• Title
  Letter from Louis de Freycinet to Barron Field, 6 July 1820
• Creator
  Barron Field, 1786-1846
• Call number
  SAFE/MLMSS 7704 (Safe 1/256)
  
• Level of description
  fonds
• Date
  
  6 July 1820
• Type of material
  Textual Records
• Reference code
  455936
• Issue Copy
  Digitised : letter
  
• Physical Description
  0.01 metres of textual material (letter in volume) - manuscript
  
• ADMINISTRATIVE/ BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY
  
  Louis de Freycinet (1779-1842) first visited Australia on the Baudin expedition in 1802. He returned to Sydney in 1819 on his voyage round the world in the ship Uranie. During his six week stay he met a number of notables in the Colony. The following year, on its voyage from Cape Horn to the Cape of Good Hope, Uranie struck a rock off the Falkland Islands. Freycinet and his crew were taken to Montevideo by an American corvette. He then bought the American vessel, renamed it La Physicienne, and returned to France.
  Barron Field (1786-1846), who arrived in Sydney in 1817, was judge of the Supreme Court of Civil Judicature of New South Wales.
• Scope and Content
  Four page letter in French, with English translation provided by bookseller. Freycinet gives a personal account of the disaster which befell the Uranie and his efforts to save the ship and its crew. He tells Field of his intention to write a refutation of the article in the Quarterly Review which attacked the published account of the Baudin voyage for its alleged plagiarism of Matthew Flinders' work. He also writes of his friendship with Field and asks to be remembered to other colonists including the Macarthur, Piper, King and Macquarie families.
• Language
  French, English
• Finding Aids
  Read the transcription here: acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/_transcript/2010/D04544/a3264.pdf
• General note
  
  The letter was formerly owned by Paris collector Henri Ledoux. The first page of the letter is marked by his small red stamp showing his initials in a heart.
  Microfilm copy made, Jan. 2007.
  Digital order no:Album ID : 886503
• Creator/Author/Artist
  Freycinet, Louis Claude Desaulses de, 1779-1842
  
• Name
  Physicienne (Corvette)
  Uranie (Ship)
  
• Subject
  Pacific Ocean--Discovery and exploration--French.
  Shipwrecks--Falkland Islands.
  Voyages around the world.
  
• Open Rosetta viewer
  IE1161727

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