The Life of Matthew Flinders by Miriam Estensen

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Small faint blue mark on tail foredge. Interior is excellent. Dust jacket is in good condition with wear and creasing at edges and spine. Small tear to back cover left tail corner now protected with book tape.

Matthew Flinders (1774 – 1814) was just 17 when he first saw Terra Australis, and unlocking its mysteries would become the burning motivation for the rest of his short life, at times at terrible cost to himself and others.

Flinders joined the Royal Navy as a teenager, journeyed to Tahiti with Bligh's second and successful breadfruit voyage, fought the French in the Caribbean and the Atlantic and sailed with Australia's second governor, John Hunter, to the distant colony of New South Wales. The strange, unmapped continent captured his imagination, and exploring its uncharted shores became his life's central goal. Winning the support of the influential Joseph Banks, he received command of the HMS Investigator on an epic voyage to explore and chart the entire Australian coast.

The obstacles were incredible: a rotting ship, the perilous, little-known labyrinth of the Barrier Reef, storms, thirst, scurvy and dysentery, and eventually shipwreck, imprisonment and a nine-year absence from a beloved wife. Yet two hundred years ago, Flinders completed the first true circumnavigation of Australia, revealing its vastness and diversity and giving it the shape- and, to some extent, the name we see on maps today.

Miriam Estensen has drawn on many sources, some only recently available, to create a vivid picture of the life and voyages of Matthew Flinders and the world and people around him. Above all, it is a new and discerning look at the man himself. The story is engrossing, a tale of high adventure and undeviating commitment, courage and sacrifice, triumph and final tragedy. (publisher blurb)