Embarks on Bougainville's circumnavigation disguised as a man

On 6 November 1766, Jeanne Baret secretly boarded the French naval storeship Étoile at Rochefort, disguised as a man and using the name "Jean Baret." She joined the expedition as valet and assistant to the naturalist Philibert Commerson, with whom she had a personal and professional relationship, becoming part of Louis Antoine de Bougainville's historic first French circumnavigation of the globe.

French naval regulations of the period strictly forbade women aboard ships, making Baret's disguise both a bold act of defiance and a considerable personal risk. Bound tightly in men's clothing, she performed the physically demanding duties of a valet while secretly assisting Commerson in his botanical work, collecting, pressing, and cataloguing thousands of plant specimens during stops in South America and the Pacific.

This act of subterfuge allowed Baret unprecedented access to scientific exploration at a time when women were categorically excluded from such expeditions and from institutional science more broadly. Her disguise not only enabled her personal participation in one of the era's great voyages but also ensured that her substantial contributions to Commerson's botanical collections could occur at all. Her successful concealment for nearly two years, until exposure in Tahiti, speaks to both her resourcefulness and the discipline required to survive undetected in the close quarters of an 18th-century sailing vessel.