Flinders arrived in Sydney in the Francis about a fortnight after Bass
returned in the whaleboat. It was, we may be certain, with delight that
he heard from the lips of his friend the story of his adventurous voyage.
The eye-sketch of the coastline traversed by Bass was, by the Governor's
direction, used by him for the preparation of a chart to be sent to
England. He was able to compare notes and discuss the probability of the
existence of a strait, and it was but natural that the two men who had so
recently been exploring, the one on the north the other on the south side
of the possible strait, should be eager to pursue enquiry to the point of
proof. Flinders acknowledged, in relating these events, his anxiety to
gratify his desire of positively sailing through the strait and round Van
Diemen's Land, and he chafed under the routine duties which postponed the
effort. The opportunity did not occur till September.
In the meantime, Flinders had to sail in the Reliance to Norfolk Island
to take over the surgeon, D'Arcy Wentworth, father of that William
Wentworth whose name has already figured in these pages, and who was then
a boy of seven. This trip took place in May to July.
In August he sat as a member of the Vice-Admiralty Court of New South
Wales to try a case of mutiny on the high seas. Certain members of the
New South Wales Corps were accused of plotting to seize the convict ship
Barwell, on her voyage between the Cape and Australia, and of drinking
the toast "damnation to the King and country." The Court considered the
evidence insufficient, and the men were acquitted, after a trial lasting
six days.
At last Flinders had an interview with the Governor about completing the
exploration of the seas to the southward, and offered his services.
Hunter, too, was anxious to have a test made of Bass's contention, which
Flinders' own observations supported. On September 3rd he wrote to the
Secretary of State that he was endeavouring to fit out a vessel "in which
I propose to send the two officers I have mentioned," Bass and Flinders.
Later in the month the Governor entrusted the latter with the command of
the Norfolk, a sloop of twenty-five tons burthen, built at Norfolk Island
from local pine. She was merely a small decked boat, put together under
the direction of Captain Townson of Norfolk Island for establishing
communication with Sydney. She leaked; her timbers were poor material for
a seaboat in quarters where heavy weather was to be expected; and the
accommodation she offered for a fairly extended cruise was cramped and
uncomfortable. But she was the best craft the Governor had to offer, and
Flinders was too keen for the quest to quarrel with the means. In those
days fine seamanship and endurance often had to make up for deficiencies
in equipment.
There were not two happier men in the King's service than these fast
friends, when they received the Governor's commission directing them to
sail "beyond Furneaux' Islands, and, should a strait be found, to pass
through it, and return by the south end of Van Diemen's Land." The
affection that existed between them is manifest in every reference which
Flinders made to Bass in his book, A Voyage to Terra Australis. "I had
the happiness to associate my friend Bass in this new expedition," he
wrote of the Norfolk's voyage; and it was a happiness based not only on
personal regard, but on kindred feeling for research work, and a
similarity in active, keen and ardent temperament.
The sloop was provisioned for twelve weeks, and "the rest of the
equipment was completed by the friendly care of Captain Waterhouse of the
Reliance." A crew of eight volunteers was chosen by Flinders from the
King's ships in port. It is likely that some of them were amongst the six
who had accompanied Bass to Westernport, and Flinders to the Furneaux and
Kent Islands, but their names have not been preserved.
The Norfolk sailed on October 7, 1798, in company with a sealing boat,
the Nautilus.* (* There are three accounts of the voyage: (1) that of
Flinders in diary form, printed in the Historical Records of New South
Wales Volume 3 appendix B; (2) that of Flinders in his Voyage to Terra
Australis Volume 1 page 138; and (3) that of Bass, embodied in Collins'
Account of New South Wales. It is probable that Bass's diary was lent to
Collins for the purpose of writing his narrative. The original is not
known to exist.) The plan was to make the Furneaux Group, then steer
westward through the strait till the open ocean was reached on the
further side; and, that accomplished, and the fact of strait's existence
conclusively demonstrated, to turn down the western coast of Van Diemen's
Land, round the southern extremity, and sail back to Port Jackson up the
east coast. This programme was successfully carried out.
An amusing incident, related by Flinders with dry humour, occurred in
Twofold Bay, which was entered "in order to make some profit of a foul
wind," Bass undertaking an inland excursion, and Flinders occupying
himself in making a survey of the port. An aboriginal made his
appearance.
