Not only is Flinders to be regarded as a discoverer whose researches
completed the world's knowledge of the last extensive region of the
habitable globe remaining in his time to be revealed; not only as one
whose work was marked by an unrivalled exactitude and fineness of
observation; but also as one who did very much to advance the science of
navigation in directions calculated to make seafaring safer, more
certain, with better means and methods at disposal. Malte-Brun declared,
when he died, that "the geographical and nautical sciences have lost in
the person of Flinders one of their most brilliant ornaments,"* and that
criticism, coming from a foreign critic than whom there was no better
informed savant in Europe, was no mere piece of obituary rhetoric. (*
Annales des Voyages 23 268.)
In 1805 he wrote a paper on the Marine Barometer, based upon observations
made during his Australian voyages. The instrument employed was one which
had been used by Cook; Flinders always kept it in his cabin. He was the
first to discover, and this essay was the first attempt to show, the
connection between the rise and fall of the barometer and the direction
of the wind. Careful observation showed him that where his facts were
collected the mercury of the barometer rose some time before a change
from landbreeze to seabreeze, and fell before the change from seabreeze
to landbreeze. Consequently a change of wind might generally be predicted
from the barometer. The importance of these observations was at once
recognised by men connected with navigation. As the Edinburgh Review
wrote, dealing with Flinders' paper when presented before the Royal
Society on March 27th, 1806:* "It is very easy for us, speculating in our
closet upon the theory of winds and their connection with the
temperature, to talk of drawing a general inference on this subject with
confidence. But when the philosopher chances to be a seaman on a very
dangerous coast, it will be admitted that the strength of this confidence
is put to a test somewhat more severe; and we find nevertheless that
Captain Flinders staked the safety of his ship and the existence of
himself and his crew on the truth of the above proposition." (* Edinburgh
Review, January, 1807; Flinders' Paper, "Observations on the Marine
Barometer," was published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society, Part 2 1806.) Nowadays, indeed, the principal use of a barometer
to a navigator aboard ship is to enable him to anticipate changes of
wind.
Not less important were his experiments and writings upon variations of
the compass aboard ship. The fact that the needle of a compass showed
deviations on being moved from one part of a ship to another had been
observed by navigators in the eighteenth century, but Flinders was the
first to experiment systematically to ascertain the cause and to invent a
remedy.* (* For the history of the matter see Alexander Smith's
Introduction to W. Scoresby's Journal of a Voyage to Australia for
Magnetic Research, 1859.)
He observed not only that the direction of the needle varied according to
the part of the ship where it was placed, but also that a change in the
direction of the ship's head made a difference. Further, he found that in
northern latitudes (in the English Channel, for instance) the north end
of the needle was attracted towards the bow of the ship; whilst in
southern latitudes, in Bass Strait, there was an attraction towards the
stern; and at the equator there was no deviation. He came to the
conclusion that these results were due to the presence of iron in the
ship. When he returned to England in 1810, he wrote a memorandum on the
subject to the Admiralty, and requested that experiments might be made
upon ships of the Navy, with the object of verifying a law which he had
deduced from a long series of observations. His conclusion was that "the
magnetism of the earth and the attraction forward in the ship must act
upon the needle in the nature of a compound force, and that errors
produced by the attraction should be proportionate to the sines of the
angles between the ship's head and the magnetic meridian." Experiments
were made at Sheerness, Portsmouth, and Plymouth on five vessels. He took
a keen personal interest in them; and the result was his invention of the
Flinders' bar, which is now used in every properly equipped ship in the
world. The purpose of the bar, which is a vertical rod of soft iron,
placed so that its upper end is level with or slightly above the compass
needle, is to compensate for the effect of the vertical soft iron in the
ship.* (* See the excellent chapter on "Compasses" in Volume 2 of the
British Admiralty's Manual of Seamanship.) Flinders' work upon this
technical subject was important even in the days of wooden ships. In this
era of iron and steel ships it is regarded by every sailor as of the
utmost value.
