16 March: Boreham on Matthew Flinders

An Australian Epic
This is the birthday of Matthew Flinders. No name in our annals shines with a richer lustre. Flinders stands as a brave Homeric figure against the empty skyline of a newly-discovered continent. As Prof. Ernest Scott has eloquently pointed out, there never was, until Flinders applied himself to the task, any deliberately planned, systematic, persistent exploration of any portion of the Australian coast. "The continent," Prof. Scott says, "grew on the map of the world gradually, slowly, almost accidentally. It emerged out of the unknown, like some vast mythical monster heaving its large shoulders, dank and dripping, from the unfathomable sea and was metamorphosed by a kiss from the lips of knowledge into a being fair to look upon and rich in kindly favours." It was Flinders who laid his vigorous and practical hand upon the misty and nebulous realm that was just emerging from primeval chaos. He transformed it into an actual geographical quantity and gave it status and recognition. Indeed it was he who, brushing aside the old unsatisfactory designation of New Holland, gave to the new continent a name, inscribing the word Australia in bold capitals across the map of the world.

In Tasmania particularly, the name of Flinders deserves to be held in deathless honour. The story of the hazardous voyage in the course of which Flinders and his friend Bass sailed round this island has taken its place among the stateliest epics of the sea. But our obligations neither begin nor end with that classic adventure, for it was largely owing to the glowing description of Tasmanian products and possibilities which Flinders published in England that Capt. Collins was sent here and the settlement of Hobart first established. Moreover, one of the first monuments to Matthew Flinders in Australia was erected by Sir John Franklin when that illustrious navigator was Governor of Tasmania.

Earth's Greatest Discoverers Pay Heaviest Price
It is with a start of surprise that we recall the fact that the intrepid and dauntless navigator whose audacity and erudition enabled him accurately to survey our interminable Australian coastline, and to present to the old world the first reliable maps and records of Australian territories, was only 40 years of age at the time of his death; and that, even then, six of the last years of his life were spent as a French prisoner at Mauritius. The story of his voyage in the Tom Thumb, a tiny vessel only eight feet in length, will probably be told and retold as long as a love for tales of adventure holds its place in the hearts of men. He sailed for thousands of miles along our Australian coasts in a crazy old craft in which today men would scarcely risk their lives on the most tranquil rivers. Provided only that a vessel could be coaxed to float, however dilapidated it might be, it was good enough for Flinders. The Investigator, the ship which he eventually commanded, had to be abandoned at Sydney as rotten and utterly incapable of repair; and finally, after suffering shipwreck in the Porpoise, he undertook, in the teeth of everybody's advice, to attempt to reach England in the Cumberland, a vessel that every sailor expected to founder or to fall to pieces as soon as she got well out to sea.

At Mauritius he was captured by the French, who were then making frantic efforts to obtain recognition for themselves as the real discoverers of Australia, and who were extremely anxious that the revelations of Flinders should be obscured or delayed until their own book had been published. Suspecting some design of this kind, the astute Flinders had, however, taken the precaution to send a duplicate set of his invaluable documents to England by another vessel, and the nefarious schemes of the wily Frenchmen were thus ignominiously frustrated. And, after enduring six years of totally undeserved incarceration, Flinders hurried to England, wrote his book and died on the very day on which it saw the light.

Reputation That Emerged From Cloud to Sunshine
The imposing annals of Australian exploration are tinged with pathos at every turn. The moving story of Burke and Wills, the great overlanders, is rivalled in this respect by the touching record of Flinders and Bass, the great navigators. Those deaths in the dusty desert are no more dismal than the deaths of those two heroic sailors who first placed this island on the atlas. Bass simply vanished: it is supposed that he was captured by Spaniards and done to death in the silver mines of South America. Flinders fell into the clutches of unscrupulous Frenchmen, in whose merciless hands his iron constitution was shattered and his valuable life hurried to a premature close. It seems to be the melancholy fate of some of the world's best workers to be consistently denied the recognition that their eminent services so obviously merit. This lamentable misfortune certainly dogged the steps of Flinders.

After his death, an application was made for a pension for his widow, the case of Capt. Cook being cited as a precedent. But, although the King viewed the project with favour, the Prime Minister (Lord Melbourne) contrived to compass its defeat. Flinders was treated by Britain pretty much as Columbus was treated by Spain. In their "History of Australia," the Sutherlands speak of Flinders as our greatest maritime discoverer. He was they say, a man who worked because his heart was in his work; who sought no reward and obtained none; who lived laboriously and rendered honourable service to mankind: yet who died, like his friend Bass, almost unknown to those of his own day, but leaving a name which the world is every year more and more disposed to cherish. In the records of Australian pioneering, Flinders has seldom been accorded the place to which his unselfish and astonishing exploits entitle him. But as Australia assumes her place in history and the romance of her past is investigated and extolled, the gallant deeds of Matthew Flinders will be recited with increasing pride and his name will be mentioned with deepening reverence and resounding acclaim.

F W Boreham

Image: Matthew Flinders