After an epic display of seamanship and navigation in tackling the wild southern sea in the sloop Norfolk with Bass and a small crew to prove once and for all that Van Diemen's Land was in fact an Island, Flinders returned to England on the Reliance with a remarkable and daring proposition. He proposed solving the great remaining mystery of the Antipodes - whether Terra Australis was one land mass or several by circumnavigating it.
By letter, he made the proposal - really the outline of a magnificent obsession - to no other than Sir Joseph Banks, to whom Flinders' growing reputation had already reached, and was evidently intrigued. Furthermore, Banks being a man of wealth, fame and remarkable influence, was just the man to facilitate the realization of Flinders' ambition. He was also aware of the strategic and scientific advantages such a voyage could provide.
To give a better idea of Banks' influence, after he'd gained the go-ahead from the Admiralty for the expedition, he asked, "[i]s my proposal for the alteration in the undertaking for the Investigator approved?" the reply was "any proposal you make will be approved. The whole is left entirely to your decision."
The alteration he was asking for, unsurprising given Banks' obsessive interest in and encyclopedic knowledge of Botany, was to have included in the crew botanist, Robert Brown, gardener, Peter Good and the artist, Ferdinand Bauer to paint what couldn't be transported back to England. Apart from these three, once news of the planned mission spread, Flinders was inundated with requests from men wanting to join his crew, putting him in position to be able to hand-pick the best and the brightest. Captain and crew would all be young men for a young man's mission.
"Investigator" was the perfectly apt new name given to the ship chosen for the journey envisaged to take three years. It had started life in 1795 as a mercantile vessel named the Fram, and had been bought by the Navy in 1798 and renamed the Xenophon after a famous general of ancient Greece. As the Investigator, extensive refitting would be needed to tailor it more for exploring than fighting. By being directly given command of this vessel, Flinders became the youngest ever captain in the history of the British Navy, albeit, one not to have taken command of a ship only on the incapacitation or death of the former captain
It was during this period the "love interest" that formed the back-bone of Ernestine Hill's acclaimed historical novel, My Love Must Wait, moved centre-stage. She was Ann Chapell. The two had known each other since very young. Ann was blind in one eye from a smallpox lancing. She has been described as "loved by all who knew her". She was of considerable intellectual strength with a talent for painting wildflowers. Literature and poetry were passionate interests.
Not knowing exactly how the refitting of his ship would take, Mathew, feeling now a man of means and able to take on the responsibility of marriage knew he had to act fast. Without informing Banks or his naval superiors out of fear obstacles being placed in his planned marital path, he decided to present them with a fait accompli. With only relatives and a few close friends present, a hastily organised marriage was performed. With the precedent of the wives of ship's captains accompanying them on voyages already set, Flinders felt confident no prohibition would be placed on his taking Ann back to Terra Australis with him. Of course it wouldn't be a naval voyage in the accepted sense but he had planned for that. He explained to Ann that he was acquainted with several good women, the wives of officials back in Port Jackson, who would be only to happy to provide accommodation and support while he was away exploring. Ann was fully accepting of this proposal and was looking forward to the adventure.
But alas, the best laid plans .... When Banks discovered what must have seemed a plot, he was less than thrilled. Navy officialdom was similarly affected. The upshot was that it was let known to Flinders that no-one would try to stop Ann sailing off with him but there was no telling what consequences it produce in terms of his career (in which it was no secret he was royally ambitious). This was a cruel blow to the young lovers. However, after what must have been agonised decision making, Flinders, driven by single-minded ambition since boyhood to be a famous explorer, made up his mind. He would leave Ann behind. After all, he would write every opportunity that presented itself, and and the anticipated period of his absence would pass in no time. Little did they know that it would be nine years before their reunion.
The sweet sorrow of parting was prolonged by the Admiralty's dithering in giving Flinders the green light for departure long after the Investigator was ship-shape and ready to go. Three months were to pass with the couple feeling that any day could be among their last together.
At last on July 18, 1801, the loops of the ship's tethers to the capstans were lifted and it was sailed east from Spithead before turning south on what would be Flinders' third visit to Terra Australis. It's not difficult to imagine the euphoria of the crew engendered by cruising into the open sea after months of inactivity and frustration. However, for Flinders, the joy must have been tempered by the sight of the diminishing figure of his new wife waving her last goodbye from the dock.
The made good time and were soon being sling-shot around the Cape of Good Hope and into the fury of the "Roaring Forties". But at least in heading east in the same direction as the wind their progress was supercharged. In the years to come, ships sailing in the opposite direction, even the great clippers before they were superseded by steamers would battle sometimes for weeks trying to round the Cape, often going backwards, often giving up all together, turning around and going the long way round via Cape Horn. (James Michener in his novel, Hawaii provides a compelling sense of what this would have been like.)
Even more difficult to imagine than the crew's elation at finally beginning the voyage is their joy at sighting land after weeks in pitching seas on a fragile, wooden ship. The land they were sighting on December 6, 1801 was the south west corner of Australia where a towering light-house now stands guard. It is also now, at least as far as Australian is concerned, where the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean. Flinders named it Cape Leeuwin after the Dutch ship Leeuwin (Lioness) which had been known to sail along the nearby coast in 1622, and then all but fade from history. This then was the southernmost point of New Holland, so named by Abel Tasman.
New Holland, Terra Australis or New South Wales? The problem arises in a similar fashion to a group of blind men feeling parts of an elephant and wondering if they belonged to the same creature.
The term Terra Australis, or to give it its full mouthful, Terra Australis Incognita, preceded the other two terms even before it had been established that the land was any more than a legend. When the Dutch touched one side of the elephant, the name, New Holland, was a sure way of claiming a first contact (and possible possession if the original evaluation of it not worth possessing were to ever change).
Between Tasman's visit in 1644 and Cook's discovery of the other side of the elephant in 1770, New Holland was the name for all between. However, for obvious reasons, this didn't suit the British in whose name the land was being claimed. It seems no time at all was taken in coming up with the name, New South Wales. However, perhaps chary of biting off more than they could chew, they were amenable to continue calling the side west of longitude 135 degrees of the mysterious land, New Holland. Presumably the location of the split was liable to re-calibration if the natural divide of a suspected strait running south-north was eventually discovered.
From the cape, all along the underside of the hulking continent, they were in completely uncharted waters and this was where the real work of Flinders began - charting those waters, so treacherous that in the years to come they would be littered with the rotting bodies of hundreds of shipwrecks.
The progress was slow because Flinders was absolutely meticulous in his cartography. For example, whereas Cook, a master navigator himself who had greatly inspired Flinders, sailed constantly north from south of Botany Bay and was naturally only able to chart the coast by day, Flinders returned every day to the exact location at which his previous day's mapping was forced to cease by the setting sun. Where landings were possible in the ship's cutter he would land himself, climb to the highest point and measure angles by theodolite.
The daily entries in Flinders' log which would be transcribed into his A Voyage to Terra Australis show that the work of mapping the southern coast of Australia was proceeding as planned with almost the sense of a work-a-day world permeating it. However excitement must have been building on seeing the land falling away into the gulf that Flinders would name Spencer's Gulf after Lord Spencer (ancestor of the late Diana, Princess of Wales). Giving rise to the excitement was a burning question: did a straight divide New Holland from New South Wales, discharging water into the Gulf of Carpentaria from an opening roughly on the same longitude on the south side of the continent - something like Spencer's Gulf? This was a question that intrigued many, including Flinders, Banks, Governor of NSW, Phillip Gidley King and John Hunter who had preceded him. Rudimentary maps of the Gulf of Carpentaria produced by the Dutch showed it to be closed. It had been over one and a half centuries since Tasman visited the Gulf in 1644 and records of that voyage had disappeared. All things considered, the British didn't quite trust the mapping by the Dutch. It was still thought possible that they could have missed something as prominent as an opening to a strait.
But before the gulf could be entered, disaster struck on Sunday, February 21 1802. Off the island Flinders would name Thistle's Island, with the ship's fresh water supply alarmingly low, the ship's master, John Thistle, a midshipman and six crewman were sent to the island in a cutter to search for replenishment.
Just before dusk, the cutter was sighted returning to the ship. It was lost sight of "rather suddenly" (1) and a half hour later had still not arrived back at the ship. A Lieutenant Fowler was sent in a boat in search of the cutter but it was a futile exercise. He arrived back at the ship and reported that at the location of the cutter's last sighting, he met "so strong rippling of tide that he himself narrowly escaped being upset"(2). Strong suspicions were therefore raised that this same phenomenon may have caused the disappearance of the cutter.
In the new day the boat was sent again and this time returned as a funerial image - towing the upturned and badly damaged cutter, so bad it appeared to have been dashed on rocks. Although with the likely fate of the missing men all but certain - none of them could swim well - a forlorn search was continued before the expedition got sadly back under way. Flinders would take it hard, his emotion not quite belied in the "stiff upper lip" style of his official accounting. In his journal he lamented the incident happening when it did, just before dark. Had there been more light left in which to search, he felt the outcome may have been different. He'd served with Thistle for around eight years. They were firm friends. The rest of those lost were well liked by him. The officers and crew would naturally have been shattered by so devastating a loss.
It seems that it was difficult for Flinders to eventually give the order to sail away from the area, but with drinking water now procured at such a terrible cost, he did. There was work to be done and a mission to complete. Names given to geographical points in the proximity of the disaster were chosen to memorialise the departed shipmates. The protrusion of land just to the west of the island named after his good friend, Flinders aptly named Cape Catastrophe.
Modern day tourists motoring along the bottom of Australia would probably be surprised to learn that just about every salient landmark was named by Flinders including Kangaroo Island, the long, piece of land crouching across a strait from the mainland, that would become the somewhat anarchic home of sealers, whalers and escaped convicts even before Adelaide was settled. From the mainland, it seems to hover like a mirage along the horizon. Archaeologists have concluded that Aborigines abandoned the island over five thousand years ago. The reason why is a mystery. They wouldn't return - at least female representatives of the race - until as concubines of the rough white men of the island. A close point on the mainland to the island where a small town now squats was named Cape Jervis by Flinders. Sealink ferries now shuttle between Cape Jervis and the island.
Kangaroo Island features in the voyage of discovery because of the deliverance it provided to the men of the Investigator. This time it was not the lack of water that was the problem; it was the lack of food. The Kangaroos breeding to abundance in the relatively confined space of the island, even though the country's third largest - naturally enough suggesting a name for the location - transported the seamen from famine to feast. Several days were spent here, hunting, and after being deprived of fresh food for so long, gorging on Kangaroo steaks and boiling down half a hundred weight of heads and tails into soup that would last them days into the continuing journey. The lost shipmates perhaps hovered like ghosts at a banquet.
(1) Flinders, A Voyage to Terra Australis, Volume 1
(2) ibid
To be continued
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