Australia Circumnavigated. The Voyage of Matthew Flinders in HMS Investigator, 1801-1803 / Volume II


Book Description

This two-volume work provides the first edited publication of Matthew Flinders’s fair journals from the circumnavigation of Australia in 1801-1803 in HMS Investigator, and of the ’Memoir’ he wrote to accompany his journals and charts. These are among the most important primary texts in Australian maritime history and European voyaging in the Pacific. Flinders was the first explorer to circumnavigate Australia. He was also largely responsible for giving Australia its name. His voyage was supported by the Admiralty, the Navy Board, the East India Company and the patronage of Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society. Banks ensured that the Investigator expedition included scientific gentlemen to document Australia’s flora, fauna, geology and landscape features. The botanist Robert Brown, botanical painter Ferdinand Bauer, landscape artist William Westall and the gardener Peter Good were all members of the voyage. After landfall at Cape Leeuwin, Flinders sailed anti-clockwise round the whole continent, returning to Port Jackson when the ship became unseaworthy. After a series of misfortunes, including a shipwreck and a long detention at the Ile de France (now Mauritius), Flinders returned to England in 1810. He devoted the last four years of his life to preparing A Voyage to Terra Australis, published in two volumes, and an atlas. Flinders died on 19 July 1814 at the age of forty. The fair journals edited here comprise a daily log with full nautical information and ’remarks’ on the coastal landscape, the achievements of previous navigators in Australian waters, encounters with Aborigines and Macassan trepangers, naval routines, scientific findings, and Flinders’s surveying and charting. The journals also include instructions for the voyage and some additional correspondence. The ’Memoir’ explains Flinders’ methodology in compiling his journals and charts and the purpose and content of his surveys.




Matthew Flinders, Maritime Explorer of Australia


Book Description

This book provides a thoroughly researched biography of the naval career of Matthew Flinders, with particular emphasis on his importance for the maritime discovery of Australia. Sailing in the wake of the 18th-century voyages of exploration by Captain Cook and others, Flinders was the first naval commander to circumnavigate Australia's coastline. He contributed more to the mapping and naming of places in Australia than virtually any other single person. His voyage to Australia on H.M.S. Investigator expanded the scope of imperial, geographical and scientific knowledge. This biography places Flinders's career within the context of Pacific exploration and the early white settlement of Australia. Flinders's connections with other explorers, his use of patronage, the dissemination of his findings, and his posthumous reputation are also discussed in what is an important new scholarly work in the field.




The Voyage of the Investigator, 1801-1803


Book Description

Brief mention of contacts - King Georges Sound, Coffins Bay (S.A.), Mornington (Vic.), Great Sandy Is., Shoalwater Bay (Qld.); fireplaces, heaps of shell, fish bones, bark containers observed at Port Phillip (by Robert Brown); p.164-170; Macassan remains - Sweers, Bentincks Island, Pellew Group; rock paintings, Chasm Island; Hostilities, Blue Mud Bay; Contact with Macassan proas, Malay Road, N.W. Arnhem Land.




Ill-Starred Captains


Book Description

' Anthony Brown's ingenious interweaving of the tales of these two very different expeditions brings the story of Australia's exploration to life in a riveting and insightful new narrative.' Tim Flannery Amid the Napoleonic Wars, France and Britain launched rival voyages of discovery to the Antipodes. Led by the outstanding naval captains Nicolas Baudin and Mathew Flinders, these expeditions were seen as vital for gathering geographical and scientific knowledge, yet both expeditions ended in personal disaster for their commanders. Drawing extensively on original eye witness accounts, logs and journals, Ill Starred Captains brings to life the tragic histories of the two men for whom 'Fortune had changed seemingly beyond recall, from smiling goddess to right whore.' With a foreword by Tim Flannery, Ill-Starred Captains tells the riveting story of a remarkable competition between two warring colonial nations and provides a major contribution to Australian, British and French history.




