Scandal at sea

There was nothing obvious in Jeanne Barret’s childhood to suggest that she would one day become the first woman to sail around the world. She was born almost 400 kilometres from the coast, into a poor peasant family in the middle of the peaceful French countryside. Generations of farm workers were born, lived and died without ever travelling more than a few miles from their village. But Jeanne was different.

In her early 20s, Jeanne left village life behind her. She dressed as a man to board a sailing ship in the French port of Rochefort and set sail for the jungles of South America, the icy Straits of Magellan, the tropical islands of the Pacific and south-east Asia. She narrowly escaped the dangers of the Great Barrier Reef before returning to France, via the French colony on Mauritius, eight-and-a-half years later. It was a perilous journey for anyone, risking shipwreck, scurvy, disease and violence. The death toll on such long voyages was often