Matthew Flinders' Cat (29 page)

It was not in the nature of the British navy to tolerate such a mischievous and unprovoked attack, so a party was sent out to hunt for the Indians who had wounded Mr Whitewood. Trim was most severely told to remain on board, Matthew Flinders having heard somewhat of his derring-do, though privately putting this down to the exaggeration normal to members of the crew when talking about Master Trim.

At sunset they came upon three Indians who immediately took to a canoe at the water’s edge. Wasting no time to inquire whether they belonged to the same group as those involved in the attack earlier in the day, they fired on the natives who were paddling furiously for the mainland. One of the Indians was seen to drop while the other two dived from the canoe and swam strongly for the distant shore.

‘Hooray!’ shouted a seaman, ‘It is my shot that got the bugger!’ Whereupon he immediately plunged into the water and swam for the canoe. Reaching it, he boarded to find a dead Indian and also the cabbage-tree hat that had been lost earlier. By some strange circumstance it proved to be the seaman’s own. He placed it on his head and standing up in the canoe hailed the shore, ‘A dead Indian and my hat returned to me!’ he yelled with such enthusiasm that he capsized the canoe, tipping the dead native into the water as well as himself.

The canoe was later rescued, but they had to wait until morning when the tide washed the body of the dead Indian to shore. It was then that they all witnessed proof of Trim’s courage on the previous day. The seaman’s musket ball had passed through the native’s heart, a neat hole that left him otherwise undamaged. The man lay with one arm across his face and when this was lifted there was a gasp from the men, the dead man’s eyes were greatly damaged, the lids scratched and torn as were the eyes themselves. This was the testimony of Trim’s bravery for all on board to witness and it became part of a legend, a tale seamen still tell whenever the merit of a ship’s cat is raised.

The body was taken to the boat for scientific purposes, the ship’s surgeon wishing to dissect the corpse for anatomical reasons. The shipboard artist, Mr Westall, wished also to record the body and features for comparison with the natives found in other parts of this vast and primitive land. In his sketch he was most careful not to show the wounds to the chest and neck or the scratching to the eyes, although he showed the eyes closed whereas in death they should have been wide staring open.

Of immediate interest to Captain Flinders himself was that the body had been circumcised and had lost the upper front tooth on the left side whereas with the natives of Port Jackson it was the upper tooth on the right that was knocked out at puberty.

My dear Ryan, you are probably finding much of this tedious, it happened such a long time ago and the dangers present today are so very different to those faced by Matthew Flinders and the inestimable Trim. But as you grow older you will see that danger is an element in our present lives that has very little to do with an outcome decided by musket ball or spear. The danger we face today is that we lack the confidence or even the permission to act bravely by listening to our consciences. The real bravery in today’s world is doing for each other what is right and proper. In the end, this courage is far more powerful than the spear or the musket, the stealth bomber or the nuclear weapon.

Billy was conscious that in writing to Ryan about bravery he was the perfect example of the cowardice he was showing. He didn’t quite know how to tell the young lad that he was aware of his gutless behaviour and that Ryan should see him for the unreliable and cowardly creature that he was. More and more, he was recognising his own shortcomings and his own lack of the virtues he was writing about. He wondered if he should quit writing for he was increasingly feeling the hypocrisy behind his moralising. The letter had taken a turn he’d never intended and it was as if it was being dictated by some inner self with whom he needed to make contact. After some thought he decided to continue, though not without real misgivings.

At your age, the lack of loyalty and bravery of conscience may be as difficult to understand as it was for Trim when he was shipwrecked. Trim was a seagoing cat and his first loyalty was always to his crew and then to all the sailors afloat. They were a fraternity of brothers, men who faced the same hardships, cast asunder from the land, they placed their trust in each other when in distress. This is the law of the sea and it has ever been so.

But now of the shipwreck. The
Investigator
, worn out and no longer reliable for the purposes of circumnavigation, had returned to Port Jackson for lighter work. As there was no suitable vessel to replace her it was decided that Matthew Flinders would leave for England to obtain another ship to complete his work of charting Terra Australis. He was to sail under the command of one of his own officers, Lieutenant Fowler, and with many of his former crew, to England where he would report to the Admiralty. The vessel chosen for Lieutenant Fowler was the
Porpoise
, a ship well overdue for a refit. It had been brought from Van Diemen’s Land where it had been employed in coastal work. The sailor in Trim wasn’t at all happy with this arrangement and thought the
Porpoise
ill-suited for the voyage to England, having seen out the best of her days at sea. He made his opinion known to Captain Flinders by rushing ahead of him while the inspection of repairs took place and pointing out with much meowing those parts of the old tub which were not to his liking.

