Page:The life of Matthew Flinders.djvu/369

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284
LIFE OF MATTHEW FLINDERS

ship in Sydney harbour till 1805. In that year she was patched sufficiently to take her to England. Captain William Kent commanded her on the voyage, leaving Sydney on May 24th. She arrived in Liverpool in a shattered condition on October 24th, having been driven past the Channel in a storm. The Admiralty ordered Kent to take her round to Plymouth. He carried out the order, but not without great difficulty. "A more deplorably crazy vessel than the Investigator is perhaps not to be seen," Kent informed the Admiralty on reaching Falmouth. She was sold and broken up in 1810. But those rotten planks had played a part in history, and if only a few splinters of them remained to-day they would be preserved with the tenderest reverence.