Returning to Britain, Flinders was married in 1801 to Ann Chappelle, the very one he had successfully wooed by naming the Chappelle Isles for her in Bass Strait.
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Just months later, he left once again, this time as skipper of HMS Investigator to circumnavigate and map the continent then known as Terra Australis, but which Captain Flinders himself would rename “Australia” and persist with that name, despite heavy resistance, until it became the accepted term.
It was in this church, too, that his new bride Ann would sometimes retreat to pray for his safe return. Little did she know that it would be nigh on a decade from their wedding before she would see him again. This was the time being taken by his voyage, and his subsequent imprisonment for over six years on Ile de France (now Mauritius) on his way home.
He returned, ailing badly from failing kidneys among other things, and died aged 40 in 1814, Ann by his side. This was just one day after he finally held in his withered hand the first published copy of the book he had written detailing his adventures.
His modest funeral was held at St James Church in Piccadilly, and his coffin taken to the vast burial ground in Hampstead Road, Camden, where it lay for more than 200 years as London grew up and over it.
The crypt for Flinders, freshly dug in the church of his youth.Credit: Peter FitzSimons
Extraordinarily, when Euston Road Station was being expanded in 2019, that coffin and Flinders’ remains were rediscovered. In Donington, a Bring Him Home Committee was quickly established. And now, here he is.
From 10am, the church bells ring as the people of Donington come out from their homes. At 1400 hours, in naval parlance, the coffin, draped in the British and Australian flags joined, is slowly driven in the hearse through the streets, past his two-storey family home where his father, the local surgeon, received his patients. Villagers crowd on either side of the road, their heads bowed.
At 1430, three shots ring out from a Royal Navy Honour Guard and his coffin is borne into the church on the shoulders of six young ensigns, behind the Bishop of Lincoln, as the local choir sings Leonard Cohen’s epic Hallelujah.
All stand.
The church is packed with dignitaries, diplomats and a diverse array of Flinders folk, many of whom are Australians. They include two men with charmingly battered Akubra hats, who prove to be descendants of Bungaree, the Darug man who accompanied Flinders and his crew on the circumnavigation and whose own diplomatic skills in negotiating with tribes all over the country proved crucial to its success.
Australian diplomat George Brandis attended the memorial service for Matthew Flinders.Credit: Liliana Zaharia
At the front, on the left, are descendants of Flinders. His brother, Samuel, is buried in the adjoining cemetery, as are their parents, while Matthew’s open grave is right here in the church, on the left, watched over by two undertakers in top hats and long tails, looking for all the world like startled escapees from a Dickens novel.
It is some surprise, to this correspondent at least, that neither Australia’s High Commissioner Stephen Smith nor the Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles are in attendance, despite both being in the country.
They are down in Sheffield, on AUKUS submarine business. The highest-ranking dignitaries from Australia are our Deputy High Commissioner, Elizabeth Mae Bowes, and the Governor of South Australia, Frances Adamson. Former Australian high commissioner George Brandis is also here.
On the British side, there were no members from the new government, or the old for that matter, and nary even a third cousin once removed from the royal family. In many ways, the importance of Flinders has been substantially, and sadly, forgotten by both nations.
But not in Donington, where five years of planning reaches journey’s end. The six young ensigns lower Flinders into his eternal resting place. Clods of earth from Mauritius, London, South Australia and Sydney are thrown upon the coffin.
The latter is scattered by the two Bungaree descendants, Shad Tyler and Laurie Bimson, and with it they add a boomerang daubed with ochre clay from Beacon Hill. It is the perfect end to a wonderfully resonant ceremony before all 400 of us gather in the churchyard for tea and scones.
Welcome home, Matthew Flinders. Australia sends a fond if distant salute.
Peter FitzSimons has been writing a book on Flinders for the last two years.
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