The French cartography of the portions of the coast eastward of the two gulfs was so badly done, in fact, that many of the features indicated on the charts are mere geographical Mrs. Harrises--there "ain"t no sich"
places. The coast was not surveyed at all, but was sketched roughly, inaccurately, and out of scale; so that even the sandy stretch now known as the Coorong, which is about as featureless as a railway embankment, was fitted with names and drawn with corrugations as though it were as jagged as a gigantic saw. Our respect for such names as Montesquieu and Descartes causes us to regret that they should have been wasted on a cape and a bay that geography knows not; and our abiding interest in the sinister genius of Talleyrand fosters the wish that his patronymic had been reserved for some other feature than the curve of the coast which holds "the Rip" of Port Phillip, though in one sense he who was so wont to "fish in troubled waters" is not inaptly a.s.sociated with that boil of sea."*
(* "Loud-voiced and reckless as the wild tide-race That whips our harbour mouth,"
wrote Mr. Rudyard Kipling ("Song of the English") of the people of Melbourne. It is believed that he meant to be complimentary.)
The south and west of Kangaroo Island were, however, first charted by Baudin, and his names survive there. Flinders had marked these sh.o.r.es with a dotted line on his chart, to signify that he had not surveyed them. He intended to complete this bit of work on his return, but he was "caught in the clutch of circ.u.mstance," and was never permitted to return. Such names as Cape Borda, Cape Linois, Maupertuis Bay, Cape Gautheaume, Bougainville Bay, and a few others, preserve the memory of the French expedition on Kangaroo Island. A rock, known as Frenchman"s Rock, upon which a record of the visit was cut, also survives there.
A few months after the publication of the Terre Napoleon charts in 1807, the truth about the matter became known. Sir Joseph Banks, who had been kept well informed by Flinders about the work which he had performed, and who had done all that was possible to obtain his release from Mauritius, was influential in scientific circles throughout Europe. Fortunately, he had ample material at his disposal. Flinders had sent home some finished charts from Sydney, and during his imprisonment he wrote up a ma.n.u.script journal which he succeeded in getting conveyed to England. It was this ma.n.u.script which the Admiralty permitted to be perused by the writer of the powerful Quarterly Review article of August 1810. The feeling of indignation evoked by the treatment which the navigator received was intensified when the publication of his Voyage and his charts in 1814 showed the measure of his shining merits--his thoroughness, his accuracy, his diligence, the beauty of his drawings, the vast extent of the entirely new work which he had done, and the manliness, gentleness, courage, and fairness of his personal character.
In addition to the discredit, of which he had to bear his full share, Freycinet was involved in perplexities of another kind. It was a convenient piece of flattery to name the two great gulfs after Napoleon and Josephine when they were Emperor and Empress; but the courtier-like compliment was embarra.s.sing when Josephine was supplanted by Marie Louise, and it became offensive when Napoleon himself was overthrown and a Bourbon once more occupied the throne of France. Many of the other names, too, were those of men no longer in favour. Yet the earlier volumes of the Voyage de Decouvertes had referred in the text to the names on the French charts as though they formed a final system of nomenclature. What was poor Freycinet to do in completing the work? Here, indeed, was a sailor hoist to his own yard-arm with his own halyard. The work could not be dropped, since faith had to be kept with purchasers. In the event, the old names were employed in the text of the completed book, but a fresh atlas was issued (1817) with the name Terre Napoleon wiped off the princ.i.p.al chart, most of the names changed to those given by Flinders and Grant, and a neat note in the corner taking the place of the former eagle--which was moulting; no longer the screaming fowl it used to be--announcing that "this map of New Holland is an exact reduction of that contained in the first edition."* (* "Cette carte de la Nouvelle-Hollande est une reduction exacte de celle contenue dans la premiere edition du Voyage aux Terres Australes.") The announcement was not quite true. It was not "une reduction exacte." The imperial bird had flown, and the names had undergone systematic revision. The Bonaparte family were pitilessly evicted. It was a new and smaller map, with a new allocation of names. Freycinet"s name appeared upon it, and he probably wrote the inscription in the corner.
CHAPTER 5. DID THE FRENCH USE FLINDERS" CHARTS?
a.s.sertions commonly made as to French plagiarism of Flinders" charts.
Lack of evidence to support the charges.
General Decaen and his career.