Trim, The Cartographer's Cat


Book Description

Not many ships' cats have even one memorial statue, let alone six. But Trim does, including one outside Euston Station in London, proudly unveiled by Prince William on the bicentenary of Matthew Flinders's death – 19 July 2014. Trim was the ship's cat who accompanied Matthew Flinders on his voyages to circumnavigate and map the coastline of Australia from 1801 to 1803. He lived quite the adventurous life. As a small kitten he fell overboard while at sea but managed to swim back to the vessel and climb back on board by scaling a rope. This cemented his position as Flinders's beloved companion, and together they survived a Pacific voyage, the circumnavigation of Australia and a shipwreck. When Flinders was imprisoned by the French in Mauritius in 1803 Trim shared his captivity until one day he mysteriously disappeared – which heartbreakingly Flinders attributed to his being stolen and eaten by a hungry slave. Trim, The Cartographer's Cat is an ode to this much-loved ship's cat, which will warm the heart of any cat lover. The first part of the book reproduces Flinders' own whimsical tribute to Trim, written while in captivity in the early 1800s, with added 'friendly footnotes' to provide some background to Flinders's numerous literary allusions and nautical terms. Next the book discusses where Flinders was when he wrote his tribute and why, and what his letters and journals from that time tell us about his 'sporting, affectionate and useful companion'. Finally, we learn what Trim's views on all of this might have been, in a fun and fanciful observation on his premature epitaph. Accompanying all of this are beautiful maps, historical photographs, quirky original illustrations by illustrator Ad Long and excerpts from Flinders' original script, showing his beautiful handwriting. This book will make a unique and treasured gift for Flinders fans, Trim fans and cat lovers around the world.







The Voyage of the Investigator, 1801-1803


Book Description

Brief mention of contacts - King Georges Sound, Coffins Bay (S.A.), Mornington (Vic.), Great Sandy Is., Shoalwater Bay (Qld.); fireplaces, heaps of shell, fish bones, bark containers observed at Port Phillip (by Robert Brown); p.164-170; Macassan remains - Sweers, Bentincks Island, Pellew Group; rock paintings, Chasm Island; Hostilities, Blue Mud Bay; Contact with Macassan proas, Malay Road, N.W. Arnhem Land.




Arcadian Quest


Book Description

Westall was a landscape and figure painter on the voyage of The Investigator, captained by Matthew Flinders, 1801; survey and chronology of the voyage; paintings include four portraits from Port Jackson; Port Lincoln; King George's Sound; Blue Mud Bay: Body of a Native Shot on Morgan's Island, 1803; Port Bowen, Queensland.




A Memory of Ice


Book Description

In the southern summer of 1972/73, the Glomar Challenger was the first vessel of the international Deep Sea Drilling Project to venture into the seas surrounding Antarctica, confronting severe weather and ever-present icebergs. A Memory of Ice presents the science and the excitement of that voyage in a manner readable for non-scientists. Woven into the modern story is the history of early explorers, scientists and navigators who had gone before into the Southern Ocean. The departure of the Glomar Challenger from Fremantle took place 100 years after the HMS Challenger weighed anchor from Portsmouth, England, at the start of its four-year voyage, sampling and dredging the world’s oceans. Sailing south, the Glomar Challenger crossed the path of James Cook’s HMS Resolution, then on its circumnavigation of Antarctica in search of the Great South Land. Encounters with Lieutenant Charles Wilkes of the US Exploring Expedition and Douglas Mawson of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition followed. In the Ross Sea, the voyages of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror under James Clark Ross, with the young Joseph Hooker as botanist, were ever present. The story of the Glomar Challenger’s iconic voyage is largely told through the diaries of the author, then a young scientist experiencing science at sea for the first time. It weaves together the physical history of Antarctica with how we have come to our current knowledge of the polar continent. This is an attractive, lavishly illustrated and curiosity-satisfying read for the general public as well as for scholars of science.




Matthew Flinders


Book Description

Biography with notes on various journeys of exploration.