Rose de Freycinet  Rose de Freycinet, born Rose Pinon, (1794 – 7 May 1832) was a Frenchwoman who, in the company of her husband, Louis de Freycinet, sailed around the world between 1817 and 1820 on a French scientific expedition on a military ship, initially disguised as a man. While not the first woman to circumnavigate the world, she was the first to record her experiences, in a diary. Being not intended for publication and being both frank and personal musings about people, places and events, her writings represent an important anthropological resource. Drew  De Freycinet was born Rose Pinon in Saint-Julien-du-Sault, in the Yonne department, to a middle-class family. Her mother was possibly called Jeanne Pinon; the name of her father is not known today. Jeanne Pinon ran a boarding school for girls. Rose was educated in that school, along with some 40 young ladies from Paris. Rose was the oldest daughter. Her father died while she was relatively young, followed by her brother, leaving Rose with the responsibility of looking after her sisters. She had a younger sister, Stéphanie, who later also took to the sea and sailed for Mauritius in 1818; Stéphanie married a civil servant, M. Maillard, who later repudiated her. At age 19, Rose married 35-year-old Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet, a member of the French aristocracy. The difference in social class proved no impediment for a happy marriage; by all accounts, her in-laws loved and respected her, and throughout her life, Rose maintained an animated correspondence with her in-laws, wherever her travels took her. Over the course of her journey she also corresponded with her mother, Madame Pinon, whom she missed dearly, especially because her departure meant her mother was separated from all of her children. Louis de Freycinet had earlier participated in the Baudin voyage that produced the first map of the Australian coastline in the period 1801-3. It is on that voyage he would have been aware of his leader Nicolas Baudin's meeting with Matthew Flinders and of their virtually simultaneous proving that New Holland of the Dutch and New South Wales of Cook was part of one island continent Australia. Displaying considerable cartographic skill, when Baudin's second ship was sent home under Jacques Hamelin laden with specimens and records, de Freycinet was elevated above others to command , a small vessel purchased in order to continue the surveys.