Now, the clear facts with regard to the taking from Flinders of his charts, papers, log-books, and journals are these. On December 17, the day after his arrival at the island, it was signified to him that the governor intended to detain him. All his charts and journals relating to the voyage, and the letters and official packets which he was carrying to England from Sydney, were put in a trunk, which was sealed by Flinders at the desire of the French officers who were sent by Decaen to arrest him. He signed a paper certifying that all the "charts, journals, and papers of the voyage" had been thus placed in the trunk.* (* Flinders, Voyage 2 361.) On the following day (Sunday, December 18) he was informed that the governor wished to have extracts made from his journals, showing the causes which had compelled him to quit the Investigator, for which ship and for no other, according to Decaen's contention, the passport had been granted. He also wished to elicit from the journals evidence of the reasons which had induced Flinders to stop at Mauritius, instead of sailing for the Cape of Good Hope. The officers explained that General Decaen considered it to be necessary to have these extracts for transmission to the French Government, "to justify himself for granting that assistance to the Cumberland which had been ordered for the Investigator." So far he had not, as a fact, granted any assistance to the Cumberland; for the imprisonment of her commander and crew can hardly be called "assistance." But as Flinders was convinced that an examination of his latest log-book would manifest his bona fides, and assure both the governor and the French Government that he was no spy, as Decaen accused him of being, he broke the seal of the trunk, and took out "the third volume of my rough log-book, which contained the whole of what they desired to know, and pointing out the parts in question to the secretary, told him to make such extracts as should be thought requisite."* (* Flinders, Voyage 2 364.) All the other papers and books were at once returned to the trunk, and sealed as before.
The third log-book was the only document pertaining to Flinders' discoveries which Decaen ever had in his possession. It was never returned. The rightful owner never saw it again. It has never since been produced. Flinders applied for it repeatedly. On the very day before he was liberated, he made a final demand for it. Mr. Hope, the British commissary for the exchange of prisoners, made a formal official application for it in 1810, but met with "a positive refusal both of the book and of permission to take a copy of it."* (* Hope's report to the Admiralty, October 25, 1810 (Historical Records of New South Wales 7 435).) In 1811, after Flinders reached England, the Admiralty, at his instance, requested the French Government to insist upon its restoration. At the end of his book, published 1814, Flinders earnestly protested against Decaen's continued detention of it. But it was not restored.