Captain Matthew Flinders
Yesterday we posted about the replica of Captain Cook’s HMS Endeavour which will be circumnavigating Australia to commemorate the 250th-anniversary of Cook’s arrival. Some critics have noted that Captain Cook did not actually sail around Australia.
Coincidentally and almost simultaneously, archaeologists in London identified the remains of Captain Matthew Flinders, who, as commander of HMS Investigator, did lead the first circumnavigation of Australia. His voyage confirmed that Australia was a continent. Later, his account of the expedition, A Voyage to Terra Australis, helped to popularize the name Australia.
Captain Flinders’s remains were identified in the excavation of the cemetery at St James’s Gardens, where he was buried in July of 1814. BBC reports: It was known Captain Flinders was among the thousands of people buried at the site, which was built over when Euston station was expanded in the 19th Century but it was unclear whether his body or others would be able to be identified.
The discovery so early in the dig has thrilled archaeologists who were not confident they would find Captain Flinders among the 40,000 people interred there, HS2 said. They were able to identify his remains by the lead breastplate placed on top of his coffin.
Flinders made three voyages to the southern ocean between 1791 and 1810. In the second voyage, in the sloop Norfolk, Flinders, and George Bass confirmed that Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) was an island. In the third voyage, Flinders circumnavigated the mainland of what was to be called Australia, accompanied by Bungaree, an Aboriginal Australian from the Kuringgai people of the Broken Bay area north of Sydney.
In his account of his voyages, Flinders argued for the name Australia for the continent which the Dutch referred to as New Holland. Cook had claimed the eastern portion of the continent and named it New South Wales. Flinders was not the first to use the word Australia, but he applied it specifically to the continent and not the whole South Pacific region.
Thanks to David Rye for contributing to this post.
JIC some did not have time to scroll thru the whole of the BBC link:
Other notable people buried at St James’s include:
Bill “the Black Terror” Richmond, a slave born in New York who became a free Londoner and a celebrated bare-knuckle boxer who was favoured by King George IV and taught Lord Byron to spar
Lord George Gordon, a political and religious activist famous for his part in the anti-Catholic “Gordon Riots” of 1780
James Christie, a British naval officer who became a leading auctioneer and founded Christie’s auction house in 1766
Bungaree was the first Australian to circumnavigate the continent, but he’s less well known than Matthew Flinders
By Yasmin Jeffery
Updated Fri at 12:58am
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-25/bungaree-australian-circumnavigate-country-matthew-flinders/10749476
Yeas, Flinders was far sighted in taking him on the journey where the arrogance of many explorers would not have allowed it.
Cook “discovered” Australia in much the same way as the several claimants “discovered” America, again quite an arrogant assumption with the aboriginals already living quite happily in those respective countries.
What is less known is that these explorers “discovered” the new world with Chinese charts. The Chinese had already “discovered” these countries but sought not to conquer, but to seek out minerals and metals for their industries. It is a great tale and is told in the fabulous book “1421:The Year China Discovered the World” about the Eunuch Admirals in mahogany ships with rudders 10 metres high.
Oxford dictionary defines discover as “to find unexpectedly or during a search” so yes, the place may have already been known about by others.
The use of the word first should be qualified, eg with Brit or European.
Nobody in my circle of friends complains when I tell them I have discovered a great pub. 🙂