Captain Matthew Flinders (16 March 1774 – 19 July 1814) was a British Royal Navy officer, navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then called New Holland. He is also credited as being the first person to utilise the name Australia to describe the entirety of that continent including Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), a title he regarded as being "more agreeable to the ear" than previous names such as Terra Australis.
Flinders was involved in several voyages of discovery between 1791 and 1803, the most famous of which are the circumnavigation of Australia and an earlier expedition when he and George Bass confirmed that Van Diemen's Land was an island. While returning to Britain in 1803, Flinders was arrested by the French at the colony of Isle de France. Although Britain and France were at war, Flinders thought the scientific nature of his work would ensure safe passage, but he remained under arrest for more than six years. In captivity, he recorded details of his voyages for future publication, and put forward his rationale for naming the new continent Australia, as an umbrella term for New Holland and New South Walesa suggestion taken up later by Governor Macquarie.
Flinders' health had suffered, however, and although he returned to Britain in 1810, he did not live to see the success of his widely praised book and atlas, A Voyage to Terra Australis. The location of his grave had been lost by the mid-19th century, but archaeologists, excavating a former burial ground near London's Euston railway station for the High Speed 2 rail project, announced in January 2019 that his remains had been identified. On 13 July 2024, he was reburied in Donington, Lincolnshire, the village of his birth.
Early life Matthew Flinders was born in Donington, Lincolnshire, the son of Matthew Flinders, a surgeon, and his wife Susannah ( Ward). He was educated at Cowley's Charity School, Donington, from 1780 and then at the Reverend John Shinglar's Grammar School at Horbling in Lincolnshire.Matthew Flinders – his life in Donington South Holland Life. Accessed 14 July 2017.
In his own words, he was "induced to go to sea against the wishes of my friends from reading Robinson Crusoe", and in 1789, at the age of fifteen, he joined the Royal Navy. Under the patronage of Captain Thomas Pasley, Flinders was initially assigned to HMS Alert as a servant, but was soon transferred as an able-seaman to , and then in July 1790 was made midshipman on .
Early career Midshipman to Captain Bligh
In May 1791, on Pasley's recommendation, Flinders joined Captain William Bligh's expedition on transporting breadfruit from Tahiti to Jamaica. It was Bligh's second "Breadfruit Voyage", following his ill-fated voyage on HMS Bounty. The expedition sailed via the Cape of Good Hope and, in February 1792, they arrived at Adventure Bay on the eastern coast of Bruny Island off the south-eastern coast of the island now known as Tasmania. The officers and crew spent over a week in the region obtaining water and lumber, and interacting with local Aboriginal people. It was Flinders' first association with any of the land which is now part of the Commonwealth of Australia.
After the expedition arrived in Tahiti in April 1792, obtaining the breadfruit plants to take to Jamaica, they sailed back west. Instead of travelling via Adventure Bay, Bligh navigated to the north of the Australian continent, sailing through the Torres Strait. There, off Zagai Island, they were involved in a naval skirmish with armed local men in a flotilla of sailing canoes, which resulted in the death of several Islanders and one crewman. The expedition arrived in Jamaica in February 1793, offloading the breadfruit plants, and then returned to England, with Flinders disembarking in London in August 1793 after more than two years at sea.
HMS Bellerophon In September 1793, Flinders re-joined , which was captained by Pasley. In 1794, Flinders served on this vessel during the battle known as the Glorious First of June, the first and largest fleet action of the French Revolutionary Wars. Flinders wrote a detailed journal of the battle which described Pasley as having "lost his leg by an 18-pounder shot which came in through the barricadoes of the quarter-deck".Matthew Flinders. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. FLI 8b. As cited in Cordingly. Billy Ruffian. p. 81. and Goodwin. The Ships of Trafalgar. p. 67. Both Pasley and Flinders survived, with Flinders deciding to pursue a preference for exploratory rather than military naval assignments.
Exploration around New South Wales Flinders' desire for adventure led him to enlist as a midshipman aboard in 1795. This vessel was headed to New South Wales carrying the recently appointed governor of that British colony, Captain John Hunter. On this voyage Flinders became friends with the ship's surgeon George Bass who was three years his senior and had been born at Aswarby, just from Donington.
Expeditions in Tom Thumb and Tom Thumb II Reliance arrived in Port Jackson in September 1795, and Bass and Flinders soon organised an expedition in a small open boat named Tom Thumb, in which they sailed with a boy, William Martin, to Botany Bay and up the Georges River. In March 1796, the two explorers, again with William Martin, set out on another voyage in a larger boat, dubbed Tom Thumb II. They sailed south from Port Jackson but were soon forced to beach at Red Point (Port Kembla). There, they accepted the help of two Aboriginal men who piloted the boat to the entrance of Lake Illawarra, where they were able to dry their gunpowder and obtain supplies of water from another group of Aboriginal people. During the return to Sydney, they had to seek shelter at Wattamolla and also explored some of Port Hacking (Deeban).
