The Best Australian Sea Stories

by Jim Haynes

  Why did Decaen persist in keeping Flinders on the island so long? We can only surmise that, once Flinders had been given relative liberty to roam the island and talk to anyone he chose, Decaen realised he knew far too much about the weakened state of the island’s defences, and how easily it could be taken, to let him return to Britain with that information.

  The longer Flinders remained, the more he knew. Decaen was well aware the colony was living on borrowed time as the war swung in favour of Britain. Keeping Flinders on the island prolonged the time he could stave off the inevitable fall of the colony to the British.

  Decaen has been pilloried by historians for keeping Flinders in an unfair state of captivity, but his priorities were to his country, and he managed to keep Ile-de-France in French hands for far longer than he had imagined possible by a combination of bluff and cunning.

  Although the public buildings, wharfs and defences were falling apart and food was scarce at times, Decaen managed to bluff the British out of attacking, even though a small force could have easily taken the island at any time from 1804. He held out until 1810.

  Decaen knew Flinders would not violate his ‘parole’ for two reasons. He had given his word that he would not attempt to escape, although it would have been a simple thing to achieve, and he was offered safe passage by at least one neutral captain and refused the offer. Flinders even kept his word in so far as his letters home never gave any military information.

  Apart from having given his word as an officer and a gentleman, Flinders was unwilling to leave without his documents, charts and journals. His mission had been to chart the coast of Terra Australis and write an account of the voyage, and he intended to complete the task assigned to him. Escaping from the island without his possessions was never an option. Indeed, he spent much of his time on Mauritius planning the completion of his mission to chart and explore the Australian continent, even going so far as to decide who should accompany him, and what positions they should hold.

  This was never to be, of course. Flinders returned to a quite different world to the one he left. Trafalgar had changed the state of the play: the navy was expanding and the Admiralty had many other concerns to deal with. Flinders was some six years too late to capitalise on his achievements and, although he was well received, his only official task for the next four years was to finalise his report and charts. Sir Joseph Banks organised a dinner in his honour, and William Bligh took him to visit the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV, but the Admiralty took little interest in his work and left him on half pay, which made his domestic situation difficult, and led to the family moving five times in four years. The great joy of his final two years was his daughter, Anne.

  Also, his health was failing. He had suffered from ‘internal complaints’ on Mauritius and the disease advanced rapidly, leaving him ‘worn to a skeleton’ in his wife’s words; at the age of thirty-nine, he resembled an old man of seventy. Although he was never heard to complain, his personal diary notes that he suffered severe pain often.

  Flinders laboured hard and diligently to make sure that A Voyage to Terra Australis was well-produced and accurate in terms of text and charts. It is a monumental work, which was designed not as a popular book, but as an accurate record of his endeavours to fulfil his commission.

  He was a severe critic of both his own drafts and the printer’s work and laboured over corrections and improvements until the final product met with his approval.

  The first copies were delivered on 18 July 1814. His wife Ann laid the volumes on his bed while he slept, but he woke the following day, only to whisper his last words, ‘my papers’, before he closed his eyes and died.

  His wife struggled on a small post-captain’s pension until she died in 1852. Learning of this, the governments of the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria each voted that a pension of £100 be paid to his widow and then revert to his daughter.

  Flinders’ widow died before this took place, but his daughter, Mrs Ann Petrie, was very touched, and wrote: ‘it would indeed have cheered her last days to know that my father’s long-neglected services were at length appreciated . . . and the handsome amount of the pension granted will enable me to educate my young son in a manner worthy of the name he bears’.

  Her son would become Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, born in 1853, the year the pensions were granted—the most celebrated and respected archaeologist of his era and the first professor to hold a chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom. He died in 1942.

  Flinders’ protege and nephew by marriage, Sir John Franklin, served with him on the Investigator and was wrecked with him on Wreck Reefs. He joined Flinders’ old ship HMS Bellerophon and was aboard her at Trafalgar. He became Governor of Tasmania and a famous polar explorer, and perished looking for the Northwest Passage in 1847.

  The Bellerophon—the ‘Billy Ruffian’ on which Flinders saw action as a young man—became even more famous a year after Flinders’ death. It was the ship on which Napoleon surrendered and was transported to England.

  Matthew Flinders is an iconic name in the history of our nation, remembered everywhere today in the titles of geographical features and public institutions such as universities, suburbs, parks and streets, although Flinders never once named anything in his own honour.

  He did us the honour, however, of popularising the name of our young nation, when he wrote in 1804, ‘I call the whole island Australia’. He wished to use the name in his published works, but unfortunately was talked out of using this name in his book’s title by his great friend and supporter Sir Joseph Banks, who thought the term ‘Terra Australis’ better known and less likely to confuse scholars already used to the terminology. ‘Had I permitted myself any innovation on the original term,’ Flinders wrote, ‘it would have been to convert it to Australia; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth.’

