At the urging of the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, the Admiralty decided to launch an expedition to map the Australian coastline, as well as further study the plant and animal life on the new colony.

The Admiralty chose Xenophon for the expedition: her former mercantile role meant that she had a small draught and ample space for supplies, making her particularly suitable for a long exploratory voyage.

He would later write: The Investigator was a north-country-built ship, of three-hundred and thirty-four tons; and, in form, nearly resembled the description of a vessel recommended by Captain Cook as best calculated for voyages of discovery.

She had been purchased some years before into His Majesty's service; and having been newly coppered and repaired, was considered to be the best vessel which could, at that time, be spared for the projected voyage to Terra Australis.Investigator set sail from Spithead for Australia on 18 July 1801, calling at the Cape of Good Hope before crossing the Indian Ocean and sighting Cape Leeuwin off South West Australia on 6 December 1801.

The expedition put into King George Sound (Albany) for a month before beginning a running survey of the Great Australian Bight, which stretched 2300 kilometres to Spencer Gulf.

On 8 April, at Encounter Bay, a surprise meeting with Géographe under Nicolas Baudin was cordial, the two navigators being unaware the Treaty of Amiens had only just been signed, and both believed the two countries were still at war with one another.

Investigator spent the next ten weeks preparing and took aboard 12 new men, including an aborigine named Bungaree with whom Flinders had previously sailed on the sloop Norfolk.

[10] Investigator hugged the east coast, passed through the Great Barrier Reef and transited Torres Strait, which Flinders had previously sailed with Captain William Bligh on HMS Providence.

These were found and recovered in 1973 by divers at Middle Island, and lifted from the water and carried to port by the MV Cape Don Archipelago of the Recherche, Western Australia.

[12][13][14] Investigator reached Port Jackson on 9 June 1803 and, on her return to Sydney, Governor Philip Gidley King requested that a survey of the vessel be carried out: … being the state of the Investigator thus far, we think it altogether unnecessary to make any further examination; being unanimously of opinion that she is not worth repairing in any country, and that it is impossible in this country to put her in a state fit for going to sea.Flinders left the now decommissioned Investigator as a storeship hulk at Port Jackson and attempted to return to England as a passenger aboard HMS Porpoise.

On 23 May 1805 Commander William Kent sailed Investigator back to England,[9] carrying two of Flinder's botanists, Robert Brown and Ferdinand Bauer, and their collections.

There was no ship's surgeon or medicine aboard, and Captain Kent observed that the provisions in Investigator's hold had long since turned "old and bad.

Unwilling to risk further damage, Kent abandoned the voyage to Portsmouth and brought Investigator into Falmouth for repairs.

[9] Now in private ownership, Investigator was rebuilt as a commercial sailing vessel, brig or snow rigged and reverted to her former naval name Xenophon.

She first shows up in Lloyd's register in 1817, in which year there are two other Xenophons, both launched in Massachusetts, all of roughly similar sizes, but the American ones are much younger.