up as lost. St Aloüarn was hospitalised and dictated a letter to Kerguelen, advising that he had taken possession of western New Holland. St Aloüarn failed to recover from his illness and died on 27 October. In 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip established a British colony on the east coast of Australia, at Sydney. However, other French expeditions followed St Aloüarn to Western Australia. In 1792, Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux named the St Alouarn Islands, south east of Cape Leeuwin after St Aloüarn. In 1800, Nicolas Baudin was the first to map the Western coast and a part of the Southern coast of Australia. By 1826, following an expedition to the south coast of Western Australia by Jules Dumont d'Urville, British authorities were seeking to forestall French settlement in Australia. A British Army force, under Major Edmund Lockyer, was despatched from Sydney, establishing a permanent British settlement at King George Sound, named Frederick Town (or Frederickstown), later known as Albany. Searches for the annexation site During the late 20th century, historian Leslie Marchant, one of whose specialities was the French exploration of Australia, and others, led expeditions that attempted to find the site of St Aloüarn's proclamation. However, the site was not located until January 1998, when an expedition, led by amateur archaeologists Philippe Godard and Max Cramer, visited Dirk Hartog Island and located an écu coin in a lead capsule, at Turtle Bay. The site was inspected and the find confirmed by staff of the Western Australian Maritime Museum. Searches continued for a bottle reportedly buried by St Aloüarn's crew, containing a document proclaiming France's annexation of Western Australia. In April 1998, a WA Maritime Museum expedition, including archaeologists and remote sensing specialists, located a bottle, capped with a lead seal surrounding another écu; however, the bottle contained only sand. A comprehensive excavation of the site failed to locate any further artefacts. There is anecdotal evidence that the proclamation was found decades earlier by a stock worker, was kept at the homestead of a sheep station operating on Dirk Hartog Island at the time and was later destroyed by fire. The proclamation site was later protected by law and a commemorative plaque was placed at the spot. See also European and American voyages of scientific exploration Footnotes Bibliography John Dunmore, French Explorers in the Pacific. I., The Eighteenth Century, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1965. Philippe Godard, "The Saint Alouarn discoveries" [article], Quarterly