‘After much laughing and joking with Girardin…the love which had already spoken to the heart of this steward now made it weaken: they were alone, the night was dark…the secret escaped. Girardin was indeed a woman, as some had suspected’

(La Motte du Portail in Frank Horner, 1996, Looking for Lapérouse, Melbourne University Press: 210).

Louis Girardin, a steward on the Recherche was really Marie Louise Victoire Girardin. She was the daughter of a former royal gardener at Versailles turned wine merchant. Louise was widowed in 1781 and in the early years of the Revolution had fled disgrace and her father’s wrath after giving birth to an illegitimate child by a disloyal lover.

She had appeared at Brest disguised as a man, with a letter of introduction to Mme Le Fournier d'Yauville. She persuaded her brother Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec, then second in command to d’Entrecasteaux, to recommend her as a steward on the Recherche. It appears that d’Entrecasteaux knew her secret, and gave his approval. Stewards were exempt from medical examination and she had a small but separate cabin.

During the voyage, Girardin stubbornly concealed her identity, despite widespread suspicion. She even fought a duel with a crew member who questioned her gender. In Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) the Aborigines were inquisitive about the sex of the younger, beardless French men, and the lack of women among their visitors. The crew joked it was just as well that Louis Girardin hadn’t come ashore with them, or he might have been revealed as a woman in disguise.

There is evidence in La Motte du Portail’s journal that Louise may have formed a relationship with his friend Sub-Lieutenant Mérite of the Recherche. Both died of dysentery within a day of each other in December 1794.

Anigozanthus ruf

Anigozanthus rufa
Hand-coloured engraving, 1808
Originally published in Atlas du Voyage à la Recherche de la Pérouse, No. 22.

after Pierre Joseph Redouté, 1797

While d’Entrecasteaux’s ships Recherche and Espérance were safely anchored behind Observatory Island in the Recherche Archipelago, his naturalists keenly examined the environment. Despite the sandy landscape, they found a wealth of new plants and animals.

In those arid wastes, grows a fine plant which nearly resembles an iris, and which naturally classes itself with the genera dilatris and argolafia. It forms, however, a new and a very distinct genus, principally by its irregular corolla…The top of the stalk is covered with reddish pili, like the flowers. I have denominated this species anigozanthos rufa [now Anigozanthos rufus—Red Kangaroo Paw] (Labillardière, 1800, Voyage in search of La Pérouse).

Lent by Wordsworth collection