Let the Land Speak

by Jackie French

  These days it seems a ridiculous custom – few ‘claiming’ plates or trees would ever be found again. But it was the ceremony that mattered, and the description in the captain’s log that it had been performed, backed up by maps to show that you had been there. Like the other captains who had claimed parts of New Holland, Van Diemen’s Land, and Eendrachtsland for their various kings, Cook saw nothing odd about acquiring a continent merely by stepping onto it and carving a name and date onto a tree.

  It is hard, these days, to understand the philosophy behind it. It wasn’t just a matter of discrimination against those who didn’t build palaces; the Europeans also assumed they had a right to exert dominion over India, China and the Malay states, all with their own kingdoms, empires, courts, literature and culture. In part, by then, it was about dark skins. Centuries of slavery had at last resulted in discrimination purely on the grounds of skin colour. In Roman times, a dark skin was merely a physical characteristic. Shakespeare could make dark-skinned Othello a romantic a hero for English audiences. Discrimination on the grounds of skin colour was a slow process, but by Cook’s time it was well in place.

  But mostly it was a subconscious assertion that might is right. British law only protected other British people. These were still the days when British privateers could take whatever they could grab. A British naval officer could become rich with ‘prize money’ from enemy ships captured in war. British armies routinely raped and looted even the European places they conquered. Cook may not have explicitly thought: we can take this place, therefore it is ours. Instead he shared the mindset that the ability to defeat other cultures was a product of a superior society. No amount of sophisticated culture would outweigh cannon and muskets.

  Cook entirely misunderstood the sophisticated culture that was to be found here, one that was wrought from relationships with the land and other people, not focused on material objects. It takes seconds to observe a palace or an army of men, but it would take more than two centuries for even a rudimentary appreciation of Indigenous cultures to develop. Cook’s survey was less than two weeks.

  Cook and Banks also misunderstood the land around them. The lush green grass and the height of the trees tricked them into thinking the land was fertile, that this was its normal state. It wasn’t. The Endeavour may have visited just after a rare La Niña or wet year, very roughly and unreliably occurring every seven years. It’s also possible that it was a dry year, but the southerly gales that had carried them so far north had also brought recent rain. Whatever the cause, it is obvious from Cook and Banks’s descriptions that they saw a bay that had received far more rain than ‘Sting Ray Harbour’ usually gets.

  Nor was the soil fertile. Rather, Cook and Banks were probably seeing a brief flush of growth spurred by the accumulated detritus – animal droppings, decomposed leaves, and so on – of the last dry period. Ground covers shrivel in dry years, but within weeks of rain after a dry period the lushness is extraordinary. Sometimes it may last for months, or even years; rarely it may last for decades, but usually it is gone the following year.

  Banks decided that the sparse trees were so far apart that the whole area could be cultivated without having to cut own a single tree, with sandy soil that produced excellent grass and in other areas tall trees growing on a rich back soil that should grow any kind of grain.

  But the tall trees were not a sign of deep, fertile soil. Neither Banks nor his assistants appear to have dug down to see how far the topsoil extended. In fact, the eucalyptus trees of ‘Sting Ray Harbour’ grew tall and thin-topped to minimise their exposure to sunlight. Tall eucalypts can have taproots that can penetrate deep down to the subsoil where there is moisture. The tallness of the trees was not a sign of good soil but the opposite. Instead, they should have looked at the width of the trunk and branches – a far more reliable sign of fertility in Australia.

  They didn’t. The land spoke to them, but they didn’t understand its language.

  How a glimpse became a colony

  Nearly twenty years later, when the British government was looking for a site to base troops and ships to counter the French presence in the Pacific, the now knighted Sir Joseph Banks, even more eminent than when he’d left on the Endeavour, partly because of his book about the voyage, would recommend that Botany Bay was the best place for a colony.

  Why?