"He was of middle age, unarmed, except with a whaddie or wooden scimitar,
and came up to us seemingly with careless confidence. We made much of
him, and gave him some biscuit; and he in return presented us with a
piece of gristly fat, probably of whale. This I tasted; but, watching an
opportunity to spit it out when he should not be looking, I perceived him
doing precisely the same thing with our biscuit, whose taste was probably
no more agreeable to him, than his whale was to me." The native watched
the commencement of Flinders' trigonometrical operations, "with
indifference, if not contempt," and after a little while left the party,
"apparently satisfied that from people who could thus occupy themselves
seriously there was nothing to be apprehended."
It was not until November 1st that the Norfolk sailed from the Furneaux
Islands on the flood-tide westward. The intervening time had been
occupied with detailed exploring and surveying work. Soundings and
observations were made, capes, islands and inlets were charted and named.
The part of Flinders' narrative dealing with these phases abounds in
detail, noted with the most painstaking particularity. Such fulness does
not make attractive literature for the reader who takes up a book of
travel for amusement. But it was highly important to record these details
at the time of the publication of Flinders' book, when the coasts and
seas of which he wrote were very little known; and it has to be
remembered that he wrote as a scientific navigator, setting down the
results of his work with completeness and precision for those interested
in his subject, not as a caterer for popular literary entertainment. He
preferred the interest in his writing to lie in the nature of the
enterprise described and the sincerity with which it was pursued rather
than in such anecdotal garniture and such play of fancy as can give charm
to the history of a voyage. His book was a substantial contribution to
the world's knowledge, and it is his especial virtue to have set down his
facts with such exactitude that our tests of them, where they are still
capable of being tested, earn him credit for punctilious veracity in
respect of those observations on wild life and natural phenomena as to
which we have to rely upon his written word. He never succumbs to the
common sin of travellers--writing to excite astonishment in the reader,
rather than to tell the exact truth as he found it. He was by nature and
training an exact man.
On the afternoon of November 3rd the sloop entered the estuary of the
river Tamar, on which, forty miles from the mouth, now stands the fine
city of Launceston. It was a discovery of first-class importance. Apart
from the pleasure which they derived from having made it, the two friends
were charmed with the beauty of their surroundings. They derived the most
favourable impression of the quality of the land and its suitableness for
settlement. They worked up the river for several miles, but time did not
permit them to follow it as far as it was navigable. Thus they did not
reach the site of the present city, and left the superb gorge and
cataract to be discovered by Collins when he entered the Tamar again in
1804. The harbour was subsequently named Port Dalrymple by Hunter, after
Alexander Dalrymple, the naval hydrographer.
The extent of the survey, with delays caused by adverse weather, kept the
Norfolk in the Tamar estuary for a full month. On December 3rd her
westward course was resumed. From this time forth Bass and Flinders were
in constant expectancy of passing through the strait into the open ocean.
The northern trend of the coast for a time aroused apprehensions that
there was no strait after all, and that the northern shore of Van
Diemen's Land might be connected with the coast beyond Westernport. The
water was also discoloured, and this led Flinders to think that they
might be approaching the head of a bay or gulf. But on December 7th the
vigilant commander made an observation of the set of the tide, from which
he drew an "interesting deduction." "The tide had been running from the
eastward all the afternoon," wrote Flinders, "and, contrary to
expectation, we found it to be near low water by the shore; the flood
therefore came from the west, and not from the eastward, as at Furneaux'
Isles. This we considered to be a strong proof, not only of the real
existence of a passage betwixt this land and New South Wales, but also
that the entrance into the southern Indian Ocean could not be far
distant."
On the following day the deduction was confirmed. After the Norfolk had
rounded a headland, a long swell was observed to come from the
south-west, breaking heavily upon a reef a mile and a half away. This was
a new phenomenon; and both Bass and Flinders "hailed it with joy and
mutual congratulation, as announcing the completion of our
long-wished-for discovery of a passage into the southern Indian Ocean."
They were now through the strait. What Bass months before had believed to
be the case was at length demonstrated to a certainty. "The direction of
the coast, the set of the tides, and the great swell from the south-west,
did now completely satisfy us that a very wide strait did really exist
betwixt Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales, and also now that we had
certainly passed it."
No time was lost in completing the voyage. The Norfolk sped rapidly past
Cape Grim and down the western coast of Van Diemen's Land. Amateur-built
as she was, and very small for her work in these seas, she was proving a
useful boat, and one can enjoy the sailors' pride in a snug craft in
Flinders' remark concerning her, that "upon the whole she performed
wonderfully; seas that were apparently determined to swallow her up she
rode over with all the ease and majesty of an old experienced petrel."
