1803
Matthew Flinders’ hat
The investigator
With this sturdy bicorn hat for protection, Matthew Flinders was the first person to describe Australia as an island; he also gave the country its name. He was still wearing the black velour bicorn hat, trimmed with black braid, when he was wrongfully detained and his life was ruined by a martinet Frenchman.
Born in 1774 in Lincolnshire, Flinders entered the Royal Navy in 1789, inspired by the novel Robinson Crusoe. In 1795 he sailed for Port Jackson in HMS Reliance with his friend George Bass, a surgeon. Bass and Flinders had a small boat, Tom Thumb, and in it they explored the coast around Port Jackson as far north as Norfolk Island. In 1798 they were given a much larger boat, Norfolk, and investigated whether Van Diemen’s Land was an island or not. Finding it was, they called the separating waters Bass Strait.
Flinders returned to London and in 1801 was promoted to commander and given HMS Investigator to explore more of Australia’s coast. On the same visit to England he married Ann Chappell. Due to events they could not have then foreseen, it was to be a decade before they lived together.
Arriving in Western Australia Flinders sailed east, charting what was called the Unknown Coast. He discovered Spencer Gulf and Kangaroo Island. On 8 April, the Investigator came across the French ship Le Géographe, and befriended Captain Nicolas Baudin.
After a brief stay in Port Jackson, Flinders mapped the coast of Queensland. On board the Investigator were scientists and Flinders’ associate Bungaree, an Aboriginal man who had accompanied Bass and Flinders on their adventures. Flinders also had a cat called Trim.
Despite all manner of trouble with the ship, Flinders finished his circumnavigation – confirming Australia to be a single continent and landmass – and finally returned to Port Jackson on 9 June 1803. He was the first person who could accurately describe what Australia looked like.
Having completed that impressive odyssey, Flinders set sail for England to get a new boat and see his wife. When he put into Mauritius, then a French outpost, he missed his friend Baudin by one day. Baudin had left behind a letter outlining the help that Flinders had given him and asking that he receive the same hospitality in Mauritius. Flinders also had a French passport, given him because of the scientific work he was doing. Baudin’s letter notwithstanding, France and England were at war and the governor of Mauritius, General Charles Decaen, arrested Flinders. After three years Napoleon recommended that Flinders be released, but Decaen defied the order and Flinders was not released until early in 1810.
By the time he reached England, his health was poor. For the next three years he worked on his magnum opus, A Voyage to Terra Australis. It was published on 18 July 1814, and Flinders died the next day. The book was his most profound achievement in a life of many. He wrote in the introduction: ‘Had I permitted myself any innovation upon the original term, it would have been to convert it into Australia; as being more agreeable to the ear, and as an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth.’
A copy of Flinders’ book was sent to Governor Lachlan Macquarie, who began to use the name in official documents – and it stuck. By 1820 the continent had adopted Flinders’ name for itself.