Abraham Duquesne-Guitton

Captain, later Admiral, Abraham de Bellebat (Belébat?) de Duquesne-Guitton, also spelled Duquesne-Guiton (1648-d. 1724 in Rochefort), was a French naval commander.

In 1687 he sailed from the Cape of Good Hope in the L'Oiseau, with a French Ambassador, Claude Céberet du Boullay, on board, to establish a French Embassy in the Kingdom of Siam.

He sighted Eendracht Land on the West Australian coast and sailed in close to shore near the Swan River on 4 August - this was France's first recorded contact with Australia. He wrote that it looked very attractive, and fully covered with green despite "the fact that we were in the middle of winter in this country."[1]

His nephew Nicolas Gedeon de Voutron also sighted the western coast of Australia that year on another ship at the same latitude.[1]

He was also appointed Governor General of the Windward Islands ("Gouverneur général des Isles du Vent") in reward for renouncing Protestantism and becoming a Catholic, and held that office from 1714 to 1717.[2]

Notes

  1. 1 2 "French maritime history in WA - wait, there's more - and it's sensational!" (PDF). The Australian Association for Maritime History, Quarterly Newsletter (79): 3–4. June 2000.
  2. ↑ Pritchard, James (2004). In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670-1730. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 512. ISBN 0-521-82742-6. p245
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