It would have been very easy for me to have suppressed every part of the circumstance, and thus to have escaped the blame which seems to attach to me, instead of some share of praise for my good intentions.

I hope that it will not be thought presumptuous in me to say that no blame ought to be attributed to me...The Admiralty do not seem to take much into consideration that I had no master appointed, who ought to be the pilot, or that having been constantly employed myself in foreign voyages I cannot consequently have much personal knowledge of the Channel.

In truth, I had nothing but the chart and my own general observations to direct me; and had the former been at all correct we should have arrived here as safe as if we had any number of pilots." It is significant of Flinders' truth-telling habit of mind that when he came to write the history of the voyage, published thirteen years later, he did not pass over the incident at the Roar, though he can hardly have remembered as agreeable an event for which he was blamed when he was not wrong.

But perhaps he found satisfaction in being able to write that the circumstance "showed the necessity there was for a regulation, since adopted, to furnish His Majesty's ships with correct charts." A natural comment is that it is odd that so obviously sensible a thing was not done until an accident showed the danger of not doing it.

The blame temporarily put upon Flinders did no harm to his credit, and was probably merely an oblique form of self-reproach on the part of the Admiralty.
The Investigator arrived at Spithead on June 2nd, but did not receive final sailing orders till more than another month had elapsed.