author
baron de Jean-Baptiste-Barthélemy Lesseps
1766–1834
Best known as the lone messenger who carried the La Pérouse expedition’s journals back to Europe, he turned a dangerous overland trek across Kamchatka, Siberia, and Russia into one of the great survival stories of the late 1700s. His travel writing preserves a vivid firsthand record of places few Western readers had seen at the time.
3 Audiobooks
Historisch dagverhaal der reize van den heer De Lesseps Zedert het verlaten van den Heer Graaf de la Perouse en zyne togtgenooten in de haven van St. Pieter & Paulus op Kamchatka, enz.
by baron de Jean-Baptiste-Barthélemy Lesseps
Travels in Kamtschatka, During the Years 1787 and 1788, Volume 1
by baron de Jean-Baptiste-Barthélemy Lesseps
Travels in Kamtschatka, during the years 1787 and 1788, Volume 2
by baron de Jean-Baptiste-Barthélemy Lesseps
About the author
Raised in a diplomatic family with ties to Russia, he learned several languages early and was chosen to serve as interpreter on the La Pérouse expedition while still very young. In 1787, when the expedition reached Kamchatka, he was entrusted with dispatches, maps, and journals and sent overland to deliver them to France.
That mission became the defining journey of his life. He crossed the Kamchatka Peninsula, traveled through Siberia and across Russia, and safely brought back the records that survive from the expedition’s early years. He later published an account of the trip, Travels in Kamtschatka, During the Years 1787 and 1788, which helped make his name known.
Afterward he continued a career as a French diplomat and writer. Though he is sometimes remembered in the shadow of his nephew Ferdinand de Lesseps, Barthélemy de Lesseps has a story of his own: a gifted linguist, a resilient traveler, and the man whose endurance saved part of one of France’s most famous voyages from being lost to history.