- Académie de Marine
France's Royal Naval Academy (French - "L'Académie royale de marine") was founded at Brest by a ruling of
31 July 1752 byAntoine Louis de Rouillé , comte de Jouy, Secretary of State for the Navy. This institutionalised an earlier initiative by a group of officers from the Brest fleet headed by the artillery captainSébastien Bigot de Morogues who all wanted to contribute to the modernisation of the French Navy, a group which had very quickly received the approbation of Louis XV.de Morogues was named the Academy's first president and the institution gathered in astronomers, hydrographers, mathematicians and so on, including such names as Dumaitz de Goimpy, Borda, Thévenard, Marguerie, and
Claret de Fleurieu , and three of its members (Claret de Fleurieu, Fleuriot de Langle, d'Escures) were to be found amongst La Perouse's expedition to theSolomon Islands which later disappeared. The Academy contributed greatly to the improvement of navigational instruments, and its graduates includedÉtienne Eustache Bruix .The institution disappeared temporarily from 1764 to 1769, at the end of the
Seven Years' War . In 1769,Aymar Joseph de Roquefeuil , commandant of the Brest fleet, obtained permission for its re-establishment from Louis XV and from Choiseul-Praslin, Secretary of State for the Navy. The Academy was linked to theAcadémie des sciences by an edict of 1771, but was finally suppressed by theNational Convention on8 August 1793 at the same time as all the other academies. It was restored again under the Empire as the "Académie de marine" and continues its work today.External links
* [http://www.academiedemarine.com/ Official site]
* [http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/texteconsolide/PPHQS.htm Text of the decree of 2 April 1991 on the reorganisation of the Académie de marine]
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