The Pacific

by Meaghan Wilson Anastasios

  The ninety-four men on the Endeavour were a mixed bunch. Naval officers, gentlemen scientists, marine guards – to enforce order – and artists rubbed shoulders with the sailors, some of whom had barely entered their teens; the youngest amongst them was aged just twelve. But monotony, physical deprivation and discomfort know no class boundaries. The hardships experienced during the long voyage were common to all. Suffice to say as the emerald peaks of Tahiti appeared on the horizon, anticipation on board would have been high.

  SAM NEILL

  Cook was quite a remote man. He was a working-class man from very humble origins. All his crew, apart from the officers, were from similar humble backgrounds. But Cook was remote from them and remote from his officers. He got on well with people but he didn’t make any close connections with the other people on board. That’s the thing about being commander – you can’t be overly familiar with your shipmates.

  James Cook was cut of a different cloth. Debauchery and excess were anathema to him. Born on 27 October 1728 in North Riding, Yorkshire, to a Scottish labourer of modest means and his Yorkshire wife, Cook’s outlook was shaped by the time he spent as an apprentice in Whitby with the Quaker coal-shipper, Captain John Walker. The constraints of this particular lifestyle are made clear in a line from the contract Cook signed with Walker; he agreed not to: ‘play at dice, cards, bowls or any other unlawful games . . . [nor] haunt taverns or play houses . . . [or] commit fornication’.

  JOHN ROBSON, Map Librarian, University of Waikato

  He was a great leader of people, he was a great seaman, he was a great navigator, and a wonderful cartographer. As to whether he was somebody that you would invite to dinner and expect to be the life and soul of the party, I suspect not.

  Quakers cherish purity, plain speaking and a modest way of life, and they abhor drunkenness and hedonism – the latter being foremost in Cook’s men’s minds as the Endeavour dropped anchor. Cook would not have approved. But it soon became apparent there was little he could do to stop it. As the ship’s master, Robert Molyneux, put it, ‘The women begin to have a share in our friendship which is by no means platonic.’

  One man on board who took full advantage of all that Tahiti had to offer would, in years to come, become an intellectual and political heavyweight. To Australians today, Joseph Banks is best known as the renowned botanist whose venerable and hoary features once graced the five-dollar note and who gave his name to the fluffy-headed native Australian wildflower species, the banksia. But when he embarked with Cook in the Endeavour, he was, not to put too fine a point on it, a rake on the tear. He was a well-resourced, well-connected and dashing young man who contributed ten thousand pounds to the voyage – this at a time when the average sailor’s wage was just fourteen pounds a year.

  Banks was ambitious and determined to make a significant contribution to his chosen field of botany. As quite the man about town and a member of the notorious Hellfire Club, he was also keen to put paid to his peers’ braggadocio about their adventurous wanderings across Europe on the well-worn Grand Tour. Not for Banks romancing his way around France and Italy – he intended to experience adventure on a much grander scale.

  Judging by his journal entries from Tahiti, adventure he did.

  SIR JOSEPH BANKS (1743–1820), 1st Baronet, Naturalist and Botanist on Cook’s first voyage

  Love is the chief occupation, nay almost the sole luxury of the inhabitants; both the bodies and souls of the women are modelled into the utmost perfection for that soft science, idleness the father of love reigns here in almost unmolested ease.

  Banks’ account is peppered with euphemistic tales of his amorous encounters on the islands, including a memorable evening spent with three beautiful girls, all of whom joined him in his tent and, the morning after, begged him to stay. He clearly had no difficulty overcoming his initial distaste for the smell of the coconut oil the Tahitian women used to anoint their skin, and it’s little wonder that he declared it preferable ‘to the odoriferous perfume of toes and armpits so frequent in Europe’. Later in life he’s said to have boasted that he had tasted ‘woman’s flesh in almost every part of the known habitable world’.

  It may well have been something more than Banks’ well-cut pantaloons and air of entitlement that piqued the interest of the Tahitian women. Beyond the acquisition of metal, they had another very good reason for embracing the noisome seamen.

