Matthew Flinders Totally Explained

Captain Matthew Flinders RN (16 March 1774 – 19 July 1814) was one of the most accomplished navigators and cartographers of his age. In a career that spanned just over twenty years, he sailed with Captain William Bligh, circumnavigated Australia and encouraged the use of that name for the continent, survived shipwreck and disaster only to be imprisoned as a spy, identified and corrected the effect of iron components and equipment on board wooden ships upon compass readings, and wrote the seminal work on Australian exploration A Voyage To Terra Australis.

Early life

Born in Donington, Lincolnshire, the young Matthew Flinders had his hunger for exploration and knowledge whetted by the tale of Robinson Crusoe, and at the age of fifteen he joined the Royal Navy, serving as midshipman in HMS Bellerophon under Captain Pasley, who recommended him to Captain Bligh with whom he sailed in HMS Providence, transporting breadfruit from Tahiti to Jamaica.
   Later, Flinders sailed to Australia in HMS Reliance, establishing himself as a fine navigator and cartographer, and in 1795 explored the coastline around Sydney in a tiny open boat called Tom Thumb. In 1798 he circumnavigated Tasmania, proving it to be an island. The passage between the Australian mainland and Tasmania became known as Bass Strait after the ship's doctor and close friend of his, George Bass, and a large island was named Flinders Island.
   Flinders together with George Bass sailed the Norfolk (sloop) from Port Jackson (Sydney) to circumnavigate Van Diemen's Land, proving its island status and the existence of Bass Strait. Whilst sailing on the Norfolk, on 17 July 1799 he arrived in Moreton Bay between Redcliffe and Brighton. He touched down at the Pumicestone Passage, Redcliffe and Coochiemudlo Island and also rowed ashore at Clontarf. During this visit he named Redcliffe after the Red Cliffs.
   On 17 April 1801 Flinders married Ann Chappell, but was soon forced to leave his new wife when the British Government sent him back to Australia. He set out that July, in command of Investigator, to produce a detailed survey of the coastline of Australia, the southern coast of which was still unknown. Between December 1801 and June 1803, Flinders circumnavigated Australia, charting parts of the coastline including the Great Australian Bight and the Gulf of Carpentaria.
   Flinders was the first European explorer to visit the You Yangs ranges near Geelong. On May 1 1802, he and three of his men climbed to the highest point and named it "Station Peak". This was later changed to Flinders Peak in his honour.
   On 12 April 1812 they'd a daughter who became Mrs. William Petrie; in 1853 the N.S.W. government of Australia bequeathed a belated pension to her (deceased) mother of £100 per year, to go to surviving issue of the union. This she, Mrs. Ann (née Flinders) Petrie, accepted on behalf of her young son, named William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the archaeologist and Egyptologist.

Exploration of the Australian coastline

The British Admiralty sent him to explore the Great Australian Bight, among other places, in 1801. He set out from England in July that year, in command of the Investigator. He reached Cape Leeuwin on 6 December and worked his way eastwards, reaching Fowlers Bay on 28 January, 1802. On 8 April 1802, while sailing east, Flinders met up with the French explorer Nicolas Baudin, who was sailing west aboard Le Géographe. Both men had been sent by their governments on separate expeditions to map the unknown southern coastline of Australia. Both men of science, Flinders and Baudin met and exchanged details of their discoveries, and sailed together to Sydney to resupply. Flinders would later name the site of their meeting Encounter Bay.
   The meeting at Encounter Bay by the two expeditions marked the point at which the entire coastline of continental Australia became mapped.
   By June 1803, the hull of the Investigator had deteriorated to such a degree that Flinders was forced to abandon his survey of the northern coastline of Australia. He returned to Sydney by the west coast, thus completing his circumnavigation of Australia.
   Flinders set sail for England aboard The Porpoise to secure another vessel from the British Government with which to complete his survey, but was shipwrecked on the Great Barrier Reef. Remarkably, Flinders navigated the ship's cutter across open sea back to Sydney, a distance of some 700 miles, and arranged for the rescue of the marooned crew on Wreck Reef.
   Flinders next attempted to return to England aboard the Cumberland, but the poor condition of the schooner forced it to put in at Mauritius for repairs on 17 December. Unbeknownst to Flinders, England was now at war with France again, and the French governor, General De Caen, had Flinders detained in close confinement as a prisoner of war. Flinders wrote to Sir Joseph Banks who subsequently arranged French government recognition of Flinders' status and approval of his release. Despite this, De Caen refused to release Flinders, who remained a prisoner. His imprisonment was, in reality, due to misunderstandings and personal antipathy on both sides and lasted for almost seven years.
   Flinders finally returned to England in October 1810, in poor health as a result of his imprisonment, where he immediately began work on preparing A Voyage to Terra Australis for publication. On 18 July 1814, the book was published. The next day, Matthew Flinders died, aged only 40.

