Trim, the Cartographer's Cat

by Matthew Flinders

  Incidentally …

  Naming things is what navigators do so they can put them on their maps and others can find them and know where they are. First on the scene gets naming rights. Few European explorers were the first on the scene, but they were the first explorers with compasses, chronometers, sextants and charts, enabling them to map places and give them names. Captain James Cook named more than a hundred bays, capes and notable features as he sailed up the east coast of New Holland. Botany Bay he named after ‘the great quantity of new plants collected by Mr Banks and Dr Solander’ [they were the naturalists on board Endeavour]’,13 striking out the earlier contenders Sting Ray Harbour, Botanist Harbour and Botanist Bay. Port Jackson was personal: a nod to his friend and admiralty secretary George Jackson, a man who later changed his name to Duckett to meet the provisions of a will. Port Jackson, however, remained Port Jackson.

  View of Port Jackson taken from the South Head, William Westall; engraved by John Pye. National Library of Australia.

  Of course, that’s not what the locals called it. The traditional Eora people had plenty of names for their places, but few newcomers or passers-by bothered to ask what they were. William Dawes was an exception. His First Fleet job was to make astronomical observations during the voyage to Botany Bay and then set up an observatory to monitor a comet expected in the southern hemisphere in 1788. He built the observatory, but the comet didn’t show. He then worked as an engineer and surveyor. But his lasting claim to fame is what he did in his spare time: he recorded the local languages in numerous notebooks because he thought it was important. He wanted to stick around the young colony and do more, but he made himself unpopular with Governor Phillip by opposing a punitive expedition against a group of Aborigines in December 1790, and as payback, Phillip dispatched him back to Britain when his time was up in December 1791. He took his notebooks with him.

  As for Matthew Flinders, he named about 348 Australian places during his four voyages, and most of them are still gazetteered and in use today. However, he really only made suggestions for names rather than plonking them down immediately on his charts. As he writes in a memoir in 1805:

  “Very few names are applied by me; for where I could not find a descriptive one, it was left to the Admiralty, or those whom their Lordships might chuse, to apply a name. It is not only consistent with propriety that the planners and promoters of a voyage of discovery should have a principle share in affixing names to the discovered parts, but it is necessary that the baptizing mania of some navigators should be under control, to prevent so many repetitions of names as we find in different parts of the world; nay sometimes in the same part. If such a controuling power had been vested in the hydrographer of the Admiralty, we should not have had two Cape Howes upon the south coast of Australia, or two Cape Deliverances upon the south coast of New Guinea.14”

  Incident 3

  ‘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.’

  Sailors do get time off. Matt thought this important. He organised dancing to the fife and drum on the forecastle on fine evenings and, as he puts it, ‘did not discourage other playful amusements which might occasionally be more to the taste of the sailors’.15 One of those was teaching me tricks. And as I have never minded being the centre of attention, a good time was had by all, with tasty little rewards on occasion.

  Activities like leaping over hands or chasing a musket ball on a piece of twine or along the deck also provided opportunities to exercise and to practise the stalking, pouncing and leaping skills that are essential for rodent control. So what looks like play is actually work, and a pleasant way to socialise with shipmates and to stay on top of one’s game.

  Doing my bit keeping the rats and mice down and out was one of my duties, and it’s true, as Matt remarks in the Tribute, that I was known for dashing after prey through thick and thin like a man of war. He knew he could always rely on my zeal in the hold and bread room to protect the ship’s stores. He had ordered 30,000 pounds of biscuit, 8,000 pounds of flour and 156 bushels of kiln-dried wheat, plus Indian corn as fodder for the sheep, pigs, geese and fowl, for the long voyage ahead circumnavigating Australia in the Investigator. I had to be indefatigable. Rats and mice would take one look and think this was an invitation to dine at a never-ending banquet.

  I’m not going to claim any ratting records, but I like to think I brought to rodent control the same determined and methodical approach Matt brought to navigation and charting. I was very touched by his commendation in the Tribute that I ‘possessed a degree of patience and perseverance, of which few men can boast; and … that like a faithful subject, … employed all these estimable qualities in the service of His Majesty’s faithful servants, and indirectly of His Majesty himself’.

  Incidentally …

  Successful hunting is not hit and miss. The ratting record holders enhance their hit rate with these seven highly effective habits – although they are listed here in some sort of ranking order, all of them are important:

  Seven Secrets of the Successful Hunter

  Be prepared.

  Plan ahead.

  Be patient.

  Persevere.

  Be fit for the task.

  Maintain a healthy life balance.

  Practice makes perfect.

  Incident 4

  ‘Trim took a fancy to learning nautical astronomy. When an officer took lunar or other observations, he would place himself by the timekeeper, and consider the motion of the hands, and apparently the uses of the instrument, with much earnest attention.’

  Like all felines, my navigation is very good on terra firma. I can find my way round a new neighbourhood easily, which is what I did when holed up in Mauritius. I would have gone stir crazy if I hadn’t been able to stretch my legs now and then. So, I slipped past the sentry and checked out the lie of the land. I never had any problems finding my way ‘home’, if our prison could be called that. Felines have a good sense of direction, but for navigational aids it’s mostly down to our sense of smell. The nose knows, you could say. At sea, we are all at sea. Dogs are in the same boat.