The wild and desolate aspect of the west coast, as seen from the ocean,
seems to have struck Flinders with a feeling of dread. He so rarely
allows any emotion to appear in his writing that the sentences in his
diary wherein he refers to the appearance of the De Witt range are
striking evidence of his revulsion. "The mountains which presented
themselves to our view in this situation, both close to the shore and
inland, were amongst the most stupendous works of nature I ever beheld,
and it seemed to me are the most dismal and barren that can be imagined.
The eye ranges over these peaks, and curiously formed lumps of adamantine
rock, with astonishment and horror." He acknowledged that he clapped on
all sail to get past this forbidding coast. The passage is singular.
Flinders was a fenland-bred man, and, passing from the low levels of
eastern England to a life at sea in early youth, had had no experience of
mountainous country. He had not even seen the mountains at the back of
Sydney, except in the blue distance. Now, the De Witt range, though
certainly giving to the coast that it dominates an aspect of desolate
grandeur, especially when, as is nearly always the case, its jagged peaks
are seen under caps of frowning cloud, would not strike a man who had
been much among mountains as especially horrid. Flinders' burst of
chilled feeling may therefore be noted as a curious psychological fact.*
(* The reader will perhaps find it interesting to compare this reference
with a passage in Ruskin's Modern Painters Volume 3 chapter 13: "It is
sufficiently notable that Homer, living in mountainous and rocky
countries, dwells thus delightedly on all the flat bits; and so I think
invariably the inhabitants of mountain countries do, but the inhabitants
of the plains do not, in any similar way, dwell delightedly on mountains.
The Dutch painters are perfectly contented with their flat fields and
pollards: Rubens, though he had seen the Alps, usually composes his
landscapes of a hay-field or two, plenty of pollards and willows, a
distant spire, a Dutch house with a mast about it, a windmill and a
ditch...So Shakspere never speaks of mountains with the slightest joy,
but only of lowland flowers, flat fields, and Warwickshire streams."
Ruskin's citation of the Lincolnshire farmer in Alton Locke is apt, with
his dislike of "Darned ups and downs o'hills, to shake a body's victuals
out of his inwards.")
The naming of Mounts Heemskirk and Zeehan, the latter since become a
mineral centre of vast wealth, were the most noteworthy events of the run
down the western coast. They were named by Flinders after the two ships
of Tasman, as he took them to be the two mountains seen by that navigator
on his discovery of Van Diemen's Land in 1642.
The Derwent, whose estuary is the port of Hobart, was entered on December
21. Bass's report on the fertility of the soil led to the choice of this
locality for a settlement four years later.
On the last day of the year the return voyage was commenced, and on
January 1st, 1799, the Norfolk was making for Port Jackson with her prow
set north-easterly. The winds were unfavourable, and prevented Flinders
from keeping close inshore, as he would have liked to do in order to make
a survey. But the prescribed period of absence having expired, and the
provisions being nearly exhausted, it was necessary to make as much haste
as possible. On January 8th the Babel Isles were marked down, and named
"because of the confusion of noises made by the geese, shags, penguins,
gulls, and sooty petrels." Anyone who has camped near a rookery of sooty
petrels is aware that they are quite capable of maintaining a
sufficiently "babelish confusion"--the phrase is Camden's--without any
aid from other fowls.
A little later in the month (January 12) the Norfolk sailed into harbour,
and was anchored alongside the Reliance. "To the strait which had been
the great object of research," wrote Flinders, "and whose discovery was
now completed, Governor Hunter gave at my recommendation the name of Bass
Strait. This was no more than a just tribute to my worthy friend and
companion for the extreme dangers and fatigues he had undergone in first
entering it in the whaleboat, and to the correct judgment he had formed,
from various indications, of the existence of a wide opening between Van
Diemen's Land and New South Wales."
Throughout this voyage we find Bass expending his abundant energies in
the making of inland excursions whenever an opportunity occurred. To take
a boat up rivers, to cut through rough country, to climb, examine soil,
make notes on birds and beasts, and exercise his enquiring mind in all
directions, was his constant delight.
The profusion of wild life upon the coasts and islands explored during
the voyage astonished the travellers. Seals were seen in thousands,
sea-birds in hundreds of millions. Flinders' calculation regarding the
sooty petrels has already been quoted. Black swans were observed in great
quantities. Bass, for example, stated that he saw three hundred of these
stately birds within a space a quarter of a mile square. The Roman poet
Juvenal could think of no better example of a thing of rare occurrence
than a black swan:
"Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno."
