The Three Colonies of Australia/Part 1/Chapter 4
Captain Flinders
CHAPTER V.
THE DISCOVERIES OF FLINDERS AND BASS.
FROM these doleful chronicles of irresponsible tyranny, of crime, and famine, it is a relief to turn and contemplate the heroism of the two men to whose ill-rewarded enterprise the most brilliant discoveries on the Australian coasts are due.
In 1795 Captain Hunter, who had commanded the "First Fleet," was sent out again to supersede Governor Phillip. Among the gentlemen under his command were Matthew Flinders, midshipman; and George Bass, surgeon. Flinders was born at Donington, in Lincolnshire. He was a descendant of the Flemish colonists, introduced by Henry VII., who first taught the English how to turn desolate, heron-haunted swamps into rich pastures. From his earliest years he displayed an adventurous and investigating spirit. It is among the traditions of his family, that on the day he was promoted from petticoats to "buttoned clothes," after being lost for hours, he was found in the middle of one of the sea marshes, his pockets stuffed with pebbles tracing the runlets of water, "wanting to know where they came from." Being desirous of entering the navy, he taught himself navigation from "Euclid" and Robertson's "Elements," without the aid of a master. In 1793, at the age of sixteen, he presented himself as a volunteer on board the Scipio, Captain (afterwards Admiral) Pasley, by whom he was placed on the quarter-deck, and at the instance of that commander joined the Providence, Captain Bligh (afterwards so infamous), engaged to carry bread-fruit trees to the West Indies. In this voyage he was entrusted with the charge of the chronometer, and took his first lesson in the construction of charts.
On his return in the latter part of 1793, he joined the Bellerophon, seventy-four, bearing the broad pendant of Sir Thomas Pasley, to whom he acted as aide-de-camp in Lord Howe's memorable victory of the 1st June, 1794. An account of this action, with diagrams of the position of the two fleets at three several periods of the day, drawn up by Flinders with neatness, clearness, and minuteness, for which all his MSS. are remarkable, are still in the possession of his surviving daughter. From the Bellerophon he followed one of his officers, who took the command of the Reliance, ordered to convey Governor Hunter to New South Wales, and met in George Bass a kindred spirit.
When they arrived in the colony, seven years after the axes of the "First Fleet" rang in the forests of Sydney Cove, little had been done to work out in detail the investigations made previous to the landing in Botany Bay. "Jervis Bay, indicated, but not named, by him, had been entered by Lieutenant Bowen, and Port Stephen had been examined; but the intermediate portions of the coast, both north and south, were little further known than from Captain Cook's general chart; and none of the more distant openings, marked but not explored by that celebrated navigator, had been seen."
The feelings of the colonists seem to have been expressed in a touch of nature which escapes Collins in a note to his heavy, grandiloquent History of New South Wales:—
"In many of these arms of Port Jackson, when sitting with my companions at my ease in a boat, I have been struck with horror at the bare idea of being lost in them, as, from the great similarity of one cove to another, the recollection would he bewildered in attempting to determine any relative situation. Insanity would accelerate the miserable end that must ensue."
Within a month after their arrival in Port Jackson, in 1795, Bass and Flinders set out in a little boat, eight feet long, appropriately called the Tom Thumb, with a crew of one boy, proceeded round to Botany Bay, and, ascending George's River, explored its course twenty miles further than the survey had been carried by Captain Hunter.[1]
On their return, a voyage to Norfolk Island interrupted further proceedings until March, 1796, when they set out again in the Tom Thumb to explore a large river, said to fall into the sea some miles south of Botany Bay. They were absent eight days, explored Port Hacking in the course of their expedition, experienced great danger from the sea, and on land from the savage tribes: as when "on a dark night, steering along an unknown shore, guided by the sound of the sea breaking against overhanging cliffs, without knowing where they should find shelter, Mr. Bass kept the sheet of the sail in his hand, drawing a few inches occasionally, when he saw a particularly heavy sea following, I (Flinders) was steering with an oar, and it required the utmost exertion and care to prevent broaching to; a single wrong movement would have sent us to the bottom. The boy baled out the water which, in spite of every care, the sea threw upon us." On another occasion, when their little boat was tossed upside down on the shore, saved from utter destruction by its lightness their muskets rusted and their powder wet Flinders amused the semi-hostile savages who surrounded them by clipping their beards, while Bass dried the powder, and obtained some much-needed fresh water.
In December, 1797, during the absence of Flinders, who had been despatched to Norfolk Island, Bass obtained leave to make an expedition to the southward, for which he was provided by the governor with a whale-boat, six seamen from the ships, and six weeks' provisions. With the assistance of occasional supplies of petrels, fish, seals' flesh, a few geese and black swans, and by abstinence, he managed to prolong his absence eleven weeks; and in a boisterous climate, with an open boat, in spite of foul winds, he explored six hundred miles of coast, discovered Western Port and the fine district now known as Port Phillip, and satisfied himself that Van Diemen's Land was separated from New South Wales by the straits that now bear his name.
