memo from the
Secretary to the Admiralty in reply to a request [Sidenote: 1800]
from the naturalist:--

"Any proposal you may make will be approved; the whole is left
entirely to your decision."

The _Investigator_, formerly the _Xenophon_, was a sloop of war, and was
fitted out in a most elaborate fashion for the cruise, carrying with her
an artist (Westall), a botanist (Brown), an astronomer (Crossley), and
several other scientists.

Among her officers were Samuel Flinders, second lieutenant and brother of
Matthew, and a midshipman named John Franklin, afterwards Sir John
Franklin, the Arctic explorer and at one time governor of Tasmania. Her
total complement numbered 83 hands. The _Lady Nelson_, a colonial
government brig, was ordered, on the arrival of the _Investigator_ at Port
Jackson, to join the expedition and act as tender to the larger vessel,
and her history is scarcely less remarkable than that of the little vessel
_Norfolk_, Flinders' old command, which by this time had been run away
with by convicts, and "piled up" on a beach near Newcastle, New South
Wales.

The _Investigator_ sailed, and Flinders made Cape Leeuwin on September
7th, 1801. He ran along the south and east coasts, met the Baudin
expedition in Encounter Bay, and entered Port Phillip on April 26th, 1802,
and found that the _Lady Nelson_ had preceded him in the February before.
Arriving in Sydney in May, he sailed again a couple of months later to the
northward, surveying the Great Barrier Reef, Torres Straits, the Gulf of
Carpentaria, and the coast of Arnhem's Land. By this time the ship was too
unseaworthy to prosecute further work, so Flinders sailed round the entire
continent by way of the Leeuwin, and finally arrived in Sydney harbour
again in June, 1803.

In these voyages he performed exploring work that is now a part of English
history, and his charts of the Australian coasts were the foundation of
all others that have since been made. He either first used the name of
Australia or adapted it to the great continent, and New Holland, after the
publication of his charts, began to be a name of the past.

Most of the remainder of this story can best be told in the words of
Flinders and from the narratives of his officers.

The long and rough voyage of the _Investigator_ had shaken her poor old
carcase terribly, as the following summary of [Sidenote: 1805]
an examination by the captains of the men-of-war