What Matthew Flinders and George Bass can teach us about male friendship

Matthew Flinders's steamy letters reveal a hidden side to the man who circumnavigated Australia Thu 2 Jul 2026 at 4:30am In 1800, aboard the HMS Reliance, navigator Matthew Flinders penned a letter to his good friend, naval surgeon and explorer George Bass. It starts innocuously enough — "My dear friend, I now begin to suspect that you are gone on to England" — and there is a lot of dry talk of charting. But later on, things get saucy: "There was a time, when I was so completely wrapped up in you, that no conversation but yours could give me any degree of pleasure; "Your footsteps upon the quarter deck over my head, took me from my book, and brought me upon deck to walk with you; often, I fear, to your great annoyance ." No wonder Bass's wife, Elizabeth, after reading Flinders's words, wrote that this letter "is written by a man that bears a bad character, no one has seen this letter but I could tell you many things that make me dislike him, rest assured he is no friend of yours". Yet Flinders appeared to be a close friend to many and a softer, perhaps unexpected side to the first European man to circumnavigate Australia emerges from the letters, which were first published in 2002. Looking at his life, Flinders appears to be not just a man with extremely good sailing and charting skills, but someone who was a fan of writing and crushing on friends far and wide. Flinders and Bass: Besties on a boat Flinders was about 21 when he met the 24-year-old Bass on the HMS Reliance while sailing for Port Jackson in 1795. Flinders was immediately drawn to the handsome Bass, who grew up near where Flinders came from. After their ship arrived, Flinders and Bass were getting along so well that they decided to do a cartographical examination of the east coast of New South Wales together. And so Flinders, Bass and a servant named William Martin set off in a small boat named Tom Thumb. "It all starts out disastrously from Sharks Bay, with them realising that they put the fresh water into the wine canisters and it's now undrinkable," The Dead Can't Sue podcast host Alecia Simmonds says. "There's another very steamy section of Flinders's journal where he describes Bass having to take all his clothes off and going ashore to try to save their waterlogged food." On The Dead Can't Sue, Simmonds and fellow historian Leigh Boucher examine whether these kinds of events, and the torrid letter, mean that the two men had a more-than-friendly relationship. But, as Simmonds points out, "this was an age of sensibility, and Matthew Flinders is a man of exquisite sensibility. He embodies his age … he is tender and full of feeling and, in so many ways, that's actually what 18th century masculinity was all about". She says the kind of deep attachment that existed between Flinders and Bass was not unusual between men (or women) in this historical period. "What I love about him is that Matthew Flinders took friendship seriously," Simmonds says. "We live in an age where friendship is quite culturally devalued. It's seen as a stepping stone on the way to the real deal, to marriage, to family, to children. The 18th century was not that world." And it's not like Flinders's ardour was directed only towards Bass. In the same letter that he penned to Bass in 1801, Flinders also brought up his old friend, the botanist James Wiles: "And yet it is not clear to me that I love you entirely; at least, my affection for Wiles reaches farther into my heart — I would take him into the same skin with me!" A man of many letters and crushes While we probably will never know the true nature of these naval men's relationships, we do know that Flinders was a prolific writer, and THAT Bass wasn't the only one who received such effusive letters. Flinders married Ann Chappelle in 1801, but for many years, before and after, their relationship played out entirely in letters as Flinders took to the sea while Ann was back in England. Luckily, Flinders had a way with words, in 1801 he wrote to her: ''I am just as awkward without thee, as one half of a pair of scissors without its fellow." despite getting hitched, Bass was far from Flinders's only potential crush, with Boucher suggesting that the navigator was "addicted to crushes". Flinders, while imprisoned on the Île de France (present-day Mauritius) in 1804, developed feelings for a young French woman named Delphine. He wrote in his diary that Delphine was "an extraordinary young lady, possessing a strength of mind, a resolution, and a degree of penetration which few men can boast of". "I think Flinders finds it very difficult to describe any kind of relationship without putting it in extreme romantic terms," Simmonds says. After six years in Mauritius, Flinders left his crush behind and arrived back in England in 1810 to reunite with Ann, putting an end to their lengthy epistolatory relationship. In 1814, when Flinders was 40 years old, he published his magnum opus, his maps and a book titled (yes, this is just the title): A Voyage to Terra Australis: undertaken for the purpose of completing the discovery of that vast country, and prosecuted in the years 1801, 1802, and 1803 in His Majesty's ship the Investigator, and subsequently in the armed vessel Porpoise and Cumberland Schooner. With an account of the shipwreck of the Porpoise, arrival of the Cumberland at Mauritius, and imprisonment of the commander during six years and a half in that island. Exhale. Flinders died the next day, having lived a life full of crushes and friendship, impassioned words and impressive feats, but never having experienced being edited (if you were to judge by that book title). The Dead Can't Sue is out now on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. This article is based on research by Alecia Simmonds.