Eventually, However, It Was Found Possible For Him To Carry Out The Exploration Of The Gulf.

Mr. Westall, landscape painter, with Mr. Robert Brown, botanist, and other scientists, sailed in the Investigator.

Bungaree, the Rose Bay native who had accompanied Flinders on his voyage in the Norfolk to Hervey Bay also went with him as well as a Sydney black fellow named Nanbury. Murray was given a code of signals for the Lady Nelson and was directed by Flinders, in case of the ships being separated, to repair to Hervey Bay, which he was to enter by a passage between Sandy Cape and Breaksea Spit said to have been found by South Sea whalers.

The two ships left Sydney together on July 22nd, 1802, but the Lady Nelson was soon in difficulties, and was left astern at Port Stephens. Shortly afterwards the Investigator lay to, to await her coming. On Saturday 24th - writes Flinders, "our little consort being out of sight we stood an hour to the southward, and not seeing her in that direction bore away along the coast." Meanwhile on the afternoon of July 26th, Moreton Island at the entrance of Moreton Bay was passed, and on Wednesday the 28th, Flinders reached Sandy Cape where he immediately began to seek for a passage into Hervey Bay. One was found but proved too shallow for the Investigator to pass through, so the ship was brought to two miles from the Spit.

On the 30th the Lady Nelson came up with the Investigator anchoring near her at sunset. After leaving Sandy Cape, Captain Flinders found that the trend of the land differed noticeably from that laid down by Cook in his chart. On August 7th Port Curtis was discovered and on the 21st Port Bowen, but by October 17th, when off the Cumberland Isles (a group off the east coast of Queensland in 20 degrees south), the Lady Nelson had become so unfit for service that she had to be sent back to Sydney.

The vessels at the time were within the Great Barrier Reef, and Flinders states that he kept the brig with him until a passage out to sea clear of the reefs could be found. "It is a matter of much concern to me," he writes to Banks,* (* See letters of Flinders to Banks. Add. manuscripts, British Museum.) "that this navigation could not be surmounted without such a loss of anchors to both vessels and of damage...to the Lady Nelson in the loss of her main keel and the damage done to the trunk." It was also found that her capacity of beating to windward, never great, was much reduced. And again in his journal he says, "the Lady Nelson sailed so ill and had become so leewardly since the loss of the main and part of the after keel that she not only caused us delay but ran great risk of being lost." Therefore, much as he desired the aid of the small vessel, Flinders decided to proceed on his voyage alone.

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