This book contained Flinders' "Journal of transactions and observations on board the Investigator, the Porpoise, the Hope cutter, and Cumberland schooner," for the preceding six months.* (* Flinders, Voyage 2 378 and 463.) There was therefore nothing in it which could have been of any use in relation to the so-called Terre Napoleon. The log-book embodying Flinders' observations on those coasts pertained to a period before the six months just mentioned, and was never seen by Decaen, nor did he see any of Flinders' charts whatever.
Towards the end of December the whole of the remaining books and papers of Flinders, even including his family letters, were, in his presence, collected from the ship by M. Bonnefoy, an interpreter, and Colonel Monistrol, Decaen's secretary--who "acted throughout with much politeness, apologising for what they were obliged by their orders to execute"--and sealed up in another trunk.* (* Ibid 2 367.) Later in the same month (December 26), Flinders, wishing to occupy his time in confinement by proceeding with his work, wrote to the governor, requesting that he might have his printed volumes, and two or three charts and manuscript books, for the purpose of finishing his chart of the Gulf of Carpentaria, adding in explanation that some of his papers were lost in the wreck of the Porpoise, and he wished to finish the work from memory, with the aid of the remaining materials, before the details faded from his recollection. Decaen acceded to his request, and Flinders took out two log-books, such charts as were necessary, all his private letters, and his journals of bearings and astronomical observations. He also took out his naval signal-book, which he destroyed, lest it should be seen by any French officer. He gave a receipt for the documents, and the remainder were once more locked up in the trunk, which was again sealed by Flinders.* (* Voyage 2 378.) The papers so obtained were the "greatest part"* (* Flinders, letter to Governor King, August 1804, and letter to Banks, July 12. Historical Records of New South Wales 4 411 and 396.) of his books and charts, and the possession of them, enabling Flinders to devote his energies to the work he loved, relieved the depression which imprisonment and illness cast upon his active brain and body.
In February of the following year Flinders made another application for more books and papers, consisting of the greater part of his "original fair charts,"* (* Voyage 2 384.) for the purpose of making an abridgment of his discoveries upon a single sheet. The governor was by this time very angry with his captive; the more so, probably, as he was conscious of the inadequacy of the reasons for detaining him. But the demeanour of the English captain did not please him either. Flinders, maintaining the dignity of his uniform, had not assumed a humble mien, and had even refused an invitation to dine with the general unless he could attend, not as a prisoner, but as an officer free and unsuspect. If Decaen really believed him to be a spy, why did he invite him? The governor, however, was not now in a mood to oblige his prisoner, and in response to his application for more papers, curtly replied that he would attend to the request when freed from more pressing business. Flinders in March urged Colonel Monistrol to intercede; complained in May that the manuscripts were still withheld; and, being unable to make any impression on the obdurate Decaen, completed his map with the aid of another journal kept by Mr. Akin, the master of the Investigator, who was a fellow-prisoner until May 1805.
These remaining documents were not restored till August 1807, when Flinders was invited to go to Port Louis from the house in the country where part of his imprisonment was spent, and take possession of the trunk. He found that rats had eaten their way into it, and had made great havoc among his papers, totally destroying some. But the seals were unbroken, and Flinders gave a receipt for the contents, acknowledging that the most important documents had happily escaped the rats.* (* Voyage 2 462.) He was an observant man, and if he had had any suspicion that the charts had been tampered with, would have promptly said so. There is not, however, the faintest reason for believing that the trunk had been opened between December 1803, when Flinders was permitted to take out the "greatest part" of his important papers, and August 1807, when the remainder were restored to him. The only missing documents were the few which the rats had eaten, the third log-book, which Decaen refused to give up, and two packets of official despatches which the Cumberland was carrying from Sydney to England, and which Colonel Monistrol informed him had been "long ago disposed of." The Colonel "supposed that something in them had contributed to my imprisonment." They had been "disposed of" by being sent to Paris for the perusal of Napoleon's Government.
Why, however, did Decaen refuse permission to Flinders to have the last of his papers till the year 1807? Why had he willingly permitted him to take some of them in December 1803, but declined to let him have any more till nearly four years later? A comparison of dates is instructive on this point. As has already been said, the first volume of Péron's Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes, and the first edition of the atlas containing two of Freycinet's charts, were published in 1807. Making all allowances for the obstinate character of Decaen, it is most significant that the remainder of Flinders' charts and papers were kept from him until the very time when Freycinet was ready to publish the first and hurried edition of his atlas. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that the governor was acting under influences exerted from Paris, private if not official, in refusing the navigator access to the material which it was believed was essential to the completion of the charts that would demonstrate his discoveries, until the French officer could hurry out a makeshift atlas and fictitious claims could be based upon it.
