Gaston de Roquemaurel

Gaston de Ròcamaurèl

Louis François Gaston Marie Auguste de Roquemaurel, was a French Navy Officer and explorer, born on 27 September 1804 in Toulouse and dead on 1 April 1878 in Toulouse.

Nephew, by his mother, of Jean-Pierre Marcassus de Puymaurin, he takes care of his education after the death of his father. Gaston Roquemaurel is a student at the college of Auch and Toulouse at Royal College, where he is preparing for the entrance examination at the École Polytechnique. Received in 1823, it is the same promotion, among others, the economist Michel Chevalier. It leaves school in 1825 and entered the naval officer career.

It sails a long time in the Mediterranean, but promoted to Lieutenant in 1834, he obtained through the Captain Jacquinot, under the command of which he served during the expedition of Algiers (1830) and is the second Dumont d'Urville, boarding for the second expedition Dumont d'Urville around the world and in Antarctica. Roquemaurel becomes the second commander of the Dumont d'Urville on board the Astrolabe and holds the expedition logbook, which lasted from September 7, 1837 to November 6, 1840.

Museum of Toulouse

He then retired to Toulouse, where he entered the Academy of Floral Games. During his travels, Roquemaurel had an important library collection and ethnographic bequeathed to the city of Toulouse. In 1882 donations from Roquemaurel were transported and presented in the new Museum of Ancient and exotic decorative Art (Musée Saint-Raymond) and then transferred to the Museum in 1922. It is also the source of exotic Malacology collections of that museum. In 1950 the space left at the Asian and Pacific ethnography was named "Roquemaurel Gallery" collection Roquemaurel was the original base of rich ethnographic collection of the Natural History Museum of Toulouse.

Sources

• Stéphanie Leclerc-Caffarel, Jean-Philippe Zanco "A disillusioned explorer : Gaston de Rocquemaurel or the culture of the French Naval Scholars during the first part of the 19th century", Terrae Incognitae vol. 45 Issue 2, Oct. 2013.