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Private Notes
In 1801, two men embark on one of the greatest ocean races the world has ever seen. The rivals - Frenchman Nicolas Baudin and his British challenger Matthew Flinders - each lead expeditions hailed as "Voyages of Discovery".
Captain Nicolas Baudin is entrusted with leading the most ambitious French "Voyage of Discovery" ever assembled - two ships loaded with 22 scientists and the best technology Revolutionary France has to offer. Baudin's ships will return to France carrying arguably the greatest collection of natural history specimens ever collected. Yet Baudin will be vilified and ultimately forgotten by history, thanks largely to his voyage's troublesome scientist, François Péron.
Baudin's rival is a brash young English lieutenant, Matthew Flinders, an ambitious 26-year-old - a talented and flawed man who is today venerated as one of Australia's greatest explorers, yet he is virtually unknown in his own country, Britain.
Both missions are seeking to map the unknown coasts of New Holland. Having set off for the adventure of a lifetime, both men instead soon find themselves pitted against shipwreck, scurvy, imprisonment and death, as well as one another. Having embarked to conquer the Unknown, they discover in the end, that perhaps the Unknown has conquered them...
The remarkable race between rival explorers Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin continues.
In March 1802, Flinders thinks he has finally discovered the huge strait rumoured to split Australia into two separate landmasses. Instead, he finds disaster, losing seven men at ‘Cape Catastrophe’.
A few days later, to the amazement of both men and their crews, he meets his French rival Nicholas Baudin, approaching from the opposite direction along the coast that the French call ‘Terre Napoleon’ The two men compare findings and together realise there is no strait splitting the continent.
The explorers sail on in their opposite directions. Baudin consolidates French claims to the western coasts and amasses one of the most spectacular scientific collections ever assembled. Flinders completes the charting of the eastern and northern coasts but his rotting ship disintegrates and Flinders and his crew are shipwrecked and abandoned.
Baudin’s expedition is the first to get back to Europe and the French are the first to publish their findings, but their claims to New Holland are eventually scuttled in a final story of subterfuge, betrayal and the re-writing of history. The great race between Flinders and Baudin will cost one man his freedom and the other his life- and deliver Britain the prize of Australia.
