Matthew flinders family

1774-1814

English Sea Captain, Explorer and Cartographer

Matthew Flinders explored the coast of Australia, charted it more carefully than any explorer had before, and gave it the name Australia. He sailed around both Australia and Tasmania, proving they were islands, and accurately located many coastal features as well as nearby islands, reefs, bays, and rocks on British maps.

Born in England in 1774, Matthew Flinders studied navigation and cartography so he could go to sea. In 1789 his uncle got him on a ship as a servant. He was fifteen, five feet six inches tall, wiry with black hair and dark eyes. A year later he was a midshipman with a berth on Bellerophon, a British, 74-gun man of war, where he learned important sailing skills and navy operations.

In 1791 Flinders was on the ship Providence with Captain William Bligh (1754-1817). Providence reached Tahiti in April of 1792 and sailed west with 600 bread fruit trees for the West Indies. Landing for water and food on New Guinea and Timor, Flinders saw new lands, people, and animals. The breadfruit was planted in the West Indies to augment food for British colonial workers.

Returning to Australia, Flinders and a friend named George Bass, in a small ship called Norfolk, charted the coast south of Sydney for the governor. Then they explored the Furneaux Islands and proved Tasmania was not attached to Australia. Needing a new ship by then, Flinders went home. In April of 1801 he and Ann Chappell, daughter of a sea captain, were married. Flinders by then was a lieutenant and a respected explorer.

A small English penal colony had been established in Australia a few years before, but the British had done nothing to secure the land. Now the government authorized an expedition to Australia and chose Flinders as Commander. The 334-ton sloop Investigator was old and not very sound, but it was all the navy could spare for exploration, since it was embroiled in a war with French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte.

Flinders reached the south coast of Australia in August of 1801 and began at once to make a complete and accurate survey of the south shore. He saw wombats, kangaroos, and aborigines—native inhabitants of Australia. He and his crew carefully described the birds, animals, plants, and insects they saw. Flinders observed tides, made soundings of bays and capes, and noted topographic features. After a rest in Sydney the expedition left again to chart the eastern and then the northern coasts of the island. By December Investigator was in such poor shape that Flinders left her and took a smaller ship home. When he stopped for supplies at Mauritius, a French controlled island east of Africa, Matthew was imprisoned and his papers, charts, journals, and letters were confiscated by the governor. After six years of captivity, an order from Napoleon set Flinders free. His maps and other papers were returned.

Back home, he was honored in scientific and naval circles, but his health had been damaged by the years in a tropical prison, and he never went to sea again. He spent years readying charts and notes for publication in his book, A Voyage to Terra Australis. It was a semi-official publication and he was not paid. He did not finish the personal account of his voyages. He was promoted to post-captain in 1814, but was not given full pay. When he died that same year, there was no pension for his wife. New South Wales and Victoria in Australia, however, both gave her a pension in honor of her husband's work. Flinders had shown that Australia was a continent, and by the time of his death its possibilities were drawing the British to its shores.

LYNDALL B. LANDAUER