Very shortly after leaving Kangaroo Island Flinders met one of the vessels of the French exploring expedition; and the story of that occurrence must occupy our particular consideration in the next chapter.
CHAPTER 15. FLINDERS AND BAUDIN IN ENCOUNTER BAY.
Flinders did not complete the examination of Kangaroo island. The approach of the winter season, and an apprehension that shortness of provisions might compel him to make for Port Jackson before concluding the discovery of the south coast, induced him to leave the south and west parts of the island, with the intention of making a second visit at a later time. Therefore, in the afternoon of Tuesday, April 6th, the anchor was weighed and he resumed the exploration of the mainland eastward from Cape Jervis, at the extremity of St. Vincent's Gulf. Wind and tide made against a rapid passage, and the east end of Kangaroo Island had not been cleared by eight o'clock on the following evening.
TABLET AT ENCOUNTER BAY, SOUTH AUSTRALIA, COMMEMORATING THE MEETING OF FLINDERS AND BAUDIN
At four o'clock on the afternoon of April 8th the sloop was making slow progress eastward, when the man aloft reported that a white rock was to be seen ahead. The attention of everybody on board was at once turned in the direction of the object. Very soon it became apparent that it was not a rock but a ship, which had sighted the Investigator, and was making towards her. As no sail had been seen for five months, and it seemed beyond all likelihood that another ship should be spoken in these uncharted seas, where there was no settlement, no port at which refreshment could be obtained, no possibility of trade, no customary maritime route, it may be imagined that there was a feeling of excitement among the ship's company. Flinders of course knew that the French had a discovery expedition somewhere in Australasian waters, and the fact that it had secured some months' start of him had occasioned a certain amount of anxiety before he left England. He was aware that it was protected by a passport from the British Government. The approaching vessel might be one of Baudin's; but she might by some strange chance be an enemy's ship of war. In any case, he prepared for emergencies: "we cleared for action in case of being attacked."
Glasses were turned on the stranger, which proved on closer scrutiny to be "a heavy-looking ship, without any top-gallant masts up." The Investigator hoisted her colours—the Union Jack, it may be remarked, since that flag was adopted by Great Britain at the beginning of 1801, before the expedition sailed. The stranger put up the tricolour, "and afterwards an English Jack forward, as we did a white flag."* (* Flinders relates the story of his meeting with Baudin, in his Voyage to Terra Australis, 1 188, and in letters to the Admiralty; and to Sir Joseph Banks, printed in Historical Records of New South Wales, 4 749 and 755. The official history of the French voyage was written by Francois Peron, and is printed in his Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes, 1 324. But Peron was not present at the interviews between Flinders and Baudin. Captain Baudin's own account of the incident is related in his manuscript diary, and in a long letter to the French Minister of Marine, dated "Port Jackson, 10th November, 1802," both of which are in the Archives Nationales, BB4, 995, Marine. These sources have been compared and used in the writing of this chapter. Baudin's narrative is translated in an appendix.)
It has already been explained (Chapter 11) that Le Geographe, commanded by the commodore of the French expedition, separated from Le Naturaliste at the eastern entrance to Bass Strait on March 7th and 8th, and that Baudin sailed through the Strait westward. We take up the thread again at that point, and will follow Baudin until he met Flinders. He was between Wilson's Promontory and Cape Otway from March 28th to 31st, in very good weather. The most important fact relating to this part of his voyage is that he missed the entrance to Port Phillip. In his letter to the Minister of Marine, he described the Promontory and the situation of Westernport, and then proceeded to relate that "from the 9th to the 11th (of the month Germinal in the French Revolutionary calendar, by which of course Baudin dated events; equivalent to March 30 to April 1st) the winds having been very favourable to us, we visited an extensive portion of the coast, where the land is high, well-wooded, and of an agreeable appearance, but does not present any place favourable to debarkation. All the points were exactly determined, and the appearance of the shores depicted." That describes the Cape Otway country; and the part of the letter which follows refers to the land on the west of the Otway. There is no word of any port being sighted. The letter agrees with what Baudin told Flinders, that "he had found no ports, harbours or inlets, or anything to interest"; and Flinders was subsequently surprised to find that so large a harbour as Port Phillip had been missed by Baudin, "more especially as he had fine winds and weather."* (* Flinders to Banks, Hist. Rec. 4 755.) Nevertheless, when Peron and Freycinet came to write the history of the French voyage—knowing then of the existence of Port Phillip, and having a chart of it before them—they very boldly claimed that they had seen it, and had distinguished its contours from the masthead,* a thing impossible to do from the situation in which they were. (* Voyage de Decouvertes 1 316 and 3 115.)