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My Love Must Wait
Romance, passion, lusty adventure .-.-. the story of Matthew Flinders navigator, explorer and lover.
When Matthew Flinders, the first man to chart and circumnavigate Australia, set sail from England in July 1801, he left behind the intrigues of his homeland but also his young bride of only a few weeks, Ann Chappell. He didn′t see her again for more than nine years. During that time he carried out incredible feats of seamanship and navigation, made the first charts of much of the coastline of Australia, and was shipwrecked and later held prisoner by the French on Mauritius.
Meticulously researched and written with great insight and sensitivity, My Love Must Wait is both a tender portrayal of faithful devotion, and a stirring re-creation of the courage and endurance of one of history′s greatest seamen.
When Matthew Flinders, the first man to chart and circumnavigate Australia, set sail from England in July 1801, he left behind the intrigues of his homeland but also his young bride of only a few weeks, Ann Chappell. He didn′t see her again for more than nine years. During that time he carried out incredible feats of seamanship and navigation, made the first charts of much of the coastline of Australia, and was shipwrecked and later held prisoner by the French on Mauritius.
Meticulously researched and written with great insight and sensitivity, My Love Must Wait is both a tender portrayal of faithful devotion, and a stirring re-creation of the courage and endurance of one of history′s greatest seamen.
463 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1941
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 12, 2013
Ernestine Hill was a mid-century Australian author who has become – not exactly forgotten, but certainly not much known outside her home country, and little enough read even there. She was mostly a journalist-cum-travel-writer, but she also wrote this one novel, a labour of love, which tells the eventful and ultimately sad life story of Matthew Flinders.
Flinders was the last of the great maritime explorers, and probably the most brilliant navigator and cartographer of all of them. He was the one who proved that the fledgling European colonies known as New Holland and New South Wales were not points on an archipelago, but did indeed represent one single enormous land continent, which Flinders dubbed ‘Australia’. (Hence why nowadays ninety percent of Australian towns seem to be built around a main road called Flinders Street.)
He survived shipwreck, unfriendly natives, struggles with stiff English authorities, and a six-year imprisonment by the French on the island formerly known as Île-de-France (now Mauritius), but Ernestine Hill also uncovered, beneath these better-known facts, an affecting love story between Flinders and his wife Ann, who didn't see him for nine years, and then only far too briefly.
Unfortunately it was this subplot that gave the book its not-very-appropriate and rather Mills-&-Booney title. This is not really a love story overall, it's a biographical novelisation in the grand old style – I was about to write ‘the kind of thing no one writes anymore’, but it actually reminded me of nothing so much as Hilary Mantel's historical novels. Hill shares Mantel's rigidly faithful approach to her source material, and every vessel, headland and minor midshipman in this book turns out really to have existed; even the incidental dialogue is based on reams of letters, journals and logbooks.
Although the book as a whole sometimes feels too long, the writing is curt and imaginative, much better than for some reason I was expecting. Islets are ‘annotated, every one, with the bright green asterisk of the coco-nut palm’, trees ‘creep away from the wind like bent and wizened beggars’, forbidding cliffs are ‘a vizor on the face of nature’, myriads of South Sea islands swim into view ‘as though God had suddenly split his world into kaleidoscopic fragments’. There is an efficiency to the prose that put me in mind of Flinders's own approving thoughts while reading William Dampier's memoirs: ‘He would sink a fleet and sack a city in a sentence, to devote two pages, with illustrations in the margin, to a catfish, a catamaran, or the sapadillo-tree.’
Mind you, sometimes she does become more voluble. She is particularly good on the romantic but thankless precariousness of a life in the navy:
Occasional passages are lightly overwritten, but it's always good fun:
I hadn't realised Flinders was from Lincolnshire, a part of England I love and where I lived for many years, so I was secretly thrilled to read the lavish descriptions of his childhood in a little village just outside Boston. In a final chapter that is really a kind of afterword, Hill writes movingly of the strange coincidence that Matthew Flinders and the Pilgrim Fathers both set off from the same obscure place, linking this tiny corner of the Fenlands with both Australia and America: ‘The square tower of Boston Stump looked down on the little ships that sailed to great beginnings; that low coast of East Anglia has mothered two great nations.’
Angus & Robertson have been printing this book continuously since 1941, so you'd think they'd have had time to correct the text by now – yet there are still far too many typos, misspellings and misprints in this edition. On the credit side, it does come with a very good introduction from Debra Adelaide. If you have a holiday hankering for sea stories, historical fiction, tragic love stories or obscure Australiana, this one will certainly tick your boxes, weigh your anchors, barbie your shrimps and shiver your timbers.
