Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the July
1814 publication of Matthew Flinders Voyage to Terra Australis, Hordern
House is publishing a lively yet hitherto almost unknown account of sailing
with Matthew Flinders, written by a young surgeon in the Royal Navy who
survived the wreck of HMS Porpoise off the Queensland coast in 1803.
The anonymous Narrative is now for the first
time shown to have been written by Surgeons Mate Robert Purdie, a junior
officer on board Flinders ship, HMS Investigator.
