1st. If your Excellency will permit me to depart with my vessel, papers, etc., I will pledge my honour not to give any information of the Isle of France or any thing belonging to it, for a limited time, if it be thought that I can have gained any information; or if judged necessary, any other restrictions can be laid upon me. If this will not be complied with, I request,
2nd, to be sent to France.
3rd. But if it be indispensable to detain me here, I request that my officer and people may be permitted to depart in the schooner; as well for the purpose of informing the British Admiralty where I am, as to relieve our families and friends from the report which will be spread of the total loss of the Porpoise and Cato, with all on board. Mr. Aken can be laid under what restrictions may be deemed requisite; and my honour shall be a security that nothing shall be transmitted by me, but what passes under the inspection of the officer who may be appointed for that purpose.
In case of refusing to adopt any of these modes, by which my voyage might proceed without possibility of injury to the Isle of France, I then reminded His Excellency that since the shipwreck of the Porpoise, six months before, my people as well as myself had been mostly confined either upon a small sand bank in the open sea, or in a boat, or otherwise on board the Cumberland where there was no room to walk, or been kept prisoners as at that time; and that I had not previously recovered from a scorbutic and very debilitated state, arising from eleven months exposure to great fatigue, bad climate, and salt provisions. After noticing my scorbutic sores, and his refusal of the surgeon's application for me to walk out, it was added--The captain-general best knows whether my conduct has deserved, or the exigencies of his government require, that I should continue to be closely confined in this sickly town and cut off from society; but of no part of this letter was any notice taken.
Two days before, I had been favoured with a visit from captain Bergeret of the French navy, who had commanded La Virginie frigate when taken by Sir Edward Pellew, and of whose honourable conduct in the affair of Sir W. Sydney Smith's imprisonment, public mention had been made in England. This gentleman sat some time conversing upon my situation, which he seemed desirous to ameliorate; he said that "the general did not consider me to be a prisoner of war, and that my confinement did not arise from any thing I had done." From what then did it arise? At this question he was silent. He regretted not to have been in town on my arrival, believing it would have been in his power to have turned the tide of consequences; and obligingly offered to supply me with money, if in want.
During a fortnight from this time, no incident occurred worth notice. My scorbutic sores being much better, the surgeon came but seldom; and the visits of the interpreter being less frequent than before, our solitude was rarely interrupted. The Gulph of Carpentaria and Torres' Strait being finished, my time had since been employed in writing an explanatory memoir upon the latter chart; Mr. Aken was occupied in copying the journal of bearings for the Admiralty, and my servant in transcribing the two first volumes of the log, which had been torn and defaced in the shipwreck; so that our time did not pass wholly in vain. It was the completion of the charts, however, that I had most at heart; and although the success of an application for more materials were very doubtful, an essay to obtain them was made on the 27th, in the following letter to the captain-general.
Sir,
The term of my imprisonment being lengthened out much beyond my expectation, puts me under the necessity of making another application to Your Excellency for more books and charts, that I may still proceed in completing the account of my observations and discoveries. If the whole were put into my possession it would be of much service to my labour, and save Your Excellency from being troubled with any further application on this head; but if this will not be complied with, I beg to make a small selection from them, which will principally consist of a roll of charts. I am not however to deceive Your Excellency--this roll contains the greater part of my original fair charts, and I am desirous to have them principally for the purpose of making an abridgment of my discoveries upon a single sheet. With all due consideration, I am
Your Excellency's prisoner,
Matthew Flinders.
This letter was no more fortunate than the last, and it seemed that general De Caen had determined upon giving me no answer to any thing.
The Admiral Aplin, an extra-indiaman outward bound, on board of which were several officers of the army and four ladies, had been brought in as a prize; the ladies with their husbands were suffered to remain at a tavern in the town, at the instance of captain Bergeret, by whose privateer, La Psyché, they had been taken; the others were sent to a house at a little distance in the country, where all the English officers had been a short time confined. I ventured to send my servant to the tavern, to inquire after my countrymen and women; and they obligingly furnished me with magazines, newspapers, and a Steele's list of the navy, up to August 1803, which in such a place, and after so long an ignorance of what was passing in England, were highly acceptable.
MARCH 1804