Account of Two Voyages in the Southern Seas and the Indies

In 1770, a Breton officer of the Royal Navy comes to Versailles with a promise: to find the great southern continent that learned men place south of the Indian Ocean, a land no one has ever seen.

Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen wins the king's confidence. He leaves Lorient in 1771, tries a new route to India, then sets out again from the Isle de France. In February 1772, a coast rises out of the mist, lashed by storms. He takes possession of it in the name of Louis XV and returns to Brest as an acclaimed discoverer.

The second voyage, in 1773, begins under very different auspices. Bitter stops at the Cape, December fogs, penguins and sea lions, sailors brought down frozen from the yard, scurvy gnawing at the crew: he must choose between the mission and the lives of his men. On his return, a court martial awaits him, and the walls of the Château de Saumur.

From his prison, Kerguelen pleads his case, gathers the letters of those who remain loyal to him and writes tirelessly: on the Navy, on Madagascar, on the American revolt, on how to strike at England. Two years later, Cook's ships will find the message one of his officers had left in a bottle.

A hero deceived by a dream of scholars, or a captain who refused to sacrifice his sailors? The account of a man wounded in his honour, who asks the reader to judge.