French Antarctic Expedition
The French Antarctic Expedition is any of several French expeditions in Antarctica.
In 1772, Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen-Trémarec and the naturalist Jean Guillaume Bruguière sailed to the Antarctic region in search of the fabled Terra Australis. Kerguelen-Trémarec took possession of various Antarctic territories for France, including what would later be called the Kerguelen Islands.
In Kerguelen-Trémarec's report to King Louis XV, he greatly overestimated the value of the Kerguelen Islands. The King sent him on a second expedition to Kerguelen in late 1773. When it became clear that these islands were desolate, useless, and not the Terra Australis, he was sent to prison.
In 1837, during an 1837-1840 expedition across the deep southern hemisphere, Captain Jules Dumont d'Urville sailed his ship Astrolabe along a coastal area of Antarctica which he later named the Adélie Coast, in honor of his wife. During the Antarctic part of this expedition, Dumont d'Urville team performed the first experiments to determine the approximate position of the South magnetic pole, and landed on Débarquement Rock in the Geologie Archipelago, (66°36′19″S 140°4′0″E / 66.60528°S 140.06667°E) just 4 km from the mainland, where he took mineral and animal samples. On his return to France in 1840 he was made rear admiral.
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