The Officers Explained That General
Decaen Considered It To Be Necessary To Have These Extracts For
Transmission To The French
Government, "to justify himself for granting
that assistance to the Cumberland which had been ordered for the
Investigator." So far
He had not, as a fact, granted any assistance to
the Cumberland; for the imprisonment of her commander and crew can hardly
be called "assistance." But as Flinders was convinced that an examination
of his latest log-book would manifest his bona fides, and assure both the
governor and the French Government that he was no spy, as Decaen accused
him of being, he broke the seal of the trunk, and took out "the third
volume of my rough log-book, which contained the whole of what they
desired to know, and pointing out the parts in question to the secretary,
told him to make such extracts as should be thought requisite."* (*
Flinders, Voyage 2 364.) All the other papers and books were at once
returned to the trunk, and sealed as before.
The third log-book was the only document pertaining to Flinders'
discoveries which Decaen ever had in his possession. It was never
returned. The rightful owner never saw it again. It has never since been
produced. Flinders applied for it repeatedly. On the very day before he
was liberated, he made a final demand for it. Mr. Hope, the British
commissary for the exchange of prisoners, made a formal official
application for it in 1810, but met with "a positive refusal both of the
book and of permission to take a copy of it."* (* Hope's report to the
Admiralty, October 25, 1810 (Historical Records of New South Wales 7
435).) In 1811, after Flinders reached England, the Admiralty, at his
instance, requested the French Government to insist upon its restoration.
At the end of his book, published 1814, Flinders earnestly protested
against Decaen's continued detention of it.
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