Flinders, MATTHEW

Flinders, MATTHEW, an English navigator, who surveyed a great portion of the Australian coasts, was born at Donington, in Lincolnshire, 10th March 1774, and in 1790 entered the navy. Going out to Australia in 1795, he determined to investigate the coast south of Port Jackson, about 250 leagues of which were laid down in the charts as 'unknown.' With an equally daring and ambitious young surgeon in his ship, named Bass, he departed on the enterprise in a small decked vessel, with a crew of only six men. Their chief discovery was the strait between Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) and the mainland of Australia, which was named after Bass. In 1801 Flinders obtained from the British government the command of a scientific expedition for the investigation of the Australian coasts and their products. Commencing his examination at Cape Leeuwin, Flinders in the course of two years gradually explored the coast to Bass Strait (q.v.), thence northwards—laying down carefully the Great Barrier Reefs—to the Gulf of Carpentaria, which he thoroughly surveyed across to Timor, then back to Cape Leeuwin, and round the south coast to Port Jackson (1803). On his way home he was first wrecked, and then detained a prisoner by the French governor of Mauritius, and not allowed to proceed to England until 1810. He gave the world the result of his explorations in A Voyage to Terra Australis, and died July 19, 1814, the day on which his book was published.—The coast of South Australia was long called after him Flinders Land. His name is still attached to the southernmost county in Eyre Peninsula, and to Flinders Island, off that coast; to the Flinders Range in South Australia, rising near the head of Spencer Gulf, and running north (highest peaks, 3100 feet); also to a town in Victoria, 61 miles SE. of Melbourne. See Life by Thynne (1896).