Matthew Flinders - the first 'Australian'
This article by Carol Fowler originally appeared in the magazine Sailing Today and is reproduced by kind permission.
- Read 150 letters and documents by, to or about Flinders in the Flinders papers website.
Lincolnshire-born explorer Matthew Flinders is revered in Australia but almost unknown in his homeland, partly because he lived in the shadow of Captain Cook.
Captain James Cook’s three great Pacific voyages between 1768–79 more or less established the shape of this huge ocean as we know it today. He was the first to trace the coastline of New Zealand in a six-month circumnavigation of the two islands. He fixed the positions of the main Pacific island groups, established that the southern continent was a myth and, as an unordered afterthought to his first voyage, laid down the east coast of Australia.
Ironically, this coastal survey was to have huge repercussions: less than 10 years after Cook's death, Britain established its first convict colony in Botany Bay. Building a settlement on the evidence of one brief visit was a risky affair and they'd no sooner arrived than they realised that Botany Bay was unsuitable, and had to move up the coast to Port Jackson, modern-day Sydney.
In fact, it quickly became obvious that they knew very little about this huge and forbidding continent, Terra Australis (or New Holland as it was often called at the time). Enter Matthew Flinders, the first man to begin the process of filling in the blanks of European knowledge of Australia; the first to circumnavigate the continent and the first person to use the name 'Australia' in his book, Voyage to Terra Australis, published in 1814.
An ambitious man and a first-rate navigator, Flinders had sailed as midshipman on Bligh's second breadfruit voyage to Tahiti in 1792 and saw that his talent for hydrography might provide a path to success. While there he caught gonorrhoea twice and it's arguable that either the disease or its treatment with mercury hastened his death at the comparatively early age of 40.
In 1795 Flinders was posted to Port Jackson on HMS Reliance where he became a friend of George Bass, the ship's surgeon, after whom the Bass Strait is named. Flinders wrote,
I had the happiness to find a man whose ardour for discovery was not to be repressed by any obstacles, nor deterred by danger… a determination was formed of completing the examination of the east coast of New South Wales.
The pair teamed up and undertook a series of detailed surveys in Tom Thumb, an 8 ft dinghy. Their major coup was the discovery that Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania) was an island and not part of the mainland. Governor Hunter lent him the Norfolk in which he circumnavigated the island, an achievement sufficient in itself to justify the effort involved.
When he returned to Britain five years later Flinders published his charts and wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, to argue that a voyage was needed to chart the remaining coasts of Australia and study its natural history.
Banks, who had travelled as the naturalist on Cook's first voyage and had been partly responsible for the choice of Botany Bay as the convict colony, had suggested the same idea two years previously. Britain, in the throes of war with France, had no resources to spare for such an expedition. Banks was a great champion of imperial expansion and now successfully argued that greater knowledge of Australia could, at the least, make the colony self-sufficient and, at best, unlock its vast potential. He urged that Flinders be given command and personally assumed control of preparations.
Unlike previous expeditions to the Pacific, this was to be a detailed investigation of something that was already known. The Flinders expedition was one of the first ever organised to try to open up lands for colonial expansion. On board were botanists and scientists, there to learn about natural resources and, through study of native plants and animals, discover whether the land was sufficiently fertile and well-watered to sustain farming and immigration.
Botany Bay had to be supplied by sea from Britain, a voyage of several months. It was settled by the military and criminals with little or no knowledge of how to survive in the harsh and unfamiliar land. The nascent colony clung to the edge of the vast continent and had little energy or inclination to explore the interior.
Banks was strongly opposed to marriage among members of his expeditions – on the occasion of one botanist’s marriage in Australia he had heatedly declaimed,
This marrying has often been in my way… I did not hire him to beget a family in New South Wales.
This prejudice was doubtless strengthened by the fact that all three of his first choices of scientists for this new expedition turned him down, two because they had recently fallen in love and one because of his wife's ill-health.
He finally appointed Robert Brown as botanist, an exceptional scientist but a chilly and uncommunicative man. He was luckier with Ferdinand Bauer, the botanical artist – gentle, hardworking, popular and, at 40, the oldest of the scientific team. The landscape artist, William Westall, was still at the Academy and Flinders thought him too immature for the job. His style was very different from previous scholarly interpretations but his paintings showed the starkness and intensity of the Australian landscape, often introducing specimens of flowers into the foreground in an attempt to capture the character of the country.
Flinders' ship was HMS Investigator. She was first built in 1796 as a collier in County Durham and named Fram. The name has local north-east connections although it is originally Scandinavian and means 'forward' (some 100 years later Amundsen's Antarctic expedition vessel would bear the same name). After two years plying the east coast coal trade Fram was bought by the Royal Navy, renamed Xenophon and adapted for convoy duties by laying an extra deck and cutting gun ports, an operation that materially weakened the structure causing her to leak alarmingly.