This conduct was reprehensible enough, but, it must be insisted, there is no ground whatever for the too frequently made assertion that Flinders' charts were surreptitiously copied or actually stolen--for the loose manner in which the affair has been related in some books renders doubtful which of the two accusations the authors desired to make.* (* Blair, Cyclopaedia of Australasia page 131, actually says that Baudin, "having taken copies of Flinders' charts, sailed for France, where he published a book and received great applause from the French nation, who called him the greatest discoverer of the present century." Spirit-writing one has heard of, but not even the Psychical Research Society has recorded the case of a dead man copying hydrographical charts. A similar disregard of the fact that Baudin died before the return of his ships occurs in J.E. Tenison Woods' History of Exploration in Australia (1865) volume 1 page 174, where we are informed that Flinders was detained in Mauritius, because "at that time the Emperor Napoleon was obliging Admiral Baudin [sic] to usurp the glory of his discoveries"; a case of post-mortem promotion.) Not only is there no evidence to support any such charge, but Flinders himself never accused Decaen of making an improper use of the papers in the trunk, nor did he ever allege that the two charts contained in the French atlas of 1807, or those in Freycinet's folio atlas of 1812--which he probably saw before his death in July 1814--were founded upon or owed anything to his drawings. He simply set forth the facts with his habitual exactness and fairness; and where Flinders was just, there is surely no warrant for others to perpetuate an accusation which originated in a period of intense national hatred and jealousy, and bears its birth-mark upon it.
A critical examination of Freycinet's charts is alone sufficient to shatter the opinion that he utilised the drawings of the English navigator. Had he even seen them, his own work would have been more accurate than it was, and his large chart of New Holland would have been more complete. It has already been shown that the French chart of the so-called Terre Napoleon coasts was in large measure defective, many capes, islands, and bays being represented that have no existence in fact, and a large portion of the outline being crudely and erroneously drawn. Not only so, but if Freycinet had had copies of Flinders' charts before him, use would certainly have been made of them to give greater completeness to the eastern and north-western shores. Flinders, in his last voyage in the Investigator, had made important discoveries on the Queensland coast and in the Gulf of Carpentaria. He had discovered, for instance, Port Bowen and Port Curtis, which had been missed by Cook, had given greater definiteness to the islands near the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, and had made a dangerous acquaintance with the Reef itself, discovering one narrow alley through it which is marked on modern maps as Flinders' Passage. In the Gulf of Carpentaria he had also done some entirely original work. He had shown, for example, that Cape Van Diemen, represented as a projection from the mainland on all previous maps, was really part of an island, which he named Mornington Isle. Freycinet's charts reveal not the faintest trace of the fresh discoveries which Flinders had achieved around east and north-east Australia, nor do they in any particular indicate that their manifold serious imperfections had been corrected by reference to Flinders' superb charts. In short, the French work, though beautifully engraved and printed, was, in a geographical sense, for the most part too poor to justify the suspicion that Freycinet received aid from the drawings of the persevering captain of the Investigator.