  Humans are different. They use their eyes rather than their nose and over the years have come up with a swag of navigational aids (compass, sextant, time-keeper or chronometer) to make their nautical-astronomy observations more accurate. Matt was very methodical about this. When he was charting a coastline, he took each bearing and angle himself from either the deck or the masthead, and then overnight he’d plot the results. Next morning, he was back at it, starting from the spot where he’d ended the previous day’s work.

  Taking the bearings is one of those tasks that put structure into a day’s work, which is why I liked to keep him and the time-keeper company. There’s a sense of doing important work when you’re charting a coastline that hasn’t been charted before. I’m not surprised he became renowned as one of the world’s most accomplished navigators. His charts show his meticulous attention to detail as well as, returning the compliment, his patience, perseverance and, dare I say it, earnest attention.

  Incidentally …

  Matt made a major contribution to navigation with his practical investigations into the influence of magnetism on the compass needle. When we were surveying Australia’s south coast, he noticed that when the ship’s heading changed, there was a perplexing difference in the direction of the magnetic needle that he couldn’t account for. He had a theory that iron might be part of the problem and moved a couple of cannons. But it wasn’t as simple as that. Stuck in a room on Mauritius with time on his hands, he gave the problem more thought, and wrote a paper setting out his findings – Concerning the Differences in the Magnetic Needle, on Board the Investigator, Arising from an Alteration in the Direction of the Ship’s Head
– and prudently called for more research to be carried out.

  While he was occupying himself with his charts and notes, I imprudently occupied myself exploring Port Louis, testing my personal navigation system. It never failed me.

  Incident 5

  ‘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.’

  No surprises that practical seamanship had a greater appeal than nautical astronomy. Likewise, I was very happy doing my pest control stint in the bread room and in the holds, but the real attraction was going aloft. Sitting up there on the cap I could keep an eye on the whole ship, my home range. I freely admit that my role was principally supervisory – the topmen did the hard work taking a reef in the sails (shortening the sail by reducing the area exposed to the wind) or replacing a topmast that had been carried away. These topmen were the absolute elite, chosen to work high above the deck on the masts and yards. It was not a job for everyone. Many sailors hate heights.

  Saying none could reach the top before me is exaggerating. But racing to the top was a breeze for me because we cats are natural climbers with built-in crampon claws. Coming down was another story, and I’m not sure what evolution’s plan was here. Our claws are simply not designed for ease of descent – it’s very hard to get a grip because they point the wrong way. Of course, we can climb down if we have to, but going head first can be very unwise, and backing down is not a good look in anyone’s book and not a smart move with predators around. Having the sense to put ego aside and hitch a ride with a mate is a good call. Mateship is what it’s all about on board – providing your shipmates with support and companionship in times of need. Worst-case scenario? Jumping. It isn’t always a nine-lives extreme challenge. Cats are designed to make a perfect landing on all four paws. Mostly. This is because within 0.125 to 0.5 of a second, a falling cat can safely turn over in its own standing height. In fact, it’s been described as a gold-medal performance, achieving a net rotation while keeping total angular momentum constant and sticking the perfect landing. Of course, having a flexible backbone and no functional collarbone (clavicle) helps with aerial acrobatics. As in all things, practice makes perfect, and experience is a great teacher. The righting reflex (also called air righting) begins to appear in kittens at three to four weeks of age, and they have perfected it by six to seven weeks.

  Incidentally …

  Few animals (and Homo sapiens isn’t among them) can climb down head first. Controlling descent (that is, opposing the force of gravity, which is pulling you down) is the problem. Those that can head down head first have highly mobile ankle joints and claws. That list is short: there are a couple of felines (the margay and the clouded leopard), red pandas, the slender mongoose, the fossa (a cat-like relative of the mongoose), and racoons and squirrels, who can rotate their feet 180 degrees. That’s like having reversible feet or paws. No mean feat.

  Incident 6

  ‘In an expedition made to examine the northern parts of the coast of New South Wales, Trim presented a request to be of the party, promising to take upon himself the defence of our bread bags, and his services were accepted.’

  The key role of ships’ cats, or seafurrers, as they like to be called, was pest control, and I was renowned for my expertise in discharging my duties in this respect. Hence my vigilance in the bread room, the favourite haunt of mice and rats, and my undivided attention to the bread bags on the Norfolk, each of which had about a hundredweight of ship’s biscuit. This is a major responsibility because bread is staple fare – a seaman gets a pound (about half a kilo) of it a day to give him the get-up-and-go he needs to sail the ship.

  The bread in those bags faced a double whammy: attack from both within and without. There’s not much we ships’ cats can do about attack from within: the weevils are already hard at work in the bread that’s in the bags. Attack from without is a different matter. We happily deal with the rodents, providing a complete catch-and-clean-up service.

  While I occasionally enjoyed a little bread well dunked in milk on the Reliance thanks to William the gunroom steward, it isn’t a natural part of the feline diet and not something I crave. We are meat eaters, or ‘obligate carnivores’, to use the technical term. Bongaree appreciated this and generously shared remnants of black swan from his kid with me. We were well supplied with swan on this trip as Flinders bagged 18 birds in Moreton Bay. Fresh is best as they say, and swan is a lot better than salt beef.

