Captain Matthew Flinders RN (16 March 1774 – 19 July 1814) was one of the most accomplished navigators and cartographers of his
age. In a career that spanned just over twenty years, he sailed with Captain William
Bligh, circumnavigated Australia and encouraged the use of that name for the continent,
survived shipwreck and disaster only to be imprisoned as a spy, identified and corrected the
effect of iron components and equipment on board wooden ships upon compass readings, and wrote the seminal work on Australian
exploration A Voyage To Terra Australis.
Early life
Born in Donington, Lincolnshire, the young Matthew Flinders had his hunger
for exploration and knowledge whetted by the tale of Robinson Crusoe, and at the
age of fifteen he joined the Royal Navy, serving as midshipman in HMS Bellerophon under Captain Pasley, who recommended him to
Captain Bligh with whom he sailed in HMS
Providence, transporting breadfruit from Tahiti
to Jamaica.
Later, Flinders sailed to Australia in HMS Reliance, establishing himself as a fine
navigator and cartographer, and in 1795 explored the coastline around Sydney in a tiny open boat
called Tom Thumb. In 1798 he circumnavigated
Tasmania, proving it to be an island. The passage between the Australian mainland and Tasmania
became known as Bass Strait after the ship's doctor and close friend of his,
George Bass, and a large island was named Flinders
Island.
Flinders together with George Bass sailed the Norfolk
(sloop) from Port Jackson (Sydney) to circumnavigate Van Diemen's Land, proving
its island status and the existence of Bass Strait. Whilst sailing on the Norfolk, on 17
July 1799 he arrived in Moreton Bay between Redcliffe and Brighton. He touched down at the
Pumicestone Passage, Redcliffe and Coochiemudlo Island and also rowed ashore at Clontarf. During this visit he named Redcliffe after the Red Cliffs.
On 17 April 1801 Flinders married Ann Chappell, but was soon
forced to leave his new wife when the British Government sent him back to Australia. He set out that July, in command of
Investigator, to produce a detailed survey of the coastline of Australia, the southern
coast of which was still unknown. Between December 1801 and June 1803, Flinders circumnavigated Australia, charting parts of the
coastline including the Great Australian Bight and the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Flinders was the first European explorer to visit the You Yangs ranges near
Geelong. On May 1 1802,
he and three of his men climbed to the highest point and named it "Station Peak". This was later changed to Flinders Peak
in his honour.
On 12 April 1812 they had a daughter who became Mrs. William
Petrie; in 1853 the N.S.W. government of Australia bequeathed a belated pension to her (deceased) mother of £100 per year, to go
to surviving issue of the union. This she, Mrs. Ann (née Flinders) Petrie, accepted on behalf of her young son, named
William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the archaeologist and Egyptologist.
Exploration of the Australian coastline
The British Admiralty sent him to explore the Great Australian Bight, among other places, in 1801. He set out from England in
July that year, in command of the Investigator. He reached Cape Leeuwin on 6 December and worked his way eastwards, reaching Fowlers Bay on
28 January, 1802.
Matthew Flinders' voyages
On 8 April 1802, while sailing east, Flinders met up with the
French explorer Nicolas Baudin, who was sailing west aboard Le Géographe. Both men
had been sent by their governments on separate expeditions to map the unknown southern coastline of Australia. Both men of
science, Flinders and Baudin met and exchanged details of their discoveries, and sailed together
to Sydney to resupply. Flinders would later name the site of their meeting Encounter Bay.
The meeting at Encounter Bay by the two expeditions marked the point at which the entire coastline of continental Australia
became mapped.
By June 1803, the hull of the Investigator had deteriorated to such a degree that Flinders was forced to abandon his
survey of the northern coastline of Australia. He returned to Sydney by the west coast, thus completing his circumnavigation of Australia.
Flinders set sail for England aboard The Porpoise to secure another vessel from the British Government with which to
complete his survey, but was shipwrecked on the Great Barrier Reef. Remarkably,
Flinders navigated the ship's cutter across open sea back to Sydney, a distance of some
700 miles, and arranged for the rescue of the marooned crew on Wreck Reef.
Flinders next attempted to return to England aboard the Cumberland, but the poor condition of the schooner forced it to put in at Mauritius for repairs on 17 December. Unbeknownst to Flinders, England was now at war with France again, and the French governor,
General De Caen, had Flinders detained in close confinement as a prisoner of war. Flinders wrote
to Sir Joseph Banks who subsequently arranged French government recognition of Flinders' status and approval of his release.
Despite this, De Caen refused to release Flinders, who remained a prisoner. His imprisonment was, in reality, due to
misunderstandings and personal antipathy on both sides and lasted for almost seven years.
Flinders finally returned to England in October 1810, in poor health as a result of his imprisonment, where he immediately
began work on preparing A Voyage to Terra Australis for publication. On 18 July
1814, the book was published. The next day, Matthew Flinders died, aged only 40.
Naming Australia
View of Port Jackson taken from South from
A Voyage to Terra Australis.
