The Call of the Sea
Boyhood in Lincolnshire
On 16 March 1774, patients at the surgery of Dr Matthew Flinders in the sleepy market town of Donington in Lincolnshire found him ready to smile at the slightest excuse. It was not because he found their troubles humorous but because his wife had given birth to a baby boy. It was a proud and happy day for Dr Flinders and he decided to name the boy Matthew after himself. He also decided that his son should follow in his footsteps.
But young Matthew was never to put on the white coat of a surgeon. Instead he followed a career which took him into the loneliness of uncharted seas, to brave storms and the perils of shipwreck and the despair of imprisonment. He was to be a wanderer, called to explore the coast of a great land mass on the other side of the world called Terra Australis. His name was to appear in twentieth-century history books; mountains, schools, lighthouses, suburbs, and even railway stations were to be named in his honour. He was to become one of the world's greatest navigators and map makers; a man who helped to shape the continent of Australia.
But all this lay in the future, and while Dr Flinders continued to heal the sick and plan for the day he would be joined by his son, young Matthew went to school, first in Donington and later to Horbling Grammar School, a few miles from his village. He was a rather thin wiry lad, but even as a scholar his dark piercing eyes and thin lips gave him a serious stubborn look and he tackled his studies with determination. His father watched his progress with interest but unknown to anyone Matthew's mind often wandered far from the four walls of his classroom.
Donington lay in the heart of the Fenland district only nine miles from The Wash, a large rectangular bay on the east coast of England, and at Boston, on the nearby Witham River, small ships tied up to load the produce of the fertile countryside.
And so whenever Matthew wandered away from home the bracing air of the sea filled his nostrils; he felt its pull and knew something of the excitement all sailors feel when they gaze upon its restless waters.
He began dreaming of far away places; he saw the sea as a road to the tropical lagoons of the South Pacific; he imagined himself defending his ship against an attack by primitive savages and landing on deserted islands. The sea was calling him and he knew that one day he would stand beneath billowing sails in command of men who were never really happy unless they were being driven away from land by favourable winds.
These dreams, however, had to be squeezed in between long hours of study and under the eyes of a father who had opened the surgery door to his son and Matthew dare not speak of them to anyone.
Then one day he opened the cover of a book called 'Robinson Crusoe' and read of the adven- tures of a man cast away on a small island, a man who loved the sea and conquered its perils, a man who was as restless for adventure as Matthew himself. He could keep his secret no longer and calling upon all his courage, faced his father and told him he wished to join His Majesty's Navy.
Dr Flinders, disappointed and angry, scolded his son for his foolishness but Matthew's mind was made up and he wrote to his Uncle John, a lieutenant in the Navy.
His answer was disappointing. There was no easy way into the Navy but his uncle, sensing his nephew's determination, advised him to study navigation and trigonometry.
Matthew pleaded with his father and was allowed to leave school and he spent the next twelve months locked in his room with books on mathematics. His father tried to persuade his son that he should be studying parts of the human body rather than problems dealing with the sides and angles of triangles; but Matthew knew that one day those same angles marked on ship's charts would be used to plot a course into unknown seas.
He made excellent progress but there were many times when he wondered just how and when he could put his training to work. He had no wish to enter the Navy as a cabin boy and spend the rest of his life in a cramped, evil- smelling fo'c'sle amongst ordinary seamen. His ambition lay in the direction of the stern cabin, where the captain was lord and master. This meant that he had to enter the Navy as a junior officer, on the recommendation of a captain or other high ranking officer. Apart from his Uncle John, there were no other seafarers in his family, but when he was fifteen and a half his cousin, Henrietta Flinders, who was governess to the family of Captain T S Pasley introduced him to her employer.
Apprenticeship in the Navy
Captain Pasley looked over the bright-eyed boy and saw the makings of a seaman in him and to Matthew's great joy, arranged for him to go aboard the training ship H.M.S. Alert, stationed at Chatham.
But this was a far cry from a Robinson Crusoe life, for the Alert never left the wharf. Matthew, along with other lieutenants' servants, spent his time learning the simple duties of a seaman. He attended flag signalling classes and learnt how to send messages from ship to shore and ship to ship; his fingers fumbled over rope as he mastered seaman's knots, and he was taught to read a compass and care for the timekeepers
The time passed quickly, however, and within eight months a proud Matthew joined Captain Pasley on the Scipio and later joined him as a midshipman aboard the Bellerophon.
On these sea-going ships he tasted for the first time some of the hardships that were in store for him as a junior officer. He slept in cramped quarters and ate food dished out by the bucketful from a galley which was certainly not as clean as the kitchen in the Donington surgery.
