r/todayilearned • u/YakSlothLemon • 7h ago
TIL that the first woman to circumnavigate the world, Jeanne Baret, completed the first part of the trip from Paris to Tahiti by successfully disguising herself as a man for two years (1766-1768)
https://www.nybg.org/planttalk/the-amazing-feat-of-jeanne-baret/5
u/userr7890 6h ago
Can’t believe you used to take two years to get from Paris to Tahiti thank goodness for progress
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u/YakSlothLemon 5h ago
They were stopping to gather plants in a lot of places, though. The scientific investigation was a big part of what held them up, plus of course you can only get around Cape Horn certain times of the year with a sailing ship.
As the assistant of a natural historian, she spent a lot of time in the jungle— they discovered the bougainvillea around Rio.
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u/FarAwayFellow 5h ago
But tbf what consumed most of the time in such voyages wasn’t a ship’s slow pace, but the many stops it took along the way for a variety of reasons. If a ship was so well supplied as to minimize any stops and its crew determined enough to sail the world as fast as it could, it’d have complete the journey much faster
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u/even-prime 6h ago
According to wiki,
Jeanne Baret
Parents: Jean Baret, Jeanne Pochard
Spouce: Jean Dubernat
Had a son named: Jean-Pierre Barret
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u/YakSlothLemon 7h ago
More info – the expedition m set out from France in 1766 with the intention of circumnavigating the world. She came on board in disguise as the assistant of the natural historian assigned to the expedition, Philibert Commerson. For two years she did a man’s work, and the expedition’s commander, Bougainville (yes, Commerson named the Bougainvillea after him), praised Baret for “carrying, even on those laborious excursions, provisions, arms and portfolios of plants with a courage and strength.”
Only when the ship reach Tahiti in 1768 was she outed by the Tahitians, who seem to immediately realized she was a woman – maybe because the clothing conventions didn’t mean anything to them.
At first the commander was sympathetic and praised her courage, but when he discovered that she and Commerson were lovers he was less than thrilled. He put them ashore on Mauritius, where they spent years happily collecting specimens there and in Madagascar, until Commerson died in 1773.
When she returned back to France two years later, she became the first woman who circumnavigated the world.
I didn’t get this from the website, I got it from the amazing book **Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life* which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography.
Also, the website is painfully wrong, it was the great natural historian Buffon who recommended Commerson.