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 Peron 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 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.

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