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Matthew
Flinders (17741814)
Letter to Sir Joseph Banks,
23 August (redated 4 November) 1804,
written from Ile de France (Mauritius)
By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge
University Library and of the Particle Physics
and Astronomy Research Council
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Flinders'
letter to Sir Joseph Banks
1804
Captain
Matthew Flinders was the first person to circumnavigate
Australia. In August 1804, he wrote to his patron
and President of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph
Banks, from his ‘Garden prison’ on the Ile de
France (also known as Mauritius). With England
and France at war, Flinders had been imprisoned
by the island’s French administration for alleged
irregularities in his passport, and for making
an unscheduled stop to repair his ailing ship.
His letter, displayed here, accompanied a larger
portfolio containing a copy of the general chart
of ‘Terra Australis or Australia’, and
other papers. For some time during his internment,
Flinders had been considering a suitable name
for the whole southern continent. The letter to
Banks begins:
‘I
send you, Sir Joseph, a copy of my general chart
of New Holland … The propriety of the name Australia
or Terra Australis, which I have applied to the
whole of the body of what has generally been called
New Holland, must be submitted to the approbation
of the Admiralty and the learned in geography.’
In
using the nomenclature of 'Terra Australis',
Flinders had deferred to cartographic precedence.
However in a footnote to the introduction to his
book Voyage to Terra Australis, Flinders
wrote of his own preference: ‘Had I permitted
myself any innovation upon the original term,
it would have been to convert it into AUSTRALIA;
as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation
to the names of the other great portions of the
earth.’
Flinders
continued to advocate the term ‘Australia’ for
the island continent. His proposal was not well
received however, by either Banks or the Hydrographical
Office of the Admiralty. In fact, by 1813 Banks
had only reluctantly agreed to the term 'Terra
Australis'. Thus, Flinders’ monumental record
of his journeys of discovery (finally published
the day before he died in 1814) was entitled Voyage
to Terra Australis. Official printed recognition
of the name ‘Australia’ was not granted until
1830 with the publication in England of The
Australia Directory.
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