One of the first matters which occupied Flinders after his arrival in
England was the use of his influence with the Admiralty to secure the
release of a few French prisoners of war who were relatives of his
friends in Mauritius. In a letter he pointed out that these men were
connected with respectable families from whom he himself and several
other English prisoners had received kindness.* (* Flinders' Papers.) His
plea was successful. There was, surely, a peculiar beauty in this act of
sympathy on the part of one who had so recently felt the pain and
distress of captivity.
Flinders was anxious for news about his old Investigator shipmates. The
faithful Elder, he found, had secured an appointment as servant to
Admiral Hollowell, then on service in the Mediterranean, and was a great
favourite. Franklin was able to enlighten him as to some of the others.
Purdie, who had been assistant-surgeon, was surgeon on the Pompey. Inman,
who had been sent out to act as astronomer during the latter part of the
voyage, was a professor at the Naval College, Portsmouth. Lacy and
Sinclair, midshipmen, were dead. Louth was a midshipman on the Warrior.
Olive was purser on the Heir Apparent, and Matt, the carpenter, filled
that post on the Bellerophon. Of Dr. Bell Franklin knew nothing. "The old
ship," he said, "is lying at Portsmouth, cut down nearly to the water's
edge."
In naval and scientific circles Flinders was the object of much honour
and interest. He was received "with flattering attention" at the
Admiralty. We find him visiting Lord Spencer, who, having authorised the
Investigator voyage, was naturally concerned to hear of its eventful
history. Banks took him to the Royal Society and gave a dinner in his
honour. The Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV, himself a sailor,
wished to meet him and inspect his charts, and he was taken to see the
Prince by Bligh. In 1812 he gave evidence before a Committee of the House
of Commons on the penal transportation system.* (* House of Commons
Papers, 1812; the evidence was given on March 25th.) What he had to say
related principally to the nature of the country he had examined in the
course of his explorations. "Were you acquainted with Port Dalrymple?"
the chairman asked him. "I discovered Port Dalrymple." "Were you ever at
the Derwent?" "I was, and from my report, I believe, it was that the
first settlement was made there." He was one of the few early explorers
of Australia whose vision was hopeful; and experience has in every
instance justified his foreseeing optimism.
But save for a few social events, and for some valuable experiments with
the magnetic needle, to be referred to in the final chapter, his time and
energies were absorbed by work upon his charts. He laboured incessantly.
"I am at my voyage," he said in a letter, "but it does by no means
advance according to my wishes. Morning, noon and night I sit close at
writing, and at my charts, and can hardly find time for anything else."
He was a merciless critic when the proofs came from the engravers. One
half-sheet contains 92 corrections and improving marks in his
handwriting. Such directions as "make the dot distinct," "strengthen the
coast-line," "make this track a fair equal line," "points wanting," are
abundant. As we turn over the great folio which represents so much
labour, so much endurance, so much suffering, it is good to remember that
these superb drawings are the result of the ceaselessly patient toil of
perhaps the most masterly cartographer who has ever adorned the British
naval service.
He took similar pains with the text of A Voyage to Terra Australis. It
was never meant to be a book for popular reading, though there is no lack
of entertainment in it. It was a semi-official publication, in which the
Admiralty claimed and retained copyright, and its author was perhaps a
little hampered by that circumstance. Bligh asked that it should be
dedicated to him, but "the honour was declined."* (* Flinders' Papers.)
The book was produced under the direction of a committee appointed by the
Admiralty, consisting of Banks, Barrow, and Flinders himself.
It abounds in exact data concerning the latitude and longitude of coastal
features. The English is everywhere clear and sound; but the book which
Flinders could have written had he lived a few years longer, if it had
been penned with the freedom which made his conversation so delightful to
his friends, might have been one of the most entertaining pieces of
travel literature in the language. At first he was somewhat apprehensive
about authorship, and thought of calling in the aid of a friend; but the
enforced leisure of Ile-de-France induced him to depend upon his own
efforts. Before he left England in 1801, he had suggested that he might
require assistance. In a letter to Willingham Franklin, John's brother, a
fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and afterwards a Judge in Madras, he
wrote (November 27th, 1801):* (* Flinders' Papers.)
"You must understand that this voyage of ours is to be written and
published on our return. I am now engaged in writing a rough account, but
authorship sits awkwardly upon me. I am diffident of appearing before the
public unburnished by an abler hand. What say you? Will you give me your
assistance if on my return a narration of our voyage should be called for
from me? If the voyage be well executed and well told afterwards I shall
have some credit to spare to deserving friends. If the door now open
suits your taste and you will enter, it should be yours for the
undertaking. A little mathematical knowledge will strengthen your style
and give it perspicuity. Arrangement is the material point in
voyage-writing as well as in history. I feel great diffidence here.
Sufficient matter I can easily furnish, and fear not to prevent anything
unseamanlike from entering into the composition; but to round a period
well and arrange sentences so as to place what is meant in the most
perspicuous point of view is too much for me. Seamanship and authorship
make too great an angle with each other; the further a man advances upon
one line the further distant he becomes from any point on the other."
