Invoice for stores consumed on the Amazone, signed by La Pérouse, and portraits of La Pérouse, 1779-1828

French naval officer and explorer Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse was born on August 22, 1741 in Albi, France. He began his career with the French navy as a teenager and continued to rise through the ranks before he was promoted to captain in 1780. He fought in many campaigns against the British, including the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution. During the American Revolution, he commanded a campaign against British settlements along the Hudson Bay. He also was placed in command of the Amazone , a 26-gun frigate. The Amazone captured twelve British ships in 1778 alone. In 1779, La Pérouse and the Amazone engaged with British forces off the island of Grenada and the coast of Savannah, Georgia.

After the American Revolution, La Pérouse began an expedition to explore the Pacific Ocean. In addition to sailing through the ocean’s tropical waters, in 1786 La Pérouse and his crew on La Boussole , accompanied by the Astrolabe , reached the southern coast of Alaska and continued to sail south to California’s Monterey Bay. From there, La Boussole reached Macau in South China on January 3, 1787 and explored the Asian Pacific coast. At the end of that year, while sailing through the Navigator Islands, a party from the Astrolabe was attacked and killed. La Pérouse continued to explore the area before departing from eastern Australia on March 10, 1788. He and his crew were never heard from again.

In 1828, French explorer Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d’Urville found wreckage of La Boussole on Vanikoro, one of the Santa Cruz (now Solomon) Islands. According to residents of Vanikoro, about thirty men from the ship had been murdered onshore, although some had managed to escape.