François Leguat

He was one of a small group of male French Protestant refugees who in 1691 settled on the then uninhabited island of Rodrigues in the western Indian Ocean.

François Leguat was a French Huguenot originating from the province of Bresse, now part of the department of Ain, who fled to Holland in 1689 after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

On 10 July 1690 Leguat and nine male volunteers boarded L'Hirondelle in Amsterdam,[3] intending to start a new life on the island of Réunion, which they believed had been abandoned by the French.

They finally left Rodrigues on 21 May 1693 and spent a week being carried by the prevailing wind and current in their open boat to Mauritius, a distance of 300 nautical miles (560 km).

One of the group died in attempting to escape; he seems to have reached Mauritius' mainland with a crude float, but apparently perished in the woods too.

Finally, in September 1696 the remaining members of the group were transferred to Batavia and brought before the Dutch Council where they were found to be innocent.