by David Barrie
The theories of the solar and lunar motions not having reached such a degree of perfection as to accord perfectly with actual observation at Greenwich, the distances calculated from these theories and given in the almanack become subject to some error, and consequently so do the longitudes deduced from them.18
By the time Flinders finally reached London in 1810, he had begun writing up his account of the Investigator’s voyage, and “the charts in particular were nearly ready for the engraver.” However, “it was desirable that the astronomical observations, upon which so much depended, should undergo a re-calculation and the lunar distances have the advantage of being compared with the observations made at the same time at Greenwich.”19 Flinders therefore obtained permission for John Crosley, the official astronomer originally assigned to the Investigator, to compare all the predicted positions of the sun and moon on which the longitude calculations were based with those actually recorded on the relevant dates at the Royal Observatory20—with the not always enthusiastic assistance of Samuel Flinders. It turned out that the Greenwich observations of the two bodies differed so much from “the calculated places . . . given in the Nautical Almanacks of 1801, 2 and 3” as to require “considerable alterations in the longitudes of places settled during the voyage; and a reconstruction of all the charts. . . .”21 Flinders wanly observed that, following the introduction of new, improved tables during his absence, “the necessity of correcting for errors in the distances at Greenwich will have ceased, or be at least greatly diminished.” He also made some interesting comments about the degree of accuracy achievable using lunars:
some sea officers who boast of their having never been out more than 5', or at most 10', may deduce from the column of corrections in the different tables, that their lunar observations could not be entitled to so much confidence as they wish to suppose; since, allowing every degree of perfection to themselves and their instruments, they would probably be 12', and might be more than 30' wrong.22
On the other hand, observers using the new tables might, Flinders predicted, achieve an error of 30' “on either side” from a single set of observations, but probably not more than 12', while sixty sets would “probably give the longitude exact to 1' or 2'.” This degree of accuracy, he rightly noted, was far beyond the hopes of the first proposers of the lunar method. Everything, however, in the end depended on the accuracy of the tables:
In appreciating the degrees of accuracy to which a small or larger number of lunar distances may be expected to give the longitude, I suppose the observer to be moderately well practised, his sextant or circle,* and time keeper to be good, and his calculations to be carefully made; and it is also supposed, that the distances in the nautical almanack are perfectly correct. As, however, there may still be some errors, notwithstanding the science and labour employed to obviate them, it cannot be too much recommended to sea officers to preserve all the data of their observations; more especially such as may be used in fixing the longitudes of places but little, or imperfectly known. The observations may then be recalculated, if requisite . . . and the observer may have the satisfaction of forwarding the progress of geography and navigation. . . .23
Although Flinders was briefly fêted on his return, his long-overdue promotion to the rank of post-captain was not backdated (for that familiar bureaucratic reason: the fear of setting a precedent), and he found himself short of money. A daughter was born in 1811, but he was already a sick man. A urinary-tract complaint, which had first manifested itself aboard the Investigator and may have resulted from gonorrhea contracted twenty years earlier in Tahiti,24 worsened while Flinders was preparing his journal for publication, eventually causing him terrible pain. Although he lived just long enough to see the printed atlas of the charts on which he had lavished so much care,25 he was already unconscious when the bound volumes of his narrative arrived. It is said that Ann put his hand on them, but Flinders died the next day, on July 19, 1814. He was forty. No trace of his grave in Hampstead remains.26 The books did not sell well and the Admiralty refused to grant Ann a pension (as they had done for Cook’s widow), so she and her daughter faced great hardship. At last in 1853 the state governments of New South Wales and Victoria offered help, but Ann had already died.27 Happily, however, these pensions devolved on her daughter, whose son, Sir William Flinders-Petrie, seems to have inherited some of his grandfather’s skills: his meticulous surveys of Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids were to launch his illustrious career as an archaeologist.*
Though Flinders himself was too modest to attach his own name to any of his discoveries (he named Flinders Island after his brother), he has certainly not been forgotten in Australia, where many features of the landscape and coastline bear his name, such as the Flinders Mountain Ranges in South Australia, the Flinders Passage on the Great Barrier Reef, and the Flinders Islands off the coast of northern Queensland. Some of his charts remained in print until 1912.