Naming Australia

Flinders wasn't the first to use the word "Australia" (see the Australia article on that). He owned a copy of Alexander Dalrymple's 1771 book An Historical Collection of Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean, and it seems likely he borrowed it from there, but he applied it specifically to the continent, not the whole South Pacific region. In 1804 he wrote to his brother: "I call the whole island Australia, or Terra Australis" and later that year he wrote to Sir Joseph Banks and mentioned "my general chart of Australia." That 92cm x 72cm chart, made that year, was the first time the name Australia was used on a map, a map he'd began while imprisoned by the French in Mauritius. (External Link

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   Flinders continued to promote the use of the word until his arrival in London in 1810. Here he found that Banks didn't approve of the name and hadn't unpacked the chart he'd sent him, and that "New Holland" and "Terra Australis" were still in general use. As a result, a book by Flinders was published under the title A Voyage to Terra Australis despite his objections. The final proofs were brought to him on his deathbed, but he was unconscious. The book was published on 18 July 1814, and Flinders died the next day without regaining consciousness, and never knowing that his name for the continent would be later accepted .
   In this book, however, Flinders wrote: "The name Terra Australis will remain descriptive of the geographical importance of this country... [but] had I permitted myself any innovation upon the original term, it would have been to convert it into Australia; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth."
   Flinders' book was widely read and gave the term "Australia" general currency. Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales, became aware of Flinders' preference for the name Australia and used it in his dispatches to England. On 12 December 1817 he recommended to the Colonial Office that it be officially adopted. In 1824 the British Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia.

Legacy

Flinders' name is now associated with many geographical features and places in Australia in addition to Flinders Island, in Bass Strait. Flinders is seen as being particularly important in South Australia, where he's often considered the main explorer of the state. Landmarks named after him in South Australia include the Flinders mountain range and Flinders Ranges National Park, Flinders Chase National Park on Kangaroo Island, Flinders University, Flinders Medical Centre, the suburb Flinders Park and Flinders Street in Adelaide. In Victoria, eponymous places include Flinders Street in Melbourne, the suburb of Flinders, the federal electorate of Flinders, and the Matthew Flinders Girls' Secondary College in Geelong. Flinders Bay in Western Australia and Flinders Way in Canberra also commemorate him. There is even a school named after him, Flinders Park Primary School.
   Bass & Flinders Point in the southernmost part of Cronulla in New South Wales features a monument to George Bass and Matthew Flinders, who explored the Port Hacking estuary.
   Australia holds a large collection of statues erected in Flinders' honour, second only in number to statues of Queen Victoria. In his native England the first statue of Flinders was erected on 16 March 2006 (his birthday) in his hometown of Donington. The statue also depicts his beloved cat Trim, who accompanied him on his voyages.
   Flinder's proposal for the use of iron bars to be used to compensate for the magnetic deviations caused by iron on board a ship resulted in them being known as Flinders bars in his honour.

Works

A Voyage to Terra Australis, with an accompanying Atlas. 2 vol. – London : G & W Nicol, 18. July 1814 (the day before Flinders' death)
Trim: Being the True Story of a Brave Seafaring Cat.

Trivia

He was a freemason (External Link

The noted archaeologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie was his grandson.

Bryce Courtenay wrote a novel called Matthew Flinders' Cat.

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