Macarthur, Antonia --- "Book Review: François Péron - An Impetuous Life: naturalist and voyager" [2008] MarStudies 5; (2008) 158 Maritime Studies 27

• BOOK REVIEWS
• François Péron – An Impetuous Life: naturalist and voyager.

BOOK REVIEWS

2007 Frank Broeze Prize for best maritime history book^[1]

This year’s Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize has been awarded to Dr Edward Duyker’s François Péron – An Impetuous Life: naturalist and voyager.

A lively field of 29 books were submitted for this year’s Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize, the biennial $2,000 cash award sponsored and administered jointly by the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) and the Australian Association for Maritime History (AAMH). The book prize is named in honour of the late Professor Frank Broeze of the University of Western Australia, who introduced Australia’s first university course on maritime history. Frank helped redefine the field in broader terms, embracing economic, business, social and urban histories to make maritime history truly multidisciplinary.

The wide-ranging topics of this year’s entrants included Melbourne’s tall ship Polly Woodside, the recollections of a World War II patrol boat man, a study of the influence of the sea on the people of Oceania and a history of the Australian Navy in the Persian Gulf 1991-2006. Emerging from this competitive field of books published in 2005 or 2006 was this year’s winner Dr Edward Duyker OAM, for François Péron – An Impetuous Life: naturalist and voyager (Miegunyah Press 2006).

The judging panel felt that Dr Duyker’s treatment of the important though little-known figure of Pacific exploration, François Péron, brought him to life in an accessible way. In 1800 Péron sailed as an assistant zoologist on Nicolas Baudin’s voyage of exploration to Australian waters. The author’s treatment of sources was, as always, exhaustive. It is both a balanced assessment of the difficult relationship between Péron and expedition leader Nicolas Baudin, and an analysis of the conduct of science during some of the most turbulent years in French history. It takes the reader from the heart of pre-revolutionary rural France to the little-known shores of Van Diemens Land and New Holland.

Graham Williams, critic with the Sydney Morning Herald, has written that ‘Dr Edward Duyker … is, quietly and methodically, trying to redress the Anglocentrism of early Australian history.’ That’s evident when you scan Dr Duyker’s earlier publications. His biographies cover many important European figures in the great era of maritime exploration. Nature’s Argonaut, the biography of Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander, a botanist on James Cook’s Endeavour voyage, was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s General History Prize in 1999. Citizen Labillardière, about the botanist on the much-overlooked d’Entrecasteaux expedition, won the New South Wales Premier’s General History Prize in 2003.

Based in Sydney, Dr Duyker is a former intelligence officer with the Department of Defence and is now an independent historian and author of 16 books. His most recent is A Dictionary of Sea Quotations (Miegunyah Press 2007). It’s reviewed elsewhere in this edition of Signals.

The late Professor Frank Broeze, when reviewing Dr Duyker’s 1995 biography of Marion Dufresne, An Officer of the Blue, described him as

one of the growing army of freelance historians who, working outside the facilities and pressures of traditional academic institutions, provide an important stimulus to historical scholarship.

The two had corresponded, but never met. Of his own work Duyker says

I feel fortunate to have achieved a measure of success in what I have done. I have also seen a great deal of the world, I am very rarely bored and I value the friendships I have made.

Dr Duyker is a fellow of the Linnean Society of London and the Royal Historical Society; was elected to the Royal Geographical Society, and is an Honorary Senior Lecturer of the Department of French Studies, University of Sydney. In 2000 he was made a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French government, and in 2004 received a medal in the Order of Australia (OAM) for services to Australian history.

Shortlisted for second place is Granville Allen Mawer for South by Northwest: the magnetic crusade & the contest for Antarctica (2006, Wakefield Press, Kent Town SA). Mawer re-examines the forces that have driven Antarctic exploration over the last 160 years – not, in this case, the better-known race for the geographic South Pole, but for the more-important magnetic South Pole. Here is a tale of ambition, achievement and tragedy which was eventually won by Australian magneticians as late as 1986. Mawer, a retired public servant and historian, lives in New South Wales. His other books include Fast Company, a history of the clipper ship Walter Hood (1994), and Most Perfectly Safe about 19th-century convict shipwrecks (1997). Ahab’s Trade (1999), about whaling in the South Seas, was short listed for the Queensland Premier’s History Prize 2000 and the New South Wales Premier’s History Prize 2001. His most recent publication was The Life and Legend of Jack Doolan, the Wild Colonial Boy (2004).

Unusually, this year, two authors were short listed in equal third place.

Miriam Estensen, The Life of George Bass; surgeon & sailor of the Enlightenment (Allen & Unwin 2005) brought this intellectually curious and complicated man to life. She presents his English childhood, medical studies, his wife and his ground-breaking Australian coastal voyages, weaving in 18th-century Sydney, friends and contemporaries and his eventual mysterious disappearance. American-born Estensen has a sea-faring heritage, the legacy of forebears in Sweden and Spain’s Basque country, and many years of travel have deepened her interest in the maritime history of the world. She lives with her husband, a retired sea captain, on Australia’s Gold Coast. Her other books include Discovery: the Quest for the Great South Land (1999) and The Life of Matthew Flinders (2004).

Glenys McDonald AM takes on the unsolved wartime disappearance of Australia’s pride, HMAS Sydney, with her book Seeking the Sydney: A Quest for Truth (University of Western Australia Press 2005). McDonald’s thorough research includes oral history but what most impresses is her sheer tenacity to work through the maze of confusion, innuendo, claims of official obfuscation and political disinterest, to produced a detailed and tested analysis. McDonald has had a varied career as nurse, midwife, sports administrator and JP. This is her first book.

This year’s Frank Broeze prize was presented at the Australian National Maritime Museum after the Vaughan Evans Memorial Lecture on 15 November 2007. Dr Duyker had already been engaged to give this year’s lecture – on James Cook’s Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander, subject of his earlier book Nature’s Argonaut – when the judges announced him as winner. This allowed members of both the Museum and the Australian Association for Maritime History to meet Dr Duyker in person over a drink on the replica of HM Bark Endeavour.

The annual Vaughan Evans Memorial Lecture is held in honour of the late Vaughan Evans OAM (1924–1993), a passionate and witty maritime historian who was an influential figure in the development of both ANMM and AAMH. Vaughan served in the Royal Navy in WW2 and worked for Lloyds of London before migrating to Australia in 1955. He established AAMH in 1978 with Frank Broeze and John Bach, and edited this newsletter until his death. He also edited its journal The Great Circle from 1983 to 1988, with John Bach. Vaughan donated his personal library to this museum, to become the foundation of its public research library which is named in his honour.

Antonia Macarthur

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^[1] This book review by Antonia Macarthur was first published in SIGNALS magazine (Vol 81) published by the Australian National Maritime Museum. It is reproduced here with permission.