Trim, the Cartographer's Cat

by Matthew Flinders

  Dedication

  To Lisette Flinders Petrie.

  Thank you for sharing Trim’s tale with the world.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Introduction

  A Biographical Tribute to the Memory of Trim

  – Matthew Flinders RN

  Matthew Flinders: Trim’s Shipmate and Bedfellow

  – Gillian Dooley PhD

  My Seafurring Adventures with Matt Flinders – Trim

  Timeline: The Voyages of Matthew Flinders and Trim

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  Picture Credits

  About the Authors

  Foreword

  by Julian Stockwin

  For some reason, the tale of Flinders and his much beloved cat has always touched me. Indeed, Trim’s portrait resides proud and prominent in my writing cave as I write this.

  My interest and respect actually goes back to my days serving in the Royal Australian Navy when I first learned about his vital role for the one who invented the term ‘Australia’. In general, sea officers are not given to writing about their feelings and, as far as I’m aware, his epitaph and tribute to his cherished companion stands alone in history, giving us an all too human insight into what these feline shipmates meant to mariners confined to the boundaries of their so frail barks for months, even years at a time. He was clearly Flinders’ cat, snuggling into his captain’s cot, while on deck, tempests roared about them and always cheekily taking advantage of his quarterdeck status. At the same time, as is the way of the sea-cat, he would deign to walk and talk with the sailors, casting his beneficence without fear or favour both to high and low. Even, to my considerable admiration and esteem, swarming up the ratlines to join them in the main-top in fisting the sails to a reef – albeit in a supervisory capacity.

  At sea, the captain of a ship is in a peculiar situation. The merchant service has a quaint phrase to be found in the ship’s papers which, for me, sums it up in one: he is ‘Master under God’ of his particular ship. Every soul aboard must render him respect and obedience, but in return, they could place their complete trust in him to see them through life and death perils of a kind never to be faced on land. There was no-one the captain himself could share his fears and doubts with and all decisions must be his own.

  The ‘loneliness of command’ was and is a very real thing for the captain of a ship but how much more was it for a solitary explorer of unutterably remote regions whose only maps and charts were the ones he made up himself as he sailed ever deeper into the vast unknown? That Flinders knew he was all but forgotten while the rest of the world was locked into a bitter war for survival and supremacy could only intensify his feelings, and that Trim was there to share them was, from the evidence in this volume, crucial to the success of this epic of navigation.

  And that the pen of Philippa Sandall, the original Seafurrer, should be the one to bring this saga together can only be meet and right!

  Julian Stockwin, an avowed cat lover himself, writes the internationally-acclaimed Thomas Kydd series of historical adventure fiction. More information can be found on his website www.julianstockwin.com

  Introduction

  While many of us have grieved over the loss of a beloved pet, few of us have turned our sadness into a tribute, let alone a tribute that’s become the world’s most timeless tale about a ship’s cat.

  Matthew Flinders did. While the manuscript found among his papers is dated 1809, he was clearly rehearsing this story in his heart and head for some time as there were at least two earlier drafts in English and French. ‘Translating into French the history of my cat Trim, which I wrote out for the purpose,’ he notes in his Private Journal on Sunday 11 January 1807.

  It’s not hard to imagine Flinders, while stuck in Mauritius, enlivening the lessons he gave Madame Louise d’Arifat’s children in mathematics, principles of navigation and English with tales of Trim’s intrepid adventures. Nor is it hard to imagine him heading home and putting pen to paper, egged on by their delighted response and requests for more. The story he has left us is more than a story about a ship’s cat who lapped and mapped Australia, it’s a story packed with informal details of shipboard life you won’t find in logs or official accounts of voyages.

  From the very first lines, Flinders sets a light-hearted tone, renaming HMS Investigator the Spyall because investigating is a kind of ‘spying’; Reliance he renamed the Roundabout because she made numerous roundabout trips to Norfolk Island. Later, the Porpoise becomes the Janty, which means ‘jaunty’, which the Porpoise absolutely wasn’t; and the Cumberland becomes the Minikin, which means small and insignificant, which Cumberland absolutely was – ‘something less than a Gravesend Package Boat’, according to Flinders.

  For Trim, The Cartographer’s Cat, we went back to Flinders’ manuscript. As the original is safely lodged in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, we contented ourselves with the PDF they supplied to make a complete and faithful new transcript, correcting the many little errors we have found in various online and print editions, some of which are also significantly abridged. The Tribute manuscript is a six-page booklet, and it is so remarkable, we have included an excerpt (here) so that readers can share our awe at Flinders’ beautiful handwriting and straight lines. While we have retained his spelling, punctuation and paragraph breaks, we have corrected the odd typo such as a missing full stop – Matthew didn’t have the advantage of a proofreader. We have also italicised the names of ships for editorial consistency throughout.

  We have also added ‘friendly footnotes’ * to provide some background to his literary allusions (Flinders was very well read) and the nautical terms that might mystify modern-day and non-nautical readers.

  To give readers a picture of Trim’s life and times, we turned to the treasure trove of material created on the Investigator during the circumnavigation of Australia, in the form of the drawings of William Westall and Ferdinand Bauer.

  Although we will never know, it’s reasonable to assume that A Biographical Tribute to the Memory of Trim would not have been written if Flinders had not been detained in Mauritius by the Governor, General Decaen. His plan was to hotfoot it back to London, get himself a new ship and complete charting Australia’s coastline with Trim at his side. That’s why we have included Gillian’s short essay on where Flinders was when he wrote the Tribute and why, and what his letters and journals from that time tell us about his ‘sporting, affectionate and useful companion’.

  What were Trim’s views on all this? In ‘My Seafurring Adventures with Matt Flinders’, Trim uses snippets from the Tribute as a springboard to add some background to what he saw as a premature Epitaph, as well as fill in gaps and, on occasion, set the record straight. He modestly confesses that he didn’t complete this memoir entirely on his own, roping in the services of a couple of scribes to help him pull it all together.

  A Biographical Tribute to the Memory of Trim

  Matthew Flinders RN Cartographer

  Isle of France

  Dec. 1809

  I can never speak of cats without a sentiment of regret for my poor Trim, the favourite of all our ship’s company on the Spyall. This good-natured purring animal was born on board His Majesty’s ship the Roundabout in 1799 during a passage from the Cape of Good Hope to Botany Bay; and saving the rights and titles of the Parish of Stepney,* was consequently an Indian by birth. The signs of superior intelligence which marked his infancy procured for him an education beyond what is usually bestowed upon the individuals of his tribe; and being brought up amongst sailors, his manners acquired a peculiarity of cast which rendered them as different from those of other cats, as the actions of a fearless seaman are fr
om those of a lounging, shame-faced ploughboy; it was, however, from his gentleness and the innate goodness of his heart, that I gave him the name of my uncle Toby’s honest, kind-hearted, humble companion.†

  In playing with his little brothers and sisters upon deck by moon-light, when the ship was lying tranquilly in harbour, the energy and elasticity of his movements sometimes carried him so far beyond his mark, that he fell overboard; but this was far from being a misfortune; he learned to swim and to have no dread of the water; and when a rope was thrown over to him, he took hold of it like a man, and ran up by it like a cat; in a short time, he was able to mount up the gangway steps quicker than his master, or even than the first lieutenant.

  Being a favourite with everybody on board, both officers and seamen, he was well fed, and grew fast both in size and comeliness; a description of his person will not be misplaced here. From the care that was taken of him, and the force of his own constitution, Trim grew to be one of the finest animals I ever saw; his size even emulated that of his friends of Angora:* his weight being from ten to twelve pounds according as our fresh-meatometer stood high or low. His tail was long, large and bushy; and when he was animated by the presence of a stranger of the anti-catean race, it bristled out to a fearful size, whilst vivid flashes darted from his fiery eyes, though at other times he was candour and good nature itself. His head was small and round, – his physionomy bespoke intelligence and confidence, – wiskers long and graceful, – and his ears were cropped in a beautiful curve. Trim’s robe was a clear jet black, with the exception of his four feet, which seemed to have been dipped in snow; and his under lip, which rivalled them in whiteness; he had also a white star on his breast, and it seemed as if nature had designed him for the prince and model of his race: I doubt whether Whittington’s cat, of which so much has been said and written, was to be compared to him.*

  Notwithstanding my great partiality to my friend Trim, strict justice obliges me to cite in this place a trait in his character which by many will be thought a blemish; he was, I am sorry to say it, excessively vain of his person, particularly of his snow-white feet. He would frequently place himself on the quarter deck before the officers, in the middle of their walk; and spreading out his two white hands in the posture of the lion couchant, oblige them to stop and admire him. They would indeed say low to each other, “See the vanity of that cat”! But they could not help admiring his graceful form and beautiful white feet. Indeed when it is known, that to the finest form ever beheld, he joined extraordinary personal and mental qualifications, the impossibility that the officers could be angry with him must be evident; and they were men of too much elevation of mind to be jealous of him. I would not be an advocate in the cause of vanity; but if it is ever excusable, it was so in this case. How many men are there, who have no claim either from birth, fortune, or acquirements, personal or mental, whose vanity is not to be confined within such harmless bounds, as was that of Trim! And I will say for him, that he never spoke ill of, or objected to the pretensions of others, which is more than can be said for very many bipeds.

  Trim, though vain as we have seen, was not like those young men who, being assured of an independence, spend their youth in idle trifling, and consider all serious application as pedantic and derogatory, or at least to be useless; he was, on the contrary, animated with a noble zeal for the improvement of his faculties. His exercises commenced with acquiring the art of leaping over the hands; and as every man in the ship took pleasure in instructing him, he at length arrived to such a pitch of perfection, that I am persuaded, had nature placed him in the empire of Lilliput*, his merit would have promoted him to the first offices in the state.

  He was taught to lie flat upon the deck on his back, with his four feet stretched out like one dead; and in this posture he would remain until a signal was given him to rise, whilst his preceptor resumed his walk backwards and forwards; if, however, he was kept in this position, which it must be confessed was not very agreeable to a quadruped, a slight motion of the end of his tail denoted the commencement of impatience, and his friends never pushed their lessons further.

