Caturday felid: The saga of Matthew Flinders and his cat Trim (and lagniappe)

February 16, 2019 • 9:00 am

Instead of the usual Caturday Felid trifecta, we have only one piece today, as it’s long.

Reader Peter sent this note: “Thought you might be interested in two pages. One about the discovery in London of Matthew Flinders grave, and cos of that, another about his life with Trim, the cat.”

Here’s the first article from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (click on screenshot):

Flinders’s remains were discovered buried under Euston station, and he was identified by the lead breastplate on his coffin:

But who was Flinders? This ABC article tells his story (note the cat on the statue):
From the ABC story (my emphasis):
In short, [Flinders] was the first person to circumnavigate Australia. As the ABC reports (my emphasis):

He joined the navy at 15 and served under William Bligh on a trip to Tahiti in 1791. He fought against the French in the naval battle of the Glorious First of June 1794, according to the Australian Museum.

Flinders sailed to Australia in 1795 to begin his survey work.

Shortly after his most famous voyage, Flinders was captured by the French on his return to England and held prisoner for more than six years.

Just four years later he died of kidney failure at the age of 40 — the day after the book detailing his circumnavigation of Australia was published.

The Australian Museum says Flinders was “an outstanding sailor, surveyor, navigator and scientist”.

After it became known French explorer Nicholas Baudin was planning to circumnavigate Australia, Flinders was sent out with his good friend George Bass to do it quicker than his French counterpart.

Historian Dave Hunt described the circumnavigation as a race.

“[Joseph] Banks says to Flinders, ‘I need somebody to go out and sail around the continent quicker than him’, so Flinders and [his cat] Trim are actually racing Baudin and his pet monkey around Australia [between] 1801 and 1803,” Mr Hunt explained to the ABC in the Rum Rebels and Ratbags podcast.

In 1801 Flinders began his circumnavigation of the continent, and was later accompanied by an Aboriginal translator, Bungaree, who he had worked alongside in 1789.

By 1803, Flinders had won, becoming the first person to circumnavigate Australia and identify it as a continent.

Mr Hunt says Flinders was also the first to seriously propose and popularise the name “Australia”for the continent he sailed around.

Before his most famous voyage, Flinders also circumnavigated Tasmania, proving it was separate from mainland Australia.

But WAIT! Who is this cat Trim?

And here’s the answer, showing that Trim was also one of the first mammals to circumnavigate Australia, and certainly the first nonhuman animal. This article tells the story of Trim, the intrepid SeaCat:

The story is long, including a shipwreck when Flinders and his men swam to safety with Trim, and Trim keeping the men in good spirits for the seven days until they were rescued.

Trim was born in 1799 on board HMS Reliance on Flinders’ voyage from the Cape of Good Hope to Botany Bay.

He was an adventurous spirit from the beginning; early on Trim fell overboard and had to swim to the boat and climb up a rope to safety.

Rachel Franks from the State Library of NSW said it was this act of bravery that caught Flinders’ attention.

“I think that he always had that determination,” she told Sarah Macdonald on ABC Radio’s Nightlife.

“I think Matthew quite liked his spirit and I think Trim quite liked [Flinders] as well.”

Flinders gave the small black and white cat the name Trim after the butler in Laurence Sterne’s book Tristram Shandy.

He described his feline friend as:

“One of the finest animals I ever saw … [his] 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.”

When Flinders undertook a mission to circumnavigate the southern continent in the ship Investigator, Trim was by his side.

Trim was said to be a cheeky cat, who would join the captain at his table and try to swipe food off the forks of others as they ate.

“He only stole food once,” Ms Franks said.

“Apparently there was a large piece of mutton that was a bit too tempting and he teamed up with another cat — they didn’t get very far.”

Trim would not have been the only cat on board Investigator; most ships kept a few cats onboard to catch rats and mice that could cause havoc by eating supplies or gnawing on ropes.

But Trim’s personality appears to have been bigger than the other ship cats.

Trim was a faithful friend to Flinders until the cat disappeared on Mauritius, possibly eaten by a slave, and Flinders wrote the following memorial:

“Thus perished my faithful intelligent Trim! The sporting, affectionate and useful companion of my voyages during four years.

