“I did not dissimulate from myself that the enterprise might have a fatal ending. In looking towards the corvette I could not prevent myself fancying involuntarily that that machine, so well organised, so imposing, and destined for such a long career, would be for some instants, by the sole effect of my will, exposed to be lost on the rocks situated at my feet.”

Thus fretted Jules Dumont d’Urville atop a ridge overlooking the tumultuous currents sweeping through French Pass, the narrow neck of water separating the South Island from the island that now bears his name. It was January 1827, and the corvette Astrolabe, which had conveyed him and his crew safely across the Pacific, was lying at anchor in Tasman Bay on the west side of the pass, boxed into a corner by wind and tide. Through the gauntlet lay the still waters of Pelorus Sound, his course down the coast and, he aspired, naval notoriety as the first European to attempt navigating French Pass.

French Pass can run at eight knots, swirling in eddies as the Tasman Sea pours into Cook Strait, rolling over reefs and churning through 100-metre-deep holes.

“Such reflections for a moment shook my resolution,” d’Urville conceded from his lookout, “but it strengthened itself shortly, and I returned aboard decided to try my fortune.”

He swung anchor off the stern, his bow swinging with the wind towards the pass, and set foresail, jib, the mizzen and the lower topsail. D’Urville raised the anchor and the ship slipped silently towards its fate—the lives of his men and the success of the expedition pitted against a torrent of salt water and rock.

At first, things appeared to be going well, but as the pass narrowed to the 100-metre-wide throat, the wind failed and the Astrolabe was at the mercy of the swift current.

“The first shock was slight,” records d’Urville, as the keel connected with the reef, “but the second a lugubrious cracking, accompanied by a prolonged shaking.”

Eventually, with the shattered remains of his keel deadwood floating in its wake, the Astrolabe floated gently into Pelorus Sound and d’Urville pronounced the near-foundering of his vessel a feat of navigation.

In November Island Passage—New Zealand Geographic’s expedition partner—navigated the pass with no such nearmisses. The complex tides are now well understood, the channel marked and we were not susceptible to the vicissitudes of the breeze.

Birds called from D’Urville Island, which is still cloaked in a verdant canopy of kohekohe, while New Zealand fur seals basked on the flanks of the rocky islets. Oystercatchers herded chicks away as we coasted past and shags, laden with pilchards, pattered along the surface of Pelorus Sound with their inadequate wings.

The moat of rushing water that challenged d’Urville has also insulated the island from some (but not all) of the predators present on the mainland, so the portion that has not been given over to pasture chimes with birdsong. Rich in argillite, a hard mudstone prized by Maori for tools and weapons, the island has now also become something of a treasure trove for the yachting community seeking anchorages off the beaten track. There are few better ways to see it than from the water, in the spirit of d’Urville.

After years of cheating death on the high seas, even as far south as Antarctica, d’Urville met his end not in a ship, but in France’s first railway disaster when the train on which he and his family were returning home to Paris from the Palace of Versailles derailed near Meudon and was engulfed in flames. If only he could have lived out his days in such a place as this.