  However, Governor Macquarie had read Flinders’ journals. He liked the name Australia and began using the term, and the surveyor and explorer Major Sir Thomas Mitchell followed suit when he coined the phrase ‘Australia Felix’ for the land he discovered south of the Murray.

  ‘Australia’ was in such common use by 1901 that there was little debate about the name that should be used when the colonies federated.

  Had he become a village surgeon, like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, Matthew Flinders’ life would have no doubt been much less eventful, and probably much longer.

  As it transpired, his short life was one packed with discoveries, adventures, achievements, heroism, hardships, disappointments, suffering, and eternal fame—and it was all because, as a boy, he read Robinson Crusoe.

  ‘The Ships That Won’t Go Down’

  Henry Lawson

  We hear a great commotion

  ’Bout the ship that comes to grief,

  That founders in mid-ocean,

  Or is driven on a reef;

  Because it’s cheap and brittle

  A score of sinners drown.

  But we hear but mighty little

  Of the ships that won’t go down.

  Here’s honour to the builders—

  The builders of the past;

  Here’s honour to the builders

  That builded ships to last;

  Here’s honour to the captain,

  And honour to the crew;

  Here’s double-column headlines

  To the ships that battle through.

  They make a great sensation

  About famous men that fail,

  That sink a world of chances

  In the city morgue or gaol,

  Who drink, or blow their brains out,

  Because of ‘Fortune’s frown’.

  But we hear far too little

  Of the men who won’t go down.

  The world is full of trouble,

  And the world is full of wrong,

  But the heart of man is noble,

  And t
he heart of man is strong!

  They say the sea sings dirges,

  But I would say to you

  That the wild wave’s song’s a paean

  For the men that battle through.

  I travel not to go anywhere but to go.

  Travel for travel’s sake.

  The great affair is to move.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  The voyage of the Janet Nicoll

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

  The author of Kidnapped and Treasure Island loved the sea and spent much of the last part of his life aboard ships. In 1890 he came to Sydney for a while and, finding it too cold for his liking, embarked on a cruise around the Pacific aboard a freighter, the SS Janet Nicoll, which he described as ‘the worst roller’ he was ever on.

  Stevenson was terminally ill with tuberculosis and, during the voyage and his time in Sydney, wrote to his friends advising them of his decision to move to Samoa and settle there to die.

  His letters are full of good humour and wonderful observations. His account of the ship catching fire while leaving Auckland Harbour—apparently some material for making fireworks was stored in a stateroom and exploded!—shows how stoically he coped with the rigours and dramas of sea travel circa 1890.

  His accounts of the islands he visited and his decision to stay in Noumea, then a penal colony of France, to study the convict system, show his lust for life and his fascination for all things foreign. His letters give an insight into the mind and character of one of the world’s best loved writers. His terminal illness was obviously in no way an impediment to his curiosity, humour and ability to communicate—Ed.

  Written aboard the SS Janet Nicoll, to Sidney Colvin

  I was sharply ill at Sydney, cut off.

  Out of bed, in this steamer on a fresh island cruise, I have already reaped the benefit. We are excellently found this time, on a spacious vessel, with an excellent table; the captain, supercargo, our one fellow-passenger, etc., very nice; and the charterer, Mr Henderson, the very man I could have chosen.

  The truth is, I fear, this life is the only one that suits me; so long as I cruise in the South Seas, I shall be well and happy—alas, no, I do not mean that, and absit omen!—I mean that, so soon as I cease from cruising, the nerves are strained, the decline commences, and I steer slowly but surely back to bedward.

  We left Sydney, had a cruel rough passage to Auckland, for the Janet is the worst roller I was ever aboard of. I was confined to my cabin, ports closed, self shied out of the berth, stomach (pampered till the day I left on a diet of perpetual eggnog) revolted at ship’s food and ship eating, in a frowsy bunk, clinging with one hand to the plate, with the other to the glass, and using the knife and fork (except at intervals) with the eyelid.

  No matter: I picked up hand over hand. After a day in Auckland, we set sail again and were blown up in the main cabin with calcium fires, as we left the bay.

  Let no man say I am unscientific: when I ran, on the alert, out of my stateroom, and found the main cabin incarnadined with the glow of the last scene of a pantomime, I stopped dead: ‘What is this?’ said I. ‘This ship is on fire, I see that; but why a pantomime?’ And I stood and reasoned the point, until my head was so muddled with the fumes that I could not find the companion.

  A few seconds later, the captain had to enter crawling on his belly, and took days to recover (if he has recovered) from the fumes. By singular good fortune, we got the hose down in time and saved the ship, but Lloyd lost most of his clothes and a great part of our photographs was destroyed.

  Fanny saw the native sailors tossing overboard a blazing trunk; she stopped them in time, and behold, it contained my manuscripts. Thereafter we had three (or two) days fine weather: then got into a gale of wind, with rain and a vexatious sea. As we drew into our anchorage in a bight of Savage Island, a man ashore told me afterwards the sight of the Janet Nicoll made him sick; and indeed it was rough play, though nothing to the night before.