Bass, having returned on the 24th March, in September following he sailed with Flinders, whom Governor Hunter had placed in command of the Norfolk, a colonial-built sloop of twenty-five tons, for the purpose of penetrating beyond Furneaux Islands, and, should a strait be found, passing through it and returning by the south of Van Diemen's Land. With a crew of eight men they went through the straits, and returned to Port Jackson in three months and two days, during which part of the coast of Van Diemen's Land, including Port Dalrymple and the River Tamar, was explored, and such information gained as led to founding a settlement there in 1803–1804.
From this time we hear no more of Bass. We cannot learn that, beyond inscribing his name on the straits between Port Phillip and Van Diemen's Land, he received either reward or honour. He left Sydney for England in 1802 as mate of a trading-vessel, and there we lose all trace of him. Flinders, in his great work, when describing the explorations made by his gallant and well-loved comrade, speaks of him as no more.
Flinders obtained the rank of lieutenant, and sailed again in 1799, in the same small vessel, on a short voyage to explore the coast to the north of Port Jackson, which he examined minutely as far as 25°. He says, "Of the assistance of my able friend Bass I was deprived, he having quitted the station to return to England."
On Lieutenant Flinders's return to England, in the latter end of 1800, the charts of the new discoveries, which Mr. Arrowsmith pronounced the most perfect that had come before him, were published, and a plan proposed to Sir Joseph Banks for completing the investigation of the coasts of Terra Australis was approved by him and Earl Spencer, the First Lord of the Admiralty.
In February, 1801, Flinders was promoted to the rank of commander, and appointed to the Investigator sloop. A proof of the popularity of his character and the adventurous spirit of the British sailor was given, when eleven men being required to complete his crew, out of three hundred seamen on board the Vice-Admiral's ship Zealand, two hundred and fifty volunteered.
On July 18th he sailed from Spithead, furnished with a passport from the French Government, which was granted after precedents of similar protection afforded to Admiral La Pérouse, and to Captain Cook, by the respective authorities in England and France.
In consequence of this passport, Flinders received directions from the Admiralty "to act in all respects towards French vessels as if the two countries were not at war."
So miserably slow was the progress of the first Australian colony that at this period, thirteen years after its foundation, it was found necessary to take a supply of salt meat for eighteen months, and to have a general supply of provisions for twelve months more, to be sent after the departure of the Investigator, and lodged in storehouses at Port Jackson for the sole use of the Investigator.
Among the gentlemen who accompanied the expedition was William Westall, landscape-painter.
A passport was also applied for by the French, and granted by the English Government, to Captain Baudin, who was said to be going round the world on a voyage of discovery.
In November, 1801, Captain Flinders sighted the coast of Australia, and proceeded to examine the coast line hitherto unexplored. In the course of his investigations he discovered and surveyed King George's Sound, on which the settlement of Swan River, or Western Australia, was planted in 1829; Port Lincoln, where Sir J. Franklin, a kindred spirit, who was one of the midshipmen in the Investigator, erected a monument to his old commander; Kangaroo Island, Spencer's Gulf, and the coast line of the country which, principally from his report, was selected for the operations of the South Australian colonists; and sailed into and surveyed Port Phillip, which had been discovered ten weeks previously by a government schooner, the Lady Nelson, from Port Jackson. Western Port, a bay in the district of Port Phillip, had previously been discovered by Bass in his whale-boat.
In April, 1802, immediately after discovering and surveying Spencer's Gulf, Port Lincoln, and Kangaroo Island, Captain Flinders fell in with Captain Baudin and his ship La Geographe,[2] which apparently, instead of sailing round the world, had sailed direct for Australia; but, instead of pursuing further discoveries from the point where the English navigators had ended, they repaired to Van Diemen's Land, following the track of their countryman, Admiral D'Entrecasteaux, and there remained many months, thus losing the opportunity of discovering and taking possession (which was the secret object of their voyage) of more than one site for a colony; just as La Pérouse a very different man from Baudin lost by a few days the chance of discovering Port Jackson.
From Port Phillip Bay Flinders returned to Sydney, where he arrived the 9th of May, 1802. He sailed again the 22nd of July, and, steering north, surveyed the great Barrier Reef, and made the route clear and safe for future navigators through the Torres Straits and round the shores of the great Gulf of Carpentaria, and only ceased his labours on finding his ship "quite rotten." After refreshing at the Island of Timor, he returned to Port Jackson on the 9th of June, 1803, having lost many of his best men.
