Stay at Botany Bay and Receveur's Death
- When
- 17 February 1788
- Where
- Botany Bay, New South Wales
The French built an observatory and garden, sent mail to Europe via the Alexander, and buried Father Receveur on 17 February 1788.
During their stay the French established an observatory and a garden, held masses, and made geological observations. Lapérouse sent journals, charts, and letters back to Europe aboard the British merchant ship Alexander, which had come to Sydney as part of the First Fleet. The chaplain of L'Astrolabe, Father Louis Receveur, never recovered from injuries sustained in a clash with indigenous people in the Samoan Islands and died at Botany Bay on 17 February 1788; he was buried on shore at Frenchman's Cove.
Sources
- Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-26
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.