The facts as to Flinders" charts.
The sealed trunks.
The third log-book and its contents; detention of it by Decaen, and the reasons for his conduct.
Restoration of Flinders" papers, except the log-book and despatches.
Do Freycinet"s charts show evidence of the use of Flinders" material?
How did the French obtain their chart of Port Phillip?
Peron"s report to Decaen as to British intentions in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and the effect on his mind.
Liberation of Flinders.
Capture of Mauritius by the British.
English naval officers and the governor.
Later career of Decaen.
Flinders, in the decrepit little c.u.mberland, put into Port Louis, Mauritius, on December 16, 1803. He was not permitted to sail out again till July 1810; and then he was a broken man, smitten with diseases, the painful product of exposure, shipwreck, confinement in a tropical climate, anxiety, and bitter years of heart-sickness and weary disappointment; yet a brave man still, with some hope n.o.bly burning in the true hero"s heart of him; but with less vitality than hope, so that he could do no more than write his big book of travel, and then lie down to die.
Many loose statements have been written about the use which the French made of Flinders" charts while he was held in captivity. It has been too often taken for granted that the evidence of plagiarism is beyond dispute. Not only popular writers, but historians with claims to be considered scientific, are substantially in agreement on this point. Two examples will indicate what is meant. Messrs. Becke and Jeffery, in their Naval Pioneers of Australia (page 216), a.s.sert that "among other indignities he suffered, he found that the charts taken from him by Decaen had been appropriated to Baudin"s exploring expedition." Again, to take a work appealing to a different section of readers, the Cambridge Modern History also charges the French with "the use of his papers to appropriate for their ships the credit of his discoveries."* (* Volume 9 page 739 (Professor Egerton). Two more examples may be cited. Thus, Laurie, Story of Australasia (1896) page 86. "He found that his journals and charts had been stolen by the French governor of the Mauritius and transferred to Paris, where the fullest advantage was taken of them by M.
Peron." Again, Jose, Australasia (1901) page 21: "His maps were taken to France to be published there with French names as the work of French explorers.")
The charge is, it will be observed, that not only did the French governor of Mauritius imprison the English navigator despite his pa.s.sport, detaining him years after the other members of the c.u.mberland"s company had been liberated, but that Flinders" charts and papers were improperly used in the preparation of the history of Baudin"s expedition. Indeed, the accusation is equivalent to one of garrotting: that General Decaen seized and bound his victim, robbed him, and enabled Freycinet and Peron to use his work as their own.
So widely has this view been diffused, that probably few will be prepared for the a.s.surance that there is no evidence to support it. On the contrary, as will be shown, neither Peron nor Freycinet ever saw any chart or journal taken from Flinders. Use was made, it is believed, of one British chart which may possibly have been his--that embodying a drawing of Port Phillip--but reasons will be given for the opinion that this, whether it was Flinders" chart or Murray"s, was seen by the French before Baudin"s ships left Sydney, and was certainly not copied at Mauritius.
Before proving these statements, it will be convenient to make the reader acquainted with the Captain-General or Military-Governor of Mauritius, Charles Decaen. He was a rough, dogged, somewhat brutal type of soldier, who had attained to eminence during the revolutionary wars. Born at Caen in Normandy in 1769, he served during his youth for three years in the artillery, and then entered a lawyer"s office in his native town; but during the wars of the Revolution, when France was pressed by enemies on all sides, he threw aside quills and parchments, and, in his twenty-third year, entered upon his strenuous fighting career. Thenceforth, until after the signing of the Treaty of Luneville in 1801, he was almost constantly engaged in military operations. He had risen from the ranks, and won commendation for stubborn valour from such commanders as Desaix, Kleber, Hoche, Westermann, and Moreau. He partic.i.p.ated in the cruel war of La Vendee, won fresh laurels during the campaign of the Rhine (1796), and fought with a furious l.u.s.t for battle under the n.o.ble Moreau at Hohenlinden. By that time (1800) he had become a general of division, and on the eve of the battle, when he brought up his force and made his appearance at a council of war, Moreau greeted him with the flattering remark, "Ah! here is Decaen; the battle will be ours to-morrow." He was recognised as a strong-willed general, not brilliant, but very determined, and as also a thoroughly capable and honest administrator.