Flinders’s personal papers and correspondence reveal far more clearly than his official account what a hard and lonely life he led as commander of the Investigator, responsible not only for the efficient discharge of his onerous surveying duties, but also for the safety and health of his crew. Nevertheless, at one point in his narrative, Flinders—perhaps unconsciously—lets his guard drop. Having listed the various seeds that the sailors had planted on Wreck Reef, he regrets their lack of “cocoa nuts,” observing that these trees would not only provide a useful beacon to mariners, but also “salutary nourishment” to any future victims of shipwreck. Indeed, Flinders suggests that the planting of coconut trees “ought to be a leading article in the instructions for any succeeding voyage of discovery,” and to those who might question the importance of such a plan, he responded that it was from suffering ourselves that “we learn to appreciate the misfortunes and wants of others.” Flinders then revealingly quotes a passage (loosely translated) from a novella by Chateaubriand* that he must have read while in Mauritius:
The human heart . . . resembles certain medicinal trees which yield not their healing balm until they have themselves been wounded.28
His beloved cat, Trim, though never mentioned in Flinders’s formal record, was a constant comfort and shared his bed aboard the Investigator:
Trim took a fancy to nautical astronomy. When an officer took lunar or other observations, he would place himself by the time-keeper, and consider the motion of the hands, and apparently the uses of the instrument, with much earnest attention; he would try to touch the second hand, listen to the ticking, and walk all around the piece to assure himself whether or no it might not be a living animal. And mewing to the young gentleman whose business it was to mark down the time, seemed to ask an explanation. When the officer had made his observation, the cry of Stop! roused Trim from his meditation; he cocked his tail, and running up the rigging near to the officer, mewed to know the meaning of all those proceedings. Finding at length that nature had not designed him for an astronomer, Trim had too much good sense to continue a useless pursuit; but a musket ball slung with a piece of twine, and made to whirl round upon the deck by a slight motion of the finger, never failed to attract his notice, and to give him pleasure; perhaps from bearing a near resemblance to the movement of his favourite planet the moon, in her orbit around the primary which we inhabit.29
Trim was presumably named after Corporal Trim, the devoted follower of Uncle Toby, in Laurence Sterne’s marvelously strange and touching novel Tristram Shandy. So we may reasonably suppose that Flinders had a soft spot for Uncle Toby, perhaps the sweetest-natured figure in English literature—the original “man who would not hurt a fly.”30 Sadly, Trim disappeared while his master was held on the Isle de France. Flinders’s whimsical tribute to his feline companion is very moving, especially bearing in mind how little time he himself had yet to live:
To the memory of Trim, the best and most illustrious of his Race,—the most affectionate of friends,—faithful of servants, and best of creatures.
He made the To
ur of the Globe, and a voyage to Australia, which he circumnavigated; and was ever the delight and pleasure of his fellow voyagers. Returning to Europe in 1803, he was shipwrecked in the Great Equinoxial* Ocean; This danger escaped, he sought refuge and assistance at the Isle of France, where he was made prisoner, contrary to the laws of Justice, of Humanity, and of French National Faith; and where, alas! he terminated his useful career, by an untimely death, being devoured by the Catophagi of that island. Many a time have I beheld his little merriments with delight, and his superior intelligence with surprise: Never will his like be seen again!
Trim was born in the Southern Indian Ocean, in the year 1799, and perished as above at the Isle of France in 1804.
Peace be to his shade, and Honour to his memory.31
Chapter 14
Voyages of the Beagle
Day 15: Took some sights at 0830. Seas still quite high but blue sky spreading from N. Slept for a bit then had fried eggs for breakfast at 1030. It’s amazing how well the eggs are keeping.
By midday it was quite sunny and we took more fixes at 1300 giving noon position of 44°44' N, 27°52' W, 119 miles run. Passing over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge north of the Azores.