“Never, my Trim, ‘to take thee all in all, shall I see thy like again’, but never wilt thou cease to be regretted by all who had the pleasure of knowing thee.

“And for thy affectionate master and friend, he promises thee, if ever he shall have the happiness to enjoy repose in his native country, under a thatched cottage surrounded by half an acre of land, to erect in the most retired corner a monument to perpetuate thy memory and record thy uncommon merits.”

Besides an entry on Purr-n-Fur UK, Trim has his own Wikipedia page, which shows that there are now many monuments to Trim (and Flinders) throughout the world. Here are a couple.

Statue of Trim with Flinders, in Donington, Lincolnshire, Flinders’ birthplace.

 

Trim’s statue by John Cornwell behind Matthew Flinders’s own in Sydney, Australia.

 

Plaque dedicated to Trim at Mitchell Library, Sydney

 

Trim. Flinders’ faithful boat cat. Port Lincoln, South Australia.

 

Trim, the boat cat. Port Lincoln

Isn’t that lovely? Finally, one bit of a long entry on Purr-n-Fur:

RIP Trim!

***********

Lagniappe: a tweet found by Matthew.

And a note from reader Darrell Ernst. I’m surprised that he didn’t expect this. As he said:

Thought this might be good for a grin. We recently bought a new chair (and a pillow for it), but I’ve yet to be able to sit in it because the cat’s always on it!

Seriously, what cat wouldn’t make a beeline for a cushy chair and a fluffy pillow like that?

 

18 thoughts on “Caturday felid: The saga of Matthew Flinders and his cat Trim (and lagniappe)”

  1. Very interesting story. Trim the explorer cat. Also noted that Trim was born in the same year that George Washington died.

  2. Flinders may have been the first to really circumnavigate Australia closely, but about a Century earlier, Abel Tasman (after whom Tasmania was named) did nearly the same. In his 1642 voyage he mapped the whole coastline of northern Australia up to the York peninsula and in 1644 he circumnavigated (at some distance) the eastern and southern parts.
    His (in collaboration with Franchoijs Visscher and Isaack Gilseman, who accompanied him) 1644 map shows Australia not very different from what Australia actually is shaped like. The only difference is that he did not show Tasmania and New Guinea as separated. Note these straits between Southern Australia and Tasmania on the one hand, and especially the Torres strait between York peninsula and New Guinea on the other, are quite narrow. In fact he shows the ‘Sahul’ continent.
    He also ‘discovered’ New Zealand.

    1. Of course, sadly there is no ‘wonderful cat’ story associated with Tasman that I know of.

          1. And also, of course, the Tasman Sea, much appreciated by New Zealanders as it keeps the Aussies at a safe distance. 😉

            cr

    2. Correction: it was during his first voyage, 1642-43 that he circumvented South and East Australia and ‘discovered’ Tasmania, and discovered New Zealand on that voyage. He also reached Tonga and Samoa.
      His mapping of the southern New Guinean and northern Australian coast was on his second Voyage, in 1644.

  3. Every time I have a passing thought that surely by now we are exhausting the supply of Amazing Cat Stories, I am happily proven wrong.

  4. I had to grin at Darrell’s story. Anyone that buys a chair for the cat has to recognize chair-ing it will be out of the question.

  6. Can thoroughly recommend the pod cast rum rebels and ratbags. One of the funniest history recounts!! Actually made history totally worth learning unlike the old school days where Australian history that was being taught in our classrooms diabolically boring. Please please have a listen you won’t regret it!!!!!

  9. Another interesting aspect of Flinders’ circumnavigation is that his scientific crew included Robert Brown. Mt Brown in the Flinders Ranges is named after him as is Brownian movement. He was a botanist and observed the random movements of pollen grains when observed under a microscope, wrote an account of this phenomenon which now bares his name.

  10. Brown also (as a good scientist) observed the same motion in particles of inorganic matter, demonstrating that the motion was not animate.

    Einstein explained Brownian motion as caused by molecular impacts in 1905 – the first (?) physical evidence of the existence of molecules.

    cr

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