Precis 7

Early Days of Eyre Peninsula (7)

COASTLINE SURVEYED BY CAPT. MATTHEW FLINDERS

The first installment of five articles about Matthew Flinders’ 1802 exploration of the coast of Eyre Peninsula, written by J. D. Somerville. Here are some extracts:

Captain Flinders was given instructions to determine what lay further on from Nuyts Archipelago (mapped by François Thijssen in Gulden Zeepaert in 1627.)

"Use your best endeavours to discover such harbours as may be in these parts, and in case you should discover any creek or opening likely to lead to an inland sea or strait, you are at liberty either to examine it or not, as you shall judge it most expedient" and "you are to be diligent in your examination of the said coast, and to take particular care to insert in your journal every circumstance that shall be useful to a full and complete knowledge thereof."

Minute instruments were given for making a botanical collection of all plants, a special plant cabin having been fitted in the ship for the purpose of keeping them.

Flinders was given the Investigator, a collier-built ship, very slow and a leaky old tub, which could only be kept afloat by constant pumping. At Cape of Good Hope the ship was in such a state that the captain had to get permission of the admiral of the fleet there, to allow some of his officers to recaulk the vessel. Throughout the journal of his wanderings is a constant reference to the leaky condition of the ship. Capt. William Kent, who eventually took the Investigator back to England, informed the Admiralty that "a more deplorable, crazy vessel than the Investigator is perhaps not to be seen."

One of the problems Flinders had to solve was whether New Holland consisted of one or two islands. For nearly a century it had been conjectured that there was a strait north and south. William Dampier, when in North Australia in 1688 and 1699, had a suspicion, because of the action of the tides, that a passage existed to the south of New Holland. Through shortage of water he was unable to test his theory. The idea persisted until Eyre on his trip to Western Australia in 1841 disproved the idea of two islands, but it was many years before the inland sea theory was likewise disproved.

See the full article

Next week's article will deal with the naming by Capt. Flinders of points on the coastline of Eyre Peninsula.