Matthew Flinders
The English naval captain
Matthew Flinders (
16 March 1774 â€"
19 July 1814) was one of the most accomplished navigators and chartmakers 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.
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 under Captain Bligh on
The Providence, transporting
breadfruit from
Tahiti to
Jamaica.
Later, Flinders sailed to Australia on
The Reliance, establishing himself as a fine navigator and cartographer, and in
1796 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.
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
The Investigator, to produce a detailed survey of the coastline of Australia, the southern coast of which was still unknown.
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 (nee Flinders) Petrie, accepted on behalf of her young son, named William Matthew Flinders Petrie the archaeologist and Egyptologist.
Between December
1801 and June
1803, Flinders charted the entire coastline of Australia. He sighted
Cape Leeuwin on
6 December and worked his way eastwards until he reached
Fowlers Bay on the
28 January. From that point on, the coastline was uncharted.
|
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 as a prisoner of war. His imprisonment was, in reality, due to misunderstandings and indignancies by both parties and lasted for almost seven years.
Flinders finally returned to England in October 1810, 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.
 |
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, Flinders'
1814 book was published under the title
A Voyage to Terra Australis despite his objections.
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. In
1817 he recommended that it be officially adopted. In
1824 the British Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia.
Flinders' name is now associated with many geographical features and places in Australia in addition to Flinders Island, in Bass Strait. In South Australia these 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 Street in
Canberra also commemorate him.
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 contains his beloved cat Trim, who accompanied him on his voyages.
*
A Voyage to Terra Australis, with an accompanying Atlas. 2 vol. â€" London : G & W Nicol, 18. July 1814 (the day before Flinders' death)
He was a
Freemason [
2].
The noted archaeologist Sir
William Matthew Flinders Petrie was his grandson.
Bryce Courtenay wrote a novel called
Matthew Flinders' Cat.
* K. A. Austin:
The Voyage of the Investigator, 1801-1803, Commander Matthew Flinders, R.N. â€" Adelaide : Rigby Limited, 1964
* Sidney J. Baker:
My Own Destroyer : a biography of Matthew Flinders, explorer and navigator. â€" Sydney : Currawong Publishing Company, 1962
* Miriam Estensen:
Matthew Flinders : The Life of Matthew Flinders. â€" Crows Nest, NSW : Allen & Unwin, 2002. â€" ISBN 1865085154
* Tim Flannery:
Matthew Flinders' Great Adventures in the Circumnavigation of Australia Terra Australis. â€" Melbourne : Text Publishing Company, 2001. â€" ISBN 1876485922
* 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 1862546258
* Geoffrey C. Ingleton:
Matthew Flinders : navigator and chartmaker. â€" Guilford, Surrey : Genesis Publications in association with Hedley Australia, 1986
* James D. Mack:
Matthew Flinders 1774â€"1814. â€" 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. â€" London : Golden Cockerel Press, 1946
* Ernest Scott:
The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders, RN. â€" Sydney : Angus & Robertson, 1914
*
The Matthew Flinders Electronic Archive at the
State Library of New South Wales.
*
The Flinders Papers at the UK
National Maritime Museum*
Free ebook of Matthew Flinders at
Project Gutenberg*
Related literature (
Project Gutenberg Australia).
*
Naming of Australia*
List of explorersThe statue of Matthew Flinders in his village of birth Donington Lincolnshirehttp://www.i5.photobucket.com/albums/y169/ctabuk/CTABUK002.jpg
