Exploration, shipwreck, and captivity on a tropical island sound like the plot of an adventure novel. Matthew Flinders, who read Robinson Crusoe as a child and later became the first person to circumnavigate Australia, describes all these experiences in A Voyage to Terra Australis, his account of voyages undertaken aboard HMS Investigator and other craft between 1801 and 1810, which was published a day before his death in 1814.