  Yes, he had reason to think the land was fertile, and the timber good. But the Endeavour’s crew had only found minimal fresh water – enough to replenish the ship’s stores with some effort, but not enough for a colony to drink, much less for irrigation. And the harbour was too shallow too provide safety for a ship, much less a naval fleet.

  Was Botany Bay so much more inviting in memory than it had been in reality? It was, after all, the site of his most successful collecting adventures. Why didn’t Banks recommend the colony be sited in New Zealand, with its lush countryside, many rivers, deep fjords, fields of flax for sails and cloth, gigantic timber trees, and pigs and crops that could be bought from the Maori to feed a colony?

  One possible answer is that the Maori had shown themselves both numerous and ready to defend their land. Britain in the 1780s wanted to establish a colony, not fight for one. Banks and Cook had assumed that Australia had relatively few inhabitants and that their weapons would be no match for muskets. In the late 1790s British traders, missionaries and British and American whalers did begin small settlements in New Zealand and eventually had to battle for the land, but those early invaders needed none of the expense and elaborate preparations that were necessary for the colony at Botany Bay.

  Banks was not one to hide his light. It’s probable that Banks chose Botany Bay because, as its ‘discoverer’, the colony would immortalise his name.

  The colony would survive, but from luck, not good judgement. Banks really had found a generous land, even if he totally misinterpreted it.

  North to disaster

  The Endeavour sailed north from Botany Bay, bound for the Torres Strait that they hoped was there, and not another figment of a sailor’s miscalculation or imagination. If it wasn’t, then they would need to go all the way around New Guinea to reach Batavia, with little chance to stop for grass or water. They might not make it.

  By midday they were in the ocean off what we now call Sydney Heads, but the wind was too strong for them to enter the narrow gap between the headlands. Cook noted that it seemed a safe anchorage and called it Port Jackson after Sir George Jackson, lord commissioner and judge advocate of the British naval fleet.

  The ship continued slowly up the coast against the southern current. Cook kept the ship well offshore, away from the pounding surf. They passed Moreton Bay, again missing one of the largest Australian harbours, then on 23 May anchored at Bustard Bay, north of present-day Bundaberg, named after the scrub turkeys they shot and ate. Their next landing was a place further north that Cook referred to as Thirsty Sound, so called because there was no fresh water to be found.

  It wasn’t until I read Cook’s log for the fourth time that I realised that I had been indoctrinated to think of him solely as a hero. James Cook was certainly heroic, but the voyage that resulted in the English settlement was foolhardy and unnecessary. It was a stroke of luck that they found land that their government could find useful. It was a miracle that any of them survived, especially at this point.

  The Endeavour was now between the mainland and the Great Barrier Reef. Tasman’s expedition had two ships: if one were wrecked, the survivors could be transferred to the other, or at least be assured that they still had a ship to bring help. The Endeavour was not just alone but way off her intended course. If she were wrecked now, the ship, crew and all the dearly won charts and knowledge would be lost with her.

  They desperately needed fresh water for the crew and animals.

  The journey up what is now the Queensland coast was tortuously slow, but it was too risky to go faster, hoping to find safe harbour and fresh water and grass. Cook ordered the ship’s boat t
o row ahead of the Endeavour, checking the depth of water and looking for rocks and coral below. At times they had to wait while the smaller boat hunted out a channel between the banks of coral lurking below the green water. Nights were the most dangerous. The only safe way to stop was to drop anchor, and even then the ship might still drift onto rocks. Instead they sailed as slowly as possible, hoping that the lookout and ‘soundings’ to check the depth of water would keep them safe. Speed was deadly, but if they didn’t find water soon they’d be dead anyway.

  North of the place Cook christened Magnetical Island, so named because the compass swung wildly as they passed it, Banks, Solander and Hicks went ashore to look for green coconuts that might supply juice. The palm trees they’d seen turned out to be cabbage palms. There was no water.

  On 10 June Cook named and landed at Green Island – no fresh water there either. The ship’s company must have felt like the ancient mariner in Coleridge’s poem: ‘Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink’.