It did not prove so in Flinders' own case, for his later letters and the
latter part of his book are written in an easier, more freely-flowing
style than marks his earlier writings. He solicited no assistance in the
final preparation of his work. He preferred to speak to his public in his
own voice, and was unquestionably well advised in so doing. It is a
plain, honest sailor's story; that of a cultivated man withal.
Intense application to the work in hand brought about a recurrence of the
constitutional internal trouble which had occasioned some pain in
Mauritius. The illness became acute at the end of 1813. He was only 39
years of age, but Mrs. Flinders wrote to a friend that he had aged so
much that he looked 70, and was "worn to a skeleton." He mentioned in his
journal that he was suffering much pain. Yet he was never heard to
complain, and was never irritable or troublesome to those about him. He
was full of kindness and concern for his friends. We find him attending
sittings of the Admiralty Court, where his friend Pitot had a suit
against the British Government, and he interested himself in the
promotion of two of his old Investigator midshipmen. He urged upon the
Admiralty with all his force that his own branch of the naval service was
as honourable and as deserving of official recognition as war service.
The only inducement for young officers to join a voyage of discovery, and
forego the advantages arising from prizes and active service, was the
reasonable certainty of promotion on their return. "This," he observed,
"certainly has been relied upon and fulfilled in expeditions which
returned in time of peace, when promotion is so difficult to be obtained;
whereas I sailed and my officers returned during a war in which promotion
was never before so liberally bestowed. Yet no one of my officers, so far
as I have been able to ascertain, has received promotion for their
services in that voyage, although it has been allowed the service was
well executed."* (* Flinders' Papers.)
The illness increased during 1814, while the "Voyage" and its
accompanying atlas were passing through the press. He never saw the
finished book. The first copy of it came from the publishers, G. and W.
Nicol, of Pall Mall, on July 18th, on the day before he died; but he was
then unconscious. His wife took the volumes and laid them upon his bed,
so that the hand that fashioned them could touch them. But he never
understood. He was fast wrapped in the deep slumber that preceded the
end. On the 19th he died. His devoted wife stood by his pillow, his
infant daughter (born April 1st, 1812) was in an adjoining room, and
there was one other friend present. Just before the brave life flickered
out, he started up, and called in a hoarse voice for "my papers." Then he
fell back and died.
Upon the manuscript of the friend who wrote an account of his death,
there is pencilled a brief memorandum, which chronicles a few words
muttered some time before death touched his lips. The pencil-writing is
rubbed and only partly decipherable, but the letters "Dr." are distinct.
I take the meaning to be that the doctor attending him heard him murmur
the words. They are: "But it grows late, boys, let us dismiss!" One can
easily realise the kind of picture that floated before the mind of the
dying navigator. It was, surely, a happy vision of a night among friends
and companions, who had listened with delight to the vivid talk of him
who had seen and done so much in his wonderful forty years of life. In
such a company his mates would not be the first to wish to break the
spell, so he gave the word: "it grows late, boys, let us dismiss."
Flinders died at 14 London Street, Fitzroy Square, and was buried in the
graveyard of St. James's, Hampstead Road, which was a burial ground for
St. James's, Piccadilly. No man now knows exactly where his bones were
laid.* (* The vicar of St. James's, Piccadilly, who examined the burial
register in response to an enquiry by Mr. George Gordon McCrae, of
Melbourne, in 1912, states that the entry was made, by a clerical error,
in the name of Captain Matthew Flanders, aged 40.) A letter written years
later by his daughter, Mrs. Petrie, says: "Many years afterwards my aunt
Tyler went to look for his grave, but found the churchyard remodelled,
and quantities of tombstones and graves with their contents had been
carted away as rubbish, among them that of my unfortunate father, thus
pursued by disaster after death as in life."
On the 25th of the same month died Charles Dibdin, who wrote the elegy of
the perfect sailor:
"Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling.
The darling of our crew,
No more he'll hear the tempest howling
For death has broached him to."
During his last years in London, Flinders lodged in six houses
successively, and it may be as well to enumerate them. They were, 16 King
Street, Soho, from November 5th, 1810; 7 Nassau Street, Soho, from
January 19th, 1811; 7 Mary Street, Brook Street, from 30th September,
1811; 45 Upper John Street, Fitzroy Square, from March 30th, 1813; 7
Upper Fitzroy Street, from May 28th, 1813; and 14 London Street, Fitzroy
Square, from February 28th, 1814.
A letter from the widow to her husband's French friend Pitot, evidently
in answer to a message of sympathy, is poignant: "You who were in a
measure acquainted with the many virtues and inestimable qualities he
possessed, will best appreciate the worth of the treasure I have lost,
and you will easily imagine that, were the whole universe at my command,
it could offer no compensation; and even the tenderest sympathy of the
truest friend avails but little in a case of such severe trial and
affliction. You will not be surprised when I say that sorrow continually
circles round my heart and tears are my daily companion. 'Tis true the
company of my little girl soothes and cheers many an hour that would
otherwise pass most wearily away, but life has lost its chief charm, and
the world appears a dreary wilderness to me.
