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Credit for the first man to circumnavigate the globe usually goes to Ferdinand Magellan, though it’s more accurate to give it to his all-male crew because Magellan himself didn’t make it. That was in 1522, but Europeans still considered the Pacific to be a big unknown in the 18^th century. Many people believed there was still a great undiscovered southern continent down there. Surely, the world could not be so unbalanced as to leave 71% of its surface as water? Surely an ocean that large was just an enormous waste of space?

Curiosity was one motivation, and greed was another. Dominating the Americas had made Spain fabulously wealthy. More recently, the Netherlands had obtained fabulous wealth by controlling various spice-filled islands.

In 1766, the French crown authorized Louis Antoine de Bougainville to circumnavigate the globe, partly as a scientific mission, but also because it would be totally great if France could claim fabulous wealth, by way of a new continent, or discover a new cash crop like sugar or coffee, or at the very least, by stealing a nutmeg tree from the Dutch.

Bougainville sailed into the Atlantic in a top-quality ship called the Boudeuse. The Etoile set sail a few months later with plans to rendezvous with him in South America. Unbeknownst to Bougainville, the Etoile sailed with one woman on board.

The story of Jeanne Baret is a frustrating one for historians. She never published her story. She left a few signatures and that’s it. For the rest, we can only piece together the accounts of various men, none of whom said very much about her, and all of whom had reason to lie. Subsequent biographers have let their imaginations run wild and published an enormous amount of fiction labeled as fact. I will be doing my best in this episode to say not only what we know, but also how we know it, so you can judge its accuracy.

The Early Years

The first record we have is reliable. It’s the parish record that Jeanne she was born in Burgundy, France, on July 27, 1740. Her parents were married. Her father and godfather were both day laborers. Only the priest signed the record, which suggests that he was the only literate one (Clode, chapter 2; Ridley, 13). That is not surprising in this time and place.

Subsequent parish records tell us only two other facts. Her mother died only 18 months later, and her father died 15 years later, leaving Jeanne a teenage orphan (Clode, chapter 2).

From there, we know nothing until August 22, 1764, when Jeanne made a notarized statement that she was a domestic servant and she was five months pregnant. She was literate enough to sign her name. She was not married. That’s why she had to make the statement, which was legally required if you were unmarried and pregnant. If the purpose was to provide leverage against negligent fathers, it didn’t work in Jeanne’s case because she didn’t name a father (Clode, chapter 3; Ridley 41).

Even so, we’re pretty sure we know who it was. He was her employer, Philibert Commerson. Commerson came from a middle-class family. He was a doctor by training, but a naturalist by inclination. He married a rich wife and then his wife died. At some point he hired a peasant woman named Jeanne Baret to manage his household for him.

Men having sexual relations with the hired help was nothing unusual. But that’s not the only reason to think he was the father. The other reason is that he didn’t fire her for being pregnant. Instead, he took her with him when he moved to Paris.

Commerson went to Paris to run agricultural experiments in the Jardin du Roi, or king’s garden (Ridley, 50). He bitterly denied any rumors that he might get remarried (Ridley, 55). Even if he had wanted to marry Jeanne, a man of his status didn’t marry a servant woman. That would be social suicide.

Going Undercover

In January 1765, a boy called Jean-Pierre Baret was left with the Paris foundling hospital (Ridley, 51).  We assume this is Jeanne’s child because it’s the right time, place, and surname, but technically we don’t know that. We certainly don’t know whose idea it was to abandon the child, or what Jeanne thought about it.

In 1766, Commerson was offered the position of botanist and naturalist on Bougainville’s expedition around the world. Commerson was thrilled. He would be paid 2,000 livres per year. He also got 12,000 livres as an equipment budget (Clode, chapter 4; Ridley, 60). He would catalogue all the new plants and animals they would see, which would be fascinating, and if he could identify the next botanic cash bonanza, like sugar or coffee or chocolate, it would be lifelong fortune. It would also be a major coup if he could recognize a Dutch nutmeg tree when he saw it, steal it from under their noses, and keep it alive until it could be planted on French territory.

To do all this, he needed a trained servant, and he was instructed to find one. This person would receive 12 livres per year from the king’s purse (Clode, chapter 4; Ridley, 60). Yes, that’s 12, as compared to the 2,000 given to Commerson. Naturally, this person would be male. French naval regulations forbade women on board (Ridley, 59).