Matthew Flinders shared Trim’s anxiety and on one occasion had thrown up his arms, ‘Trim, thou art correct in thy survey, but we have no choice, England prepares for war against France and all His Majesty’s seaworthy warships are gathered in England, this old gunpowder trap is all they have available for us to use to sail back home. Alas, if the war were to take place in these antipodean lands, then the use of my charts would allow us to command the latest man o’ war, but the coast of Europe is well charted and we must be happy with this mended old bucket well past her fighting days.’ He had stroked Trim to reassure him, ‘There are much worse sailing the seven seas, my friend. The
Porpoise
, at the least, is not leaky nor crank and, given fair weather, will do us well, what say you, eh?’

Trim, with a cat’s instinct for survival, wasn’t too keen to put another of his nine lives to the test but he had no choice, he was obliged to go wherever his master went. But he was not a happy pussycat. He had climbed the
Porpoise
’s mast to find it was too short and thought her beam too narrow and she creaked to his ears like the bones of an old lady.

On the 10th of August 1803, the
Porpoise
sailed down the harbour and through the heads accompanied by two merchant vessels, both bound for Batavia as their first port of call. They had asked permission to sail with the
Porpoise
as they were anxious to test the Torres Strait, a shorter passage first charted in the
Investigator
. Flinders was only too pleased to have them along, as it would give him the opportunity to prove the advantages of this new route and so bring it into general use. Captain Palmer was master of the
Bridgewater
, a ship of 750 tons, and Mr John Park commanded the
Cato
, a smaller ship of 450 tons.

Billy was becoming increasingly aware that if Ryan had been present and seated on his skateboard while he told the story, he would have omitted some of the detail which might prove tedious to the youngster. Billy, a keen sailor in his better days, had sailed in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race on six occasions and, like all serious yachtsmen, found it almost impossible to leave out what others might think of as superfluous detail. It was, he knew, self-indulgence and he told himself he intended to make a clean copy and would leave out the nautical bits ’n’ pieces.

All went to plan for the first two days and on the morning of the third day they sighted a sandbank but continued on all day and by nightfall were thirty-five miles (50 km) from it with a good depth of water under them. Lieutenant Fowler decided they were well clear and, rather than lose sailing time, they would run through the night under easy working sail. With the topsails double-reefed and a fresh breeze blowing, all seemed well enough. The night was cloudy and visibility slightly down, though not too badly so there was no cause for concern. The
Porpoise
, with the two merchant ships on either side a good distance away but with their lights clearly showing, was making steady progress when suddenly the master of the watch shouted from the quarterdeck, ‘Breakers ahead! White water!’

Trim rushed to the quarterdeck rail to confirm the sighting. There it was, a surf crashing in the half-light against an invisible shore. The helm was immediately put down, the intention to tack away from the crashing waves, but with the topsails double-reefed they lacked the canvas to pull the vessel around. ‘Oh my God!’ thought Trim, ‘there goes another one of my poor lives!’ For he was too good a sailor not to know what would happen next.

And happen it did, the sails were shaking in the wind with the ship being pulled towards the huge breakers fifty metres away and in less than a minute the
Porpoise
was among them. Then came a mighty thump as the ship hit the coral reef and immediately heeled on her larboard beam ends. Men clung on desperately and there was a great deal of yelling out. ‘Fire a gun! Fire a gun to warn the other ships,’ Matthew Flinders shouted. But the surf roared over them and threw men every which way so that the firing of the small cannon was impossible. Then the foremast crashed down and was carried away, another bump followed and the bottom stove in and the
Porpoise
started taking in water.

‘Bring up the lights!’ shouted Lieutenant Fowler, ‘We must warn the other vessels with our lights!’ But before the lights could be brought up, Trim saw that the two merchant ships, the
Bridgewater
and the
Cato
, had both realised the danger to themselves and moved each on the opposite tack, ‘Holy puss ’n’ boots!’ Trim meowed, ‘They’re going to collide!’

The men on the
Porpoise
, drenched from the spume and spray as the breakers broke over the ship’s beam, watched as the two merchant vessels drew closer to each other. If they collided, as it now seemed they must, there could be no rescue for the men on the
Porpoise
. Even Trim held his breath and closed his eyes as the two ships were about to ram. By some miracle of the deep they passed each other, their hulls lightly touching but moving each away from the other. ‘Hooray, we are saved!’ someone shouted, but moments later they saw the
Cato
, the lighter of the two merchant vessels, caught in the breakers two hundred and fifty metres away. She fell onto her broadside and her masts immediately disappeared in the white water. With her profile no longer set against the sky, she was now too far away to be seen in the darkness.

Trim was drenched but unafraid, he could swim if he must and beyond the breakers there would be a shoreline. The
Bridgewater
is still safe, she will rescue us, he thought, she’s big enough to take us all if we should survive. Just then the
Bridgewater
’s lights came on at her masthead, this to show she had cleared the reef. ‘Hallelujah, we are saved!’ the bosun, a religious man, shouted ‘Praise be to the Mighty Redeemer, we have been snatched from the darkness of the sea!’ It was thought by all that it was only a question of time before the
Bridgewater
would tack and send boats to their rescue.