Flinders was the last of the great maritime explorers, and probably the most brilliant navigator and cartographer of all of them. He was the one who proved that the fledgling European colonies known as New Holland and New South Wales were not points on an archipelago, but did indeed represent one single enormous land continent, which Flinders dubbed ‘Australia’. (Hence why nowadays ninety percent of Australian towns seem to be built around a main road called Flinders Street.)
He survived shipwreck, unfriendly natives, struggles with stiff English authorities, and a six-year imprisonment by the French on the island formerly known as Île-de-France (now Mauritius), but Ernestine Hill also uncovered, beneath these better-known facts, an affecting love story between Flinders and his wife Ann, who didn't see him for nine years, and then only far too briefly.
Unfortunately it was this subplot that gave the book its not-very-appropriate and rather Mills-&-Booney title. This is not really a love story overall, it's a biographical novelisation in the grand old style – I was about to write ‘the kind of thing no one writes anymore’, but it actually reminded me of nothing so much as Hilary Mantel's historical novels. Hill shares Mantel's rigidly faithful approach to her source material, and every vessel, headland and minor midshipman in this book turns out really to have existed; even the incidental dialogue is based on reams of letters, journals and logbooks.
Although the book as a whole sometimes feels too long, the writing is curt and imaginative, much better than for some reason I was expecting. Islets are ‘annotated, every one, with the bright green asterisk of the coco-nut palm’, trees ‘creep away from the wind like bent and wizened beggars’, forbidding cliffs are ‘a vizor on the face of nature’, myriads of South Sea islands swim into view ‘as though God had suddenly split his world into kaleidoscopic fragments’. There is an efficiency to the prose that put me in mind of Flinders's own approving thoughts while reading William Dampier's memoirs: ‘He would sink a fleet and sack a city in a sentence, to devote two pages, with illustrations in the margin, to a catfish, a catamaran, or the sapadillo-tree.’
Mind you, sometimes she does become more voluble. She is particularly good on the romantic but thankless precariousness of a life in the navy:
How many had he known…shabby lieutenants on a few pounds a week fighting for their lives all their lives in the war and on the waves in rotten ships…ambassadors to the foreigner and the cannibal, trading for wheat, gold, pearls, pepper, territory…diplomats, chancellors and high financiers to the feathered savage, walking encyclopaedias of world-wide knowledge, vegetable, animal and mineral […] homeless men, nameless men, their wave-washed journals the first pages in the chronicles of empire, their future at worst a watery grave, at best an old age of cards, prating to their families on Navy half-pay…and here he was aspiring to be one of them. Why? ‘I gave my heart to know wisdom.’
Occasional passages are lightly overwritten, but it's always good fun:
Scarred and tattooed sailors of the Seven Seas, with evil, mottled faces thronged the taverns to fight by day and lust by night where harlots writhed their polished bodies, whirling in veils of flame, to the obscene screaming of the Congo pipes and fandango of tambourines. The West Indies were a painted veil of cruelty and greed. Here faith was blasphemy, the sea polluted with filth, and God and man defiled.
I hadn't realised Flinders was from Lincolnshire, a part of England I love and where I lived for many years, so I was secretly thrilled to read the lavish descriptions of his childhood in a little village just outside Boston. In a final chapter that is really a kind of afterword, Hill writes movingly of the strange coincidence that Matthew Flinders and the Pilgrim Fathers both set off from the same obscure place, linking this tiny corner of the Fenlands with both Australia and America: ‘The square tower of Boston Stump looked down on the little ships that sailed to great beginnings; that low coast of East Anglia has mothered two great nations.’
Angus & Robertson have been printing this book continuously since 1941, so you'd think they'd have had time to correct the text by now – yet there are still far too many typos, misspellings and misprints in this edition. On the credit side, it does come with a very good introduction from Debra Adelaide. If you have a holiday hankering for sea stories, historical fiction, tragic love stories or obscure Australiana, this one will certainly tick your boxes, weigh your anchors, barbie your shrimps and shiver your timbers.
August 26, 2013
I remember first reading and loving this when I was about 15 or so. So I was apprehensive about reading it again 30 years later. I loved it this time too which was a welcome surprise. I don't know whether it was the dedication that Matthew had for Ann or his dedication to his task but something really drew me in here. If you like historical 'fiction' then this is a book for you. It's not really fiction but more based on a true story. An engrossing read.
September 25, 2016
We all know the story of Matthew Flinders until, that is, we are asked for the details and then we all get a little sketchy. Many know Flinders as a great Australian explorer and that he suggested the very name 'Australia'. Few know what a passionate scientist and talented cartographer he was, nor that he was shipwrecked and continued his mission in another ship.
Before leaving England, Flinders had married his childhood friend, but Sir Joseph Banks did not approve her joining the ship, so Ann was left in England as Flinders charted our shores. It was to be a three year separation but that was before Flinders was taken prisoner on the Ille de France for six years.