  Bongaree and I had sailed together before when he had signed on for a 60-day Norfolk Island round trip on Reliance between May and July 1798, but this trip on the Norfolk was the first occasion we had time to get to know each other. He was the first Aboriginal I met; I was possibly the first ship’s cat he met. We bonded. While the Eora people did keep pets such as dingo puppies, they had never had cats or kittens because there weren’t any. We don’t know when the first felines set foot on Terra Australis; but when Sydney Cove was being settled, a number of ships’ cats jumped ship on arrival and called Australia home. Doing that never occurred to me. Seafaring with Matt suited me fine.

  Incidentally …

  The Norfolk, a 25-ton sloop built on Norfolk Island using Norfolk Island pine, was originally intended to ship supplies and dispatches between Sydney and that penal colony on a more regular basis. She completed her first run to Port Jackson on 15 June 1798, and that decided it. She had a greater destiny. Governor Hunter immediately commandeered her for Flinders and Bass to circumnavigate Van Diemen’s Land and prove that it was an island. They did. Flinders then sailed north in her to explore Glass-house Bay and Hervey’s Bay, and Trim joined him for this trip.

  That was not the end of the Norfolk’s adventures. In November 1800, laden with 500 bushels of wheat, she was seized by 15 convicts who had boarded her in Broken Bay on her way to Port Jackson from the Hawkesbury River.

  “The runaways proposed proceeding to the Dutch settlements among the Moluccas … [and] called in at the Hunter River, where their vessel was driven on shore … With all speed Governor King despatched an armed boat to the Hunter River, where the Norfolk was found bilged through the unskilful handling of the pirates, who thereupon committed a fresh act of piracy by seizing another boat. The armed cutter, after a desperate chase, captured nine out of the fifteen desperadoes, and secured the Sydney trader’s vessel uninjured, but the Norfolk went to pieces in the surf off the point afterwards denominated Pirates’ Point, and now known as Stockton.16”

  BACKGROUND BRIEFING:

  Baking Biscuit

  Baking biscuit for Britain’s navy was big business. Here’s how big:

  “At Deptford the bake-house belonging to the victualling-office has twelve ovens; each of which bakes twenty shoots daily; the quantity of flour used for each shoot is two bushels, or 112 pounds; which baked, produce 102 pounds of biscuit. Ten pounds are regularly allowed on each shoot for shrinkage, &c. … at Deptford alone, they can furnish bread, daily, for 24,480 men, independent of Portsmouth and Plymouth..17”

  Incident 7

  ‘In 1800, the Roundabout returned to England by the way of Cape Horn and St. Helena, and thus Trim, besides his other voyages, completed the tour of the globe.’

  Well, this goes down in history as one of our rare uneventful voyages with nothing to do except observe ‘small quadrupeds, birds, and flying fish’. However, without being picky, I have to insert a small correction: I hadn’t yet completed a tour of the globe. That date with destiny had to wait until I completed the Portsmouth–Cape Town leg on the Investigator.

  All told, we spent nearly a year in England, twelve long months when I discovered that the restrictions of hearth and home weren’t for me (and I tried several that year). While I was being billeted around and trying to make friends with the locals, Matt was busy. He pu
blished his charts of his new discoveries (printed by John Nichols in London in 1801 and wisely dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks, the work was called Observations on the Coasts of Van Diemen’s Land, on Bass’s Strait and Its Islands, and on Part of the Coasts of New South Wales: intended to accompany the charts of the late discoveries in those countries), and took time out to marry his sweetheart, Ann Chappelle. However, he didn’t have long-term plans to settle down either. He had more explorations in mind.

  He successfully pitched his plan to complete the investigation of the coasts of Terra Australis to the powers that be, and took command of the Investigator on a salary of ₤250 a year, which seemed princely but was somewhat less than the artists on board, he later discovered. Sir Joseph Banks’ support magically opened doors for him. I didn’t get to meet the great man myself, but people were always talking about him and his scientific achievements, and I personally noted his generosity and thoughtfulness – he presented Matt with a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica for the use of all the officers on the voyage. I am pretty sure he also provided a signed copy of his own book, Rules for Collecting and Preserving Specimens of Plants.

  Incidentally …

  Banks was always in the wings pulling strings. He had joined James Cook’s scientific expedition to the Pacific in 1768 on the recommendation of the Royal Society. Cook’s scientific mission was to calculate the distance between the earth and the sun by measuring Venus transiting the sun. Banks had his own plans. He was young, ambitious and wealthy and he wanted to be the first naturalist to go plant hunting and species seeking in the South Seas. And he was (as far as we know). Three years later, he and the Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander arrived back in England with some 30,000 plants, shells, insects and animals representing some 3,000 species, of which 1,600 were wholly new to science. He was also on the spot when Cook hoisted English colours and took possession of the whole eastern coast of New Holland in the name of His Majesty King George III on 22 August 1770, naming this new ‘colony’ New South Wales.