lland. While "my Lords" were warming up imaginary errors in the heat of
an excited imagination on account of poor Mrs. Flinders, the commander of
the Investigator was losing valuable time. In May he wrote to Sir Joseph
Banks: "The advanced state of the season makes me excessively anxious to
be off. I fear that a little longer delay will lose us a summer and
lengthen our voyage at least six months. Besides that, the French are
gaining time upon us."

On May 26th, the Investigator left the Nore for Spithead to wait further
orders. She was provided, by the Admiralty itself, with a chart published
by J.H. Moore, upon which a sandbank known as the Roar, extending from
Dungeness towards Folkestone, between 2 1/2 to 4 miles from land, was not
marked. On the evening of the 28th, in a perfectly calm sea, and at a
time when, sailing by the chart, there was no reason to apprehend any
danger, the ship glided on to the bank. She did not suffer a particle of
injury, and in a very short time had resumed her voyage. If Flinders had
said nothing at all about the incident, nobody off the ship would have
been any the wiser. But as the Admiralty had furnished him with a
defective chart, and might do the same to other commanders, who might
strike the sand in more inimical circumstances, he considered it to be
his duty to the service to report the matter; when lo! the Admiralty,
instead of censuring its officials for supplying the Investigator with a
faulty chart, gravely shook its head, and made those "severe remarks"
about Flinders, which induced Sir Joseph Banks to admonish him so
paternally in the letter already quoted. The Investigator had, it seemed
to be the opinion of their Lordships, struck the sand, not because it was
uncharted, but because Mrs. Flinders was on board between the Nore and
Spithead! Flinders' letter to Banks, June 6th, stated his position quite
conclusively:

"Finding so material a thing as a sandbank three or four miles from the
shore unlaid down in the chart, I thought it a duty incumbent upon me to
endeavour to prevent the like accident from happening to others, by
stating the circumstances to the Admiralty, and giving the most exact
bearings from the shoal that our situation would enable me to take, with
the supposed distance from the land. It would have been very easy for me
to have suppressed every part of the circumstance, and thus to have
escaped the blame which seems to attach to me, instead of some share of