Napoleon, in 1803, selected him for Indian service, and stationed him at the Isle of France (Mauritius), in the hope that if all went well a heavy blow might some day be struck at British power in India. Decaen was not a courtier, nor a scholar, nor a man of sentiment, but a plain, coa.r.s.e, downright soldier; a true Norman, and a thorough son of the Revolution.
He was not the kind of man to be interested in navigation, discovery, or the expansion of human knowledge; and appeals made to him on these grounds on behalf of Flinders were futile. Yet we must do justice to the admirable side of Decaen"s character, by observing that he bore a reputation for generosity among his fellow-soldiers; and he was a very efficient and economical governor, maintaining a reputation for probity that did not distinguish too many of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic generals. Flinders, just in his opinion even of an enemy, wrote to Sir Joseph Banks that Decaen bore among the people of the island "the character of having a good heart, though too hasty and violent." It is pleasant to find him writing thus of the man who had wronged him, at a time when he had good reason for feeling bitter; and we certainly need not think worse of Decaen than did the man who suffered most from the general"s callous insensibility.
Now, the clear facts with regard to the taking from Flinders of his charts, papers, log-books, and journals are these. On December 17, the day after his arrival at the island, it was signified to him that the governor intended to detain him. All his charts and journals relating to the voyage, and the letters and official packets which he was carrying to England from Sydney, were put in a trunk, which was sealed by Flinders at the desire of the French officers who were sent by Decaen to arrest him.
He signed a paper certifying that all the "charts, journals, and papers of the voyage" had been thus placed in the trunk.* (* Flinders, Voyage 2 361.) On the following day (Sunday, December 18) he was informed that the governor wished to have extracts made from his journals, showing the causes which had compelled him to quit the Investigator, for which ship and for no other, according to Decaen"s contention, the pa.s.sport had been granted. He also wished to elicit from the journals evidence of the reasons which had induced Flinders to stop at Mauritius, instead of sailing for the Cape of Good Hope. The officers explained that General Decaen considered it to be necessary to have these extracts for transmission to the French Government, "to justify himself for granting that a.s.sistance to the c.u.mberland which had been ordered for the Investigator." So far he had not, as a fact, granted any a.s.sistance to the c.u.mberland; for the imprisonment of her commander and crew can hardly be called "a.s.sistance." But as Flinders was convinced that an examination of his latest log-book would manifest his bona fides, and a.s.sure both the governor and the French Government that he was no spy, as Decaen accused him of being, he broke the seal of the trunk, and took out "the third volume of my rough log-book, which contained the whole of what they desired to know, and pointing out the parts in question to the secretary, told him to make such extracts as should be thought requisite."* (*
Flinders, Voyage 2 364.) All the other papers and books were at once returned to the trunk, and sealed as before.
The third log-book was the only doc.u.ment pertaining to Flinders"
discoveries which Decaen ever had in his possession. It was never returned. The rightful owner never saw it again. It has never since been produced. Flinders applied for it repeatedly. On the very day before he was liberated, he made a final demand for it. Mr. Hope, the British commissary for the exchange of prisoners, made a formal official application for it in 1810, but met with "a positive refusal both of the book and of permission to take a copy of it."* (* Hope"s report to the Admiralty, October 25, 1810 (Historical Records of New South Wales 7 435).) In 1811, after Flinders reached England, the Admiralty, at his instance, requested the French Government to insist upon its restoration.
At the end of his book, published 1814, Flinders earnestly protested against Decaen"s continued detention of it. But it was not restored.
This book contained Flinders" "Journal of transactions and observations on board the Investigator, the Porpoise, the Hope cutter, and c.u.mberland 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 ma.n.u.script 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 doc.u.ments, 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 a.s.sumed 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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.ments 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 c.u.mberland 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 Peron"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 fict.i.tious 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 a.s.sertion that Flinders"
charts were surrept.i.tiously 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 sh.o.r.es. 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" Pa.s.sage. 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances 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 Peron in a succeeding volume, he would by an a.n.a.lysis of the evidence refute the story. But Walckenaer died in 1852, before his Flinders article was published, and the author of the article on Peron 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 a.s.sez," 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 pa.s.sions humaines et permet toujours a la verite de reprendre ses droits, fera justice d"accusations concues avec legerete et soutenues avec inconvenance. Peron et Flinders sont morts; l"un et l"autre ont des t.i.tres 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.