The circumstances attending the imprisonment of Flinders, and the precipitate haste with which Freycinet's work was pushed forward, undoubtedly furnished prima facie justification for the suspicion, indignantly voiced by contemporary English writers, and which has been hardened into a direct accusation since, that an act of plagiarism was committed, dishonest in itself, and doubly guilty from the circumstances in which it was performed. The Quarterly reviewer of 1817* pointed out that the few charts in Freycinet's atlas "ARE VERY LIKE THOSE OF CAPTAIN FLINDERS, ONLY MUCH INFERIOR IN POINT OF EXECUTION." (* Volume 17 pages 229 to 230; the italics are the reviewer's. The plagiarism legend--for such it is--originated with this Quarterly article. The earliest biographer of Flinders, in the Naval Chronicle 32 page 177, wrote very strongly of General Decaen, considering that he was "worthy of his Corsican master," and that his name "will be consigned to infamy as long as mankind shall consider it honourable to promote science and civilised to practise hospitality," but alleged no improper use of the charts. C.A. Walckenaer, who wrote the excellent life of Flinders in the Biographie Universelle, published in 1856, said that the French Government was "inexcusable d'avoir retenu Flinders en captivite," but denied that his charts were improperly used, and promised that when he came to write the life of Péron in a succeeding volume, he would by an analysis of the evidence refute the story. But Walckenaer died in 1852, before his Flinders article was published, and the author of the article on Péron did not carry out his predecessor's undertaking. It is to be presumed that Walckenaer would have exhibited the facts set out above. Alfred de Lacaze, in his article on Flinders in the Nouvelle Biographie Generale 17 932, wrote that the excuses given for the imprisonment of Flinders formed "pauvres pretextes"; but declared that the seals put on Flinders' papers in Mauritius were "loyalement respecte pendant les six ans que dura la captivite du navigateur anglais." That was true. It is a pleasure to acknowledge that all the references to Flinders which the author has seen in French works unanimously and strongly condemn the treatment of him, and do ample justice to his splendid qualities.) They are very like in one respect, namely, in the representation of Spencer's and St. Vincent's Gulfs and Kangaroo Island. In other particulars, at all events as far as relates to the Terre Napoleon coasts, the French charts are quite unlike those of Flinders. But contemporaries--knowing that Flinders' charts had been taken from him by Decaen, and that he had been held in captivity until the French could finish their work, and then, comparing his charts with Freycinet's, finding that parts of the coasts discovered by the English captain were well represented on the French charts, while other parts of the outline of Terra Australis were badly done or inadequate--not unnaturally drew the inference that the well-drawn sections were based upon drawings improperly acquired. If the chain of evidence was not complete, the violent racial animosities then prevalent moulded the missing links in the fervent heat of imagination.
But it is quite easy to account for the superior cartography of the two gulfs and Kangaroo Island. Le Geographe visited this region twice. In April 1802, after meeting Flinders in Encounter Bay, Baudin sailed west, and endeavoured to penetrate the two gulfs. But his corvette drew too much water to permit him to go far, and he determined to give up the attempt, and to devote "une seconde campagne" to "la reconnaissance complete de ces deux grands enfoncements."* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 3 11.) In Sydney, Governor King permitted him to purchase a small locally constructed vessel of light draught--called the Casuarina, because she was built of she-oak--with which to explore rivers and shallow waters. The command of this boat was entrusted to Lieutenant Louis de Freycinet, the future cartographer and part historian of the expedition; and the charts of the two gulfs and Kangaroo Island were made by, or under the superintendence of, that officer. Freycinet was not with Le Geographe on her first cruise in these waters, and was not responsible for the original drawings upon which his charts of the Terre Napoleon coasts eastward of Cape Jervis were founded. But the fact that he surveyed the gulfs and Kangaroo Island on the second visit, in 1803, is quite sufficient to account for the improved cartography of this region in the French atlas. Whatever we may think of the part played by Freycinet in relation to Flinders and the history of the expedition, his professional ability was of a high character. All the charting work done by him, when he had not to depend upon the rough drawings of inferior men, was very good. His interest in scientific navigation was deep, and when, in 1817, he was given the command of a fresh French expedition, consisting of the Uranie and the Physicienne, the large folio atlas produced by him indicated that he had studied the technicalities of his profession to excellent purpose.
The superiority of the work done by Baudin's expedition in the vicinity of the two gulfs, then, was not due to any fraudulent use of Flinders' material, but simply to the fact that there was a competent officer in charge of it at that time; and there is nothing on the charts for which Freycinet was personally responsible to justify the belief that his work claiming to be original was not genuinely his own. When, in 1824, he published a second edition of the Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes,* (* In octavo volumes; the first edition was in quarto.) he repudiated with quiet dignity the suggestion that the work of the English navigator had been plagiarised.* (* "C'est assez," he wrote, "repousser des accusations odieuses et envenimees, fondees sur des idees chimeriques, avec absence de toute espece de preuve. Le temps, qui calme les passions humaines et permet toujours a la verite de reprendre ses droits, fera justice d'accusations concues avec legerete et soutenues avec inconvenance. Péron et Flinders sont morts; l'un et l'autre ont des titres certains a notre estime, a notre admiration; ils vivront, ainsi que leurs travaux, dans la memoire des hommes, et les nuages que je cherche a dissiper auront disparu sans retour" (volume 1 Preface page 11). One cannot but be touched by that appeal; but at the same time it is to be observed that in the very preface in which he made it, Freycinet did far less than justice to the work of Flinders.) Except for the Port Phillip part of the work, we might fairly say that history has commonly done him and his confreres a serious injustice.