During afternoon we passed through a great flock of shearwaters wheeling and diving, and saw more dolphins in the distance. Presumably they were all after a shoal of fish. Lovely rainbows—N force 5–6. No. 2 stays’l and reefed main.
Steering 080° for Land’s End. High spirits all round as England gets nearer and BBC radio now clear at night. Celebrated halfway with the tinned chicken, fried, with tinned new potatoes and beans, followed by rice pudding. All cooked by Alexa, who called it “Poulet Atlantique.” Sang songs to accompaniment of Colin’s “squeeze box” and Alexa’s guitar.
The very first European to see the Pacific Ocean was the Spanish soldier Vasco Núñez de Balboa, not, as the poet Keats would have it, “stout Cortez.”1 Nevertheless, when they struggled through the jungle across the Isthmus of Panama in 1513, Balboa and his men may well have looked at each other “with a wild surmise” when that vast blue expanse opened up before them. With the arrogance of the conquistador, Balboa waded into the ocean and claimed all the land within and around it for the king of Spain. Surely the “Spice Islands” with all their riches lay beyond the horizon, as well as China, but how could they be reached? The search for a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific was soon begun. The Straits of Magellan were discovered by the Portuguese navigator of that name* in 1520 when in command of a Spanish expedition, but for a long time it remained unclear how much farther to the south the American landmass extended. Was it perhaps joined to the great southern continent? In 1578 Francis Drake landed on what seemed to him to be the southernmost point of South America, having been driven to the southeast by storms after entering the Pacific through the Straits of Magellan. However, it was only in 1616 that a Dutch expedition led by Isaac Le Maire and Willem Corneliszoon Schouten—backed by the burghers of Hoorn—entered the Pacific from the Atlantic by the open sea. It was they who gave Cape Horn its name.
Bougainville had not enjoyed his long and arduous passage through the Straits of Magellan in 1767–68, and his experience was typical. Baffling headwinds, dangerously violent downdrafts from the surrounding mountains, frequent heavy rain, and low temperatures even in summer made the Straits a most uncomfortable place in the days of sail. However, they did at least offer relatively sheltered waters compared to the wild seas off Cape Horn, especially in winter. The Straits were therefore an important route between the Atlantic and the Pacific and one that badly needed to be properly charted. In the 1820s the Royal Navy, by now committed to the task of systematically surveying the world’s oceans, decided to chart not only the Straits themselves, but the many channels and islands of Tierra del Fuego, including Cape Horn—itself a small island. This was one of the most challenging survey missions yet mounted, and it involved a ship that was later to be made world famous by one of its passengers, Charles Darwin.
The Beagle, under the command of Lieutenant Pringle Stokes, first sailed for South America in May 18262 as tender to the Adventure, commanded by Captain Phillip Parker King (1793–1856), who was in overall charge of the survey expedition. As we have already heard, King, as a boy of ten, had witnessed the return of Flinders from Wreck Reef, and—perhaps inspired by this dramatic experience—he later brilliantly completed the survey of the Australian coast that Flinders had begun. Stokes, though a highly experienced sailor, was new to survey work. King was therefore taking a risk by giving him the tough assignment of exploring the exposed western entrance to the Straits of Magellan, where the strong prevailing westerly winds, coupled with the imposing Pacific swells, make the reef-strewn coast a formidably dangerous lee shore.
