Jean Baptiste, marquis de Traversay
(1754-1831)
Jean Baptiste Prevost de Sansac, marquis de Traversay (24 July 1754 – 19 May 1831) was a naval officer of French Creole origins who distinguished himself in the ranks of the Royal French Navy during the American Revolutionary War. In 1791, fleeing from the French Revolution, Traversay joined the Imperial Russian Navy, rising to commander-in-chief of the Black Sea Fleet in 1802. In 1809 he was appointed Minister of the Navy, which position he held for 18 years. His name was frequently russified to Ivan Ivanovich de Traversay (Russian: Иван Иванович де Траверсе).
Traversay is commemorated internationally in the name of the Traversay Islands and in the sarcastic Russian name for the shallow Neva Bay – the Marquis Puddle (Russian: Маркизова лужа).
Biography
Early years
Jean-Baptiste Prevost de Sansac de Traversay was born in the French Caribbean island of Martinique, the first of nine children of Jean-Francois and Claire de Traversay. His father, Jean-Francois chevallier de Traversay, was a French Navy lieutenant stationed in Martinique who later became a military governor of the island. Jean-Francois's mother owned sizable sugar cane plantations and came from an old naval family named Duquesne; her direct ancestry included captain-armator Abraham Duquesne and admiral Abraham Duquesne-Guitton. The title of Prevost de Sansac de Traversay traces back to chevallier Hugh Prevost (d. 1086).
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This entry incorporates text from “Jean Baptiste, marquis de Traversay” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.