We have no record of how Jeanne Baret and Philibert Commerson decided between them that she should take the job, going undercover as a man. Maybe it was her idea. Maybe it was his. Neither one of them had ever been to sea or had any concept of what she was getting into.

From what Jeanne said much later, we can deduce that they planned for Commerson to claim he’d been unable to find an assistant. While boarding ship, a boy named Jean Baret would come up and ask for the job. Commerson would hire him as the last possible choice. This meant that if Jeanne was detected before they left port, Commerson could claim he was a victim here, not a deceiver. It wasn’t his fault!

This excuse would only hold up if no one realized that Jeanne was not just female, but a female with whom Commerson had been living for two years. But who at the docks would know that? His naturalist friends were being left behind. This was a brave new world.

They also made a backup plan. Commerson made a will which said, “I bequeath to Jeanne Barret, known as de Bonnefoi, my housekeeper, the sum of six hundred livres.” He also left her back wages, and many of the personal items in the Paris apartment. He also asked her to sort out the natural history collections there, which suggests she was already well trained in how to handle botanic specimens (Clode, chapter 4; Ridley 66-68; Oliver, 85).

The Etoile sailed on February 1, 1767. Jeanne’s disguise held good. She was now trapped in a space that was 102 feet long and 33 feet wide. It contained eight officers and 108 sailors and servants.

Very few of these people left any record at all about the journey. Certainly Jeanne did not. There ought to be a log from Captain La Giraudais, but it has never been found. Commerson kept a log, but he barely mentions Jeanne. It’s hard to say whether he was deliberately avoiding the subject or simply oblivious to the hired help. It could be both. Some other people’s accounts really were oblivious to the hired help. They never mention Jeanne at all, as man or woman.

The one who mentions her the most is the Etoile’s doctor, François Vivès. He despised Commerson, which probably means he was jealous of his fellow medical man who was getting paid a much bigger salary. Vivès says he suspected Commerson had managed to bring his mistress on board. He says Captain La Giraudais was forced to confront her, the rumors got so bad, and that she told the captain that she was a eunuch. He more or less says that La Giraudais was an idiot for believing her. He also says Jeanne protected herself from harassment by carrying two pistols at all times and brandishing them at anyone who bothered her (Ridley, 79-84).

All this would be plausible if Vivès had written it during the voyage. But he didn’t. He wrote it after the fact and laced it with spite and sexual innuendo. It’s hard to know how much truth was here and how much he just thought it made a good story.

No one else mentioned Jeanne as they crossed the whole Atlantic. They landed in Montevideo, where Commerson and others made a lot of money selling the trinkets they had stored on board instead of the food they were supposed to have put in that same space (Clode, chapter 7; Ridley, 91).

Jeanne also goes unmentioned as they moved along to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. Along the way, they rendezvoused with Bougainville and the Boudeuse. Surely, if everyone on the Etoile knew Jeanne was breaking naval regulations just by existing, they should have mentioned it to Bougainville? And surely he should have done something about it? But there’s nothing in the record.

In many of these ports, they were stuck for some time for repairs and resupply. That was all very well as far as a naturalist is concerned. While they were at sea, Commerson had little to do, and Jeanne’s duties were those of a personal servant: laundry, cleaning, mending, etc. When they were in port, Commerson went out to collect specimens, and Jeanne was definitely involved in this. Perhaps even more than she intended to be because Commerson was having problems with an ulcer on his leg. He didn’t have a lot of movement ability. Jeanne must have been the one doing the heavy work of hiking, climbing, digging, cutting, and carrying. Afterwards, she was probably the one drying, pressing, and otherwise preserving.

It was while they were in South America that they collected a very pretty flowering plant, which Commerson graciously named after his commander. It was (and is) called a bougainvillea.

Instead of banishing Jeanne, Bougainville actually invited Commerson to move over to the Boudeuse. That invitation would naturally include Commerson’s servant, though no one bothered to mention it. Commerson declined. He said he wouldn’t have enough space on the Boudeuse to hold all his specimens and equipment. The only reason he had so much space on the Etoile was because Captain La Giraudais had traded cabins with him. The captain’s quarters had a private bathroom, which was very obviously to Jeanne’s advantage. How she would have managed on a ship where most people did their business off the edge the ship in full view of anyone on deck is anyone’s guess. There is a lot of speculation about why La Giraudais would consent to trade cabins, but it is only speculation.