  Trim took a fancy to learning nautical astronomy. When an officer took lunar or other observations, he would place himself by the time-keeper, and consider the motion of the hands, and apparently the uses of the instrument, with much earnest attention; he would try to touch the second hand, listen to the ticking, and walk all round the piece to assure himself whether or no it might not be a living animal; and mewing to the young gentleman whose business it was to mark down the time, seemed to ask an explanation.* When the officer had made his observation, the cry of Stop! roused Trim from his meditations; he cocked his tail, and running up the rigging near to the officer, mewed to know the meaning of all those proceedings. Finding at length that nature had not designed him for an astronomer, Trim had too much good sense to continue a useless pursuit; but a musket ball slung with a piece of twine, and made to whirl round upon the deck by a slight motion of the finger, never failed to attract his notice, and to give him pleasure; perhaps from bearing a near resemblance to the movement of his favourite planet the moon, in her orbit around the primary which we inhabit.

  He was equally fond of making experiments upon projectile forces and the power of gravity; if a ball was thrown gently along the deck, he would pursue it; and when the gravitating principle combined with the friction overcame the impelling power, he would give the ball a fresh impetus, but generally to turn its direction into an elliptic curve; at other times the form of the earth appeared to be the object of his experiments, and his ball was made to describe an oblate spheroid. The seamen took advantage of this his propensity to making experiments with globular bodies; and two of them would often place themselves, one at each end of the forecastle, and trundling a ball backwards and forwards from one to the other, would keep Trim in constant action running after it; his admiration of the planetary system having induced an habitual passion for everything round that was in motion. Could Trim have had the benefit of an Orrery, or even of being present at Mr. Walker’s experiments in natural philosophy,* there can be no doubt as to the progress he would have made in the sublimest of sciences.

  The greatest discoveries are sometimes due to accident. It must now be evident, that some celebrated cat of antiquity, perhaps one of those which entered with Noah into the ark and from which Trim was probably a descendant, gave rise, by the great profundity of his meditations, to the personification of wisdom adopted in the hyeroglyphic paintings and sculptures of the first ages. When afterwards Minerva was made the emblem of wisdom, she was long accompanied by a cat, to mark the attribute she represented; and with all deference to the F.A.Ses, I presume to conjecture, that it was not until about the time of Pericles, when all the divine attributes were made to take a human form, that this Grecian divinity could dispense with the presence of her companion. It was not the presence of Minerva which shewed the cat to be the personification of the wisdom of the great Jao-Πατηρ or Jupiter, but that of the cat which explained what Minerva was intended to represent. I could go still further, and shew, that by a simple transformation of all the letters [illegible – ‘Sofia’?] (wisdom), and [illegible – ‘Felis’?] (cat, domestic happiness) have the same etimological root; or are rather identically the same word. It would be worth enquiring to know whether this holds good in the Cophtic, Phenician, and Chinese languages.*

  His desire to gain a competent knowledge in practical seamanship, was not less than he shewed for experimental philosophy. The replacing a top-mast carried away, or taking a reef in the sails, were what most attracted his attention at sea; and at all times when there was more bustle upon deck than usual, he never failed to be present and in the midst of it; for as I have before hinted, he was endowed with an unusual degree of confidence and courage, and having never received anything but good from men, he believed all to be his friends, and he was the friend of all. When the nature of the bustle upon the deck was not understood by him, he would mew a
nd rub his back up against the legs of one and the other, frequently at the risk of being trampled under foot, until he obtained the attention of someone to satisfy him. He knew what good discipline required, and on taking in a reef, never presumed to go aloft until the order was issued; but so soon as the officer had given the word – “Away up aloft!”; up he jumped along with the seamen; and so active and zealous was he, that none could reach the top before, or so soon as he did. His zeal, however, never carried him beyond a sense of his dignity: he did not lay out on the yard like a common seaman, but always remained seated upon the cap, to inspect like an officer. This assumption of authority to which, it must be confessed, his rank, though great as a quadruped, did not entitle him amongst men, created no jealousy; for he always found some good friend ready to caress him after the business was done, and to take him down in his arms.

  In harbour, the measuring of log and lead lines upon deck, and the stowage of the holds below, were the favourite subjects of his attention. No sooner was a cask moved, than he darted in under it upon the enemies of his king and country, at the imminent risk of having his head crushed to atoms, which he several times very narrowly escaped. In the bread room he was still more indefatigable; he frequently solicited to be left there alone and in the dark, for two or three days together, that nothing might interrupt him in the discharge of his duty. This is one of the brightest traits in my friend Trim’s character, and would indeed do honour to any character; in making the following deductions from it I shall not, I think, be accused of an unjust partiality. 1st. it must be evident that he had no fear of evil spirits; and consequently that he had a conscience above reproach. 2nd; it is clear that he possessed a degree of patience and perseverance, of which few men can boast; and 3rd. that like a faithful subject, he employed all these estimable qualities in the service of His Majesty’s faithful servants, and indirectly of His Majesty himself. Alas! my poor Trim; thy extraordinary merit required only to be known, in order to excite universal admiration.