Pierre François Péron

French Captain Pierre François Péron, born in 1769 at Lambézellec, near Brest, was a French sailor and trading captain who sailed to many different locations in the late 18th century. He owned his ship until it was captured by the British, following which he became a sealer and adventurer.

Captain Péron says he was marooned three years (from 1792 to 1795) on New Amsterdam Island or Île Amsterdam. He wrote an account about being marooned for 40 months gathering sealskins on that lonely Southern Indian Ocean island. There was confusion in the early days between Amsterdam and Saint Paul Islands. In February 1793 Sir George Staunton on his way to China on board the Lion found a sealer named Perron and 4 others on the southern of the two islands, now called Saint Paul Island.

After being rescued, Péron travelled via Tasmania to the convict settlement at Sydney Cove. While in Sydney Péron found that the store of seal skins he left behind had been brought in the American trading ship Otter. He negotiated with the captain, Ebenezer Dorr ("Dawes") and was given the post of first officer until the skins were sold in China. The Otter was normally engaged in the sealskin and fur transport from the American Pacific coast to China. While leaving Sydney, Péron assisted in the escape of Thomas Muir of Huntershill, a Scottish lawyer tried in 1793 in Edinburgh for sedition and sentenced to transportation to New South Wales in 1794. Péron's chronicles describe the escape and the voyage across the Pacific.

The Otter then became the first known European merchant vessel to visit Tonga where several escaped convicts landed. After sighting Niue, the Otter reached Pukapuka on 3 April 1796. Peron, Thomas Muir and a small party landed ashore but the inhabitants did not allow them to inspect the island. Trading later took place near the ship as adzes, mats and other artifacts were exchanged for knives and European goods.

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