Australia’s forgotten whalers
On 7 October 1826, the Astrolabe sailed into King George Sound, Western Australia, where present-day Albany is located. The captain, Frenchman Jules Dumont d’Urville, was partway through his circumnavigation of the globe. After 108 days at sea, having confronted the worst weather the Southern Ocean could throw at them, the crew were ready for what d’Urville called ‘a perfect rest’.
George Vancouver, Matthew Flinders, Nicolas Baudin and Philip Parker King had already led expeditions into the Sound in the previous 30 years, so d’Urville had charts and descriptions at his disposal. Nevertheless, he had no expectation of meeting anyone except the local Indigenous people in this still largely unknown region.
On the afternoon of 12 October, however, a rowboat crewed by eight
