Description
Very rare and historically important chart by Matthew Flinders from the elephant folio deluxe issue of Flinders’s famous atlas. The map is of the Queensland coast from Northumberland Islands to Flat Isles.
In the deluxe issue elephant folio format issue of the atlas the large charts such as this one, were bound with only a centre fold, rather than with multiple folds as found in the smaller sized standard issue of the atlas.
The tracks of the Norfolk in 1799, Investigator in 1802 and Porpoise, Cato, Bridgewater, Cumberland, Rolla and Francis in 1803 are shown. With an inset of coast from Keppel Bay to Bustard Bay.
The charts Flinders produced on this voyage were so accurate that they were re-issued by the Admiralty for many decades and form the basis for many modern charts of the Australian coastline. Appended are Longitude tables and notes on compass variation, since Flinders was the first to correct compass errors caused by iron in ships. He also first proposed the name Australia to include both the continent and Tasmania. Returning to England in 1803 in the Cumberland via Mauritius he was imprisoned as a spy there for nearly seven years where he wrote much of this work. The work was eventually seen through the press in 1814, but by this time Flinders was dying, and a contemporary tradition holds that he received the published work on 19 July of that year, the last day of his life.
From: Flinders, M. A Voyage to Terra Australis; undertaken for the purpose of completing the discovery of that Vast Country, and prosecuted in the years 1801, 1802, and 1803, in His Majesty’s Ship the Investigator, and subsequently in the armed vessel Porpoise and Cumberland schooner. With an account of the shipwreck of the Porpoise, arrival of the Cumberland at Mauritius, and imprisonment of the commander during six years and a half in that island…
