Thomas Vasse of Dieppe in France was assistant helmsman on the Naturaliste during Nicolas Baudin's expedition of 1801–1804. He was presumed drowned off the south west coast of Western Australia in 1801.
According to Thomas Brendan Cullity in Vasse : An Account of the Disappearance of Thomas Timothée Vasse, '...his companions last saw him disappearing into the wild surf about fifty metres from the beach, on June the 8th 1801, not far from Wonnerup Inlet on Geographe Bay, just north of Busselton [Western Australia]' (3). Stories of his survival were published in European newspapers at the end of the first decade of the 1800s.
Swan River (Western Australia) colonist George Fletcher Moore, during his travels in the south west of Western Australia in April 1838, was told by the Indigenous people of the area that Vasse had survived only to die sometime later. Moore published this story in a letter to the Perth Gazette (5 May 1838): 71 and wrote of it in his diary.
Georgiana Molloy also corresponded on the fate of Vasse. (Cullity, 18-19). Cullity writes: 'In Western Australia the Vasse story has achieved the status of a romantic myth. From time to time it is recounted - for example by Sir Paul Hasluck ...' (4)
Vasse is remembered by the name, the Vasse, given to the area where he was lost and by the names of other geographical features including the Vasse River and Vasse Inlet.
Source: Thomas Brendan Cullity, Vasse: An Account of the Disappearance of Thomas Timothée Vasse (1992)
