Flinders stepped up the romantic ardour.
Writing to Ann from the Investigator as it
was being readied for departure, he urged her
to meet him so that “this hand shall be thine
forever”. They were married on April 17, 1801,
in a ceremony conducted by her stepfather
at St Nicholas’s, Partney. She immediately
set about buying outfits for a changed way
of life in Australia and made herself at home
on the ship. This was indiscreet. Nobody had
told Banks, who apparently did not even
know of the marriage. It is said that Ann was
seen by a senior Admiralty officer, or officers,
sitting on the commander’s knee in his cabin.
Banks threatened Flinders with dismissal
from the expedition unless he sailed without
her. Flinders expressed disappointment
but gave in and on July 20, 1801, set off
unaccompanied. He would be away, and
parted from his bride, until October 1810.Matthew Flinders had a cat, a creature
he remembered in an epitaph as “the
most illustrious of his race”. He named
it Trim, after the faithful manservant in
Laurence Sterne’s novel Tristram Shandy
who attended to his master “with great
fidelity and affection”.Trim was born aboard the Reliance
during its explorations of 1799 when
the ship’s resident cat, brought all the
way to Australian waters from Britain,
produced a litter. This particular kitten
was black with a white star on his chest,
and feet that, as Flinders himself put it,
“seemed to have been dipped in snow”.
He impressed the commander by having
no fear of the ocean, happy to swim and
climb back to the deck up a rope.
He completed the voyage of the
Reliance and was temporarily deposited- not all that comfortably, for he was
accustomed to the heave and the pitch
of a life on the waves – in a London
house. Trim rejoined Flinders on the
1801 Investigator quest, sailing right
around Australia, surviving a shipwreck
and then attending to the vermin on
the doomed Cumberland.
While his master languished as a
prisoner, Trim was boarded out once
more – this time, according to Flinders,
“with a little girl and her mother” on
Mauritius. But he vanished in 1804,
never to be seen again.Trim had supplied unfailing on-boardentertainment, as well as winning
respect for keeping down the rats and
mice. He was allowed to steal food from
the very forks of sailors as they dined
and admired for being able to dash up
the gangway steps “quicker than any
member of the ship’s crew”.Flinders even wrote a biographical
tribute to Trim, describing him as “the
most affectionate of friends, faithful of
servants and best of creatures”. A new
edition, Trim, The Cartographer’s Cat,
by Matthew Flinders, Philippa Sandall
and Gillian Dooley, will be published
by Bloomsbury on October 17, 2019.
Meanwhile, a statue (pictured) stands
today in Donington, Lincolnshire, the
home of the Flinders family, in memory
of the cat possessed of a passion for the
sea and those who sailed it.Having a feline for the seas