The Best Australian Sea Stories Page 13

  Educated at Donington Parish School until the age of twelve, young Matthew was then sent to nearby Horbling Grammar School for three years where he learned Latin, Greek, the Classics and mathematics and was given a good grounding in writing clear English by the Reverend John Shinglar. The geometry he learned in those three years enabled him to master the complex arts of navigation and chart making—in which he was essentially self-taught, like his hero James Cook.

  Unlike Cook, Flinders did not have the benefit of many years sailing and commanding commercial vessels and studying navigation and seamanship at night before joining the navy.

  Matthew had an uncle, John, who had served eleven years in the navy and tried to turn the young man away from a life at sea. Uncle John, however, could not compete with James Cook and Robinson Crusoe. When the family refused to sanction his plans, Flinders used a more devious method to achieve his dream.

  The enterprising young Matthew had a cousin who was governess to the daughter of Captain Thomas Pasley of the Royal Navy and, at just fourteen years of age, he managed to persuade his cousin to introduce him to the captain.

  The first meeting resulted in a long conversation and an overnight stay at the captain’s house. As a result of this friendship, Flinders joined HMS Alert as an officer’s servant at age fifteen. Seven months later he transferred to Captain Pasley’s vessel, HMS Scipio.

  Two months later Thomas Pasley was promoted to command HMS Bellerophon, a 74-gun battleship named after a mythological Greek hero, and one of the most famous fighting ships of the era. Sixteen-year-old Matthew Flinders soon joined his patron as a midshipman on the Bellerophon.

  Flinders had decided as a young teenager that his chances of advancement would depend on his abilities as a navigator and explorer, rather than as a naval commander of warships. In 1791, aged seventeen, he saw an opportunity to advance his cause.

  William Bligh had just returned from losing the HMS Bounty to mutineers while on a voyage to gather breadfruit plants and take them to the West Indies, where they would hopefully prosper and provide a cheap source of food for plantation slaves.

  Bligh was much admired by the Admiralty and was immediately charged with another voyage to complete the work he had begun, this time with two ships, HMS Providence and the tender Assistant.

  Flinders knew Bligh had learnt his craft as a commander and navigator while serving under Cook, and applied for permission to join the voyage. With Pasley’s approval he was ‘loaned’ to the expedition and joined the Providence as a midshipman.

  Thus, for the last two and a half years of his teenage life, Flinders sailed the waters of the Pacific Ocean, Asia and the West Indies— and many ports in between—under the tutelage of one of the finest navigators of the time. He learned to observe weather and ocean conditions and calculate position and distance. He meticulously kept a journal in which he noted the customs of the people he encountered and the landscapes of the places he visited. In short he developed what he called ‘a passion for exploring new countries’. During this voyage Bligh’s ships explored Adventure Bay in southeastern Tasmania, and sailed through Torres Strait to the north.

  When the voyage ended, Flinders again joined the Bellerophon, this time as an aide-de-camp to Pasley, who had been promoted to rear-admiral and commanded the van squadron of the channel fleet. As rear-admiral Pasley remained on the Bellerophon, which was now captained by William Hope.

  As Britain was at war with France young Matthew was bound to see action and, sure enough, the Bellerophon was involved in a number of minor engagements in the English Channel in late 1793 and early 1794. On 1 June 1794, the warship—known to her lessthan-classically educated crew as the ‘Billy Ruffian’—was involved in the famous Third Battle of Ushant, afterwards known as ‘the Glorious First of June’.

  The battle came about when the British fleet attempted to blockade French ports during the French Revolution, during which the French declared war on Britain and the Dutch Republic on 1 February 1793. The French Atlantic fleet engaged the British fleet under Admiral Lord Howe in an attempt to get a convoy of grain ships from America into the French port of Brest.

  Twenty-five British ships of the line and twenty-six French warships fought a pitched battle in the Bay of Biscay, after Lord Howe used the unusual tactic of sailing directly at the French and then attacking ship-to-ship after breaking their line. Seven French warships were sunk, while Howes’ fleet returned to port at Plymouth, battered and damaged, without losing a ship.

