FLINDERS' ADVENTURES.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 1600, 31 May 1924, Page 20 (Supplement)

FLINDERS' ADVENTURES.

THE WAN WHO NAMED AUSTRALIA SURVEYING THE COASTS OF. A CONTINENT. If Robinson Crusoe did nothing else, it gave the world one of its greatesi navigators and marine surveyors in the person of Matthew Flinders, to whom a statue is being erected in Melbourne. Born into a medical family, with his father, grandfather, and greatgrandfather all surgeons, it was naturally supposed he would follow in their "footsteps; but Flinders had other ideas. As a boy he read Robinson Crusoe, and became fired with the ambition to go to sea. His parents discouraged the idea, but nothing could damp the boy's ardour, and though he had no teachers in the subjects, he studied geometry and navigation till he attained an amazing proficiency. At last, when he was sixteen, he obtained a position as midshipman, and after a year or two in different ships, sailed for New South Wales in the ship that was taking out a newGovernor. He was now a lieutenant, and for the next five years, with the surgeon of his ship, George Bass, he was engaged in surveying the adjacent coast of Australia,

A Sail in the Tom Thumb. The work he did then and afterwards on other parts of the. coast, considering his poor equipment and enormous difficulties, was marvellous, and the British Admiralty charts today are still based on the original charts of Flinders. First of all, Flinders and Bass were given a little cockle-shell of a boat eight feet long called the Tom Thumn, and in this, with a boy for a crew, they went exploring the coast and risking- their lives in storm and tempest. "Afterwards they explored separately, and Flinders, in a little sloop, was the first man to sail round Tasmania, proving, what had been suspected by Bass, that it was an island. In honour of his friend-, Flinders named the strait between Tasmania and the mainland Bass Strait. Franklin Sails South. On returning to England, Flinders was made a captain and given a ship, the Investigator, for exploring in'Australian waters, and he took with him on the ship a young midshipman, a cousin of his, named John Franklin, who was afterwards to be famous as an Arctic explorer lost in the Frozen North. Franklin was for seven'years Governor of Tasmania, or Van Diemcn;s Land, as it was then called, and he erected a monument to Flinders at Stamford Hill. South Australia, with this inscription:— "This place, from - which the Gulf and its shores were first surveyed on 26. Feb., 1802, by Matthew Flinders, R.N., Commander" of H.M.S. Investigator, The discoverer of the country now called South Australia,, was set apart on 12 Jan., 1841, with the sanction of Lt.-Col. Gawler, K.H., then Governor of the Colony, and in the first year of the Government of Capt. G. Grey, adorned with this monument to the perpetual memory of the illustrious navigator, his honoured commander, by John Franklin, Capt. R.N., K.C.H., K.R., Lt.-Governor of Van Diemen's Land." While at Port Jackson Flinders established a'little observatory, and put Franklin in charge, and the. midshipman did so well that Captain King, the Governor of New South Wales, used to address him humorously as .Mr Tyeho Braho. Flinders sailed right round Australia, and proved for the first time that it was a single island Flinders had many thrilling adventures, including shipwreck, and then sailed for England with his charts and survey notes. England and France were at war at the time, and, putting into .Mauritius, Flinders was arrested as a spy and tnrown into prison, all his notes being seized and sent to France, where they were published with French names and given out as the glorious results of the "work of French explorers. , For six years Flinders languished in confinement, and then he was released and returned home to obtain credit for his splendid services. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest navigators and hydrographers the world has produced, and it was in his book giving an account of his explorations that he first suggested the name Australia for what had been hitherto called New Holland. The idea was adopted, and Flinders thus named a continent.