Dagelet and Dawes: Their Meeting, Their Instruments and the First Scientific Experiments on Australian Soil

Abstract

At Botany Bay on 2 February 1788, the Lapérouse expedition's astronomer, Joseph Lepaute Dagelet, met his First Fleet counterpart, William Dawes. Dagelet sent Dawes a three-page letter containing the geographic co-ordinates of his observatory, advice on various aspects of the observatory that Dawes was building at Sydney Cove, a discussion of the main issues of contemporary astronomy and information on his own research. By drawing on the evidence of Dagelet's letter and other surviving documents, instrument inventories, fragments of instruments recovered from the Vanikoro shipwreck sites, private and official correspondence by members of the expedition and others, and importantly a short professional biography of Lepaute Dagelet written in 1803 by his mentor Jérôme Lalande, the scientific experiments made by Dagelet at Botany Bay are identified. Dawes' gravity experiments are also identified.