Norfolk Island would find its uses, though. For a start, because it was so fertile, it was the one thing that kept the early settlement in Sydney from starvation when food was scarce. But it also performed a less benign function – it became the new penal colony’s offshore dumping ground. Between 1788 and 1855, Norfolk Island would be the end of the road for those convicts deemed the worst of the worst. By the mid-1830s, it was the most infamous penal outpost in the world; its reputation was such that in 1840 Charles Dickens offered to set a novel on the island in order to promote its horrors and ensure nobody wanted to risk ending up there.
One man in particular was to make quite an impression on Norfolk Island. In 1833, Captain Foster Fyans was posted there as captain of the guard. Upon arrival, he was enormously impressed by the Pacific island’s natural aspects.
FOSTER FYANS (1790–1870), Penal Administrator, Norfolk Island, and Public Servant
All days alike in this heavenly climate. The island is small, but luxuriantly rich, abundance of lemons, guavas, pomegranates, custard apple and other fruits indigenous to the soil. The length is not more than seven miles . . . the sea appeared truly grand, with a long heavy surf rolling on the island . . . To me for days the island appeared a fairy land, and so beautiful in comparison to New South Wales. The pine trees grow to an enormous size . . . the valleys are provided with numerous exotics in plants, and streams of the finest water.
But he was less enthusiastic about the settlement and its occupants, condemning them as a disgrace to Britain. And it’s here that Sam Neill’s personal story crosses paths with that of the Pacific.
SAM NEILL
Curiously, this is where my family and Cook and Norfolk Island intersect. The acting commandant at this gaol when prisoners rebelled and escaped was Captain Foster Fyans. His daughter married one Percival Neill, my great-grandfather. Fyans is still a family name – one I gave my son Tim. Why should this matter? Because it goes to the heart of what we call history. Foster Fyans put down the rebellion, captured the escaped convicts and administered punishment. A military man, it was his job.
Foster Fyans had a pretty clear idea about what was required to keep convicts under control.
FOSTER FYANS
I am a great advocate for convicts and no man ever got on better than I with them . . . I say do the men every justice . . . but you must be strict with them.
Australian writer and commentator Robert Hughes wrote of Norfolk Island that it was a ‘place of perverted values where evil was reckoned to be good and where the unbelievable became the norm’. In Hughes’ international best-selling account of the European settlement of Australia, The Fatal Shore, ‘Flogger Fyans’ was established as an arch-villain of the very worst kind. Described as a ‘sweaty’ and ‘dishevelled figure’, for Hughes, Fyans was a symbol of the brutal colonial rule that laid the foundations for modern Australia:
In a prolonged sadistic fury, Fyans and the soldiers of the 4th set out to make the mutineers wish they had never been born. It took the blacksmiths nine days to make new irons for the prisoners; they were double or triple weight, with the inside of the basils jagged to lacerate the flesh . . . Fyans wanted new, special cats made ‘to strike terror into these hardened-minded fellows . . .’ The mass floggings went on into the evening by the light of flambeaux, until the ‘desperate and lawless and listless mob’ had been battered into submission.
Needless to say, Sam and his family have taken umbrage at the tenor of Hughes’ portrait.
SAM NEILL
When the late Robert Hughes came to write his history of Australia’s foundations – The Fatal Shore – he found more fault in Foster Fyans for administering punishment than the convicts who admitted they planned to cut the throats of the prison staff, rape their wives and abscond on a stolen ship. He dubbed him ‘Flogger Fyans’. He transposed the convicts’ notoriety to Fyans’ character. For Hughes, Fyans was on the wrong side of history. Of course I disagree, and in the field of history there’s often no middle ground.
As for Foster Fyans, he lived to the grand old age of eighty after a notable career in the early Australian public service. He served as the first police magistrate of Geelong, in what is now Victoria, and was commissioner of Crown lands in the Portland Bay pastoral district. The town of Fyansford on the outskirts of Geelong was named for the crossing Fyans built on the Moorabool River to access his police camp.
SAM NEILL
Is this all just a matter of unintended consequences? Cook, convicts, Bligh, the mutiny on the Bounty, Pitcairn, Norfolk Island and my besmirched ancestor? I don’t know but I do know this small island is a reservoir of Pacific history.
If the story of the Pacific tells us one thing, it’s that history is told by the victors. But every now and then, the marginalised have the chance to write their own narrative. That’s how it was for the descendants of the mutineers from HMS Bounty and their Tahitian wives who ended up on Norfolk Island in 1856 after it was abandoned by the British. Queen Victoria gifted it to the Pitcairn Islanders who had outgrown their remote island home. One hundred and ninety-three men and women took advantage of the well-constructed and attractive buildings deserted by the British and relocated, though the new residents were forced to grapple with the island’s grim recent history.
RHONDA GRIFFITHS, Pitcairn Islander Descendant
They thought that they would have Norfolk the same way they had Pitcairn, which is ours in entirety. But when they arrived they didn’t like the island because it had ghosts. There were piles of uniforms and leg irons just left abandoned, and of course this was a great horror for the new arrivals.
