AustLit

'Sailing with Flinders: the first published account, now shown to be written by HMS Investigator veteran Robert Purdie

'A lively 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.

'This hitherto almost unknown account is now shown to have been written by Surgeon's Mate Robert Purdie, a junior officer on board HMS Investigator. Purdie's lengthy "Narrative" is the earliest published account of any Investigator veteran and the only account of life on Wreck Reef in the Coral Sea after the foundering of the Porpoise and Cato, and of the survivors who made their own way back to England. First published as an anonymous serial in the famous journal The Naval Chronicle in late 1806 and early 1807, the only other major published eyewitness account of the wreck was by Matthew Flinders himself, in his Voyage to Terra Australis (1814).

'Although published anonymously, the work has always been suspected to be more serious and authentic than the penny-chapbooks and newspaper accounts that were issued at the time, and it is now shown to have been written by Purdie in a new introduction and notes by Matthew Fishburn.' (Publication summary)