Yet Grant's
names, inscribed in plain print on his published chart, were all ignored
on the Terre Napoleon charts - his Cape Nelson becoming Cap Montaigne; his
Cape Otway, Cap Desaix; his Cape Schanck, Cap Richelieu; and so forth.
The contention that the south coast exploration of the French was
"entirely a work of discovery,"* (* Freycinet, 2 page 23.) although they
were forestalled in it by Flinders and Grant, is neither true nor
sensible. If it could be held that the voyage of a vessel sailing without
a chart or a pilot along a coast previously unknown to its officers was
"entirely a work of discovery," then a ship that should sail under such
conditions along any piece of coast - say from Boulogne to La Hague - would
accomplish "a work of discovery." Discovery is a matter of priority, or
the word is meaningless.
Freycinet's notes nowhere meet the gravest feature of the case - the
prolongation of the imprisonment of Flinders until the French could
complete their own charts for publication. The talk about not knowing
what Flinders' names were, the affected ignorance of his prior claims,
were crudely disingenuous. Freycinet knew perfectly where Flinders was,
and why his charts were not issued. The Moniteur contained several
references to his case. Sir Joseph Banks repeatedly pressed leading
members of the Institute to lend their influence to secure his
liberation. But Freycinet, who had shared in the generous hospitality of
the British governor in Sydney - extended at a time when the French crews
were sorely stricken - and should have been moved by gratitude, to say
nothing of justice, to help in undoing an act of wrong to a
fellow-navigator, does not seem to have taken the slightest step in this
direction, nor does he in any of his writings express any regret
concerning the unhappy fate that overtook the English captain.
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