Stanislas Benjamin Levillain, whose name was sometimes spelled Le Vilain by Hamelin and Le Villain by Baudin, had already accompanied Nicolas Baudin on an earlier expedition to the West Indies, aboard La Belle Angélique. He later embarked on Le Géographe as assistant zoologist, before being transferred to Le Naturaliste, whose crew no longer included a zoologist after the voluntary disembarkation of Bory de Saint-Vincent and Désiré Dumont at Île de France in early 1801.
During his missions in Geographe Bay, around Rottnest Island, and on Dirk Hartog Island, Levillain collected and prepared numerous specimens intended for the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris. His collections included birds — petrels, cormorants, Cape petrels and oystercatchers — as well as many shells. On returning from his mission to Dirk Hartog Island, he noted in his journal, on 5 Thermidor Year IX (24 July 1801):
“Today I busied myself making a large crate for the Muséum, containing about a dozen white hammer oysters, two tun shells of various colours, six or seven giant clams or tuillées, various well-coloured bivalve shells, sponges, land and water snakes, various augers, a large black petrel, four Cape petrels, a white-bellied cormorant, a bird known by the sailors as the ‘cordonnier’, two black oystercatchers with red bills, eyes and feet, various mussels, a large Ethiopian crown in the best possible condition, and many other species.”
Geographe Bay: the disappearance of Vasse and the loss of Kismy
Levillain had been deeply affected by the events that took place in Geographe Bay between 19 and 23 Prairial Year IX (8–12 June 1801), marked by the disappearance of the sailor Vasse and the loss of his dog, Kismy. In his journal, he reveals a very strong emotional response to the account of the wreck of the Géographe’s longboat and the death of the sailor, carried away by a wave after having already been rescued twice. He writes that his “heart is heavy” and that he cannot hold back his tears.
To this grief over Vasse’s death was added an even more intimate sorrow: the loss of Kismy, his dog, whom he had lent to Milius as a courtesy. Frightened by the wave, the animal could not be brought back on board and had to be abandoned on the shore. Levillain describes him as his “most faithful friend”, a gentle, affectionate animal loved by the whole crew.
“I cannot hold back my tears — my poor dog, my faithful old friend. One must have had such an animal to know the grief one feels when deprived of the creature to whom one was attached!!!”
This loss was not only emotional; it also directly affected his work as a zoologist. Levillain emphasised that a dog was indispensable for retrieving quadrupeds, marsh game, and aquatic birds shot in the water.
Around Rottnest Island: the wreck of the long boat
It was therefore a Levillain already marked by death, loss, and the practical difficulties of natural-historical work in an unknown land who set out again, a few days later, on a new reconnaissance. On 28 Prairial Year IX, Hamelin
“sent the longboat, under the orders of Midshipman Milius, accompanied by the zoologist Le Vilain and Midshipman Giraud, to reconnoitre the island lying to the south of us, and the extent of the reefs around it and between it and Rottnest Island.”
The precise identification of this island remains uncertain: it may have been Garden Island or Carnac Island. Hamelin further specified: “I had it supplied with provisions for two days, with orders to return this evening or tomorrow.”
Levillain’s mission report, together with the pages of his journal devoted to this reconnaissance, combines zoological observations, descriptions of the natural environment, coastal survey, and a narrative of survival. Having set out with the officer Milius, Levillain observed abundant fauna, dominated by the “sea bears” — that is, sea lions or fur seals — which the men saw, killed and consumed in large numbers. He also noted the presence of crows larger than those of Europe, a buzzard, wild ducks, and a handsome black sea-pie, with red bill, eyes and feet, killed by Milius.
His observations also concerned the vegetation and the nature of the terrain: fragrant woods, tall arborescent heath, abundant mosses within the forests, and sandy soil. Later, on the shore, he reported the discovery of a large piece of succin or amber, found near the remains of a large fish that he supposed to be a whale. These remarks show the eye of a zoologist attentive not only to the species encountered, but also to the material traces left by the coastal environment.
