In 1810 Admirals
Pellew And Bertie Were In Command Of Strong British Forces, And Lord
Minto, The Governor-General Of India, Was Determined To Root The French
Out Of The Isle Of France, And Clear India Of Danger From That Source.
They Succeeded, And Mauritius Has Been British Ever Since.
We must now leave the sphere of conflict in which the destinies of the
world were being shaped, and enter upon another phase of this history.
The reader will:
"Slip across the summer of the world,
Then, after a long tumble about the Cape
And frequent interchange of foul and fair,"
- will accompany for a while an illustrious British explorer in his task
of filling up the map of the globe.
CHAPTER 1. FLINDERS AND THE INVESTIGATOR.
The Investigator at Kangaroo Island.
Thoroughness of Flinders' work.
His aims and methods.
His explorations; the theory of a Strait through Australia.
Completion of the map of the continents.
A direct succession of great navigators: Cook, Bligh, Flinders, and
Franklin.
What Flinders learnt in the school of Cook: comparison between the
healthy condition of his crew and the scurvy-stricken company on the
French vessels.
On April 7, 1802, His Majesty's ship Investigator, 334 tons, Commander
Matthew Flinders, was beating off the eastern extremity of Kangaroo
Island, endeavouring to make the mainland of Terra Australis, to follow
the course of discovery and survey for which she had been commissioned.
The winds were very baffling for pursuing his task according to the
carefully scientific method which Flinders had prescribed for himself. He
had declared to Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society,
before he left England, that he would endeavour so to explore the then
unknown coasts of the vast island for which he himself afterwards
suggested the name Australia, "that no person shall have occasion to come
after me to make further discoveries."* (* Flinders to Banks, April 29,
1801, Historical Records of New South Wales 4 351.) This principle of
thoroughness distinguished his work throughout the voyage. Writing
thirteen years later, after the long agony of his imprisonment in
Mauritius, he said that his "leading object had been to make so accurate
an investigation of the shores of Terra Australis, that no future voyage
to the country should be necessary" for the purpose; and that had not
circumstances been too strong for him, "nothing of importance should have
been left for future discoverers upon any part of these extensive
coasts."* (* Flinders, A Voyage to Terra Australis 2 143.) Nobody can
study Flinders' beautiful charts without recognising them as the work of
a master of his craft; and so well did he fulfil his promise, until the
debility of his ship and a chain of misfortunes interposed to prevent
him, that the Admiralty charts in current use are substantially those
which Flinders made over a hundred years ago.* (* Sir J.K. Laughton in
Dictionary of National Biography 19 328.)
His method, though easy enough to pursue in a modern steamer,
comparatively indifferent to winds and currents, was one demanding from a
sailing ship hard, persistent, straining work, with unflagging vigilance
and great powers of endurance. It was this. The Investigator was kept all
day so close along shore that the breaking water was visible from the
deck, and no river mouth or inlet could escape notice. When the weather
was too rough to enable this to be done with safety, Flinders stationed
himself at the masthead, scanning every reach of the shore-line. "Before
retiring to rest," he wrote, "I made it a practice to finish the rough
chart for the day, as also my astronomical observations and bearings."
When darkness fell, the ship hauled off from the coast, and every
morning, as soon after daylight as possible, she was brought in-shore
again, great care being taken to resume the work at precisely the point
where it was suspended the night before. "This plan," he wrote, "to see
and lay down everything myself, required constant attention and much
labour, but was absolutely necessary to obtaining that accuracy of which
I was desirous."
Before Flinders reached Kangaroo Island, he had, in this painstaking
manner, discovered and mapped the stretch of coast westward from the head
of the Great Australian Bight, charted all the islands, and, by following
the two large gulfs, Spencer's and St. Vincent's, to their extremities,
had shattered the theory commonly favoured by geographers before his
time, that a passage would be found cleaving the continent from the Gulf
of Carpentaria to the Strait which George Bass had discovered in 1798.*
(* Pinkerton, in his Modern Geography (1807) volume 2 588, published
after Flinders had made his principal discoveries, but before the results
were known, reflected the general opinion in the passage: "Some suppose
that this extensive region, when more thoroughly investigated, will be
found to consist of two or three vast islands, intersected by narrow
seas." The Committee of the Institute of France, which drew up the
instructions for the expedition commanded by Baudin, directed him to
search for a supposed strait dividing Australia longitudinally into "two
great and nearly equal islands" (Peron, Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres
Australes 1 5). With these passages may be compared the following from
Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, published
in 1824, ten years after the appearance of Flinders' book: "There are few
voyages from which more important accessions to geographical knowledge
have been derived than from this voyage of Captain Flinders, especially
when we reflect on the great probability that New Holland...[observe that
Kerr had not adopted the name Australia, which Flinders suggested only in
a footnote] will soon rank high in population and wealth. Before his
voyage it was doubtful whether New Holland was not divided into two great
islands, by a strait passing between Bass Straits and the Gulf of
Carpentaria. Captain Flinders has put an end to all doubts on this point.
He examined the coast in the closest and most accurate manner; he found,
indeed, two great openings; these he sailed up to their termination; and
consequently, as there were no other openings, and these were mere
inlets, New Holland can no longer be supposed to be divided into two
great islands.
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