Circumnavigation of Van Diemen's Land
In 1798, Flinders, by then a lieutenant, was given command of the sloop with orders "to sail beyond Furneaux's Islands, and, should a strait be found, pass through it, and return by the south end of Van Diemen's Land". Flinders and Bass had, in the months previously, both made separate journeys exploring the region but neither were conclusive as to the existence of a strait. Flinders, with Bass and several crewmen, sailed Norfolk along the uncharted northern and western coasts of Van Diemen's Land, rounded Cape Pillar and returned to Furneaux's Islands. By doing so, Flinders had completed the circumnavigation of Van Diemen's Land and confirmed the presence of a strait between it and the mainland. The passage was named Bass Strait after his close friend, and the largest island in the strait would later be named Flinders Island in his honour. During the voyage, Flinders and Bass rowed the ship's dinghy for some miles up the River Derwent, where they had their only encounter with Aboriginal Tasmanians.In the wake of Bass and Flinders: 200 years on: the story of the re-enactment voyages 200 years on... | National Library of Australia . Catalogue.nla.gov.au. Retrieved on 2 August 2013.
Expedition to Hervey Bay
In 1799, Flinders' request to explore the coast north of Port Jackson was granted and, once more, the sloop Norfolk was assigned to him. Bass had returned to Britain by that time and, in his place, Flinders recruited his brother Samuel Flinders and was also accompanied on the voyage by a Indigenous Australian man named Bungaree. They departed on 8 July 1799 and arrived in Moreton Bay six days later. Flinders rowed ashore at Woody Point () and named a point west of that () as Redcliffe (on account of its red cliffs). That point is now known as Clontarf Point, while the name Redcliffe is used by the town of Redcliffe to the north. He landed on Coochiemudlo Island () on 19 July while he was searching for a river in the southern part of Moreton Bay.
In the northern part of Moreton Bay, Flinders explored a narrow waterway () which he named the Pumice Stone River (presumably unaware it separated Bribie Island and the mainland); it is now called the Pumicestone Passage. Most of the meetings between the Aboriginal people of Moreton Bay and Flinders were of a friendly nature, but on 15 July at the southern tip of Bribie Island, a spear was thrown which resulted in a local man being wounded by gunfire. Flinders named the place where this occurred Point Skirmish. While anchored in Pumicestone, Flinders ventured several kilometres overland with three crew including Bungaree and climbed the mountain Beerburrum. They turned back after meeting the steep cliffs of Mount Tibrogargan on about 26 July.
Exiting Moreton Bay, Flinders continued north exploring as far as Hervey Bay before returning south. They arrived back in Sydney on 20 August 1799.
Command of Investigator
In March 1800, Flinders rejoined Reliance and returned to Britain. During the voyage, the Antipodes Islands were discovered and charted.Robert McNab, Murihiku and the Southern Islands, Invercargill, W. Smith, 1907, p.68. Flinders' work had come to the attention of many of the scientists of the day, in particular the influential Sir Joseph Banks, to whom Flinders dedicated his Observations on the Coasts of Van Diemen's Land, on Bass's Strait, etc.. Banks used his influence with Earl Spencer to convince the Admiralty of the importance of an expedition to chart the coastline of New Holland. As a result, in January 1801, Flinders was given command of , a 334-ton sloop, and promoted to commander the following month.
Investigator set sail for New Holland on 18 July 1801. Attached to the expedition were the botanist Robert Brown, botanical artist Ferdinand Bauer, landscape artist William Westall, gardener Peter Good, geological assistant John Allen, and John Crosley as astronomer.Vallance, T.G., Moore, D.T. & Groves, E.W. 2001. Nature's Investigator The Diary of Robert Brown in Australia, 1801-1805, Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra, (p.7) Vallance et al. comment that compared to the Baudin expedition this was a "modest contingent of scientific gentlemen", which reflects "British parsimony" in scientific endeavour. The future explorer John Franklin, Flinders' cousin by marriage, served as midshipman.
Exploration of the Australian coastline Surveying the southern coast
Aboard Investigator, Flinders reached and named Cape Leeuwin on 6 December 1801, and proceeded to make a survey along the southern coast of the Australian mainland. The expedition soon anchored in King George Sound and stayed there for a month exploring the area. The local Aboriginal people initially indicated that Flinders' group should "return from whence they came", but relations improved to the point where one resident participated in musket-drill with the ship's marines. In nearby Oyster Harbour, Flinders found a copper plate that Captain Christopher Dixson, on , had left the year before.
While approaching Port Lincoln, which Flinders named after his home county of Lincolnshire, eight of his crew were lost when the sailing cutter, in which they were attempting to return to the ship after an expedition to the mainland, capsized. Flinders named nearby Memory Cove in their honour. On 21 March 1802, the expedition reached a large island where many kangaroos were sighted. Flinders and some crew went ashore and found the animals so tame they could walk right up to them. They killed 31 kangaroos with Flinders writing that "in gratitude for so seasonable a supply [of meat], I named this southern land Kangaroo Island." The seals on the island proved less docile, with a crew member receiving a severe bite from one.
On 8 April 1802, while sailing east, Flinders sighted , a French corvette commanded by the explorer Nicolas Baudin, who was on a similar expedition for his government. Both men of science, Flinders and Baudin exchanged details of their discoveries, despite believing that their countries were at war. Flinders named the bay in which they met Encounter Bay.