18 July 2014 will mark 200 years since the publication of A Voyage to Terra Australis, the classic account of the voyage of HMS Investigator written by Matthew Flinders.
To celebrate, Hordern House has published in full an important eyewitness account of the fate of the Flinders expedition originally written in 1806. As is discussed in the introduction and notes, this anonymously published Narrative was almost completely overlooked for more than two centuries, but is now proven to have been written by one of Flinders' officers, Surgeon's Mate Robert Purdie. This discovery is particularly significant as the Narrative is the only major published account to be written by a veteran of the expedition besides Flinders' own Voyage.