Sailing through the treacherous Straits of Magellan was very, very slow, so the naturalists collected hundreds of specimens. It was no trivial work, and there is again little reason to doubt that Jeanne was doing the hardest parts. When the English Captain Cook explored it a year later, two servants engaged in the same task died of cold. Bougainville’s record of this place said it was the most dreadful climate in the world (Bougainville, 90).

Tahiti and a Surprising Discovery

They survived the straits and headed up into the Pacific. From this point, their charts were scanty and unreliable. So they were completely surprised and taken aback by Tahiti. It was lush, verdant, and beautiful, but far more striking was that the Tahitian women were extremely, extremely available for sex. Many European visitors recorded that.

Sadly, we don’t have any Tahitian written accounts, so we don’t know what was in the minds of these women. Commerson did hardly any botanizing. This might be because he was distracted by other things on offer. But it also might be because his indispensable assistant was coping with an unexpected development.

Bougainville’s published account has never before mentioned Jeanne, but now it says:

“For some time there was a report in both ships, that the servant of M. de Commercon, named Bare, was a woman. His shape, voice, beardless chin, and scrupulous attention of not changing his linen, or making the natural discharges in the presence of any one, besides several other signs, had given rise to, and kept up this suspicion. But how was it possible to discover the woman in the indefatigable Bare, who was already an expert botanist, had followed his master in all his botanical walks, amidst the snows and frozen mountains of the straits of Magalhaens, and had even on such troublesome excursions carried provisions, arms, and herbals, with so much courage and strength, that the naturalist had called him his beast of burden?

A scene which passed at Taiti changed this suspicion into certainty. M. de Commercon went on shore to botanize there; Bare had hardly set his feet on shore with the herbal under his arm, when the men of Taiti surrounded him, cried out, It is a woman, and wanted to give her the honours customary in the isle. The Chevalier de Bournand, who was upon guard on shore, was obliged to come to her assistance, and escort her to the boat.

After that period it was difficult to prevent the sailors from alarming her modesty. When I came on board the Etoile, Bare, with her face bathed in tears, owned to me that she was a woman; she said that she had deceived her master at Rochefort, by offering to serve him in mens cloaths at the very moment when he was embarking; … that being born in Burgundy, and become an orphan, the loss of a law-suit had brought her to a distressed situation, and inspired her with the resolution to disguise her sex; that she well knew when she embarked that we were going round the world, and that such a voyage had raised her curiosity.

She will be the first woman that ever made it, and I must do her the justice to affirm that she has always behaved on board with the most scrupulous modesty. She is neither ugly nor handsome, and is no more than twenty-six or twenty-seven years of age. It must be owned, that if the two ships had been wrecked on any desart isle in the ocean, Bare’s fate would have been a very singular one” (Bougainville, 142).

Vivès tells the story a little differently. He says that Jeanne was outed by a particular Tahitian named Ahutoru, who identified her as a woman, and pursued her sexually she said she was dressing and acting as a man. This was not an unknown concept in Tahiti, so Ahutoru backed off but remained friendly (Clode, chapter 10).

Commerson’s journal says nothing whatsoever about this, and nor does anyone else’s. You’d think it would be worth mentioning, but maybe not, if it was already an open secret.

Alternatively, maybe it was not worth mentioning because it never happened. When you stop to think about it, Bougainville’s version does seem a little prettied up for publication. Notice that none of the important French men are at fault in any way. No one is sexually assaulted.

After this one paragraph, Bougainville moves on as if Jeanne is of no more interest. Apparently, he didn’t care about naval regulations. He did not make any move either to censure Jeanne or to protect her. He never mentions asking Commerson how he could have shared a cabin with Jeanne and missed the obvious (Clode, chapter 11).

A Second Discovery and a Possible Rape

From Tahiti, the expedition sailed on and on. Their food and water stores did not go on and on. Rations were reduced and reduced again. Everyone was ill with scurvy. Possibly people on the Etoile regretted filling their holds with trinkets for sale instead of food.

July of 1768 is the most puzzling part of the whole journey. They were in harbor. I’m honestly confused about which island they were on, but not much food was available. Three of the surviving journals mention the weather and an earthquake and nothing else.

One journal writer wrote more but edited out the part about Jeanne before publication. The original said, “The sailors discovered on board the Etoile a girl disguised in men’s clothing who worked as a servant to M. Commerson. Without suspecting the naturalist of having taken her on for such a painful voyage. I like to accord to her alone all the honour for such a hardy enterprise, forsaking the tranquil occupations of her sex, she had dared to face the fatigue, dangers and all the events one can morally expect on a navigation of this kind. The adventure, I believe, can take its place in the history of famous girls” (Clode, chapter 13).