No suitable ship to complete his survey was to be found in Port Jackson, He therefore embarked in the Porpoise store-ship, "in order to lay his charts and journals before the Admiralty, and obtain, if possible, a ship to complete the examination of Terra Australis."
The Porpoise was accompanied by two trading vessels, the Cato and the Bridgwater. In passing through Torres Straits on the night of the 17th of August, 1804, the Porpoise struck on a coral reef, and "took a fearful heel over on her larboard beam-ends. The Bridgwater was on the point of following, but, the Cato giving way, the former, grazing, escaped, while the latter struck and went over two cables' length from the Porpoise." The coward captain of the Bridgwater, one Palmer, having escaped, sailed away, in spite of the remonstrances of his mate, without making an effort to aid his companions.[3]
Flinders took the command, safely landed the crew of the two vessels on a sand-bank, of which a narrow space was clear at high water collected stores, erected tents, formed an encampment, and established a disciplined order of proceedings. The reef was a mere patch of sand, about three hundred yards long and one hundred broad, on which not a blade of vegetation was growing.
It was determined that two decked boats, capable of conveying all but one boat's crew, should be built from the materials of the wreck, and that the largest cutter should be repaired and despatched, under the charge of Captain Flinders, to Port Jackson, a voyage of 750 miles.
On the 26th of August, a Friday, the cutter was launched, named the Hope, and pushed off "amidst the cheers and good wishes of those for whom we were going to seek relief. An ensign with the union downwards had hitherto been kept hoisted as a signal to Captain Palmer of our distress; but, in this moment of enthusiasm, a seaman quitted the crowd, and, having obtained permission, ran to the flagstaff, hauled down the ensign, and rehoisted it with the union in the upper canton. This symbolical contempt for the Bridgwater, and of confidence in the success of our voyage, I did not see without lively emotion."
Flinders safely reached Port Jackson on the 6th of September. He returned in the only vessel he could obtain for his purpose—a small leaky schooner, the Cumberland, of twenty-nine tons burden—accompanied by two trading vessels, on the 6th of October; and was received by his crew with frantic cheers of joy, although his brother, Lieutenant Flinders, after hearing that the rescue-ships were in sight, "calmly continued his calculations on lunar observations until they came to anchor."
In his absence the sailors had planted the reef with pumpkins, oats, and maize, which were sprouting above the sand flourishingly; and Flinders expresses his regret that he had not "palm cocoa-nuts to plant, of which he thought ten thousand might be usefully set in these seas, as warning-marks, and food for shipwrecked mariners, as they will flourish within the spray of the sea."
It is evident that Matthew Flinders in this, as in many other instances, displayed the stuff of which a colonial governor should be made. There have been very few among Australian rulers who would have thought of the cocoa-nuts, especially at such a moment: still less would they have inspired their men with the same spirit.
In the miserable Cumberland, Flinders, intent on laying the result of his researches before the Admiralty, set out on a voyage of sixteen thousand miles to England. Every man of his crew, except his clerk, volunteered to share the danger and accompany him; but the leaky state of his craft compelled him soon to seek shelter at the nearest port, and he put into the Mauritius, relying- upon his passport. This would have been a sufficient protection had the government of the island been in the hands of a gentleman and man of honour; but the governor was one De Caen, a low, malignant, envious, insolent wretch, who, to the infinite disgust of many of his countrymen and companions in arms, availed himself of the misfortune which had thrown Flinders into his power to vent his spite on a nation he detested.
De Caen seized the Cumberland, took possession of the charts, journals, and log-books, and detained Captain Flinders for six years, during which period, in spite of the representations of the French Admiral Linois, and of many of the most respectable colonists, he treated him with every kind of cruelty and indignity; and, after evading repeated orders for his release, dismissed him as unceremoniously as he had seized him, detaining, however one log-book, which Flinders was never able to recover. In the meantime appeared an account of Captain Baudin's voyages—the Captain Baudin who had received at Port Jackson every kind of attention and information. In this work, accompanied by an atlas, the discoveries of Flinders and Bass were appropriated wholesale, and renamed.
Baudin had made about fifty leagues of discovery, and claimed nine hundred leagues, part of which had been surveyed by the Dutch a century before his time.
Flinders reached England in 1810, broken in health, but his spirit of duty unimpaired. Under the regulations of the service the time he had passed in unjust imprisonment could not count in his professional employment. At length he petitioned the Prince Regent for promotion, as an act of grace; but his prayer was refused, and neither his widow nor his daughter were able to obtain the pension to which his eminent services formed so strong a claim.
Flinders devoted the last days of his broken health and spirits to preparing his book and maps for the press—an admirable work, which has been the foundation of every subsequent exploration and colonisation in Australia, and died on the 14th of July, 1814, on the very day his "Account of a Voyage to Terra Australis" was published.
