François Renier Duminy (Lorient, 4 October 1747 – Cape Town, 26 May 1811) was a French mariner, navigator, cartographer and South African pioneer.
In 1781 he was sent on a special mission to Europe to report on the VOC's losses during the American War of Independence and, after the capture of his ship by the British, returned as captain of the Meermin, on which during the next 10 years he carried out important survey work of the southern African coastline.
His employment as pilot reflects his lasting interest in navigation and his skill in calculating longitude using lunar distances, the method devised by Jean-Baptiste d’Apres de Mannevillette, the Company's cartographer.
He was second-lieutenant on the Gerion (250 tons, 5 cannons), chartered by a group of speculators and commanded by family relative Mathieu Lunel Duminy.
Duminy left the Salomon to obtain provisions from Reunion in the yacht Heureux and on 22 August assumed command of the Belle Artur, a privately owned [[Snow (ship}|snow]] that sailed from Port Louis (Mauritius) on 15 September 1776.
He intended to trade for slaves at Madagascar but, when these were unobtainable, agreed to convey Baron Maurice Benyokswy to Cape Town.
In the following year, he undertook a similar expedition on the Sainte Therese (230 tons), which had sailed to Cape Town from Lorient under the command of Bourdé de la Villehuet.
The decision to enter the war proved extremely costly for the Dutch, for they lost most of their shipping and trading bases in the Indian Ocean and, after the arrival of a stricken fleet had brought news of further disasters to Cape Town, it was decided that Duminy would sail to Europe in the Postillon to convey this news to the Dutch East India Company's authorities.
The Postillon was however intercepted by a British fleet and Duminy was taken to the West Indies as a prisoner of war after he had thrown his despatches into the sea.
In Holland, he was given the command of the Meermin, a newly built frigate (500 tons, 26 guns) and given the task of escorting six company vessels transporting the de Meuron Regiment which was to bolster the Dutch forces in Ceylon.
Duminy was admitted to The Order of St Philippe as a Knight Commander and Chevalier Grand Cross when he visited Europe in 1783.
He was asked to provide guidelines for future expeditions and this he did in December 1786, followed by another document dealing with the mortality of slaves in which he ascribed most of the deaths to diseases which had been contracted before transit.
In 1790 a map showing the coastline as well as a section of the interior was presented to van de Graaff, following a land survey carried out by J.N.Friderici and Josephus Jones.
After retiring from a life at sea, Duminy looked forward to profiting from farming, taking advantage of the VOC administration's decision to privatise grain and meat production.
The main reason for this decline in fortune was the end of the VOC's administration (followed by its bankruptcy) and the occupation of the Cape in 1795 by Britain, following the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars.
Following his residence at Simonstown between 1803 and 1806, Johanna died of depression in 1807 and Duminy lived in rented properties in Cape Town, visiting his daughter Jeanne who farmed at Bokkerevier and the mineral springs at Caledon, which were believed to provide relief for his gout and arteriosclerosis.
Influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment, in which Duminy was well-read, many of its members were vociferous champions of republicanism and opponents of the ‘superstition’ which was seen to characterise Western religion.
After the second British occupation, the Lodge de Goede Hoop was increasingly influenced by the English Masonic movement and became more concerned with social respectability than with the political radicalism that had inspired the American and French Revolutions.
François Renier Duminy introduced keratolytic winter erythema, a rare genetic disease, in South Africa.
- Records of the French East India Company and of the marine d'outre mer, Service historique de la Défense à Lorient.