During that first season, however, Stokes proved more than equal to the task, though the conditions the Beagle encountered were testing in the extreme. The Beagle was an even smaller vessel than the Investigator—only 235 tons, with a complement of about sixty officers and men. Approaching the western extremity of the Straits of Magellan, she encountered a heavy breaking sea caused by the deep swell of the Pacific, and Stokes found an anchorage for the night under Cape Tamar. The following evening they nearly reached another, farther to the west, under Cape Phillip, but the weather was atrocious:
About seven in the evening [recorded Stokes] we were assailed by a squall, which burst upon the ship with a fury far surpassing all that preceded it: had not sail been shortened in time, not a stick would have been left standing, or she must have capsized. As it was, the squall hove her so much over on her broadside, that the boat which was hanging at the starboard quarter was washed away. . . . On closing [Cape Tamar], the weather became so thick that at times we could scarcely see two ships’ lengths a-head.3
Stokes dryly commented that “these circumstances were not in favour of exploring unknown bays,” and he therefore reluctantly decided to forfeit the progress they had made to windward, and headed back to the anchorage they had earlier left. As King later explained:
Even this was a dangerous attempt; they could hardly discern any part of the high land, and when before the wind, could not avoid the ship’s going much too fast. While running about eight knots, a violent shock—a lift forward—heel over—and downward plunge—electrified everyone; but before they could look round, she was scudding along, as before, having fairly leaped over the rock.4
Stokes now decided to leave the ship in Tamar Bay and gamely undertook a survey mission in the cutter, discovering several well-sheltered anchorages in the process:
Our discomfort in an open boat was very great, since we were all constantly wet to the skin. In trying to double the various headlands, we were repeatedly obliged (after hours of ineffectual struggle against sea and wind) to desist from useless labour, and take refuge in the nearest cove which lay to leeward.5
At last the Beagle managed to reach the appropriately named Harbor of Mercy, thirty days after leaving Port Famine.* During the next few days, the Beagle was employed—to use King’s words—“in the most exposed, the least known, and the most dangerous part of the Strait.”6 Stokes, nevertheless, continued to gather all the useful data he could. Incessant rain and thick clouds delayed the observations necessary for making an island just outside the Harbor of Mercy, the southern end of his baseline for the trigonometrical connection of the coasts and islands near the western entrance of this weather-beaten strait. But on February 20, 1827:
I weighed and beat to windward, intending to search for anchorage on the north shore, where I might land and fix the northern end of our base line. In the evening we anchored in an archipelago of islands, the real danger of whose vicinity was much increased to the eye by rocks, scattered in every direction, and high breakers, occasioned doubtless by reefs under water. . . . The number and contiguity of the rocks, below as well as above water, render it a most hazardous place for any square-rigged vessel: nothing but the particular duty on which I was ordered would have induce
d me to venture among them.7
Stokes landed on one of the islands to fix its position. Then “after extricating ourselves from this labyrinth (not without much difficulty and danger), we beat to the westward,” hoping to reach Cape Victory, the northwestern limit of the Strait. He was forced back, however, to the Harbor of Mercy, and then, taking advantage of a brief spell of fine weather, set out again in an open boat:
After pulling, in earnest, for six hours, we landed upon Cape Victory . . . and there, with a sextant, artificial horizon, and chronometer, ascertained the position of this remarkable promontory. From an eminence, eight hundred feet above the sea, we had a commanding view of the adjacent coasts, as well as the vast Pacific, which enabled us to rectify former material errors. Late in the evening we were fortunate enough to get safely on board again, which, considering the usual weather here, and the heavy sea, was unexpected success.8
The passages quoted give some flavor of Stokes’s achievements during the 1827 survey season. When the Adventure and the Beagle returned in 1828 after a break in Montevideo, now accompanied by a schooner called the Adelaide, King had no hesitation in sending Stokes and his crew off to survey the coast of southern Chile, farther to the north. It was winter, and they were frequently in danger. In June, at the northernmost limit of their expedition, the Beagle was storm-bound in an anchorage on the eastern side of the Gulf of Peñas on the coast of Chile in weather that Stokes described as the worst he had ever experienced:
Nothing could be more dreary than the scene around us. The lofty, bleak and barren heights that surround the inhospitable shores of this inlet, were covered, even low down their sides, with dense clouds, upon which the fierce squalls that assailed us beat, without causing any change . . . and, as if to complete the dreariness and utter desolation of the scene, even birds seemed to shun its neighbourhood. The weather was that in which (as Thompson emphatically says) “the soul of man dies within him.”