An unpleasant feature of the subject, which cannot be overlooked, relates
to the Admiralty's ungenerous treatment of Flinders and his widow. When
he returned from Mauritius, the First Lord was Mr. C.P. Yorke after whom
Flinders named Yorke's Peninsula, who was inclined to recognise that the
special circumstances of the case demanded special treatment. He at once
promoted Flinders to the rank of Post-Captain. But in consequence of his
long detention Flinders had lost the opportunity for earlier promotion.
It was admitted that if he had returned to England in 1804 he would at
once have been rewarded for his services by promotion to post-captain's
rank. Indeed, Lord Spencer had definitely promised him a step in rank. It
was therefore urged in his behalf that, as he had not been a prisoner of
war in the ordinary sense, his commission should be ante-dated to 1804.
Yorke appeared to think the claim reasonable. The Admiralty conceded that
he had not been a prisoner of war, and he was not brought before a
court-martial, although the Cumberland, left to rot in Port Louis, had
been lost to the service. The First Lord directed that the commission
should be ante-dated to the time of the release, but it was not
considered that more could be done without an Order in Council. This
could not be obtained at the moment, because King George III was mentally
incapacitated. When the Regency was established (1811) an application did
not meet with a sympathetic response. "The hinge upon which my case
depends," said Flinders in a letter, "is whether my having suffered so
long and unjustly in the Isle of France is a sufficient reason that I
should now suffer in England the loss of six years' rank." The response
of the Admiralty officials was that the case was peculiar; there was "no
precedent" for ante-dating a promotion.
Flinders asked that he might be put on full pay, while he was writing the
Voyage, which would make up the difference in the expense to which he
would be put by living in town instead of in the country; but Barrow
assured him that the Admiralty would object "for want of a precedent." He
showed that he would be 500 or 600 pounds out of pocket, to say nothing
of the loss of chances of promotion by remaining ashore. It was to meet
this position that the Admiralty granted him 200 pounds; but as a matter
of fact he was still 300 pounds out of pocket,* and was put out of health
irrecoverably by intense application to the task. (* Flinders' Papers.)
His friend, Captain Kent, then of the Agincourt, advised him to abandon
the work. "I conjure you," he wrote "to give the subject your serious
attention, and do not suffer yourself to be involved in debt to gratify
persons who seem to have no feeling." But to have abandoned his beloved
work at this stage would have appeared worse to him than loss of life
itself. The consequence was that his expenses during this period, even
with the strictly economical mode of living which he adopted, entrenched
upon the small savings which he was able to leave to his widow. He was
compelled to represent that, unless a concession were made, he would have
to choose between abandoning his task or reducing his family to distress;
and it was for this reason that the Admiralty granted a special allowance
of 200 pounds, in supplement of his half-pay. This, with 500 pounds "in
lieu of compensation" on account of his detention in Ile-de-France was
the entire consideration that he received.
When he died, application was made to the Admiralty to grant a special
pension to Mrs. Flinders. The widow of Captain Cook had been granted a
pension of 200 pounds a year. (Mrs. Cook, by the way, was still living in
England at this time; she did not die till 1835). Stout old Sir Joseph
Banks declared that he would not die happy unless something were done for
the widow and child of Matthew Flinders. But his influence with the
Admiralty was not so great as it had been in Lord Spencer's time, and his
efforts were ineffectual. The case was at a later date brought under the
notice of William IV, who said that he saw no reason why the widow of
Captain Flinders should not receive the same treatment as the widow of
Captain Cook. The King mentioned the subject to Lord Melbourne; he,
however, was unsympathetic, and nothing whatever was done. Mrs. Flinders
was paid only the meagre pension of a post-captain's widow until she died
in 1852. No official reward of any kind was granted by the British
Government for the truly great services and discoveries of Flinders. The
stinginess of a rich nation is a depressing subject to reflect upon in a
case of this kind.
A gratifying contrast is afforded by the voluntary action of two
Australian colonies. It was learnt, to the surprise of many, some time
after 1850, that the widow of the discoverer and her married daughter
were living in England, and were not too well provided for. The Colonies
of New South Wales and Victoria thereupon (1853) voted a pension of 100
pounds a year each to Mrs. Flinders, with reversion to Mrs. Petrie. The
news of this decision did not reach England in time to please the aged
widow, but the spirit of the grant gave unfeigned satisfaction to
Flinders' daughter. "Could my beloved mother have lived to receive this
announcement," she wrote,* (* New South Wales Parliamentary Papers 1854 1
785.) "it would indeed have cheered her last days to know that my
father's long-neglected services were at length appreciated. But my
gratification arising from the grant is extreme, especially as it comes
from a quarter in which I had not solicited consideration; and the
handsome amount of the pension granted will enable me to educate my young
son in a manner worthy of the name he bears, Matthew Flinders."* (* "My
young son" is the present Professor W. Matthew Flinders Petrie.)
The Voyage to Terra Australis, it may be mentioned, was originally sold
for 8 or 12 guineas, according to whether or not the atlas was bought
with the two quarto volumes. A copy to-day, with the folio Atlas, sells
for about 10 guineas.