In this time of necessary lockdown, we pine for our horizons to be wider than they are now. Well might we receive the tale of Jeanne Baret (1740-1807), a woman with more chutzpah, curiosity, and mad resourcefulness than most of us can ever possess.
Born a poor peasant in southern France, Jeanne finagled her way onto a navy expedition ship by disguising herself as a man. For three years she travelled as a valet to the French naturalist Philibert Commerson, doing much of the heavy lifting due to his weakness. Jeanne called herself Jean during this time, and cultivated great skills in botany, helping the expeditionary crew to identify many different plants around the world — such as the flowering vine named Bougainvillea after the captain of Jeanne’s ship. (See second slide.) Jeanne’s gender was discovered in Tahiti, but she eventually made her way back to France, becoming the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.
Eventually in 1785 the Ministry of Marine granted Jeanne Baret a lifelong pension, and in the written record of the Ministry she was praised:. “Jeanne Barre, by means of a disguise, circumnavagated the globe . . . She devoted herself in particular to assisting Mr de Commerson, doctor and botanist, and shared with great courage the labor’s and dangers of this savant. Her behaviour was exemplary . . . . “
Source(s): Wikipedia really supplied better than other online sources this time. The first image is of an 18th-century simple sailor by Thomas Rowlandson, and appears in the DOI: bbprivateer.ca/?q=book%2Fexport%2Fhtml%2F7. “Pirate and Privateer Clothing – General History – Introduction @ bbprivateer.ca .