In Flinders' day the delicacy of the compass, its liability to error, the
nature of the magnetic force to which it responds, and the necessity for
care in its handling, were very little appreciated. "Among the nautical
instruments taken to sea there are not any so ill-constructed, nor of
which so little care is taken afterwards, as the compass," he did not
hesitate to write.* (* Manuscript, "Chapter in the History of Magnetism;"
Flinders' Papers; another copy was sent to the Admiralty.) Compasses were
supplied to the Admiralty by contract, and were not inspected. They were
stowed in storehouses without any regard to the attraction to which the
needles might be exposed. They might be kept in store for a few years;
and they were then sent on board ships without any re-touching, "for no
magnets were kept in the dockyards, and probably no person there ever saw
them used." When a compass was sent aboard a ship of the Navy, it was
delivered into the charge of the boatswain and put into his store or
sail-room. Perhaps it was put on a shelf with his knives and forks and a
few marline-spikes. Flinders urged that spare compasses should be
preserved carefully in officers' cabins. Magnets for re-touching were not
kept in one ship in a hundred. Under these circumstances, he asked, "can
it be a subject of surprise that the most experienced navigators are
those who put the least confidence in the compass, or that ships running
three or four days without an observation should be found in situations
very different from what was expected, and some of them lost? The
currents are easily blamed, and sometimes with reason. Ships coming home
from the Baltic and finding themselves upon the shores of the Dutch
coast, when they were thought to be on the English side, lay it to the
currents; but the same currents, as I am informed, do not prevail when
steering in the opposite direction." The last is a neat stroke of irony.
Flinders strongly recommended that the Admiralty should appoint an
inspector of compasses, that there should be at every dockyard an officer
for re-touching compasses, and that a magnet for re-touching should be
carried on each flagship. The recommendations may seem like a counsel of
elementary precautions to-day, but they involved an important reform of
method in 1810.
Flinders also wrote on the theory of the tides; a set of notes on the
magnetism of the earth exists in manuscript; a manuscript of 106 pages,
consisting of a treatise on spheric trigonometry, is illustrated by
beautifully drawn diagrams, and includes an account of eight practical
methods of calculating latitude and five of calculating longitude. In
Mauritius he read all he could obtain about the history of the island,
and wrote a set of notes on Grant's History.
He was eager to praise the work of previous navigators. Laperouse was
especially a hero of his, and he wrote in French for the Societe
d'Emulation of Ile-de-France an account of the probable fate of that
celebrated sailor. In an eloquent passage in this essay, speaking of the
wreck, he cried: "O, Laperouse, my heart speaks to me of the agony that
rent yours. Ah, your eyes beheld the hapless companions of your dangers
and your glory fall one after another exhausted into the sea. Ah, your
eyes saw the fruit of vast and useful labours lost to the world. I think
of your sorrowing family. The picture is too painful for me to dwell upon
it; but at least when all human hope abandoned you, then--the last
blessing that God gives to the good--a ray of consolation shone upon your
eyes, and showed you that beyond those furious waves which broke upon
your vessels and swept away from you your companions another refuge was
opened to your virtues by the angel of pity."
Knowing the extreme difficulties attaching to navigation, even when in
the public interest he had to make a correction in the work of others, he
was anxious to cause no irritation. He sent to the editor of the Naval
Chronicle a correction in Horsburgh's Directions for Sailing to and from
the East Indies, but requested the editor to submit it first to the
author of that work, and to suppress publication if Horsburg so desired.
He never expressed a tinge of regret that he had chosen a field of
professional employment wherein promotion and reward were not liberally
bestowed. Entering the Navy under influential auspices, in a period when
active service provided plentiful scope for advancement, he deliberately
preferred the explorer's hard lot. The only prize money he ever won was
10 pounds after Lord Howe's victory in 1794. "I chose a branch," he said
in a letter to Banks, "which though less rewarded by rank and fortune is
yet little less in celebrity. If adverse fortune does not oppose me, I
will succeed." He succeeded beyond all he could have hoped.
The excellence of his charts was such that to this day the Admiralty
charts for those portions of the Australian coast where he did original
work bear upon them the honoured name of Matthew Flinders; and amongst
the seamen who habitually traverse these coasts, no name, not even that
of Cook, is so deeply esteemed as his. Flinders is not a tradition; the
navigators of our own time count him a companion of the watch.