Of Flinders' noble fellow-labourer in the cause of discovery—George Bass—we were unable to find any published memorials, but while the first edition of this work was passing through the hands of the reader for the press, a native of Lincoln, he wrote to a relative and obtained the following interesting particulars:—
"The mother of Mr. George Bass lived with them (the Calder family) fourteen years, and died with them. Her son and only child, George Bass, was born at As worthy, near Sleaford, where his father had a farm, and died when he was a boy, The widow and son afterwards went to reside at Boston. From his boyhoood he showed a strong inclination for a seafaring life, to which his widowed mother was much opposed. He was apprenticed to Mr. Francis, a surgeon at Boston; and at the end of his apprenticeship walked the hospitals and took his diploma with honour. But his inclination for the sea being unsubdued, according to a promise she made, she yielded to his wish, and sank a considerable sum in fitting him out and buying a share in a ship, which was totally lost. She was a fine, noble-minded woman, of no ordinary intellect. Her son wrote her long- letters containing full accounts of his discoveries. These came into the possession of Miss Calder on the death of Mrs. Bass. A short time ago she thought to take a peep at the letters, went to the old box, but they were gone. The last time his mother heard of Bass he was in the straits of China. She expected him many years, thinking that he might be taken prisoner; but at last gave up all hopes, concluding that he had been wrecked and drowned. He had only been married three months when he sailed away never to return. His widow is dead."
We have devoted thus much space to an imperfect record of the labours of Flinders and Bass, as an act of justice towards two men whose labours profit, but whose merits are scarcely known to thousands of Australian colonists. In their silent paths they were both heroes; who ventured and endured shipwreck, thirst, famine, the attacks of black barbarians, and displayed not less humanity than courage and sagacity while pursuing discoveries of the highest possible importance to their country, with faint and distant hopes of any reward other than that inherent feeling which supports unknown or neglected genius and heroism—the consciousness of power rightly exercised, of the "talent" put out to interest tenfold—a hundredfold.
- ↑ The MS. Journal of this Expedition is in the possession of Mrs. Petrie, the daughter of Captain Flinders.
- ↑ "The situation of the Investigator when I hove to for the purpose of speaking Captain Baudin was 35° 40' south and 138° 58' east. At the above situation, the discoveries by Captain Baudin upon the south coast have their termination to the west, as mine in the Investigator have to the eastward; yet Monsieur Peron, naturalist to the French expedition, has laid a claim for his nation to the discovery of all parts between Western Port, in Bass's Straits, and Nuyts' Archipelago; and this part of New South Wales is called Terre Napoleon; my Kangaroo Island, which they openly adopted in the expedition, has been converted into L'Isle Decres; Spencer's Gulf is named Golfe Bonaparte; the Gulf of St. Vincent, Golfe Josephine; and so on along the whole coast to Cape Nuyts, not even the smallest island being without some similar stamp of French discovery." Monsieur Freycinet, First-lieutenant of the Geographe, said at the house of Governor King, at Port Jackson, to Flinders, "'Captain, if we had not been kept so long picking up shells and catching butterflies at Van Diemen's Land, you would not have discovered the south coast before us.' I believe M. Peron wrote from overruling authority, and that it smote him to the beart." Flinders' Voyage to Terra Australis.
- ↑ Mr. Williams, the third mate of the Bridgewater, kept a journal, from which the following particulars of this unparalleled piece of cowardice on the part of Captain Palmer are taken. After describing the situation of the Porpoise, he says:—"Though the noise of the surf was so tremendous, the voice of the unfortunate Captain Flinders was heard, by the fifth officer, to say, 'For God's sake, Captain Palmer, assist me!' I now volunteered my services to proceed in the cutter if Captain Palmer would consent, to the aid of the Porpoise: he did consent, but, while getting ready, he changed his mind … The boat was promised in the morning, for which I had every refreshment that could be procured for the relief of my unfortunate companions. We again stood off: at 7 a.m., from the mast-head, we saw the reef off the two ships, and to leeward of them a sand-bank … We all rejoiced in the prospect of affording assistance to our companions; but the captain ordered the ship to be put on the other tack, and, sailing away, left them to their fate! I was sent on shore at Tellicherry with the account of the loss of the Cato and Porpoise. In giving this account, I did, for the first time, disobey orders, and gave a contrary account; for I was convinced that the crews of those ships were on the reef, and that the account of their loss was given by Captain Palmer to excuse his conduct. I wrote out the account and left it behind, after having related it as differently as possible. This caused many words, and ended in my leaving the ship, forfeiting my wages and part of my clothes." So far young Williams: Palmer and his ship were afterwards lost at sea—In fact, they were never afterwards heard of; Williams, by his honourable quarrel with his captain, escaped this singularly retributive fate.