The Story
In 1801, a twenty-seven-year-old British naval captain named Matthew Flinders set sail from Spithead aboard the Investigator with an audacious mission — to chart, for the first time in history, the entire coastline of the vast and largely unknown southern continent then called New Holland. What followed was one of the great voyages of exploration: three years of brilliant navigation, near-catastrophic shipwreck, first encounters with Aboriginal peoples, and the quiet scientific revolution of naming a continent. In this masterfully edited edition, acclaimed scientist and explorer Tim Flannery brings Flinders's own account of the voyage — long buried in a two-volume nineteenth-century tome few modern readers have ever opened — back to vivid life. Drawing on Flinders's original 1814 A Voyage to Terra Australis, Flannery distils the adventure to its essentials and frames it with a rich introduction that situates Flinders among the explorers, naturalists, and imperial ambitions of his age. The result is a gripping, beautifully produced narrative of courage, curiosity, and discovery — and a reminder that the map of Australia, and indeed the continent's very name, is the legacy of one obsessive young man who gave his freedom, and ultimately his life, to knowing it whole.
Description
In 1801, a twenty-seven-year-old British naval captain named Matthew Flinders set sail from Spithead aboard the Investigator with an audacious mission — to chart, for the first time in history, the entire coastline of the vast and largely unknown southern continent then called New Holland. What followed was one of the great voyages of exploration: three years of brilliant navigation, near-catastrophic shipwreck, first encounters with Aboriginal peoples, and the quiet scientific revolution of naming a continent. In this masterfully edited edition, acclaimed scientist and explorer Tim Flannery brings Flinders's own account of the voyage — long buried in a two-volume nineteenth-century tome few modern readers have ever opened — back to vivid life. Drawing on Flinders's original 1814 A Voyage to Terra Australis, Flannery distils the adventure to its essentials and frames it with a rich introduction that situates Flinders among the explorers, naturalists, and imperial ambitions of his age. The result is a gripping, beautifully produced narrative of courage, curiosity, and discovery — and a reminder that the map of Australia, and indeed the continent's very name, is the legacy of one obsessive young man who gave his freedom, and ultimately his life, to knowing it whole.
