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click to zoomMatthew Flinders (1774–1814)
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

 

Flinders' letter to Sir Joseph Banks
1804

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Cambridge University Library
Cambridge
United Kingdom

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.