The documents transcribed on this site belong to a collection of papers, charts, journals, letterbooks and books relating to Captain Matthew Flinders (1774–1814), part of which is on long-term loan to the National Maritime Museum from Lisette Flinders Petrie (see acknowledgements for the list of documents that are on loan). This collection, currently held in the National Maritime Museum's Caird Library, is the residue of those documents presented to the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia by Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853–1942), grandson of Matthew Flinders.

The collection consists of three main groups

1. Flinders's papers, correspondence, charts and journals; narratives of his voyages; service papers and technical notes
2. Ann Flinders's letters and correspondence
3. Sir William Flinders Petrie's miscellaneous collection of biographical material, notes, memoirs and news cuttings relating to his grandfather’s career; and correspondence with J F Shillinglaw about a biography of Flinders which Shillinglaw never completed.

Viewing the Flinders papers

The documents in this collection can be ordered and viewed via the National Maritime Museum's Caird Library. Retrievals take place on Monday to Friday at 10.30, 11.45, 14.15 and 15.30; viewing manuscripts on Saturdays is by appointment only. Documents must be ordered in advance of any visit: please e-mail manuscripts@nmm.ac.uk.

When ordering, it is essential that the correct classmark be quoted to enable the order to be processed. For the Flinders collection this is FLI followed by a two-digit series number (see the top of each document page for the full transcript number). The transcripts on this site are taken from the following series:
FLI/1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8a, 9a, 9b, 11, 25, 26, 27, 28.

For more details regarding the library and manuscripts collection, please see our online catalogue. (To view details of the Flinders collection, enter the search term 'Flinders, Matthew, Captain, 1774-1814' in the Keywords field.)