Bougainville Begins Pacific Circumnavigation

November 1766

Louis-Antoine de Bougainville sailed from Nantes on a three-year voyage around the world, the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe. He would encounter Tahiti, chart Samoan waters, and nearly wreck on the Great Barrier Reef. His naturalist described a flowering vine in Rio that still bears Bougainville's name in every garden on earth.