The report, however, quickly becomes a narrative of peril. After leaving in a bottle a note attesting to their passage on the island, the men put back to sea at around five o’clock in the evening. To avoid a vast chain of reefs, the longboat headed towards the mainland, but a storm arose during the night. The boat nearly capsized and filled with water several times, while the exhausted boatmen remained asleep. Milius had the grapnel thrown out near a great sand cliff; the following day, the mainmast broke, and at around nine o’clock the longboat was wrecked.
All managed to save themselves, but the situation rapidly became critical. The shipwrecked men had to find fire, water and food, and to survive for several days in an improvised camp, exposed to cold, hunger, and fear of animals or of the inhabitants of the country. Milius’s zeal nearly cost him his life when he tried to save the longboat, at a moment when the men no longer obeyed him. Weakened, the small party searched among the plants for edible seeds, but nearly poisoned themselves with a seed which, once cooked, had the smell and taste of chestnut. Levillain was the most seriously affected: he suffered violent vomiting, nearly died, and long afterwards continued to suffer from cruel colic.
This ordeal takes on particular intensity in his account because it reawakened in Levillain the intimate and painful memory of a family shipwreck: his father and brother had perished at sea. The disaster experienced on this Australian coast was therefore not merely a maritime incident; it revived a personal memory of bereavement and gave the report a profoundly human tone.
After several days of waiting, help finally arrived from the ship. The workmen repaired the longboat, while the castaways organised their camp, gathered shellfish, searched for water, kept fires burning, and in turn left, in a bottle, a notice recounting their shipwreck on this coast. When the longboat was relaunched, after several hours of effort, the return to the ship was filled with intense emotion: the men came back on board with tears of joy, embracing their companions, who had believed them lost.
Dirk Hartog Island: shells and geological questioning
On Dirk Hartog Island, Levillain questioned the origin of the abundance of shells observed in the northern part of the island, a sector marked by pronounced relief, limestone cliffs, and considerable heights. He wrote:
“On this part of the island, one notices many shells of the giant-clam family, or tuillées, of quite large size, as well as several other species of sea shells. How did they come onto this enormous mountain? Were they thrown there by the sea in heavy weather, or brought by birds — which is scarcely likely?”
Levillain’s remark is characteristic of the questions that accompanied, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the emergence of geology as a discipline. Finding, on a height that he described as an “enormous mountain”, shells belonging to the giant-clam family, together with other marine species, he posed one of the founding questions of the Earth sciences: how can one explain the presence of marine remains far from the present shoreline, and sometimes at altitudes that seem to exclude the ordinary action of the sea? His hesitation between transport by storms and a less credible external cause reflects a moment of intellectual transition, when the history of the Earth was beginning to be understood through the material traces inscribed in landscapes.
Rather than a recent deposit caused by storms or birds — an explanation Levillain himself found unsatisfactory — these shells may today be understood as the remains of former littoral or marine deposits, incorporated into the island’s sandy and calcareous formations. Dirk Hartog Island is largely composed of carbonate sands and dune limestones derived from fragments of shells, corals and other marine organisms. The presence of shells on elevated ground therefore points less to a sudden incursion of the sea than to the longer geological history of sea-level change, the accumulation of shelly sands, their reworking by wind, and their consolidation into limestone landforms.
Levillain’s death and the fate of his collections
Six months later, Levillain died of dysentery. Baudin notes in his journal that, on 23 December 1801, Hamelin informed him of the death of Citizen Le Villain, embarked as assistant naturalist, after he had contracted dysentery during his stay at Timor. Baudin described him as a man of “gentle, affable and good-natured” character.
On 5 February 1802, Baudin also referred to the plundering of Levillain’s collections by members of the crew. According to Péron’s account, this episode enabled British officers, during the Géographe’s stopover at Port Jackson, to recover certain rare specimens collected by the zoologist and send them to British museums, to the great displeasure of Péron, the Freycinet brothers and Ransonnet, and despite Baudin’s request to Governor King for their return. Nevertheless, among the 1,021 bird skins brought back by the Baudin expedition, Louis Dufresne, taxidermist at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, mounted several cormorants as well as many other Australian birds collected by Levillain and his colleagues Maugé and Lesueur.