  When Wallis had first arrived in the Dolphin two years earlier, his welcome had been far less congenial than the reception that greeted Cook and his men. In fact, it was outright hostile.

  While the Tahitian warriors encircled the vessel and readied to attack, the women stood in canoes and exposed their genitals. In a classic – and understandable – example of cultural misunderstanding, the men on board the ship interpreted this to be a sexual invitation. The women were actually issuing them with a grave insult, showing them the passage to Te Pō, the place from which all men issue forth and to which they will all return after death. But there was no misreading the warriors’ intent as they flung spears and hurled stones at the ship. The Dolphin fired its cannon and a battle ensued. When hostilities ceased, many Tahitians had been killed and their canoes shattered. It’s difficult to fathom the shock and horror that must have overwhelmed the Tahitians after the massacre, their warriors torn apart by unfamiliar weaponry that caused such complete devastation. Wallis wielded his military might without mercy, and it was a lesson that wouldn’t be forgotten.

  For the Tahitians, the arrival of these men with their big guns was big news. In a region rife with intertribal rivalries, chieftains tussled to gain the favour of the new arrivals. These pale-skinned men bearing arms would be formidable allies. By drawing them into their world, the Tahitians would absorb their mana – their sacred power.

  JOSIANE TEAMOTUAITAU PhD

  When they saw those visitors with their uniforms, the white shirts, and those golden buttons, the Tahitians knew they had power. It was magic. They could take out things from their pockets. On Tahiti we didn’t have pockets, you see. When the visitors arrived, they realised that they were men with mana and men with power because they had guns, and so they wanted to befriend them. In those days there was this thing called the bond friendship. They exchanged names, but in doing so, they also exchanged everything else. So the taio of Cook, for example, would take his name, and Cook would take his taio’s name. And if Cook wanted, he could have had his wife and all his property, too. But it was meant to work the other way too.

  In Tahiti, a formal alliance between two people was given a name: taio. Friend. These were friends with benefits. A chieftain’s taio was permitted to lie with his wives and make use of his possessions. These men were also expected to defend each other in military conflicts.

  Predictably, and very sensibly, the Tahitians rushed to form alliances with the British captain. Wallis had been a taio to Purea – the woman declared ‘Queen’ by the European visitors. When Cook arrived on the island, after an exchange of ceremonial gifts he was claimed by the chieftain, Tutaha, in order to forestall an alliance with Tutaha’s adversary, Purea.

  The usually libidinous Banks noted the response of the chieftain’s wives after this ceremony, describing how they demonstrated themselves willing to partner with their husband’s taio, despite being exposed to the curious gaze of a potential audience.

  SIR JOSEPH BANKS

  [They] showed us all kind of civilities our situation could admit of, but as there were no places of retirement . . . we had not an opportunity of putting their politeness to every test that maybe some of us would not have failed to have done had circumstances been more favourable . . . by their frequently pointing to the mats on the ground and sometimes by force seating themselves and us upon them they plainly showed that they were much less jealous of observation than we were.

  But Banks declined the offer, his enthusiastic promiscuity stalled by a surprising coyness. Tahitian attitudes to public displays of sexuality were much more lai
ssez-faire than the Englishman could entertain.

  PHILIBERT COMMERSON (1727–1773), Naturalist on Bougainville’s voyage of circumnavigation

  Here, modesty and prudery lose their tyranny. The act of procreation is an act of religion; its preludes are encouraged by the voices and songs of the assembled people, and its end is greeted by universal applause.

  In Cook’s own journals, he described one of these ritual sex acts: ‘A young fellow above 6 feet high lay with a little girl about 10 or 12 years of age publicly before several of our people and a number of the natives,’ as senior women coached her performance. Cook observed that it ‘appeared to be done more from custom than from lewdness’.

