The Pride Which Flinders Had In The Result
Was Modestly Expressed:
"I had the satisfaction to see my people orderly
and full of zeal for the service in which we
Were engaged." Really, it
was a splendid achievement in itself, and it showed that, if the hardship
of life in a small ship, on a long voyage, could not be abolished, at
least horror could be banished from it.
Compare this genial record with that of the French exploring ships Le
Geographe and Le Naturaliste, which were quite as well equipped for a
long voyage. They had, it is true, been longer at sea, but they had an
advantage not open to Flinders in being able to refit at Mauritius, had
rested again for some weeks at Timor, and had spent a considerable time
in the salubrious climate of southern Tasmania, where there was an
abundance of fresh food and water. When, on June 23, 1802, Le Geographe
appeared off Port Jackson, to solicit help from Governor King, it was
indeed "a ghastly crew" that she had on board. Her officers and crew were
rotten with scurvy. Scarcely one of them was fit to haul a rope or go
aloft. Out of one hundred and seventy men, only twelve were capable of
any kind of duty, and only two helmsmen could take their turn at the
wheel. Not a soul aboard, of any rank, was free from the disease.* (*
Peron, Voyage de Decouvertes 1 331 to 340; Flinders, Voyage 1 230.) Of
twenty-three scientific men and artists who sailed from Havre, in 1800,
only three returned to France with the expedition, and before its work
was over the Commander, Baudin, and several of the staff were dead. The
chief naturalist, Francois Peron, and one of the surgeons, Taillefer,
have left terrible accounts of the sufferings endured. Putrid water,
biscuits reduced almost to dust by weevils, and salt meat so absolutely
offensive to sight and smell that "the most famished of the crew
frequently preferred to suffer the agonies of hunger" rather than eat
it - these conditions, together with neglect of routine sanitary
precautions, produced a pitiable state of debility and pain, that made
the ship like an ancient city afflicted with plague. Indeed, the vivid
narratives of Thucydides and Boccaccio, when they counted:
"the sad degrees
Upon the plague's dim dial, caught the tone
Of a great death that lay upon the land,"
are not more haggard in their naturalism than is Taillefer's picture of
the sufferings of the sailors to whom he ministered. Their skin became
covered with tumours, which left ugly black patches; where hair grew
appeared sores "the colour of wine lees"; their lips shrivelled,
revealing gums mortified and ulcerated. They exhaled a breath so fetid in
odour that Taillefer loathed having to administer to them such remedies
as he had to give; and at one part of the voyage even his stock of drugs
was depleted, so great was the demand upon his resources. Their joints
became stiff, their muscles flaccid and contracted, and the utter
prostration to which they were reduced made him regret that they retained
so much of their intellectual faculties as to make them feel keenly the
weight of despair.* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 1 340.)
When Le Geographe stood outside Sydney Harbour, a boat's crew of
Flinders' bluejackets from the Investigator, themselves fresh from their
own long voyage, had to be sent out to work her into port. So enfeebled
were the French sailors that they could not even muster sufficient energy
to bring their vessel to the place where succour awaited them. While we
deplore this tale of distress, we can but mark the striking contrast with
the English vessel and her jolly crew. Truly, it meant something for a
commander to have learnt to manage a ship in a school nourished on the
example of Cook, whose title to fame might rest on his work as a
practical reformer of life at sea, even if his achievements as a
discoverer were not so incomparably brilliant.
We must now return to the Investigator, which, at the commencement of the
chapter, we left fighting with a contrary wind east of Kangaroo Island.
Although the sloop quitted her anchorage early on the morning of April 7,
at eight o'clock in the evening she had made very little headway across
Backstairs Passage. On the 8th, she was near enough to the mainland for
Flinders to resume his charting, and late in the afternoon of that day
occurred an incident to which the next chapter will be devoted.
Meanwhile, it is important to observe that had the wind blown from the
west or south-west, instead of from the east or south-east, Flinders
would have accomplished the survey of the coast between Cape Jervis, at
the entrance of St. Vincent's Gulf, and Cape Banks, before the French
discovery ship, Le Geographe, emerged from Bass Strait on her voyage
westward. The wind that filled Captain Baudin's sails, and drove his ship
forward towards the seas in which the Investigator was making important
discoveries, was the wind that delayed Flinders at Kangaroo Island. Had
the weather been more accommodating to the English captain and less to
the French, there cannot be the slightest doubt that even the fifty
leagues of coast, or thereabouts, which are all that can be claimed to
have been discovered by Baudin, would have been first charted by
Flinders. But the French expedition was so unfortunate, both as to
results and reputation - so undeservedly unfortunate, in some respects, as
will be shown in later chapters - that this small measure of success may
be conceded ungrudgingly. It is, indeed, somewhat to be regretted that
the small part of the Australian coast which was genuinely their own
discovery, should not have been in a more interesting region than was
actually the case; for the true "Terre Napoleon" is no better for the
most part than a sterile waste, with a back country of sand, swamp, and
mallee scrub, populated principally by rabbits, dingoes, and bandicoots.
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