Detailed off for the voyage to Australia and re-named yet again, HMS Investigator was to be Flinders' first command. He valued his career enough to keep any misgivings about her condition to himself, saying only,
It was considered to be the best vessel which could, at the time, be spared for the voyage.
Desperate to achieve his first command and well aware of Banks' views on marriage, Flinders wrote to his long-time love Ann Chappelle:
Let us then, my dear Annette, return to the sweet, calm delights of friendship. I must call ambition to my assistance since it must be so; and a life of activity and danger, wean out of my mind but that we are friends.
However, his nature, passionate and somewhat lacking in discipline, overcame his misgivings and he married Ann just before HMS Investigator sailed, planning to take her on board with him, despite the fact that such action was not officially sanctioned. He was bursting with self-confidence and, mistakenly as it turned out, relied on Banks backing his actions, whatever they were.
Unfortunately, HMS Investigator had only reached Dungeness when she ran aground while Flinders was below with his new wife. Banks was enraged and bluntly told Flinders to choose between his wife and his command. Ann returned to Lincolnshire, Flinders sailed for Australia.
In these safety-conscious times it's well nigh inconceivable that anyone would undertake the voyage in a ship in such a poor state of repair. Just how bad it was is made clear in a letter from Bauer to his brother written when they reached South Africa.
I have hopes that we will stay here some time because the ship requires extensive repairs and throughout the entire voyage we seldom had a dry cabin because water was coming in everywhere through the sides of the upper-middle deck, despite the fact that during this time we were not exposed to any great storm.
Flinders' orders were to make landfall at Cape Leeuwin at the southwest tip of Australia and, noting any major features, sail to Port Jackson for a refit before making a thorough survey of the southern coast. The priorities given by the Admiralty were then to survey the north-west coast, the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Torres Straits, the northern central tip of Australia and part of the Queensland coast previously unsurveyed.
Cook had maintained that no one would ever make a half-decent explorer if he stuck to his orders. But Cook's judgement was excellent and, perhaps even more important, he was lucky. As soon as he arrived at Cape Leeuwin Flinders decided to follow Cook's example, disobey his orders and make a detailed survey of the southern coast immediately.
Although the charts produced were superb, it was now mid-summer and too late in the season to suit the botanist Robert Brown. Bauer, however, did a magnificent job of drawing the specimens, using a numbered chart with 1000 different shades to note down the nearest colour enabling him to complete the paintings later. The expedition brought back 4000 dried plant specimens including 150 genera and 1500 species new to science. Cook's second voyage, considered a triumph in botanical terms, brought back 350 new species. Despite this Brown felt that he had not been given a proper chance to investigate the Australian flora and fauna and in grumbling letters to Banks laid the blame on Flinders’ decision to travel in mid-summer.
Following the delayed refit they travelled north to Queensland, surveying areas not in his orders and leaving insufficient time for the more important surveys of the Torres Straits and the Gulf of Carpentaria, which at the time was thought might split Australia in two. By now HMS Investigator was making well over a foot of water an hour – the ship's carpenters reported that it was rotting badly and unlikely to survive heavy weather or grounding. Since Flinders had expressed the intention to 'follow the land so closely, that the washing of the surf upon it should be visible, and no opening, nor anything of interest escape notice', the poor state of the ship was likely to present a problem.
Flinders made for Timor, planning to take on fresh provisions and get some emergency repairs done. The repairs proved impossible and along with supplies the ship took on board a severe strain of dysentery, which afflicted most of the crew. Cook too had had his problems in this area: after barely a single case of sickness throughout his first voyage, he lost nearly a quarter of his men to fevers picked up in Batavia.
Letters from Ann added to Flinders' woes. Hers to him no longer exist but his replies indicate that, having been promised an independent life as a married woman, she was less than overjoyed at returning to live in her father’s house. He writes;
…but look my dear Ann to the happy side. See me engaged, successfully thus far, in the cause of science and followed by the good wishes and approbation of the world: see rising out of this employment a moderate competence for thee and myself.
And on another occasion:
...but my heart is with thee, and as soon as I can insure for us a moderate portion of the comforts of life, thou wilt see whether love or ambition have the greatest power over me.
When he became aware of the truly parlous state of HMS Investigator, Flinders decided to return to Port Jackson down the west coast, thus completing the first circumnavigation of Australia. On arrival the ship was condemned. Amazingly, she was later patched up and returned to Liverpool in 1805 and is recorded as still being in use 50 years later.