And when he stood on deck and gazed up at the maze of spars and rigging, the names and uses of which had to be learnt by heart, Matthew knew that there was much more to a sailor's life than tropical islands and sailing before favourable winds.
He was also disappointed that the Bellerophon and the Dictator, on which he served for a short time, did not take him far from the English coast. He yearned for adventure on the high seas, but he was now a sailor in His Majesty's Navy and his life was controlled by the Lords of the Admiralty and the senior officers of his ship.
To the South Seas with Captain Bligh
In 1791, however, an event took place which was to bring his dream within reach. In that year planters in the British island of Jamaica in the West Indies decided to send a ship, under Captain William Bligh, to the islands of the South Pacific for breadfruit, which they believed would make a cheap and nourishing food on which to feed the slaves working on their planta- tions. This amazing fruit had been discovered by early navigators in the Pacific and William Dampier, who sailed around the world three times, and on his final voyage between 1708 and 1711 rescued Alexander Selkirk, the original Robinson Crusoe, from the Juan Fernandez Islands off the coast of Chile, described it in this way: 'The breadfruit, as we call it, grows on a large tree as big and as tall as our largest apple trees. It hath a spreading head full of branches and dark leaves. The fruit grows on the boughs like apples; it is as big as a penny loaf when wheat is at five shillings the bushel. The natives use it for bread. They gather it when full grown; then they bake it in an oven, which scorcheth the rind and makes it black; but they scrape off the outside black crust and there remains a tender thin crust and the inside is soft, tender and white, like the crumb of a penny loaf.'
Matthew, still only a lad of seventeen, heard of the expedition through Captain Pasley and with his help was signed aboard Bligh's ship, the Providence as a midshipman.
He was the happiest man in the fleet on the day he stood before Captain Bligh, but before the voyage ended he was to learn something of the hardships of deep water sailing under a man who ruled his ship with a rod of iron.
Bligh had made a previous voyage to the South Pacific for breadfruit in 1787, one which ended in mutiny when his crew, unable to stand his bullying ways, took over his ship, put him over the side in an open boat and left him to the perils of a 3,600 mile voyage from the island of Tofoa in the Pacific to the Dutch Island of Timor off the north coast of Australia.
But the opportunity was too good to miss and young Matthew closed his ears to the rumours about his new commander and saw only adventure ahead among the sparkling lagoons and islands of a new world.
Bligh's course took him south to the Cape of Good Hope, on the southern tip of the continent of South Africa, then deep into the stormy seas of the Indian Ocean, to fill his sails with the winds sailors called the roaring forties, to run his easting down towards the Southern Pacific Ocean. After a stormy voyage he reached the island of Tahiti on 10 April 1792. Here Matthew met native people who were as friendly and warm as the endless sun which bathed their islands. He wandered among ferns and trees, bathed in rock pools and explored the golden beaches during his off duty hours.
But Captain Bligh had not brought his ship half-way around the world to watch his crew pluck bananas and lie in the sun. He saw to it that his men, including midshipman Matthew Flinders, earnt their keep. During their three month stay, 600 breadfruit were potted and loaded aboard the Providence and its tender, the Assistant.
Then after taking on as much water as they could carry, Bligh set sail back across the Pacific towards Torres Strait, separating the island of New Guinea and Cape York Peninsula on Aus- tralia's north-east coast. From there he set a course across the Indian Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope, then north-west to the Caribbean Sea and the island of Jamaica.
During the return journey Matthew gained valuable experience in navigation and general seamanship; he was serving his apprenticeship in deep water sailing which was to stand him in good stead in later years.
But he also learnt that a captain of a ship in the days of sail had to make unpopular decisions. Fresh water was soon in short supply and as the breadfruit had to be landed in Jamaica in good condition, Bligh saw to it that they received all that was needed to keep them healthy.
While the leaves of the breadfruit flourished, his men were often forced to lick the drops that fell from the pots to quench their thirst.
The men crowded in the fo'c'sle cursed their captain, but William Bligh was a man of iron will and was determined that his precious cargo should not perish under the sticky humid air of the tropics. He was also a man who knew that a healthy crew meant the difference between suc- cess and failure, and saw to it that lime juice was issued regularly to all hands to ward off the dreaded disease of scurvy, which attacked seamen of the day who were forced to go for long periods without fresh vegetables.
And so Matthew Flinders had the chance to study a man who was responsible for the lives of dozens of men and a valuable cargo, as his ships beat their way across uncharted seas, through reefs and rip tides, against currents and un- favourable winds. He knew then that the captain's cabin was the loneliest part of the ship; the man who occupied it had unlimited power; he was the lord and master, but he was also the one who was blamed for every misfortune.
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