  Although the French claimed a pyrrhic victory on account of the grain convoy arriving successfully several days afterwards, the battle was a triumph for the British navy.

  Young 20-year-old Matthew Flinders sat calmly on the deck of the Bellerophon throughout the battle, observing and making notes. As chaos reigned around him and the Bellerophon took broadside after broadside from the French warships Eole and America in a pitched gunnery battle, he prepared what was to become the most accurate account of the famous battle, a report that ran to forty foolscap pages.

  The battle was to have a great effect on Flinders’ career. While his calmness under fire and his skills of observation and expression impressed his superiors, the pivotal outcome of the battle for Flinders was the retirement from active command of his first patron, Rear-Admiral Thomas Pasley, who lost a leg to a cannon ball in the battle as his protege sat on deck making notes.

  This left Flinders free to move on to another stage of his naval career, as he was no longer duty-bound to serve with his great supporter and mentor.

  Following the Third Battle of Ushant, while the Bellerophon was being repaired, her fifth lieutenant, Henry Waterhouse, was appointed captain of HMS Reliance. This ship was to convey the second governor of New South Wales, John Hunter—a First Fleet veteran, as captain of the escort warship HMS Sirius—to the other side of the world to take up his post. Flinders saw his chance. Using his connection with Waterhouse, he joined the Reliance as midshipman and sailed from Plymouth in February 1795, bound for the penal colony, which had been largely forgotten by the Admiralty during the tumultuous years of war with the French. On board was another native of Lincolnshire, ship’s surgeon George Bass.

  Bass was three years older than Flinders. A Lincolnshire farmer’s son, he also had a grammar school education after his father died when he was seven years old. He became a surgeon at eighteen, having joined the navy after being apprenticed to a local doctor for five years.

  Bass had an adventurous spirit and had brought a small boat, 8 feet by 5 feet, on board the Reliance with the intention of exploring the waterways of the new colony—he called it Tom Thumb. He had also brought a servant boy, William Martin, with him.

  Flinders made good use of the voyage out to New South Wales to develop friendships with both Governor Hunter and George Bass and, in October 1795, he and Bass and Martin explored the George’s River in Tom Thumb. The young explorers were encouraged and supported by Governor Hunter and their voyage led to the settlement of Bankstown being established.

  In a larger version of Tom Thumb, they explored and charted Port Hacking and Lake Illawarra. Bass went on to explore the coast as far south as Western Port in Governor Hunter’s whaleboat, which led him to assert that Van Diemen’s Land was separated from the mainland.

  The wreck of the trading vessel Sydney Cove on an island off the coast of Van Diemen’s Land in 1796, and the subsequent rescue missions to retrieve her crew and cargo, had aroused Bass’ interest in the area. His exploration of the southern coast led him to believe there was a passage north of Van Diemen’s Land that would shorten the journey from Britain to New South Wales considerably.

  Bass was right and, in 1798, he and Flinders circumnavigated Van Diemen’s Land in the Norfolk, a sloop of 25 tons that was built on Norfolk Island.

  Their explorations and charts led to the establishment of Hobart in 1803, and it was Flinders who suggested to Hunter that the strait between the mainland and Van Diemen’s Land bear his friend’s name, n
oting in his journal that ‘this was no more than a just tribute to my worthy friend and companion’.

  In 1799 Flinders explored the coast of what today is Queensland. He and Bass returned to Britain in 1800 and Bass married Elizabeth, sister of Henry Waterhouse, Captain of the Reliance, in October 1800.

  Ten weeks after his marriage, Bass sailed his own ship to New South Wales, and then embarked upon a series of trading exploits in New Zealand and Hawaii (the Sandwich Islands), which culminated in a secretive and possibly illegal voyage to trade in South America, a trip from which he simply never returned.

  Bass was a remarkable man. Among other things he attempted unsuccessfully to cross the Blue Mountains, and was made an honorary member of the Society for Promoting Natural History (which became the famous Linnean Society) for his paper on the anatomy of the wombat!

  Upon his return to Britain, keen to advance his opportunities to explore, Flinders found a valuable patron in another Lincolnshire man, Captain Cook’s old patron and friend Sir Joseph Banks, who was also a friend of Flinders’ supporter John Hunter.