  Cook sailed on, even in the darkness. He was risking shipwreck, but if they didn’t find water they were doomed.

  Shipwreck came first.

  The goat and sheep droppings save the ship

  Sunday, 11 June was a fine, clear night with a good breeze. Cook ordered the ship to sail further offshore. They were now in the latitude where the maps of earlier explorers had noted islands. They could see shoals under the water. The danger of running aground in darkness was extreme.

  But the water grew deeper and deeper, from fourteen to twenty-one fathoms (twenty-five to thirty-seven metres). Everyone relaxed. The officers were eating supper when suddenly twelve, ten then eight fathoms were called out, all within a few minutes.

  Cook ordered everyone to their stations to anchor the ship. Then suddenly the water grew deeper. Cook decided the danger was over. At ten o’clock the water was still a comfortable twenty-one fathoms. The gentlemen went to bed in ‘tranquillity’.

  At 11 p.m. the ship hit the reef. The Endeavour stuck fast, motionless except for the battering of the waves about her. They were three and a half hours’ sail from shore. Few of the crew could swim. Less than half could fit in the ship’s boats. But the crew must have known that if the ship sank the officers and Banks would load the boats with stores instead of people, to give them food and water to get to Batavia. The crew’s only chance would be to mutiny – to seize the boats and save themselves.

  The deck shuddered so hard that it was almost impossible stand upright. The darkness prevented them seeing how badly they had been holed, but wreckage floated all about the ship including its false keel, the reinforcing that had been attached to the true keel to protect it. Had the keel itself been wrenched away? If it had, the ship was useless, impossible to steer even if it didn’t sink.

  Amazingly, no one panicked. No mutineers tried to launch the boats. Cook’s two years of discipline held good. The rowboats were put to sea to investigate the damage. The men peered through the darkness at a great hole gaping in the ship’s side, growing larger all the time. As the tide fell the ship would sink even further down onto the reef that snagged it.

  Cook ordered everything possible thrown overboard to lighten the ship – the six great guns on deck, iron and stone ballast, casks, hoop staves, oil jars, decayed stores … Each man knew the situation was desperate – so desperate, Cook wrote years later, that the men even stopped swearing. Death seemed too near.

  All night they felt the ship grind as she sank down on the coral below them. She couldn’t hold together long; they could only pray that she didn’t break up in darkness. In daylight there might be a chance to grab floating wreckage and a faint chance of making it to shore before dying of thirst, sharks or sunstroke. The wind dropped leaving a dead calm about them, which was one blessing – if the wind had stayed strong the waves would have battered the ship to planks and bodies.

  Daylight came. Miraculously, the ship was still in one piece. Was there a chance that the ship might float off the reef at high tide, and even keep floating long enough to get closer to shore for repairs? They could see land in the distance, about forty kilometres away.

  The crew threw off another fifty tons of cargo and waited for high tide. The water rose about them. Would she lift, giving them a small chance to repair her and get to shore?

  But the ship stayed stuck on the reef, the water gushing in through the hole, growing deeper and deeper around them. The two pumps were only just enough to keep her from flooding. No one slept. Each man took their turn pumping, working till exhausted, then flinging themselves down on any available surface above the water to rest until they took their turn again. By 2 p.m. the ship was listing badly. More water gushed through the hole.

  The next high tide was due at midnight. Could the ship last till then? She did. Slowly as the tide rose the Endeavour righted herself, and it became clear that the coral was blocking the great hole in the ship’s hull. Once the ship floated off it the hold would fill with water. Their frantic pumping had bought them only a few hours – they were waiting for death. Cook knew that as soon as the ship began to sink his authority would vanish. Men would kill for a chance at the boats and life.

  The ship lifted higher and higher still. The men kept pumping, clinging desperately to the hope that they could keep pumping out enough water to keep the ship afloat. By now they had been pumping for twenty-four hours without a break. Exhausted men collapsed into the rising water, dragged out by their friends. Suddenly, at twenty minutes past ten, the ship floated off the reef. But no matter how hard the desperate men pumped, the water was winning.