Another man wrote in the margins of his journal that “it has been discovered that the servant of M. Commerson, the doctor, is a girl who has been dressed as a boy” (Clode, chapter 13).

Bear in mind that it has been eight weeks since Jeanne was publicly outed on Tahiti according to Bougainville. According to Vivès, it has been a year and a half since everyone guessed the truth anyway, so what is all this about the sailors only just now figuring it out?

Vivès himself wrote multiple versions about this moment. One of his versions says that:

“there was no great doubt on the decision about the sex of our so-called eunuch, … since there was no physical evidence, she dealt with the accusation by issuing some challenge to the servants who promised her an examination.” But Jeanne somehow left her pistols behind when she went botanizing here. Seizing the opportunity, “the servants” (he’s unclear on exactly who he means) “took advantage of the moment and found in her the concha veneris, the precious shell they had been seeking for so long. It was in fact a service that we rendered to this girl… This examination greatly mortified her but she became more at her ease, no longer compelled to restrain herself [or] to stuff herself with cloths. She remained blushing as a man [and] finished the voyage very pleasantly, having suitors on all sides” (Clode, chapter 13).

On the basis of these scant and contradictory journal entries, historians and authors have said all kinds of things. Early writers assumed that there’s no way a nice woman would venture on a trip like this so Jeanne must have been sexually promiscuous, probably the whole time. More squeamish writers said no, no, this was just an examination. Humiliating, but not sexual. Still others say that Vivès was a spiteful, disgusting man, with more lust than honesty, and nothing of the kind happened at all. More recent feminist rage writers assume there’s just no way a woman could make this trip without getting gang raped, and this is when it happened. One even claims as fact that Jeanne got pregnant from it (Ridley).

Since Jeanne herself left no record at all, my own view is that we’ll never know. But none of those explanations seem convincing to me on the evidence. If these men knew the truth and were all disgusting pigs, then it surprises me that it took them a full year and half to get around to raping her. If they only found out in Tahiti, then it surprises me that it took them eight weeks to get around to it. If they did find out and rape her at this point, it surprises me that Bougainville mentioned the issue eight weeks earlier and not here. Maybe he did know and he had tolerated her presence before because she was helpful and caused no trouble, but if there was now going to be sex, consensual or not, it was going to cause division among the men. Jeanne’s feelings might not matter to him, but would Commerson not be miffed? It just seems like Bougainville had a problem, no matter what.

The pregnancy bit seems the least likely of all. Not one of the journal writers mentioned such a thing, not then, nor ever, and let’s not forget that everyone involved was literally starving at this point. Starvation does not increase a woman’s fertility.

The only thing that seems certain is that by this point, people knew they had a woman on board, but every one of the writers, including Vivès, agreed Jeanne was a loyal servant, a hard worker, a valuable contributor, and she took care of herself just fine, with the possible but unconfirmed exception of a traumatic event on this one day in July 1768. You can draw your own conclusions.

They soon reached the Dutch-controlled spice islands, now in Indonesia. All hope of sneaking in for some contraband was overthrown by the need for regular, plain, unspiced food. They threw themselves on the mercy of the Dutch, and I am pleased to say that the Dutch fed them. Commerson (and presumably Jeanne, though no one mentioned it) did go botanizing there, but they were closely supervised. They didn’t get anything of commercial value.

Fed, watered, and restocked, they set off across the Indian ocean and were grateful to arrive on French-controlled Mauritius in November of 1768.

Years in Mauritius

To my surprise, both Jeanne and Commerson called it quits here. Commerson agreed to stay and study the native plants of Mauritius and of course Jeanne was tied to him (Bougainville, 202).

Bougainville made his way home from there and published his account, with his one paragraph on Jeanne. His book was a great commercial success.

For Jeanne herself, the completion of the journey took longer, and no one kept logs about her movements.

We do know that Commerson lived first at the governor’s mansion, and then made a botanizing trip to Madagascar, and still later bought a house (Oliver, 206). But whether Jeanne was with him on any of this is unrecorded. He died on Mauritius.