  Flinders’ charts and reputation as an explorer had preceded him and, with the support of Banks and Hunter, his career made remarkable progress between his arrival back in Britain in October 1800 and his promotion to commander in February 1801.

  In these four short months his plan for the exploration of Australia was accepted, a ship (the Investigator) was commissioned for the purpose, and his journals were published.

  Flinders described his ship this way:

  The Investigator was a north-country-built ship, of three-hundred and thirty-four tons; and, in form, nearly resembled the description of a vessel recommended by Captain Cook as best calculated for voyages of discovery. She had been purchased some years before into His Majesty’s service; and having been newly coppered and repaired, was considered to be the best vessel which could, at that time, be spared for the projected voyage to Terra Australis.

  Indeed, HMS Investigator began life as a shallow draught collier, like the Endeavour. Launched as the Fram in 1795, she was acquired by the navy during the war with the French in 1798, and used as a 20-gun escort sloop, HMS Xenophon.

  Although refitted at Deptford with extra cabins and storage for scientists, she was not in good condition, but was all that could be spared by a navy preparing for war. Problems of poor timber would plague the Investigator and force Flinders to abort his mission in 1803.

  To make matters worse she had been ‘coppered’—a process designed to protect a ship’s timber from marine worms and prevent marine growth, which slowed a ship’s speed. The very expensive process of routinely sheathing naval vessels in copper sheeting began in 1781, despite failed experiments as early as 1761. The problem was that the copper reacted electrolytically with the iron bolts used in timber ship construction, and the resultant corrosion of the bolts meant that the timbers leaked and rotted. Various alloys were tried but, over the following decades, many of His Majesty’s ships were actually falling apart as the timbers rotted inside the copper sheathing.

  But all this was in the future for young Commander Flinders in February 1801. He had other problems.

  Against the advice of his patron Joseph Banks, he married his childhood sweetheart, Ann Chappell, in April 1801 and applied for permission to take her on the voyage. When this was refused he sailed in July, leaving his bride to live alone for the next nine years, reaching the southwest tip of Australia, Cape Leeuwin, on 6 December 1801. He spent a month preparing in King George Sound (Albany) and then moved slowly eastward.

  Flinders charted the south coast to Kangaroo Island meticulously, using the technique he had used in mapping Van Diemen’s Land. The ship was kept as close inshore as possible during the day, so the shoreline was visible and no river or opening could escape notice. Flinders stood at the masthead with a telescope and constantly checked bearings while the land was in sight. Each night he made his rough chart for the day and his journal of observations, and care was taken to start at the same point next morning at daylight.

  When bays and islands were found, Flinders went ashore with the theodolite, measured, mapped and made topographical notes. Soundings were taken constantly and the rise and fall of the tides observed. Time was given for the naturalists to collect specimens, and for the artist to make drawings.

  Flinders found and explored Spencer Gulf; today Lincolnshire names still abound in that area, including Port Lincoln and Donington.

  Before the gulf was explored, however, tragedy struck the expedition. On Sunday 21 February, the ship’s cutter was returning from searching for water. Aboard were the ship’s master, John Thistle, midshipman William Taylor, and six sailors.

  Nobody saw what happened. The boat was seen leaving shore, but it did not arrive. Next day the boat was found floating upside down, with holes indicating it had been smashed against rocks.

  The loss of John Thistle affected Flinders deeply. He noted:

  Mr Thistle was truly a valuable man, as a seaman, an officer, and a good member of society. I had known him, and we had mostly served together, from the year 1794. He had been with Mr Bass in his perilous expedition in the whaleboat, and with me in the voyage round Van Diemen’s Land, and in the succeeding expedition to Glass House and Hervey’s Bays. From his merit and prudent conduct, he was promoted from before the mast to be a midshipman and afterwards a master in His Majesty’s service. His zeal for discovery had induced him to join the Investigator when at Spithead and ready to sail, although he had returned to England only three weeks before, after an absence of six years . . . His loss was severely felt by me, and he was lamented by all on board.

