him. I’m sure you can now guess who the assistant was. The third striking fact about Jeanne: How did a woman manage to join such an expedition? It was banned and unthinkable! So Jeanne’s clever idea was to dress as a man and play the part of Commerson’s assistant.

Louis-Antoine de Bougainville was in charge of the expedition comprising about 300 men and two ships, the Boudeuse and the Étoile. A handful of journals lived to tell the story of what happened during the voyage, that’s how we know about Jeanne’s disguise and what she did during the trip.




I’m sure you are wondering, how was it possible that not one single man realised that Jeanne was a woman? The most popular story is that Jeanne’s cover was revealed during their stay in Tahiti. That must have been about 18 months after the journey started. It is said that the natives were the ones who realised that she was a girl the moment she set foot on the island. This came as a surprise to everyone on board, especially to Bougainville.

This story is not really believable. It is thought that Bougainville made it up to avoid conflict due to laws banning women from those journeys. He, like Commerson, must have recognised Jeanne’s potential to make their botanising expedition a success. Not wanting to get rid of her, he had to come up with a story. Here we have the fourth striking fact: thanks to her knowledge and dedication, Jeanne was allowed to stay through the whole expedition.

We can tell by the surviving accounts that Jeanne had been very brave and worked extremely hard to collect the specimens. She ventured into the most dangerous lands, climbed steep hills and sharp rocks, always carrying her botanising equipment, which included an incredibly heavy field press.

They went to places like Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and through the Strait of Magellan in South America; Tahiti, New Britain and New Ireland in The Pacific. The final stop was the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. 

The expedition left for France in 1768, however, Jeanne and Commerson stayed behind. They decided to go to Madagascar to increase their collection, which amounted to more than 6000 pieces! This is now displayed at the Natural History Museum in Paris. Commerson died in Mauritius and Jeanne married a soldier called Jean Dubernat. They came back to France until 1775, where she lived till the age of 67.


Two of the most popular discoveries of this expedition were:






  • The bougainvillea (Bougainvillea brasiliensis), discovered in Rio de Janeiro and named after Bougainville.









  • Commerson’s dolphin (Cephalorhyncus comersonii) (link and figure), which they spotted while crossing the Strait of Magellan.













None of the new specimens were named after Jeanne. However, it is said that while in Madagascar Commerson did name a plant after her. The genus was called Baretia, and according to Commerson it comprised three species: Baretia bonafidia, Baretia oppotisiva, and Baretia heterophylla. The plants have different shapes and sizes of leaves, hinting at the dubious identity of Jeanne while they were at sea. There are now about 50 species belonging to this genus, which was sadly renamed to Turraea.


Up until 2012 there were no varieties named after Jeanne. Then a group in the USA decided that it was time to commemorate her success: Solanum baretiae is a new species of Solanum. This genus is one of the largest and commercially important on earth and includes the tomato, potato and eggplant. Solanum baretiae grows at high altitudes (about 1900 to 3000 m) mostly in the south of Ecuador and north of Peru, and like Commerson’s Baretia, its leaves are variable.



At last Jeanne’s name has been honoured, a happy ending to the story of a remarkable woman.


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