Baudin, Nicolas << boh dan, nee kaw LAY >> (1754-1803), was a French navigator who explored the southern coast of the Australian mainland during 1801 and 1802. He gave the name of Terre Napoléon to the coastal region from Nuyts Archipelago to Bass Strait. He also gave the names of Golfe Bonaparte and Golfe Joséphine to what are now Spencer Gulf and Gulf St. Vincent. The British navigator Matthew Flinders had already mapped most of this coastline, and his place names are used today. In April 1802, the two navigators met and held friendly conversations in a bay near the mouth of the Murray River. Flinders named this inlet Encounter Bay. The South Australian Museum possesses a rock, known as Frenchman’s Rock, on which Baudin inscribed the name of his ship, Géographe, during his visit to what is now Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia.
Baudin was born on Feb. 17, 1754, on the Île de Ré, off La Rochelle, in France. He died on Sept. 16, 1803, on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