But here black swans could have been cited in a simile illustrating
profusion. Bass quaintly stated that the "dying song" of the swan, so
celebrated by poets, "exactly resembled the creaking of a rusty ale-house
sign on a windy day." The remark is not so pretty as, but far more true
than, that of the bard who would have us believe that the dying swan:
"In music's strains breathes out her life and verse,
And, chaunting her own dirge, rides on her watery hearse."
The couplet of Coleridge is vitiated by the same error, but may merit
commendation for practical wisdom:
"Swans sing before they die; 'twere no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing."
Flinders also saw from three to five hundred black swans on the lee side
of one point; and so tame were they that, as the Norfolk passed through
the midst of them, one incautious bird was caught by the neck.
Bass went ashore on Albatross Island to shoot. He was forced to fight his
way up the cliffs against the seals, which resented the intrusion; and
when he got to the top he was compelled "to make a road with his club
among the albatross. These birds were sitting upon their nests, and
almost covered the surface of the ground, nor did they otherwise derange
themselves for their new visitors than to peck at their legs as they
passed by."
In the Derwent Bass and Flinders encountered Tasmanian aboriginals, now
an extinct race of men. A human voice was heard coming from the hills.
The two leaders of the expedition landed, taking with them a swan as an
offering of friendship, and met an aboriginal man and two women. The
women ran off, but the man stayed and accepted the swan "with rapture."
He was armed with three spears, but his demeanour was friendly. Bass and
Flinders tried him with such words as they knew of the dialects of New
South Wales and the South Sea Islands, but could not make him understand
them, "though the quickness with which he comprehended our signs spoke in
favour of his intelligence." His hair was either close-cropped or
naturally short; but it had not a woolly appearance. "He acceded to our
proposition of going to his hut; but finding from his devious route and
frequent stoppings that he sought to tire our patience, we left him
delighted with the certain possession of his swan, and returned to the
boat. This was the sole opportunity we had of communicating with any of
the natives of Van Diemen's Land."
The results of the cruise of the Norfolk were of great importance. From
the purely utilitarian point of view, the discovery of Bass Strait
shortened the voyage to Sydney from Europe by quite a week. It opened a
new highway for commerce. Turnbull, in his Voyage Round the World (1814)
discussing the advantages of the new route, mentioned that "already has
the whole fleet of China ships, under the convoy of a 64, passed through
these Straits without the smallest accident;" and he pointed out that
ships which were late in the season for China, and availed themselves of
the prevailing winds by taking the easterly route round Australia, were
thus enabled to avoid the tempestuous weather which generally faced them
to the south of Van Diemen's Land. Governor King, too, writing to the
Governor of Bombay in 1802, sent him a chart of the strait, and pointed
out that the discovery would "greatly facilitate the passage of ships
from India to this colony."
The discovery also revealed a fresh and fertile field for the occupation
of mankind. Geographically no discovery of such consequence had been made
since the noble days of Cook. It brought the names of Bass and Flinders
prominently before the scientific world, and the thoroughness with which
the latter had done his work won him warm praise from men competent to
form a judgment. Intimations concerning the discovery published in the
Naval Chronicle and other journals valued the work very highly; and it
had the advantage of bringing the commander of the Norfolk under the
notice of Sir Joseph Banks, that earnest and steadfast supporter of all
sincere research work, who thus became the firm friend of Flinders, as he
had been the friend and associate of Cook thirty years before.
The turbulent state of Europe in and about 1799, with Napoleon Bonaparte
rising fast to meridian glory on the wings of war, did not incline
British statesmen to attach much significance to such events as the
discovery of an important strait and the increased opportunities for the
development of oversea dominions. Renewed activity in that direction came
a little later. There is a letter from Banks to Hunter, written just
after the return of the Norfolk, but before the news reached England
(February, 1799), wherein he conveys a concise idea of the perturbation
in official circles and the difficulty of getting anything done for
Australia. "The political situation is so difficult," said Banks, "and
His Majesty's Ministers so fully employed in business of the deepest
importance, that it is scarce possible to gain a moment's audience on any
subject but those which stand foremost in their minds; and colonies of
all kinds, you may be assured, are now put into the background."
But that was no more than a passing phase. The seeds of a vaster British
Empire than had ever existed before had already germinated, and when the
years of crisis occurred, the will and power of England were both ready
and strong enough to protect the growing plant from the trampling feet of
legions. Meanwhile, the work on the Norfolk secured for Flinders such
useful encouragement and help as enabled him very little later to crown
his achievements with a task that at once solidified his title to fame
and ultimately ended his life.