Marquis Abraham Duquesne (1610-1688) was an admiral in the Swedish navy from 1644 to 1647. He served in the French navy during the Dutch wars and defeated the combined fleets of Spain and Holland in 1676. In 1681 he received the title of marquis, though his Protestantism prevented his being made an admiral. In spite of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, he was allowed to retire in peace.

     Pierre André de Suffren de Saint-Tropez (1729-1788) was a Knight of Malta and an admiral in the French navy. In 1781 he was sent to India where he engaged the British squadron off the coasts of India and Ceylon and destroyed it.

     .In 1785 Comte Jean-François de Galaup de La Pérouse (1741-1788) sailed from France to Easter Island, the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands, north to Alaska and south along the Pacific coast from San Francisco to Monterey. From there he sailed to China and the Philippians, through the Sea of Japan to Siberia. Next he sailed to the Navigators’ Islands, the Friendly Islands, Norfolk Islands and Botany Bay, Australia. Finally, he sailed to the Santa Cruz Islands where he and his crew died at the hands of the islanders. His records, which had been sent overland to France from Petropavlovlsk on Kamchatka, were edited by L.A. Milet-Mureau and published posthumously as A Voyage Round the World in 1797.

     While he was in the service of the French East India Company Comte Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais (1699-1753) took part in the capture of Mahé on the Malabar Coast of India. He was governor of the Île de France (Mauritius) and Île de Bourbon (Réunion) until he was put in command of a French fleet in Indian waters. He defeated the British forces in two engagements and blockaded Madras, but was removed by the governor-general of French East India and returned to France. He was acquitted of charges of corruption in 1751.

     Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1729-1811) went to Canada in 1756 as aide-de-camp to General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm during the French and Indian War. In 1763 he left the army for the navy and established a French colony in the Falkland Islands.
     In 1766 he was commissioned by the French government to circumnavigate the earth. Three years later he returned to Saint-Malo, having lost only seven men. He was chef d’escadre (commodore) of the French fleet off North America in support of the American Revolution. He was made a senator, count, and member of the Legion of Honour by Napoleon. The largest of the Solomon Islands, a strait in the New Hebrides, and the plant genus Bougainvillea were named for him.

     Among the accomplishments of Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d’Urville (1790-1842) was helping France gain possession of the Greek sculpture, the Venus de Milo in 1820.
     In 1837 he sailed for the Antarctic, and ultimately sighted the Adélie coast, naming it for Mme d’Urville. He returned to France in 1841 and the next year he, his wife and son were killed in a railway accident. He published two accounts of his voyages: Voyage of the Corvette Astrolabe, 1826-1829, and Voyage to the South Pole and Oceania, 1837-1840.