We do have a document in which Jeanne was granted two buildings in Port Louis (Clode, chapter 16). We also know she was fined for selling alcohol on Sunday (Clode, chapter 17). In 1774, she got married to a Jean Dubernat. The marriage contract still exists in the Mauritius archives, and it tells a very different story than that of a penniless orphan girl from rural France. Dubernat brought furniture, clothes, and a good chunk of money to the marriage. Jeanne brought more. And she only allowed one-third of her 19,500 livres to be community property. The two-thirds she kept for herself.

Jeanne’s salary on board ship was a grand total of 12 livres per year, so she didn’t get that stash as a naturalist’s assistant, and she’d have to be strikingly good at selling alcohol to achieve that level. Maybe Commerson was substantially more generous than expected. Maybe Jeanne also sold illegal trinkets in South America to great profit. There’s even a remote possibility that she found something of enormous value. Commerson wrote a letter to his brother-in-law saying he discovered diamonds in South America, but no diamonds ever appeared in any inventory of his belongings (Clode, chapter 17).

I am sorry to say that the other possession Jeanne brought to the marriage was slaves. Every person of means in Mauritius owned slaves, and Jeanne was now a woman of means. It was an evil system, but that was how it worked.

Completing the Circle

Jeanne and her new husband eventually decided to return to France. The port records show that they arrived in Bordeaux on August 26, 1775 (Clode, chapter 18). They settled in Dubernat’s home in the Dordogne, where they bought a large house. The contract stresses that it was a joint purchase. Jeanne provided half the cash, and she owned half the property. This was not the way things were usually done in France (Clode, chapter 18).

Jeanne also claimed what Commerson had left her in that will he left before they left. The apartment in Paris had long since been sold, but she demanded and was granted compensation for her share. To my complete surprise, she was also granted a naval pension for her services to the navy, even though she was never supposed to be on that ship at all (Clode, chapter 18). She died in her own home on August 5, 1807, thirty-five years after becoming the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.

Commerson has been duly honored for his contributions to natural history. The natural history museum in Paris still owns 5,000 specimens collected by him. This is just a small sampling of the total number he and Jeanne collected. There are over 200 plants which have commerson in their name somewhere (Clode, chapter 17).

None of them have the name Baret. This despite the fact that we know from multiple journals that Commerson was frequently in no physical condition to collect anything. He couldn’t have done it without Jeanne Baret. Commerson just gets the honors because he was the one with the job title.

It is true that Commerson did try to name one plant after his faithful assistant. He chose a flowering shrub on Madagascar. It has leaves that come in multiple shapes, which make it hard to classify. He named it Baretia bonafidia, and his note on it said:

“This plant showing deceiving leaves or clothing is named for that heroic woman who changed into manly clothes and with the mind of a woman, traversed the whole globe, a thirst for knowledge as her cause, daring to cross land and sea with us unaware. She so often followed in my footsteps … crossing with agility the highest mountains of the Strait of Magellan and the deepest forests of the southern islands. Equal to the armed hunter Diana and the sage and severe Minerva, she evaded ambush by wild animals and humans, not without risk to her life and virtue, unharmed and sound, inspired by some divine power” (Clode, chapter 16; Oliver, 210-211).

As far as I can tell, this is the only time Commerson admitted that he knew his assistant was a woman. It is a fitting tribute, even if it’s not enough. It’s not Commerson’s fault that the scientific establishment disagreed and changed the name of his flowering shrub.

I have special thanks today to Karen and to Eva, both of whom signed up as supporters on Patreon. And now, the announcement of the winner of the Women’s History Month prize drawing <drum roll> is someone with the initial B (sorry I don’t have the full first name). But B made a donation on the website very early in March, probably before she or he even knew there was a prize drawing. B, I’ll be sending you an email today about how to claim your free Her Half of History Merch. Patrons and donors like B and Karen and Eva keep this show running and available for everyone. Your support is much appreciated, even after Women’s History Month.

Selected Sources

Bougainville, Louis de. A Voyage Round the World. Translated by John F Fegan. 1772. Internet Archive. Accessed March 21, 2026. https://archive.org/details/VoyageAroundTheWorldByLewisDeBougainvilleIn1766-9.

Clode, Danielle. In Search of the Woman Who Sailed the World. Sydney, Nsw: Pan Macmillan Australia, 2020.

Oliver, Samuel Pasfield, 1838-1907. The Life of Philibert Commerson, D. M., Naturalist Du Roi: an Old-world Story of French Travel And Science In the Days of Linnœus. London: J. Murray, 1909. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011680189. Accessed March 19, 2026.

Ridley, Glynis. The Discovery of Jeanne Baret : A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe. New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2011.