  Often, the men and women participating in these public displays were ’arioi: a revered class of priests and priestesses devoted to the performance of erotic songs, dances and ritual sex. Travelling from island to island, they were members of a cult of beauty dedicated to the god ’Oro. But not just anyone could join; practitioners were expected to be gifted with great natural beauty and demonstrate physical strength, grace and endurance. As the Endeavour’s artist, Sydney Parkinson, observed, ‘I never beheld statelier men.’

  The purpose of the ’ariois’ public displays on Tahiti was not to entertain audiences with the equivalent of a Pacific peepshow. The ’arioi indulged in public sexual displays to stimulate the carnal appetites of the Tahitian gods during the seasonal festivals and ensure the fertility of the islands. It’s possible that Purea arranged the ritual sex act described by Cook as a way of arousing the British gods. But of course the men on the Endeavour got the wrong end of the stick. Cook took it to mean that Tahitian society was generally lacking in sexual decorum.

  CAPTAIN JAMES COOK

  Both sexes express the most indecent ideas in conversation without the least emotion and they delight in such conversation beyond any other. Chastity indeed is but little valued.

  This attitude certainly carried with it a fair dose of hypocrisy. The Endeavour had just set sail from Georgian England, which was in the grip of what’s been described as the first sexual revolution; prostitution was rife and public displays of sexuality not at all uncommon. Cook was aware of this and did caution his readers against tarring all Tahitian women with the same brush, noting that women who were married and of high social status did not participate in the trade for sexual favours.

  WILLIAM WALES (1734–1798), Astronomer, Cook’s second voyage

  The great part of these women admit of no such familiarities, or at least are very careful to whom they grant them. That there are prostitutes here as well as in London is true . . . and such no doubt were those who came on board the ship to our people. These seem not less skilful in their profession than ladies of the same stamp in England, nor does a person run less risk of injuring his health and constitution in their embraces.

  Cook feared less for his sailors’ mortal souls than he did for their physical wellbeing. The thought that his men might be felled by a sexually transmitted disease would have bothered him terribly, if only because a ship crewed by men stricken down with the pox wouldn’t go too far. He was also mindful of the grievous damage that would be visited upon the Tahitians if the pox were let loose amongst them.

  Despite Cook’s exhortations about the perils of the diseases dubbed ‘the clap’, ‘this filthy distemper’, ‘the foul disease’, ‘that heavy curse’, and ‘that greatest plague that ever the human race was afflicted with’, within five days of landing, symptoms began to spread amongst the men. Prior to disembarking, Cook had directed the Endeavour’s surgeon to examine the men for symptoms of venereal disease. He found that just one man was infected, and Cook forbade him from communicating with the Tahitians. It was decided, then, that the disease had already been on the island when Cook and his men arrived. That left two possible culprits: the crew of the Dolphin, or Bougainville’s libertine sailors.

  Cook tried his best but could do little to slow the disease’s progress through his men. In his journal, he bemoaned the scourge while also finding some misguided comfort in the belief that the Endeavour was not responsible for bringing venereal disease to the island.

  CAPTAIN JAMES COOK

  All I could do was to little purpose for I may safely say that I was not assisted by one person in the ship . . . and the women were so very liberal with their favours, or else nails, shirts &c were temptations that they could not withstand, that this distemper very soon spread itself over the greatest part of the ship’s company but now I have the satisfaction to find that the natives all agree that we did not bring it here.

  Given there was no love lost between the French and the English, in years to come they predictably blamed each other for infecting the Tahitians. But the final word on the matter should be left to the locals, who called venereal disease apa no Britannia. English illness.

  Cook knew the disease would spread like wildfire, predicting that it would ‘in time spread itself over all the islands in the South Seas, to the eternal reproach of those who first brought it among them’. He was right. Once tuberculosis, smallpox, measles and whooping cough were added into the mix, the indigenous Tahitian population was decimated. For their part, the Tahitians attributed the scourge to vengeful deities. In 1774, Cook estimated there to be 204,000 Tahitians living on the island. A French census in 1865 counted just 7169 indigenous Tahitians.

