Jeanne+Baré

Jeanne Baré (1740-1807) by Miss Hill
Jeanne Baré was the first woman to circumnavigate (sail around) the world. She was an amateur botanist (someone who studies plants) who disguised herself as a servant so that she could travel the world.

In those days women were not allowed on ships as crew because people thought they brought bad luck.

Nobody knows much about her. She was born in France and her father was a poor peasant. But Jeanne must have had an education because she could read and write.

She worked as a housekeeper for a man called Philibert Commerson. He was a naturalist (someone who studies nature) and when he joined the Bougainville expedition she went along, dressed as a man, as his manservant and assistant. She shared his cabin with a private toilet so nobody could see that she was really a woman, and she helped him collect and organise his specimens.

The expedition left France in 1766 led by Louis de Bougainville on a ship called the //Étoile//. They sailed across the Atlantic to South America, then down to the southern tip of South America, through the Straits of Magellan and across the Pacific to Indonesia. From there they sailed across the Indian Ocean to Mauritius (an island off the east coast of Africa).

In 1773 Commerson died in Mauritius, leaving Jeanne Baré with no job and no money. Although Commerson had left her money in his Will, she could not get back to France to get it. Then in 1774 she married Jean Dubernat and sailed back to France with him. This voyage completed her journey around the world and she was given a pension by the Ministry of Marine as a reward.

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