His repeated appeals, for back-dating another
six years to the official end of his nautical
survey, were rejected. They lived in a series
of rented rooms in London, constantly
experimenting with such ineffective remedies
as citrus juice, seltzer water and magnesia for
his pain-racked half-life on half-pay.
Following his death – on July 19, 1814,
at the age of only 40 – the naval authorities
compounded their unkindness by refusing
Ann a special pension. Instead, she existed
cautiously on the standard gratuity made
to the widow of a captain until her own
death long afterwards in 1852. There would
be no financial recognition of her husband’s
contribution to Britain’s standing as a force
of empire.
But Ann Flinders herself, a woman of
indomitable spirit, left an elegantly written
memoir to Matthew, ranking him among his
nation’s most celebrated explorers. “Hunger,
thirst, labour, rest, sickness, shipwreck,
imprisonment, Death itself,” she wrote, “were
equally to him matters of indifference if they
interfered with his darling Discovery.”
His lasting image is one of unfailing
stoicism in the face of oppressive adversity.
So, too, is Ann’s. Just as Flinders attains heroic
stature, she emerges from their travails as
personifying to a profound degree an Austen
character study of courage and forbearance –
and as a heroine of the Regency era.In January
this year
archaeologists
working on
the site of a
high-speed
rail project in
London found
the mortal
remains of
Matthew
Flinders. He had
been interred,
in July 1814, at the St James’s burial
ground, but his headstone was removed
during an earlier railway development
in 1840 and all trace of the celebrated
explorer apparently lost.Identification was established through
a lead breastplate (pictured) attached
to the coffin. His name has long been
attached, too, to a range of sites and
institutions in Australia. Among their
number are a university, a mountain
range, a parliamentary electorate and a
national park.
There is even a nautical device, used in
maritime compasses worldwide, known
as the Flinders bar. It compensatesfor magnetic deviation caused by the
iron in ships’ superstructure and cargo.
Flinders invented it in a series of tests
he conducted, with Admiralty support,
in 1812. Dr Gillian Dooley, of Flinders
University, Adelaide, has found that
one of those trials took place aboard
HMS Namur, captained by Jane Austen’s
brother Charles. Dr Dooley now hopes
for his further posthumous, and
peaceful, recognition through Flinders
being buried in the English countryside,
“which is what he wished”, she says.The legacy left by Flinders extends
also to the fields of Egyptology and
mathematics. His daughter, Anne, had
a son, Sir William Matthew Flinders
Petrie (1853–1942), who excavated many
of the most important archaeological
sites in Egypt, becoming Britain’s first
professor of Egyptology, at University
College London. He in turn had a son,
John Flinders Petrie (1907-72), a juvenile
prodigy who became a distinguished
mathematician and had his name
conferred in perpetuity to a geometric
visualisation known as “the Petrie
polygon”.
Discovery, it seems, was in the genes.Dr Nigel Starck is an alumnus of the
Flinders University of South AustraliaA grave discovery and a lasting legacy