  Flinders erected a copper plate upon a stone post at the head of Memory Cove, engraved with the names of those who died. Two fragments of the original plate are now in the museum at Adelaide.

  Some parts of the southern coast had been charted as far back as 1627, on the voyage undertaken by Dutchman Pieter Nuyts. Captain George Vancouver in the British ship Chatham had explored as far as King George Sound in 1791, and Frenchman Bruni d’Entrecasteaux explored further east the following year on his quest to find tidings of missing French explorer La Perouse.

  In typically sentimental Gallic fashion, d’Entrecasteaux’s ships were named Esperance (Hope) and Recherche (Searching). The town of Esperance takes its name from the former.

  Captain James Grant had sailed through Bass Strait in 1800 and charted the coast from the east as far as Western Port in 1801. While Flinders was slowly mapping the southern coast from the west, Frenchman Nicolas Baudin was doing the same thing, but heading westward. They met at Encounter Bay, off Kangaroo Island, on 8 April 1802.

  In 1798 Baudin had presented to the French National Museum of Natural History a plan for a hydrographic survey expedition to the South Seas, which would include a search for fauna and flora that could be brought back for cultivation in France. After considering this extensive proposal, the French government decided to proceed with an expedition confined to a survey of western and southern New Holland. Baudin reached Australia in May 1801 with two ships, Geographe and Naturaliste, accompanied by nine zoologists and botanists. He explored and mapped the western coast, and a part of the southern coast. More than 2500 new species were discovered.

  In spite of poor health and dissension among his officers, during a time of uneasy truce between Britain and France, Baudin acted diplomatically and honourably in his relations with the colonists and, during time spent in Sydney, was most grateful for the support of Governor King. He spent two and a half years exploring and charting the Australian coast, collecting flora and fauna and making a close study of Tasmanian Aborigines. He died from tuberculosis on his way home in 1803, at Mauritius.

  Although there were some communication problems due to Flinders’ lack of French and Baudin’s poor English, the two were able to share the fruits of their discoveries and spent two days in friendly communication in Encounter Bay before parting.

  As the entire
southern coast was now at least adequately charted, Flinders sailed to Port Jackson, with a stop-over to make maps of Port Phillip and Western Port, and prepared the Investigator for the task of charting the entire coast of Australia. Baudin arrived some six weeks later, with most of his crew needing medical attention for scurvy and dysentery.

  While the crew recovered, the two explorers shared more of their discoveries and charts during several weeks encamped together at Port Jackson.

  Flinders sailed north in July, finding and exploring places such as Port Curtis and Port Bowen, and continuing his detailed survey work, mapping the Queensland coast and the Gulf of Carpentaria.

  After passing through Torres Strait, it became apparent that the Investigator, which was leaking badly, was so rotten that she might have trouble surviving bad weather. The ship was careened for inspection, and the ship’s carpenter was of the opinion that she could only remain afloat for another six months.

  Flinders could not continue his detailed surveying and charting under those conditions, but he was determined to be the first to at least circumnavigate the continent. He therefore sailed westward, spent some time looking for the mysterious Trial Rocks, which had wrecked the British East Indiaman Tryall in 1622, and returned to Port Jackson by way of the western coast and Bass Strait, bringing the barely seaworthy Investigator safely into Port Jackson on 9 June 1803.

  Flinders was anxious to complete the task he had been assigned by the Admiralty: the complete survey of the coast of Terra Australis. In August 1803 he sailed as a passenger from Port Jackson in HMS Porpoise to secure a suitable ship.

  Further adventures still lay ahead for Matthew Flinders, but the completion of the survey was not to be one of them.

  The Porpoise was seven days out of Sydney, sailing in convoy with the passenger ships Cato and Bridgewater, when two of the three ships struck an uncharted reef in heavy seas at 9.30 on the dark moonless night of 17 August 1803.

  Wreck Reefs, as they are now called, consist of 30 kilometres of reefs and sandy islands, 450 kilometres east-northeast of the modern-day town of Gladstone. Seconds after the lookout man on the forecastle called out ‘breakers ahead’, the Porpoise was beyond control in heavy surf. A minute later she struck a coral reef and the heavy sea lifted the vessel and dashed her onto the coral.