Flinders was not the first to use the word "Australia" (see the Australia article on that).
He owned a copy of Alexander Dalrymple's 1771 book
An Historical Collection of Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean, and it seems likely he borrowed it from
there, but he applied it specifically to the continent, not the whole South Pacific region. In 1804
he wrote to his brother: "I call the whole island Australia, or Terra Australis" and later that year he wrote to Sir Joseph Banks and mentioned "my general chart of Australia." That 92cm x 72cm chart, made that year, was
the first time the name Australia was used on a map, a map he had began while imprisoned by the French in Mauritius. [1]
Flinders continued to promote the use of the word until his arrival in London in
1810. Here he found that Banks did not approve of the name and had not unpacked the chart he had
sent him, and that "New Holland" and "Terra Australis" were still in general use. As a result, a book by Flinders was published
under the title A Voyage to Terra Australis despite his objections. The final proofs were
brought to him on his deathbed, but he was unconscious. The book was published on 18 July
1814, and Flinders died the next day without regaining consciousness, and never knowing that his
name for the continent would be later accepted [1].
In this book, however, Flinders wrote: "The name Terra Australis will remain descriptive of the geographical importance of
this country... [but] had I permitted myself any innovation upon the original term, it would have been to convert it into
Australia; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth."
Flinders' book was widely read and gave the term "Australia" general currency. Lachlan
Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales, became aware of Flinders' preference for
the name Australia and used it in his dispatches to England. On 12
December 1817[2] he
recommended to the Colonial Office that it be officially adopted. In 1824 the British Admiralty
agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia.
Legacy
Flinders' name is now associated with many geographical features and places in Australia in addition to Flinders Island, in Bass Strait. Flinders is seen as being particularly important in South Australia,
where he is often considered the main explorer of the state. Landmarks named after him in South Australia include the Flinders
mountain range and Flinders Ranges National Park, Flinders Chase National Park on Kangaroo Island,
Flinders University, Flinders Medical
Centre, the suburb Flinders Park
and Flinders Street in Adelaide. In Victoria, eponymous places
include Flinders Street in Melbourne, the
suburb of Flinders, the federal electorate of Flinders, and the Matthew Flinders Girls' Secondary College in
Geelong.
Flinders Bay in Western Australia and Flinders Way in Canberra also commemorate him. There is even a school named after him, Flinders Park Primary School.
Bass and Flinders Point in Cronulla, New South Wales.
Bass & Flinders Point in the southernmost part of Cronulla in New South
Wales features a monument to George Bass and Matthew Flinders, who explored the Port
Hacking estuary.
Australia holds a large collection of statues erected in Flinders' honour, second only in number to statues of
Queen Victoria. In his native England the first statue of Flinders was erected on
16 March 2006 (his birthday) in his hometown of Donington. The
statue also depicts his beloved cat Trim, who accompanied him on his voyages.
Flinder's proposal for the use of iron bars to be used to compensate for the magnetic deviations caused by iron on board a
ship resulted in them being known as Flinders bars in his honour.
Works
- A Voyage to Terra Australis, with an accompanying Atlas. 2 vol. – London : G & W Nicol, 18. July 1814 (the
day before Flinders' death)
- Trim: Being the True Story of a Brave Seafaring Cat.
Trivia
Notes
- ^ The Weekend Australian, 30-31 December 2000, p. 16
- ^ The Weekend Australian, 30-31 December 2000, p. 16
References
- K. A. Austin: The Voyage of the Investigator, 1801-1803, Commander Matthew Flinders, R.N. – Adelaide : Rigby
Limited, 1964
- Sidney J. Baker: My Own Destroyer : a biography of Matthew Flinders, explorer and navigator. – Sydney :
Currawong Publishing Company, 1962
- Miriam Estensen: Matthew Flinders : The Life of Matthew Flinders. – Crows Nest, NSW : Allen & Unwin,
2002. – ISBN 1-86508-515-4
- Tim Flannery: Matthew Flinders' Great Adventures in the Circumnavigation of Australia Terra Australis. –
Melbourne : Text Publishing Company, 2001. – ISBN 1-876485-92-2
- Fornasiero, Jean; Monteath, Peter and West-Sooby, John. Encountering Terra Australis: the Australian voyages of Nicholas
Baudin and Matthew Flinders, Kent Town, South Australia,Wakefield Press,2004. ISBN 1-86254-625-8
- Geoffrey C. Ingleton: Matthew Flinders : navigator and chartmaker. – Guilford, Surrey : Genesis Publications
in association with Hedley Australia, 1986
- James D. Mack: Matthew Flinders 1774–1814. – Melbourne : Nelson, 1966
- Geoffrey Rawson: Matthew Flinders' Narrative of his Voyage in the Schooner Francis 1798, preceded and followed by notes on
Flinders, Bass, the wreck of the Sidney Cove, &c. – London : Golden Cockerel Press, 1946
- Ernest Scott: The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders, RN. – Sydney : Angus & Robertson, 1914
See also
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External links
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