Page:The life of Matthew Flinders.djvu/225

 and when Matthew was again at sea, prosecuting that voyage from which he was not to return for over nine years. "I don't admire want of firmness in a man. I love courage and determination in the male character. Forgive me, dear Fanny, but insipids I never did like, and having not long ago tasted such delightful society I have now a greater contempt than in former days for that cast of character." An "insipid" Ann Chappell certainly had not married, and she found in Matthew Flinders no lack of the courage and determination she admired.

A second marriage contracted by the elder Matthew Flinders, connecting his family with the Franklins, had an important influence upon the life of another young sailor who had commenced his career in the Navy in the previous year. The Franklin family, which sprang from the village of Sibsey (about six miles north-east of Boston), was now resident at Spilsby. At the time of the Flinders-Chappell wedding, young John Franklin was serving on the Polyphemus, and had only a few days previously (April 1) taken part in the battle of Copenhagen. In the ordinary course of things he would, there can hardly be a doubt, have followed his profession along normal lines. His virile intellect and resourceful courage would probably have won him eminence, but it is not likely that he would have entered upon that career of exploration which shed so much lustre on his name, and in the end found him a grave beneath the immemorial snows of the frozen north. It was by Flinders that young Franklin was diverted into the glorious path of discovery; from Flinders that he learnt the strictly scientific part of navigation. "It is very reasonable for us to infer," writes one of Franklin's biographers "that it was in all probability in exploring