Pierre-François Peron

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aukepalmhof
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Pierre-François Peron

Post by aukepalmhof » Mon Jan 24, 2022 8:17 pm

French Southern and Antarctic Territory issued in 2021 one stamp which shows us the adventurer and seaman Pierre Francois Peron and a sailing ship which Watercraft Philately named the EMELIE a brig rigged whaler. Can’t find anything on the vessel only that she later was captured by the British ship HMS LION, not the date was given.

French Captain Pierre François Péron, born in 1769, near Brest, was a French seaman and trading captain who sailed to many different places in the late 18th century. He owned his ship until it was captured by the British, after which he became a hunter and adventurer.
Captain Péron reports that he was stranded for three years (from 1792 to 1795) on New Amsterdam Island or Amsterdam Island. He wrote an account of being stranded for 40 months collecting sealskins on this lonely island in the southern Indian Ocean. There was confusion at first between Amsterdam and St. Paul's Islands. In February 1793 Sir George Staunton was on his way to China, as Secretary of the Macartney Embassy on the East Indiaman HINDOSTAN, HMS LION escorted him. At Amsterdam Island, they found a seal named Perron and 4 others in the south of the two islands, now called Saint-Paul Island.
Later, LION captured the French ship EMÉLIE, the ship that had landed the hunters. Deprived of the ship that had landed them, Péron and his men spent some forty months stranded on the island until Captain Thomas Hadley, of CÉRÉS, rescued them in late 1795 and took them to Port Jackson.

After being rescued, Péron traveled via Tasmania to the doomed settlement at Sydney Cove. While in Sydney, Péron discovered that the stock of sealskins he had left behind had been taken by the American trading vessel OTTER. He negotiated with Captain Ebenezer Dorr ("Dawes") and was given the post of the first officer until the skins were sold to China. OTTER then engaged in transporting sealskin and fur from the American Pacific coast to China. Leaving Sydney, Peron assisted in the escape of Thomas Muir from Huntershill, a Scottish lawyer tried in 1793 in Edinburgh for sedition and sentenced to transportation to New South Wales in 1794. Péron's chronicles describe the escape and journey across the Pacific.
The OTTER then became the first known European merchant ship to visit Tonga where several escaped convicts disembarked. After sighting Niue, the OTTER reached Pukapuka on April 3, 1796. Péron, Thomas Muir, and a small party disembarked but the locals would not allow them to inspect the island. Later trade took place near the ship as adzes, mats and other items were exchanged for knives and European goods.

Thomas Muir
This island was given the name "Isles de la Loutre" by Péron: "Everything united to convince us that we had the right to attribute to ourselves the honor of having discovered three new islands and with this conviction, I gave the name of the OTTER Islands [Isles of the OTTER] which was the name of our ship. In order to distinguish them, we named the one to the east 'Peron and Muir' (Motu Ko), the one to the north 'Dorr' (Pukapuka), and the name 'Brown' (Motu Kotowa) was given to the third, after one of our officers." Peron
From Pukapuka the OTTER sailed to Nootka Sound where furs were obtained and Muir was transferred to the Spanish ship SUTIL under José Tobar y Tamariz and taken to Monterey where he was received by Governor Diego Borica. In his stories, Péron writes about the Pacific Northwest and its natives, as well as an interesting account of the Hawaiian Islands. Most notable is a visit to California, then a Spanish colony, including a stay in Monterey in 1796. It was the first time an American ship had stopped in California. Peron found Monterey a bit backward at the time.

Péron then traveled to San Blas, Mexico City, Veracruz, Havana, and Cadiz, finally reaching France.
In 1804 Péron retired to his chateau at Nommé. Appointed mayor in 1805 and again in 1815, he moved to Saumur in 1825, where he became first deputy mayor until 1830.
Péron's Memoirs, in which he describes his survival on the island of Amsterdam alone, were published in a limited edition and are now an expensive collector's item. His account contains notes on British Columbia, Vancouver Island, and the Queen Charlotte Islands, descriptions of California, especially his visit to Monterey in 1796, Tasmania and New South Wales in Australia, Hawaii, and Sumatra. His memoirs include descriptions of storms, shipwrecks, as well as situations of misery and hardship of all kinds. Péron's memoirs are well written and describe many interesting events in the life of a sea captain who traveled through much of the then still unrecognized world where Western trade was rapidly expanding.

Péron died in 1846 in Luynes .

https://france2.wiki/wiki/Pierre_Fran%C ... P%C3%A9ron (Google translated)
French Southern & Antarctic Territories 2021 1.20 Euro sg?, Scott 650
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2021 Emilie Pierre-François-Peron-Naval-Captain-Marooned-on-St-Paul (2).jpg
2021 Emilie Pierre-François-Peron-Naval-Captain-Marooned-on-St-Paul (2).jpg (124.1 KiB) Viewed 512 times

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