The Race to Found Australia

In August 1785, one of the American heroes of its War of Independence, naval commander John Paul Jones, was in France as an agent of his new country’s embassy. The American ambassador, Thomas Jefferson, shared with Jones his concerns that the recently departed expedition of Captain Jean Laperouse—ostensibly a scientific voyage to the Pacific Ocean—might also have political objectives. The French had lost their North American territory of Louisiana in 1763 in the Seven Years War and Jefferson suspected they might be trying to make a comeback on the continent’s Pacific coast. He ordered Jones to undertake some espionage, especially in the port of Brest from which Laperouse and his two ships had just departed.

Jones discovered that the expedition had two undeclared goals. One was to establish a fur trading enterprise at Nootka Sound on North America’s west coast (modern Vancouver). The second was to traverse the Pacific and take possession of territory on the Australian…