Voyages of Matthew Flinders

Captain Matthew Flinders (16 March 1774 – 19 July 1814) was an English navigator who led the first inshore navigation of inland Australia.

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Captain Matthew Flinders was an English navigator, cartographer and officer of the Royal Navy who led the second circumnavigation of New Holland, that he would subsequently call "Australia", and identified it as a continent. Flinders made three voyages to the southern ocean between 1791 and 1810. In the second voyage, George Bass and Flinders confirmed that Van Diemen's Land was an island. In the third voyage, Flinders circumnavigated the Australian mainland; heading back to England in 1803, Flinders' vessel needed urgent repairs at Isle de France. Although Britain and France were at war, Flinders thought the scientific nature of his work would ensure safe passage, but a suspicious governor kept him under arrest for more than six years. Although he reached home in 1810, he did not live to see the success of his widely praised book and atlas, A Voyage to Terra Australis. The location of his grave was lost by the mid-19th century, but archaeologists excavating a former burial ground near London's Euston railway station for the High Speed 2 (HS2) project, announced in January 2019 that his remains had been identified. Flinders' remains will be reinterred in the parish Church of St Mary and the Holy Rood in Donington, Lincolnshire, where he was baptised, on 13th July 2024. While largely forgotten in his home country England, he is a household name in Australia, where over 100 places and monuments have been named after him.