Desperate to return to England and acquire another vessel to complete the survey, Flinders decided to ship back to England as a passenger aboard The Porpoise. A few days out of Port Jackson, laden with manuscript charts, seeds, plants and specimens, she ran aground on Wreck Reef, where, among other items, many of Westall's sketches of the Australian landscape were lost. Flinders, as senior naval officer, took command and, his surveys with Tom Thumb having accustomed him to handling a small boat, made the 1100 km journey back to Port Jackson in the ship's cutter in under two weeks. He was able to organise a rescue party for the men left stranded.
No nearer to England and another ship, Flinders accepted the Governor's offer of The Cumberland in which he was able to collect his charts and notes from Wreck Reef before setting out on the long sea journey back home. The Cumberland turned out to be in little better shape than HMS Investigator with the floors awash unless pumps were worked continuously.
In a letter to Governor King he described the conditions in which he wrote his journal.
I am now sitting on the lee locker with my knees up to my chin for a table to write on, and in momentary expectation of a sea coming down the companion and sky light, for they have broken two panes of the four already… writing here is like writing on horseback on a rainy day.
It seems that a brief break in pumping had flooded the cabin floor and the locker was the only relatively dry place for the Commander to perch. According to another letter The Cumberland was also verminous,
for bugs, fleas, lice, weevils, mosquitoes, cockroaches and mice (this schooner) rises superior to them all.
By the time they reached the Indian Ocean only the starboard pump was working and that was showing signs of failure. Flinders put into French-held Ile de France (present day Mauritius), confident in the knowledge that he held a French passport ensuring safe passage. Even in time of war this was not unusual since explorers, regarded as benefiting all of mankind, were allowed privileges not permitted to ordinary naval vessels. However, even though Robert Brown spoke French, Flinders had never bothered to get a translation of the document. It transpired that far from guaranteeing free passage for Flinders and his crew the safe passage only applied to HMS Investigator. Now aboard The Cumberland, they were duly interned. Flinders wrote to Ann,
It is scarcely possible but that the very unjust treatment I have met with from the French must be known by this time in England. How it will end is yet uncertain, for I am still kept closely confined as before, although in seven months nothing has been found against me to confirm their villainous suspicions.
Flinders spent six unhappy years on the island, eventually being released in 1810. This long delay meant that he was unable to get his charts published and write up his account of the expedition while it still held the public's interest. Bauer and Brown had stayed on to continue their work and both published books on their return. Neither book flourished, largely because there was no overall narrative from the expedition's commander to fill out their work. Flinders' own book, Voyage to Terra Australis, was finally published days before his death in 1814.
Despite Flinders' failings, his achievements were remarkable, especially considering the state of his ship. Perhaps he never had the stature of Cook but, along with Bligh and George Vancouver, he was a distinguished member of that elite band of seamen who began to add precise detail to the outlines of the world’s oceans and help to lay the foundations of the Royal Navy's professional hydrographic service.
More Flinders facts
Flinders bars
While earlier navigators had observed errors in their compasses which could not be explained by magnetic variation, Matthew Flinders was the first to make a systematic investigation of the problems caused by the presence of iron in the ship. He suggested that it would be possible to correct such errors by using a 'counter-attractor'. He made it clear that he had not tried such a device, but advised using a vertical iron bar near the compass with one end let into the deck and the other almost level with the compass card. Although such devices were not used until the second half of the 19th century, they were called Flinders bars in recognition of the origin of the idea.
Trim the cat
Flinders' much-loved cat, Trim, served with him from his days as a kitten aboard Reliance in 1799 until his death on Mauritius in 1804. Together they suffered shipwreck and internment; Flinders writes about him with humour and affection which tells us as much about the man as about the cat. Here he is on Trim's table manners:
Trim was admitted upon the table of almost every officer and man in the ship. His modest reserve was such that his voice was not heard until everybody else was served. By a gently caressing mew, he petitioned for a little, little bit, a kind of tithe from the plate of each, and it was no purpose to refuse it, for Trim was enterprising in time of need as he was gentle and well bred in ordinary times. Without the greatest attention to each morsel in the person whom he had petitioned in vain, he would whip it off the fork with his paw, on its passage to the mouth with such dexterity and an air so graceful, that it rather excited admiration than envy.
Flinders' running survey
Cook's method of laying down a coastline, quickly and quite accurately, through a series of running fixes, was the mainstay of Flinders’ survey of Australia. Where the 'master' would stop surveying when night fell and resume wherever his ship was in the morning, Flinders would stand out to sea at night and begin again in the morning where he'd left off. A combination of bearing, course, speed and tides were used to make charts of such detail and accuracy that some of Flinders' coastal surveys were still in use after World War II.
The Caird Library
The Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum is a treasure trove of maritime history. Among thousands of items are Matthew Flinders' letters and atlases, available to researchers.
Issue 78, October 2003
The National Maritime Museum gratefully acknowledges the commitment and cooperation of the Sailing Today editorial team and the author of the articles, Carol Fowler.