What Happened To Matthew Flinders When, After A Brief Sojourn In Sydney
Harbour, He Left To Continue His Explorations In The Northern Waters Of
Australia, Is Generally Known.
While he was at work in the Gulf of
Carpentaria, the condition of the Investigator caused him much
uneasiness, and when she was overhauled, the rotten state of her timbers
compelled him to return.
She was then condemned as unseaworthy. On again
sailing north in the Porpoise, he was wrecked on the Barrier Reef. Making
his way back to Sydney in a small open boat built from the wreckage, and
well named the Hope, he was given the use of the Cumberland, a mere barge
of only twenty-nine tons, in which to carry himself and part of his
shipwrecked company to England. Compelled by the leaky condition of the
crazy little craft, and the inefficiency of the pumps, to put into
Mauritius, then a French possession, he was detained as a prisoner by the
French governor, General Decaen, for six and a half years.
There is no need, for our immediate purpose, to linger over these
occurrences, inviting as they are, with a glint of Stevensonian romance
in the bare facts, and all the pathos that attaches to the case of a
brave and blameless man thwarted and ruined by perversity and malignity.
Frequently have the facts been wrongly written, as for instance when
Blair states, in his Cyclopaedia of Australia, that Baudin in Le
Geographe called at Mauritius after Flinders was imprisoned, and, instead
of procuring his release, "persuaded the Governor to confine him more
rigorously." Poor Baudin - he had been in his grave three months when
Flinders appeared at the island in dire distress, and Le Geographe itself
left the day before his arrival.
What is clear, however, is that Flinders was detained in a captivity that
broke down his health and wrecked his useful life, first on General
Decaen's own responsibility, and later - though the evidence on this point
is not specific - in accordance with influences from Paris; and that
during his imprisonment an attempt was made to deprive him of credit for
his discoveries by the publication of the first volume of the French
official history and its accompanying atlas.
The atlas published in 1807* (* The date on the imprint of volume 1,
though the charts bear the date 1808. A second part of the atlas,
containing a few additional small charts, was issued in 1811.) contained
two large charts, the work of Lieutenant Louis de Freycinet. The first
was a "Carte generale de la Nouvelle Hollande," with the title inscribed
upon a scroll clutched in the talons of an imperial eagle, a most
fearsome wild-fowl, that with aggressive beak and flaming eye seemed to
assert a claim to the regions denominated on what it held. This was the
most complete map of Australia published up to the date named. The second
was entitled "Carte generale de la Terre Napoleon." In this case the
title was held by feathered Mercury in graceful flight, displaying the
motto "Orbis Australis dulces exuviae." An exquisite little vignette
under the title (by Lesueur) should not escape notice.
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