On the evening of the 28th, in a perfectly calm sea, and at a time when, sailing by the chart, there was no reason to apprehend any danger, the ship glided on to the bank.

She did not suffer a particle of injury, and in a very short time had resumed her voyage.

If Flinders had said nothing at all about the incident, nobody off the ship would have been any the wiser.

But as the Admiralty had furnished him with a defective chart, and might do the same to other commanders, who might strike the sand in more inimical circumstances, he considered it to be his duty to the service to report the matter; when lo! the Admiralty, instead of censuring its officials for supplying the Investigator with a faulty chart, gravely shook its head, and made those "severe remarks" about Flinders, which induced Sir Joseph Banks to admonish him so paternally in the letter already quoted.

The Investigator had, it seemed to be the opinion of their Lordships, struck the sand, not because it was uncharted, but because Mrs.Flinders was on board between the Nore and Spithead! Flinders' letter to Banks, June 6th, stated his position quite conclusively: "Finding so material a thing as a sandbank three or four miles from the shore unlaid down in the chart, I thought it a duty incumbent upon me to endeavour to prevent the like accident from happening to others, by stating the circumstances to the Admiralty, and giving the most exact bearings from the shoal that our situation would enable me to take, with the supposed distance from the land.