Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, commanded a major French scientific and geographic expedition that sailed from Brest in 1785 and disappeared after leaving Botany Bay in 1788.
The expedition used two ships, Boussole and Astrolabe, and carried astronomers, naturalists, artists, and naval officers. Its instructions called for charting, scientific observation, and evaluation of trade and strategic possibilities.
The voyage crossed the Atlantic, rounded Cape Horn, visited the Pacific coast of North America, crossed to Asia, explored waters around Japan and the Russian Far East, and then moved south through the Pacific.
At Port des Français in Alaska, now Lituya Bay, a sudden tidal current caused a boating disaster that killed twenty-one men. The event illustrates the limits of even well-equipped survey expeditions in unfamiliar waters.
In 1787 the expedition suffered another major loss at Tutuila in Samoa when conflict during a water-gathering operation killed Captain de Langle and other members of the party.
Lapérouse reached Botany Bay in January 1788 shortly after the British First Fleet. Letters and scientific correspondence were sent back to Europe from there.
The ships departed Botany Bay in March 1788 and vanished from European records. The disappearance remained unresolved for decades.
In 1826 Peter Dillon obtained evidence linking wreckage on Vanikoro to the expedition. Later searches found anchors and other remains, and the wreck of Boussole was identified in 1964.
Local oral accounts recorded by early searchers described survivors and a vessel built from wreckage. Those accounts are important but do not establish the ultimate fate of every survivor.
For TransitSatellite, the documented route should end at Botany Bay, with Vanikoro added as an archaeologically established wreck location rather than a continuous plotted track that no surviving log records.