The Only Missing Documents Were
The Few Which The Rats Had Eaten, The Third Log-Book, Which Decaen
Refused To
Give up, and two packets of official despatches which the
Cumberland was carrying from Sydney to England, and which Colonel
Monistrol informed him had been "long ago disposed of." The Colonel
"supposed that something in them had contributed to my imprisonment."
They had been "disposed of" by being sent to Paris for the perusal of
Napoleon's Government.
Why, however, did Decaen refuse permission to Flinders to have the last
of his papers till the year 1807? Why had he willingly permitted him to
take some of them in December 1803, but declined to let him have any more
till nearly four years later? A comparison of dates is instructive on
this point. As has already been said, the first volume of Peron's Voyage
de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes, and the first edition of the atlas
containing two of Freycinet's charts, were published in 1807. Making all
allowances for the obstinate character of Decaen, it is most significant
that the remainder of Flinders' charts and papers were kept from him
until the very time when Freycinet was ready to publish the first and
hurried edition of his atlas. It is impossible to resist the conclusion
that the governor was acting under influences exerted from Paris, private
if not official, in refusing the navigator access to the material which
it was believed was essential to the completion of the charts that would
demonstrate his discoveries, until the French officer could hurry out a
makeshift atlas and fictitious claims could be based upon it.
This conduct was reprehensible enough, but, it must be insisted, there is
no ground whatever for the too frequently made assertion that Flinders'
charts were surreptitiously copied or actually stolen - for the loose
manner in which the affair has been related in some books renders
doubtful which of the two accusations the authors desired to make.* (*
Blair, Cyclopaedia of Australasia page 131, actually says that Baudin,
"having taken copies of Flinders' charts, sailed for France, where he
published a book and received great applause from the French nation, who
called him the greatest discoverer of the present century."
Spirit-writing one has heard of, but not even the Psychical Research
Society has recorded the case of a dead man copying hydrographical
charts. A similar disregard of the fact that Baudin died before the
return of his ships occurs in J.E. Tenison Woods' History of Exploration
in Australia (1865) volume 1 page 174, where we are informed that
Flinders was detained in Mauritius, because "at that time the Emperor
Napoleon was obliging Admiral Baudin [sic] to usurp the glory of his
discoveries"; a case of post-mortem promotion.) Not only is there no
evidence to support any such charge, but Flinders himself never accused
Decaen of making an improper use of the papers in the trunk, nor did he
ever allege that the two charts contained in the French atlas of 1807, or
those in Freycinet's folio atlas of 1812 - which he probably saw before
his death in July 1814 - were founded upon or owed anything to his
drawings.
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