Robert Challe

Robert Challe (17 August 1659 – 25 January 1721) was a French colonialist, voyager and writer, although he never published under his own name, which accounts for his obscurity until his re-discovery in the 1970s.

The influence of his mother, who seems to have preferred her oldest son, ensured that he was inequitably treated in his father's will, receiving only one tenth of the estate, and he entered into violent dispute with his two older brothers, fought a duel with one of them and injured him.

In March 1690 he signed on as an ecrivain de navire, that is the purser or accountant, on a vessel sailing from Lorient in western France for Pondicherry, India, and other destinations in the Far East.

The many adventures of the vessel on which he sailed, L'Ecueil, with a crew of 350 men and a veritable farmyard of fresh food on the hoof, are described in his two volume Journal d'un voyage fait aux Indes Orientales.

The vessel, one of a fleet of six, was owned by the Compagnie des Indes Orientales and was an armed merchantman of 38 cannon, sailing for trade but also on a diplomatic mission to the Kingdom of Siam.