Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux

Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni, chevalier d'Entrecasteaux (; 8 November 1737 – 21 July 1793) was a French Navy officer, explorer and colonial administrator who served as the Governor of Isle de France from 1787 to 1789. He explored the Australian coast in 1792 while searching for Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse.

Early career Bruni d'Entrecasteaux was born to Dorothée de Lestang-Parade and Jean Baptiste Bruny, in Aix-en-Provence in 1739. His father was a member of the Parlement of Provence. Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux was educated at a Jesuit school in Aix-en-Provence and reportedly intended to become a priest in the Society of Jesus, but his father intervened and enlisted him in the French Navy in 1754. In the Battle of Minorca, which secured the Balearic Islands for France, Bruni d'Entrecasteaux served as a midshipman aboard the 26-gun Minerve, and in April 1757 he was commissioned as an ensign. His further naval career as a junior officer was uneventful, and he appears in this period to have done general service in the French Navy.

For a time Bruni d'Entrecasteaux was assistant director of ports and arsenals, after which (1785) he was transferred to command a French Squadron in the East Indies, comprising Résolution and Subtile. During this service he opened up a new route to Canton by way of the Sunda Strait and the Moluccas, for use during the south-east monsoon season. In 1787 he was appointed Governor of the French colony of Isle de France (now Mauritius) and the Isle of Bourbon.

His explorations

In September 1791, the French Assembly decided to send an expedition in search of Jean-François de La Pérouse, who had not been heard of since leaving Botany Bay in March 1788. Bruni d'Entrecasteaux was selected to command this expedition. He was given a frigate, (500 tons), with Lieutenant Jean-Louis d'Hesmity-d'Auribeau as his second-in-command and Élisabeth Rossel among the other officers. A similar ship, , was placed under Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec, Although Peyroux's proposal fell on deaf ears at the time, it may have influenced d'Entrecasteaux's choice of the location to investigate. An inset map of Frederick Henry Bay, the place recommended by Peyroux for a settlement, was included in the map of Van Diemens Land prepared by Beautemps-Beaupré.

On 28 February d'Entrecasteaux sailed from Van Diemen's Land towards Tonga, sighting New Zealand and the Kermadec Islands en route. At Tonga, he found that the local people remembered Cook and Bligh well enough, but knew nothing of La Pérouse. He then sailed back to New Caledonia, where he anchored at Balade. The vain search for La Pérouse then resumed with Santa Cruz, then along the southern coasts of the Solomon Islands, the northern parts of the Louisiade Archipelago, through the Dampier Strait, along the northern coast of New Britain and the southern coast of the Admiralty Islands, and thence north of New Guinea to the Moluccas.

By this time, the affairs of the expedition had become almost desperate, largely because the officers were ardent royalists and the crews equally ardent revolutionaries. Kermadec had died of tuberculosis in Balade harbour, and on 21 July 1793, d'Entrecasteaux himself died of scurvy,

Eponyms D'Entrecasteaux is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of lizard endemic to Australia, Pseudemoia entrecasteauxii.