Built as a three masted wooden hulled corvette by Chantier Loquet at Honfleur for the French Navy.
September 1794 laid down under the name URANIE.
1799 Renamed GALATÉE.
Displacement 796 tons, tonnage 350 tons. Dim. 40.3 x 9.7 x 3.8m. (draught)
Armament 24 – 12 pounder long guns.
08 June 1800 launched as GALATÉE.
23 August 1800 renamed in GÉOGRAPHE.
The ship was for a long time on the yard the builder did not want to launch her before he was paid.
19 October 1800 under command of Captain Nicolas Baudin she left Le Havre together with the NATURALISTE for a discovery voyage of the coast of New Holland (now Australia)
On board the two ships were 22 scientists and artists and 259 crew.
The two ships sailed along the African coast and it took 145 days before the expedition reached Ile de France (now Mauritius). 40 men quit the expedition due to illness or refused to continue the voyage under command of the authoritarian Baudin.
At least at 1 June 1801 she came near Cape Leeuwin and anchored in a bay they named Géographe Bay.
From there she altered to a northerly course and followed the western coastline of Australia.
During a storm the two ships got separated.
The crew of the GÉOGRAPHE landed at various points on the coast before she headed to Kupang, Timor in the Dutch East Indies.
The NATURALISTE arrived in Kupang on 21 September, much later than the GÉOGRAPHE had arrived.
Both ships crews had scurvy on arrival which was cured at Kupang.
13 November both ships sailed from Kupang with a depleted crew which got also dysentery contracted in Kupang.
A southerly course was set and then for Van Diemen’s Land, both ships got again separated and at the end of March 1802 the GÉOGRAPHE reached the south coast of New Holland which the French named Terre Napoleon.
08 April 1802 the GÉOGRAPHE encountered the HMS INVESTIGATOR under command of Flinders in a bay which now carried the name Encounter Bay.
Baudin got a copy of a chart from Flinders he had just completed and after the two ships parted Baudin followed the southern coast and in May he arrived in Port Jackson (Sydney).
The NATURALISTE joined there again the GÉOGRAPHE and it was decided to send her home with on board the collections of specimens gathered by the scientists.
Baudin bought a schooner in Port Jackson of 30 tons with a length of 8.85m. He renamed her in CASUARINA and she came under command of Louis de Freycinet.
She was used for inshore survey work.
18 November the three ships left Port Jackson with a southerly course after passing the Bass Strait the NATURALISTE sailed for France while the other two ships surveyed the south west and north west coast of New Holland, as far as the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf.
Then she headed to Timor were the two ships stayed from 06 May till 3 June 1803.
Many of the crew were sick or had died, and after the call in Timor the two ships she entered the Gulf of Carpentaria for a short time before both ships headed for France via Ile de France, where Baudin died on 16 September 1803.
The CASUARINA was sold in Ile de France.
The GÉOGRAPHE left under command of Captain Pierre Milius and arrived in Lorient on 25 March 1804, with on board life animals and birds and the collected specimens.
The GÉOGRAPHE was hulked in Lorient in 1811.
06 April 1819 broken up.
Mauritius 2001 Re1 sg?, scott? and Rs4 sg?, scott?
Australia and France issued in April 2002 a joint issue for the Bicentenary of the encounter by Baudin and Flinders, the stamp shows a ship but I am not sure which ship is depict. She carries the French flag, possible the GÊOGRAPHE.)
Source: Wikipedia and various other web-sites.