But we have seen that, although Port Phillip was included in the French charts, and inside soundings were actually shown, neither the port nor the entrance was seen by the expedition. How was that information obtained?
Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste lay in Sydney harbour from June 20 to November 18, 1802, their afflicted crews receiving medical treatment, and their officers enjoying the hospitality of Governor King. Flinders and Lieutenant John Murray, who discovered Port Phillip, were both there during part of the same time. It was then that the French learnt of the existence of the great harbour of which Baudin was ignorant when he met Flinders in Encounter Bay; and it is highly probable that by some means they obtained a copy of the chart which they saw.
Grounds for stating that that is a probability will be advanced a little later. But let us first see how the drawing of Port Phillip that does appear on the Terre Napoleon charts got there.
It was taken, as Freycinet acknowledged,* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 3 430.) "from a ma.n.u.script chart prepared on the English ship Armiston, in 1804. In 1806 the French frigate La Piedmontoise captured the British ship Fame. Amongst the papers found on board was this ma.n.u.script chart.
It so happened that one of the officers of La Piedmontoise was Lieutenant Charles Baudin des Ardennes, who had been a junior officer on Le Naturaliste from 1800 to 1804. (He was no relative of Captain Baudin. The family of Baudin des Ardennes was very well known in France; and this officer became a distinguished French admiral.) He took possession of the ma.n.u.script, and handed it over to Freycinet, who made use of it in preparing his charts.
Probably it was a very rough chart; but even so, if Freycinet had had anything like a drawing of Port Phillip made on Le Geographe, he would have turned out a better piece of work. Not only is the outline very defective, but the "lay" of the Nepean peninsula is so grossly wrong that this alone would suffice to show that Freycinet did not merely correct his chart with the aid of that captured from the Fame, but that the whole drawing of Port Phillip was fitted in, like a patch. However ill a navigator may draw, he always knows whether a coast along which he is sailing runs west or north-west. A mariner"s apprentice would know that.
But on the Terre Napoleon charts, the peninsula lies due east and west, whereas in reality, as the reader will see by reference to any good map, it has a decidedly north-westerly inclination. The patch was not well put on. The consequence of this bad cobbling was to give a box-like, rectangular appearance to the bay, utterly unlike the reality. The east and west sides were carried about as far as Mornington and St. Leonards respectively, in two nearly straight and parallel lines; Swan Bay and Swan Island were missed altogether; and the graceful curve of the coast round by Sorrento and Dromana--a curve most grateful to the eye on a day when sea and sky are blue, and the silver sands and white cliffs shine in the clear light--was tortured into a sharp bend. It was a very rough bit of work.
The fact that an expedition sent out for discovery purposes, and which named a considerable extent of the coast-line traversed after the Emperor who had enabled it to be despatched, had to depend upon a ma.n.u.script accidentally obtained from a captured British merchant ship for a chart of the princ.i.p.al port in the territory so flauntingly denominated, hardly calls for comment. But even when we are in possession of this information, we are still left in some doubt as to whether the French had not some sort of a drawing of Port Phillip before they left Sydney.
Otherwise the course pursued by their commodore after quitting that port is quite unaccountable. The following reasons induce that belief.
When Baudin bade an affectionate and grateful farewell to Governor King at Sydney on November 18, he sailed direct to King Island, which is situated in Ba.s.s Strait, on the 40th parallel of south lat.i.tude, about midway between the south-east of Cape Otway and the north-west corner of Tasmania. Le Geographe was accompanied by Le Naturaliste and the little Casuarina. A camp was established on the island, which was fully charted.
Baudin had missed it on his former voyage, though he had sailed within a few miles of it. It will be remembered that when Flinders conversed with him in Encounter Bay, and "inquired concerning a large island said to lie in the western entrance of Ba.s.s Strait," Baudin said he had not seen it, "and seemed to doubt much of its existence."* (*Flinders, Voyage 1 188.) But Flinders found it easily enough, and spent a little time there before entering Port Phillip. It was doubtless this inquiry of Flinders that induced Baudin to mark down on his chart a purely fict.i.tious island far westward of the actual one, and to inscribe against it the words, "it is believed that an island exists in this lat.i.tude."* (* "On croit qu"il existe une ile par cette lat.i.tude." See the chart, a little west of Cape Bridgewater (Cap Duquesne).)