After this encounter Flinders discovered and named Port Phillip, at the head of which stands the famous city of Melbourne to-day, and then made his way on to Port Jackson. He had managed his crews so well that the inhabitants of Port Jackson declared they were reminded of England by the fresh colour of the men amongst the Investigator ship's company. The Frenchmen had not fared so well. One hundred and fifty out of one hundred and seventy were down with scurvy and had to be taken to the hospital at Sydney.
Before the end of July, Flinders was off again, sailing northwards along the eastern coast of New South Wales. October found him passing the Great Barrier reefs, and on the 21st he had reached the northernmost point, Cape York. Three days of anxious steering took the Investigator through Torres Strait, and Flinders was soon sailing into the great Gulf of Carpentaria. Still hugging the coast, he discovered a group of islands to the south of the gulf, which he named the Wellesley Islands, after General Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington. Here he found a wealth of vegetation; cabbage palm was abundant, nutmegs plentiful, and a sort of sandal-wood was growing freely. He spent one hundred and five days exploring the gulf; then he continued his voyage round the west coast and back to Port Jackson by the south. He returned after a year's absence with a sickly crew and a rotten ship. Indeed, the Investigator was incapable of further service, and Flinders decided to go back to England for another ship. As passenger on board the Porpoise, early in August 1802, he sailed from Sydney for the Torres Strait accompanied by two returning transports. All went well for the first four days, and they had reached a spot on the coast of Queensland, when a cry of "Breakers ahead!" fell on the evening air. In another moment the ship was carried amongst the breakers and struck upon a coral reef. So sudden was the disaster that there was no time to warn the other ships closely following. As the Porpoise rolled over on her beam ends, huge seas swept over her and the white foam leapt high. Then the mast snapped, water rushed in, and soon the Porpoise was a hopeless wreck. A few minutes later, one of the transports struck the coral reef: she fell on her side, her deck facing the sweeping rollers, and was completely wrecked. The other transport escaped, sailed right away from the scene of disaster, and was never seen again by the crew of the Porpoise. The dawn of day showed the shipwrecked crew a sandbank, to which some ninety-four men made their way and soon set sailcloth tents on the barren shore. They had saved enough food for three months. Flinders as usual was the moving spirit. A fortnight later in one of the ship's boats, with twelve rowers and food for three weeks, he left Wreck Reef amid ringing cheers to get help from Sydney for the eighty men left on the sandbank.
"The reader," says the hero of this adventure, "has perhaps never gone two hundred and fifty leagues at sea in an open boat or along a strange coast inhabited by savages; but, if he recollect the eighty officers and men upon Wreck Reef, and how important was our arrival to their safety and to the saving of the charts, journals, and papers of the Investigator's voyage, he may have some idea of the pleasure we felt, particularly myself, at entering our destined port."
Half-starved, unshaven, deplorable indeed were the men when they staggered into Sydney, and "an involuntary tear started from the eye of friendship and compassion" when the Governor learnt how nearly Flinders and his friends had lost their lives.
|
THE HUTS OF THE CREW OF THE PORPOISE ON THE SANDBANK,
WRECK REEF. From Flinders' Voyages. |
A few days later Flinders left Sydney for the last time, in a little home-built ship of twenty-nine tons, the Cumberland. It was the first ship ever built in the colony, and the colonists were glad it should be of use to the man who had done so much for their country. With all his papers and his beloved journals, Flinders put to sea accompanied by a ship to rescue the men left on Wreck Reef. Three months later, owing to the leaky condition of the ship, he landed at Mauritius. Here he was taken prisoner and all his papers and journals were seized by the French. During his imprisonment a French Voyage of Discovery was issued, Napoleon himself paying a sum of money to hasten publication. All the places discovered by Flinders, or "Monsieur Flinedore" as the French called him, were called by French names. Fortunately before reaching Mauritius, Flinders had sent duplicate copies of his charts home, and the whole fraud was exposed. Flinders did not reach home till 1810. A last tragedy awaited him. For he died in 1814, on the very day that his great book, The Voyage to Terra Australis, was published. Flinders was a true explorer, and as he lay dying he cried, "I know that in future days of exploration my spirit will rise from the dead and follow the exploring ship!"