Despite the Mills and Boon type title, this is a fine piece of historical fiction where even the dialogue is drawn faithfully from letters and diaries. It was obviously a scholarly labor of love on the part of Ernestine Hill who must have spent years in writing it.
It is not a quick read and an acquaintance with sailing terms is an advantage but readers will be rewarded not only with more knowledge of Flinders, but also some beautiful imagery on Hill's part as she waxes lyrical on the age of sail.
Before leaving England, Flinders had married his childhood friend, but Sir Joseph Banks did not approve her joining the ship, so Ann was left in England as Flinders charted our shores. It was to be a three year separation but that was before Flinders was taken prisoner on the Ille de France for six years.
Despite the Mills and Boon type title, this is a fine piece of historical fiction where even the dialogue is drawn faithfully from letters and diaries. It was obviously a scholarly labor of love on the part of Ernestine Hill who must have spent years in writing it.
It is not a quick read and an acquaintance with sailing terms is an advantage but readers will be rewarded not only with more knowledge of Flinders, but also some beautiful imagery on Hill's part as she waxes lyrical on the age of sail.
December 6, 2023
I remain amazed at the courage and skill of those explorers and navigators who took to the high seas in leaky wooden barques. Flinders was one of the greatest, and I try to imagine the Australia he encountered.
It’s not a great read, but it’s a great story and if you’re interested in history it’s very worthwhile. As the author says, “Scenes and situations are created from written records. Not in any instance have I played with history. Logs, journals, letters and treasured private diaries are my authority. Dialogue is founded on fact.”
This book was published during WW2 (it’s a book I’ve had for 50 years).
Of course not everyone will have the enthusiasm or time. So I’ve attempted a brief précis (in Haiku):
Young Flinders in love
Charts and names Australia
The French fuck things up
It’s not a great read, but it’s a great story and if you’re interested in history it’s very worthwhile. As the author says, “Scenes and situations are created from written records. Not in any instance have I played with history. Logs, journals, letters and treasured private diaries are my authority. Dialogue is founded on fact.”
This book was published during WW2 (it’s a book I’ve had for 50 years).
Of course not everyone will have the enthusiasm or time. So I’ve attempted a brief précis (in Haiku):
Young Flinders in love
Charts and names Australia
The French fuck things up
September 30, 2022
A re-read of a favourite from many years ago. Beautifully & tirelessly researched, it is an honourable tribute to an amazing man.
July 1, 2023
Story of Matthew Flinders short life as explorer and cartographer - mapped coastline of Australia. He first termed the name “Australia” to replace “New Holland” or “Terra Australis.”
January 3, 2024
Fantastic book, pretty much unknown today. The best account of Flinders' life I have read, in quasi-fictional form.
June 19, 2018
I first read it in the'90's, too long ago to remember more than it is a record of a man so important in the taking of Australia and our way of life at that time.
I was so surprised at how easily I forgot the torment this poor man went through.
One misadventure after another, it's amazing he accomplished as much as he did. Imprisoned for years, never given the credit he deserved in his short lifetime... part bad luck and part self inflicted because of his perversely upholding a very conservative and highly moralistic code of honor.
Obsessive? I'm sure there are more personality disorders that would be used to label this probable genius today.
I wonder what differences it would have made had he been allowed to map more of the world seeing that the charts he did leave behind, remained the only and most important for a hundred years.
I would love to see this book slightly re-edited to cut some of what felt like unsubstantiated filler in the descriptions of some of Flinders' thoughts and actions and the rather obvious moral bias of the author. This would make it much more attractive to today's readers.
I was so surprised at how easily I forgot the torment this poor man went through.
One misadventure after another, it's amazing he accomplished as much as he did. Imprisoned for years, never given the credit he deserved in his short lifetime... part bad luck and part self inflicted because of his perversely upholding a very conservative and highly moralistic code of honor.
Obsessive? I'm sure there are more personality disorders that would be used to label this probable genius today.
I wonder what differences it would have made had he been allowed to map more of the world seeing that the charts he did leave behind, remained the only and most important for a hundred years.
I would love to see this book slightly re-edited to cut some of what felt like unsubstantiated filler in the descriptions of some of Flinders' thoughts and actions and the rather obvious moral bias of the author. This would make it much more attractive to today's readers.
October 20, 2011
Great story of discovery and self sacrifice in an age of exploration
Want to read
October 3, 2012I read this book ages ago but want to read it again after reading 'Matthew Flinders' cat' by bryce courtney.
January 11, 2014
So good I stole it from my dad's bookshelf when I left home and recently gave it to my son as an heirloom.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews