Life of Captain Matthew Flinders | Page 8

Sailing of the Investigator.
1801 (December) : Australia reached.
1802 (February) : Discovery of Spencer's Gulf.
1802 (March) : Discovery of Kangaroo Island and St. Vincent's Gulf.
1802 (April) : Meeting of Flinders and Baudin in Encounter Bay.
1802 (May) : Flinders in Port Phillip.
1802 (July) : Voyage to Northern Australia.
1802 (August) : Discovery of Port Curtis and Port Bowen.
1802 (November) : In the Gulf of Carpentaria.

1803 (April) : Return voyage; Australia circumnavigated.
1803 (June) : Sydney reached; the Investigator condemned.
1803 (July 10) : Sails in the Porpoise.
1803 (August 17) : Wrecked on the Barrier Reef. Voyage in the Hope
to Sydney.
1803 (September 8) : Arrival in Port Jackson.
1803 (September 21) : Sails in the Cumberland.
1803 (November) : Timor reached.
1803 (December 17) : Arrival at Ile-de-France; made a prisoner.
1804 (April) : Removal to the Garden Prison (Maison Despeaux).
1805 : Removal to Wilhelm's Plains.
1806 (March 21) : French Government orders release of Flinders.
1810 (June 13) : Release of Flinders.
1810 (October 24) : Return to England.
1814 (July 19) : Death of Flinders.
***
THE LIFE OF MATTHEW FLINDERS.
CHAPTER 1.
BIRTH AND ORIGINS.
Matthew Flinders was the third of the triad of great English sailors by
whom the principal part of Australia was revealed. A poet of our own

time, in a line of singular felicity, has described it as the "last sea-thing
dredged by sailor Time from Space; "* (* Bernard O'Dowd, Dawnward,
1903.) and the piecemeal, partly mysterious, largely accidental
dragging from the depths of the unknown of a land so immense and
bountiful makes a romantic chapter in geographical history. All the
great seafaring peoples contributed something towards the result. The
Dutch especially evinced their enterprise in the pursuit of precise
information about the southern Terra Incognita, and the nineteenth
century was well within its second quarter before the name New
Holland, which for over a hundred years had borne testimony to their
adventurous pioneering, gave place in general and geographical
literature to the more convenient and euphonious designation suggested
by Flinders himself, Australia.* (* Not universally, however, even in
official documents. In the Report of the Committee of the Privy
Council, dated May 1, 1849, "New Holland" is used to designate the
continent, but "Australia" is employed as including both the continent
and Tasmania. See Grey's Colonial Policy 1 424 and 439.)
But, important as was the work of the Dutch, and though the
contributions made by French navigators (possibly also by Spanish) are
of much consequence, it remains true that the broad outlines of the
continent were laid down by Dampier, Cook and Flinders. These are
the principal names in the story. A map of Australia which left out the
parts discovered by other sailors would be seriously defective in
particular features; but a map which left out the parts discovered by
these three Englishmen would gape out of all resemblance to the
reality.
Dampier died about the year 1712; nobody knows precisely when.
Matthew Flinders came into the world in time to hear, as he may well
have done as a boy, of the murder of his illustrious predecessor in 1779.
The news of Cook's fate did not reach England till 1781. The lad was
then seven years of age, having been born on March 16th, 1774.
His father, also named Matthew, was a surgeon practising his
profession at Donington, Lincolnshire, where the boy was born. The
Flinders family had been settled in the same town for several

generations. Three in succession had been surgeons. The patronymic
indicates a Flemish origin, and the work on English surnames* that
bids the reader looking for information under "Flinders" to "see
Flanders," sends him on a reasonable quest, if to no great resulting
advantage. (* Barker, Family Surnames 1903 page 143.)
The English middle-eastern counties received frequent large migrations
of Flemings during several centuries. Sometimes calamities due to the
harshness of nature, sometimes persecutions and wars, sometimes
adverse economic conditions, impelled companies of people from the
Low Countries to cross the North Sea and try to make homes for
themselves in a land which, despite intervals of distraction, offered
greater security and a better reward than did the place whence they
came. England derived much advantage from the infusion of this
industrious, solid and dependable Flemish stock; though the temporary
difficulty of absorption gave rise to local protests on more than one
occasion.
As early as 1108, a great part of Flanders "being drowned by an
exudation or breaking in of the sea, a great number of Flemings came
into the country, beseeching the King to have some void place assigned
them, wherein they might inhabit."* (* Holinshed's Chronicle edition of
1807 2 58.) Again in the reign of Edward I we find Flemish merchants
carrying