  All through this gale I worked four to six hours per diem spearing the ink bottle like a flying fish, and holding my papers together as I might. For, of all things, what I was working at was writing history— the Samoan business—and I had to turn from one to another of these piles of manuscript notes, and from one page to another in each, until I should have found employment for the hands of Briareus.

  All the same, this history is a godsend for a voyage; I can put in time, getting events coordinated and the narrative distributed, when my much-heaving numskull would be incapable of finish or fine style.

  At Savage we met the missionary barque John Williams. I tell you it was a great day for Savage Island: the path up the cliffs was crowded with gay islandresses (I like that feminine plural) who wrapped me in their embraces, and picked my pockets of all my tobacco, with a manner which a touch would have made revolting, but as it was, was simply charming, like the Golden Age.

  One pretty, little, stalwart minx, with a red flower behind her ear, had searched me with extraordinary zeal; and when, soon after, I missed my matches, I accused her (she still following us) of being the thief. After some delay, and with a subtle smile, she produced the box, gave me one match, and put the rest away again.

  Written in Noumea, to E.L. Burlingame

  As for my health, I got over my cold in a fine style, but have not been very well of late. To my unaffected annoyance, the blood-spitting has started again. I find the heat of a steamer decidedly wearing and trying in these latitudes, and I am inclined to think the superior expedition rather dearly paid for.

  Still, the fact that one does not even remark the coming of a squall, nor feel relief on its departure, is a mercy not to be acknowledged without gratitude. The rest of the family seem to be doing fairly well; both seem less run down than they were on the Equator, and Mrs Stevenson very much less so.

  We have now been three months away, have visited about thirty-five islands, many of which were novel to us, and some extremely entertaining; some also were old acquaintances, and pleasant to revisit. In the meantime, we have really a capital time aboard ship, in the most pleasant and interesting society, and with (considering the length and nature of the voyage) an excellent table.

  I shall probably return to Samoa direct, having given up all idea of returning to civilisation in the meanwhile. There, on my ancestral acres, which I purchased six months ago from a blind Scots blacksmith, you will please address me until further notice.

  The name of the ancestral acres is going to be Vailima; but as at the present moment nobody else knows the name, except myself and the co-patentees, it will be safer, if less ambitious, to address R.L.S., Apia, Samoa. The ancestral acres run to upwards of three hundred; they enjoy the ministrations of five streams, whence the name. They are all at the present moment under a trackless covering of magnificent forest, which would be worth a great deal if it grew beside a railway terminus. To me, as it stands, it represents a handsome deficit. Obliging natives from the Cannibal Islands are now cutting it down at my expense.

  You would be able to run your magazine to much greater advantage if the terms of authors were on the same scale with those of my cannibals. We have also a house about the size of a manufacturer’s lodge. ’Tis but the egg of the future palace, over the details of which on paper Mrs Stevenson and I have already shed real tears; what it will be when it comes to paying for it, I leave you to imagine. But if it can only be built as now intended, it will be with genuine satisfaction and a grounded pride that I shall welcome you at the steps of my Old Colonial Home, when you land from the steamer on a long-merited holiday . . .

  It is suggested to me that you might like to know what will be my future society. Three consuls, all at loggerheads with one another, or at the best in a clique of two against one; three different sects of missionaries, not upon the best of terms; and the Catholics and Protestants in a condition of unhealable ill-feeling as to whether a wooden drum ought or ought not to be beaten to announce the time of school. The native population, very
genteel, very songful, very agreeable, very good-looking, chronically spoiling for a fight (a circumstance not to be entirely neglected in the design of the palace). As for the white population of (technically, ‘The Beach’), I don’t suppose it is possible for any person not thoroughly conversant with the South Seas to form the smallest conception of such a society, with its grog-shops, its apparently unemployed hangers-on, its merchants of all degrees of respectability and the reverse.

  The paper, of which I must really send you a copy . . . rejoices in the name of Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser. The advertisements in the Advertiser are permanent, being simply subsidies for its existence. A dashing warfare of newspaper correspondence goes on between the various residents, who are rather fond of referring to one another’s antecedents. But when all is said, there are a lot of very nice, pleasant people, and I don’t know that Apia is very much worse than half a hundred towns that I could name.

  Written in Noumea, to Charles Baxter

  I have stayed here a week while Lloyd and my wife continue to voyage in the Janet Nicoll; this I did, partly to see the convict system, partly to shorten my stay in the extreme cold—hear me with my extreme! Moi qui suis originaire d’Edimbourg—of Sydney at this season.

  I am feeling very seedy, utterly fatigued and overborne with sleep. I have a fine old gentleman of a doctor, who attends and cheers and entertains, if he does not cure me; but even with his ministrations I am almost incapable of the exertion sufficient for this letter; and I am really, as I write, falling down with sleep. What is necessary to say, I must try to say shortly . . .