Saturday, January 24, 2009

Famous Ships of France

(Click Image to view larger picture)

Technical Description
Issuer: Michel Bez - Jacky Larriviere
Process: Gravure
Sheet Size: 143mm x 105mm
Value:
3.30 (6 stamps of €0.55 each)
Issue Date: June 23, 2008

Grande Hermine: It was the name of the ship that is supposed to have brought Jacques Cartier to Saint-Pierre on 15 June 1535.

Boudeuse (1766): The Boudeuse was a frigate of the French Navy, famous for being the exploration ship of Louis Antoine de Bougainville between 1766 and 1769.

The Boudeuse, under Nicolas Pierre Duclos-Guyot, departed from Nantes on 15 November 1766 for the first French circumnavigation, along with the Étoile.

Boussole: The Boussole was a ship of the French Navy, famous for its exploration of the Pacific with Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse.

It departed Brest on 1st August 1785 under La Pérouse, accompanied by the Astrolabe under Paul Antoine Fleuriot de Langle.

The expedition vanished mysteriously in 1788 after leaving Botany Bay on 10 March 1788. The fate of the expedition was eventually solved by Captain Peter Dillon in 1827 when he found remnants of the ships the Astrolabe and the Boussole at Vanikoro Island in the New Hebrides. The ships had been wrecked in a storm. Survivors from one ship had been massacred while survivors from the other ship had constructed their own small boat and sailed off the island, never to be heard from again.

Hermione (1779): The Hermione was a 12-pounder frigate of the French Navy. She ferried General La Fayette to the United States in 1780 to allow him to join the American side in the American Revolutionary War.

She was one of a series of four similar frigates built at Rochefort; the others were Courageuse, Concorde and Fée.

Astrolabe: Named after the instrument astrolabe. It is ship of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse (1781), a converted fluyt.

Confiance: A fast 18-gun ship from Bordeaux under command of Robert Surcouf (nickname - King of Corsairs)

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