  A young midshipman named Jonathon Monkhouse came to Cook with a preposterous suggestion, one he claimed he’d seen on board a merchant ship. They’d sew oakum (fibres picked from old rope) and wool into one of the sails, then spread the sail with dry sheep and goat dung. They’d guide the sail under the ship with chains and the suction of the water into the dry dung would seal the sail around the hole.

  Could manure really save the ship? It was impossible. It was also their only chance. Cook gave permission.

  It worked.

  The solution showed desperation and ingenuity, but it also indicates something more. That tiny ship had a lot of sheep and goat manure, enough to plug a massive hole in the ship. At a minimum there must have been two or three barrels full. (Pig and fresh cattle dung is wetter, even when they are fed on dry rations, so less likely to have been used.)

  Cook was rigorous about keeping the ship clean. It was scrubbed twice a week, the decks several times a day, though presumably not since the emergency began. But in that time enough manure had been deposited – and dried in the sun. To the image of a deck full of desperate men we also need to add sheep, pigs and the goat, squealing their terror. But they weren’t even mentioned in Cook’s log or any of the diaries kept on board. Like many other matters of everyday life in the past, their presence would be taken for granted.

  The goat and sheep had saved the ship. But the fact they provided enough manure to do so shows just how important live animals were, and how vital the grass, water and frequent trips ashore to find them.

  Australia had been ignored for centuries because of its relative lack of grass, fresh water, and harbours. Within twenty years the British government would see the grass and fresh water reported by Banks as a way to supply their navy and merchant ships at a time of increasing strategic tensions. Grass and fresh water – and the lack of it – have influenced a large part of Australian history, from first settlement to the planning policies of today. But the wreck of the Endeavour is one of the few clues to their importance in the centuries of sailing ships.

  More miracles for the Endeavour

  It took five long, desperate days and nights to get the Endeavour with her sail and manure-covered hull to the shore, pumping all the way. Two more miracles saved them. After weeks with no fresh water they had been wrecked near what is now the Endeavour River, where Cooktown is today. It was both a secure harbour an
d a safe place to beach the ship to try to repair it and a place where good grass and the fresh water they desperately needed could be found. When they finally inspected their ship they saw the second miracle: the largest hole was still plugged by a giant piece of coral. If it had fallen out the ship would have sunk.

  The ship’s carpenters began work on the keel and new false keel while the smiths were making bolts and nails in a forge on the shore. The animals were unloaded and put to pasture. The grass was thick and plentiful, as was the game. Cook sent a party out to shoot pigeons for the sick. They saw a swift animal the size of a greyhound and the colour of a mouse – possibly a wallaby, although if it were, then it’s strange no one mentioned that it hopped on its hind legs – as well as many ‘Indian houses’.

  Finally, on 10 July, they saw some of the Guugu Yimithirr, four men spearing fish from a canoe. This time, for a while, there was a polite exchange, instead of shots and spear-throwing. Cook’s men offered clothes, nails, food, beads and paper. One of the Guugu Yimithirr presented them with a large fish.

  The repairs went well. The land provided both water and fresh food, with plenty of stingrays, turtles and roast ‘kangaroo’ – the first Australian word to enter the English language, although what they ate was probably wallaby, not kangaroo. But then on 19 July a party of the ‘natives’ came aboard to ask if they could have some of the turtles that the Endeavour’s crew had caught. Mr Banks curtly refused.

  The Guugu Yimithirr men paddled back to shore. One grabbed a burning bit of wood from the fire and two warriors lit the tall grass all around the ship’s camp. Luckily the gunpowder supply had only just been taken back on board – if it had exploded most of the crew and the stores would have been destroyed. A piglet was scorched to death.

  More grass was set alight where the Endeavour’s fishing nets and linen were drying. Cook ordered the men to fire a musket and small shot, then Cook himself shot one of the ringleaders. Cook didn’t think he had badly wounded the man but they never knew for sure.