The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders, R.N.

This 1914 biography, based on thorough archival research, vividly describes the eventful life of the first navigator to circumnavigate Australia.

Ernest Scott (Author)

9781108040617, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 29 December 2011

612 pages, 28 b/w illus. 10 maps
21.6 x 14 x 3.5 cm, 0.77 kg

Matthew Flinders (1774–1814) joined the Royal Navy at fifteen, later claiming to have been inspired by Robinson Crusoe. He served under William Bligh, and charted the Bass Strait in 1798. In 1801 he was commissioned to chart 'New Holland', and so became the first to circumnavigate the island he referred to as Australia. After being shipwrecked on the Barrier Reef and imprisoned for six years on Mauritius on suspicion of spying, he returned to England in 1810 and began work on A Voyage to Terra Australis. He died the day after his book and maps were published. This biography, published in 1914 to mark the centenary of his death, was the first comprehensive study of this central figure of Australian maritime exploration. The leading Australian historian Ernest Scott (1868–1939) based his account on material held in private collections in France as well as on documents deposited in Australian libraries.

Preface
1. Birth and origins
2. At school and at sea
3. A voyage under Bligh
4. The battle off Brest
5. Australian geography before Flinders
6. The Reliance and the Tom Thumb
7. The discovery of Bass Strait
8. The voyage of the Francis
9. Circumnavigation of Tasmania
10. The fate of George Bass
11. On the Queensland Coast
12. The Investigator
13. The French expedition
14. South Coast discovery
15. Flinders and Baudin in Encounter Bay
16. Flinders in Port Phllip
17. The French at Port Jackson. Péron the spy
18. Australia circumnavigated
19. Wrecked on the Barrier Reef
20. To Ile-de-France in the Cumberland
21. General Decaen
22. The captivity
23. The captivity prolonged
24. The captivity modified
25. The order of release
26. The release
27. Last years and death of Flinders
28. Characteristics
29. The navigator
30. The naming of Australia
Appendix
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Historical geography [HBTP]