  Once the romantic descriptions of these perfect tropical islands nestled in warm, aquamarine waters and populated by sexually uninhibited maidens were carried back to Europe and transmitted by lovesick sailors, Tahiti became a byword for paradise. Cook’s description was typically restrained, but it was as close as he would ever come to being effusive.

  CAPTAIN JAMES COOK

  The whole exhibits a view which can only be described by the pencil of an able painter . . . No very agreeable discovery, to us whose ideas of plenty upon our arrival at this island was carried to the very highest pitch.

  As might be expected, Banks was more florid: ‘The scene we saw was the truest picture of an arcadia of which we were going to be kings that the imagination can form.’ But it is to the Frenchman, Bougainville, that we must look for the most evocative description of Tahiti’s appeal. He likened it to the Greek island of Cythera – the birthplace of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

  LOUIS ANTOINE DE BOUGAINVILLE

  Nature had placed the island in the most perfect climate in the world, had embellished it with every pleasing prospect, had endowed it with all its riches, and filled it with large, strong, and beautiful people . . . Farewell, happy and wise people; remain always as you are now. I will always remember you with delight, and as long as I live I will celebrate the happy island of Cythera: it is the true Utopia.

  At the dawn of an era when monumental social, political and economic rupture would tear Western society asunder, prominent thinkers were grappling with the essence of human nature and trying to unravel humankind’s place in a topsy-turvy world. Foremost amongst these philosophers were Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Diderot was inspired to compose a fictional account that celebrated the ‘noble savagery’ of the Tahitians after reading Bougainville’s account. For his part, Rousseau confected the model of ‘natural man’ as an ideal creature unspoilt by cultured society and the corrupting forces of civilisation. Think Adam and Eve gambolling in the Garden of Eden while enjoying a state of divine innocence and ignorance before they each took a big bite of the forbidden fruit. As far as the first European arrivals in Tahiti were concerned, the locals were living this utopian ideal in what amounted to paradise on earth. Bougainville again: ‘I thought I had been transported to the Garden of Eden. Restfulness, a quiet joy and all the semblances of happiness reign everywhere.’

  View of the inside of a house on the island of Ulietea, with representation of a dance, Giovanni Battista Cipriani, 1773, drawn from Sydney Parkinson’s 1769 sketches of dancing Raiateans. It appears that Cipriani took Banks’ florid descriptions to heart, transforming Tahiti
into a Grecian idyll far removed from Polynesia.

  National Library of Australia, 7411 #S1691

  During the nineteenth century, as the wheels of progress drove the Industrial Revolution forward, and war and violent revolution turned society on its head, more and more people tried to find a way out. Tahiti had the misfortune of being cast as surrogate for frustrated Western fantasies. But the thing about fantasy is that it seldom has any basis in reality and fails to accommodate an extant society’s history, culture and complexity.

  SAM NEILL

  In a way, it’s unfortunate the Europeans had such a good time in the Pacific because they brought back these stories of compliant women wearing next to nothing, and so the Pacific was seen as an exotic and desirable place . . . That the Pacific became the South Pacific Paradise didn’t do anyone any good at all – the cliché of the dusky South Seas maiden and so on.

  So it was for Tahitians. The countless foreigners who journeyed to their shores in Cook’s wake were determined to find paradise, regardless of whether or not it wanted to be found. To the Western imagination, it was important that this idyllic island was populated by tribes of ‘noble savages’ offering the world-weary flotsam and jetsam who washed up on its beaches an easy way to relax and forget their troubles. But to the locals, it was simply home.

  One of the worst culprits when it came to shaping the Western vision of Tahiti was the French post-impressionist painter, Paul Gauguin.

  JOSIANE TEAMOTUAITAU PhD

  In those days the painters had a message to convey. We can see all the standards of the Enlightenment: fair-skinned people, untouched world, noble savage, and also the classical references. Because those women do not look Tahitian at all, of course. The message was that this is the untouched world. The message they wanted to bring back to Europe was that they were gods of this new Arcadia.