Peron Stated, For Example, That Flinders Said That He Had Been
Accompanied From England By A Second Vessel, Which Had Become Separated
From Him By A Violent Tempest.
There had been no second vessel, and
Flinders could have made no such assertion.
Again, Peron wrote that
Flinders said that, hindered by contrary winds, he had not been able to
penetrate behind the islands of St. Peter and St. Francis, in Nuyts
Archipelago. Flinders made no such absurd statement. He had followed the
coast behind those islands with the utmost particularity. His track, with
soundings, is shown on his large chart of the section.* (* On this
statement the Quarterly reviewer of 1810 bluntly wrote: "Now, we will
venture not only to assert that all this is a direct falsehood (for we
have seen both the journal and charts of Captain Flinders, which are
fortunately arrived safe in this country), but also to pledge ourselves
that no such observations are to be found either in Captain Baudin's
journal or in the logbook of the Geographe." Quarterly Review 4 52. It
was a good guess. No such observation is contained in the printed log of
Le Geographe.) Once more, Peron stated that Flinders said that he had
lost a boat and eight men in the same gale as had endangered the French
ships in Bass Strait. Flinders had lost John Thistle, an officer to whom
he was deeply attached, and a crew of eight men off Cape Catastrophe, but
the incident occurred during a sudden squall.
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