Come 1791, he was ready to try again,
commanding HMS Providence with Flinders
as one of his midshipmen, the most junior of
officer ranks in the navy. It was a seductive
experience for a boy of 17, turning 18: the
dramatic scenery of Tenerife and the Cape
of Good Hope; the dash across the bottom
of the globe to Tasmania (then known as
Van Diemen’s Land), driven ever onward by
Roaring Forties winds; skirting New Zealand
in salt-lashed tempest; then turning for the
warmth of Tahiti and its breadfruit target
after a voyage of nine months.
Seduction of the fleshly
kind flourished too.
The crew were
warned about
the charms of
Tahitian women,
and about the threat to
health accompanying those charms.
But temptation was often impossible to
resist. A Providence log, cited by Flinders’s
biographer Miriam Estensen, points to
at least a quarter of the ship’s company
having their pay docked for venereal
disease treatment. The name of the young
midshipman, she writes, appears twice on
the list.
Then ensued an arduous slog back home
via what is now Indonesia, the southern
extremity of Africa again, and to the West
Indies ports for unloading their cargo of
more than 2,000 saplings. Watering them
every day, for five months, had been a
tiresome task for sailors desperately short of
drinking water themselves. The young trees
took to the Caribbean soil, though, and the
fruit is a prominent feature of the region’s
diet today.
Ever the opportunist, Flinders signed up
again for naval warfare, seeing fierce action in
1794 in what became known as the Glorious
First of June, when the British fleet routed
the French. This career momentum, fired
by his unfettered drive, led to appointment
aboard HMS Reliance the following year,
when it took a colonial governor to Australia.
His resourcefulness was soon recognised.
After the arrival of the Reliance, Flinders
was dispatched on schooners and sloops
and even tiny open boats to penetrate the
hazards of the extensive – and, until then,
largely unknown – inlets and promontories
of the Australian mainland and its islands.
This allowed him to exercise some naming
rights. In honour of Ann, upon whom he
had apparently called again in his pre-
embarkation leave, he gave the name of
Mount Chappelle to one rocky outcrop.
Back home once more in 1800, he
pursued two ambitions: command of a
major expedition in his own right, and the
quest for a wife. With Sir Joseph Banks yet
again as the agitator, the British Admiralty
endorsed another mission to Australia that
would finally resolve the uncharted elements
of its coast, collect its exotic
flora and define its
unique fauna. And
with Sir Joseph
as his patron,
Flinders was
given command of the
craft selected for the job, HMS
Investigator. His complement of 83 included
a botanist, a botanical artist, an astronomer, a
landscape painter and a gardener. This was to
be a voyage of enlightenment.
Fired by these new-found powers,Top, ‘Poedooa, the Daughter of Oree’, painted
by John Webber in 1782, illustrated the allure
of Tahitian women to the sailors of the British
navy. Above, the platypus: Australia’s egg-
laying semi-aquatic mammal, by Ferdinand
Bauer, botanical artist on the 1801-03
Investigator voyage