Today, half the residents of the island trace their parentage to the Bounty mutineers, which means surnames are in short supply and the local phone book includes nicknames to distinguish between them all. You’re not going to have much trouble finding the right number with names like ‘Cane Toad’, ‘Paw Paw’, ‘Diddles’, ‘Lettuce Leaf’ and ‘Goof’ to choose from. These whimsical nicknames give the impression that Norfolk Islanders are pretty easygoing in general, and there’s certainly no shortage of quirky facts to support that conclusion – for example, local laws give cows right of way on the island’s few roads.
But the Norfolk Islanders are fiercely proud of their Pacific heritage. The local lingo is Norf’k, a blend of eighteenth-century English and Tahitian with words including nor’gwen (not going) and do-mine (never mind), and there has been major opposition to Australia’s move in 2016 to abolish the Norfolk Island Legislative Assembly and establish the island as an Australian territory subject to the same Commonwealth laws as the mainland. Sixty-eight per cent of islanders reject the changes and have appealed to the United Nations to oversee a transition to self-determination.
RHONDA GRIFFITHS
Yes, we could do without Australia. We’ve got lots of tools that you can’t see, and these tools are our ability to go back to our subsistence lifestyle. We’ve got our land, we’ve got the know-how, we’ve got a sense of community. We always talk about our history, but I would rather see a future where we are self-governing, where Australia takes a much more adult approach to us and allows us to become part of the Pacific.
While the Australian government now insists that the Australian national anthem is sung at official functions, it’s done begrudgingly. Given a choice, the locals sing their preferred anthem: ‘God Save the Queen’.
Norfolk Island is not going to be saying do-mine to Australian intervention anytime soon.
*
Cook’s return home via Cape Horn on 30 July 1775 was a triumph. Thanks to his rigour and a painstaking search, whose path across the Pacific resembles the marks made on a wall by a toddler with a crayon, he confidently consigned the Great Southern Continent to the scrap heap of history.
CAPTAIN JAMES COOK
I had now made the circuit of the Southern Ocean . . . in such a manner as to leave not the least room for the possibility of there being a continent, unless near the pole and out of the
reach of navigation; by twice visiting the Pacific Tropical Sea . . . Thus I flatter myself that the intention of the voyage has in every respect been fully answered, the southern hemisphere sufficiently explored and a final end put to the searching after a Southern Continent, which has at times engrossed the attention of some of the maritime powers for near two centuries past and the geographers of all ages.
For a modest man, his account reflects no small pride in this achievement.
Cook was given all the rewards the Royal Navy could grant him. He was offered an honourable discharge and a lucrative position as an officer at the Greenwich Hospital. He was acknowledged as the pre-eminent navigator of the age, was made a Fellow of the Royal Society and won the Copley Medal for contributions to scientific research. Elizabeth was waiting, and London society beckoned. For most people, it would have been more than enough. But James Cook was not most people.
The man who wrote ‘I whose ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for any man to go’ knew that many questions were left unanswered. He had solved the southern hemisphere’s greatest mystery, a puzzle that had vexed many of the world’s greatest thinkers and explorers for thousands of years. But he had yet to cross into the northern Pacific, home to another great enigma that promised enduring fame and unimaginable wealth.
James Cook was not done with the Pacific, and it was not done with him.
PART FIVE
THIRTEEN
CHASING RAINBOWS
As soon as Cook heard of a planned voyage to find the North-West Passage he turned his back on retirement and domestic bliss. This was a chance to complete the Pacific trifecta. A third voyage would encompass the northern regions of the ocean, complete his chart, and connect the planet’s two great oceans: the Atlantic and the Pacific. Not to mention the reward. Cook was neither a greedy man nor was he intemperate. He had come a long way from being a farm labourer’s son. Could he go further? Immortality beckoned as well as wealth. It would be the biggest gamble of Cook’s life.
SAM NEILL
Men foolhardy enough to give their lives to the sea in the eighteenth century rarely made it to their three-scoreand-ten. So at forty-seven years old, James Cook was well into his dotage. After his return from his second voyage, he was also famous. Cook had managed to scale the rungs of the social ladder from his humble beginnings in a tiny Yorkshire cottage to find himself a place in London’s high society.
By 1775 Cook had spent most of his life at sea. No other British navigator had travelled as far as he had. After making two tremendously successful voyages of exploration to the Pacific, and garnering the recognition and acclaim of his peers, Cook could have retired. Actually, given how the next chapter of his story ended, he should have retired.
Instead, when the Admiralty began to scout about for someone to lead a third voyage to the Pacific, he put up his hand for the job. The admirals had been lining up Charles Clerke to fill the position and had hoped that Cook would agree to act as a consultant to the expedition. But when Cook volunteered, Clerke was quickly shunted to one side.
As the venerable mariner readied to depart in July 1776, Cook would again be leaving his wife, Elizabeth, and children – thirteen-year-old James, twelve-year-old Nathaniel and newborn Hugh. The couple had already lost three children – a daughter called Elizabeth, and two sons, Joseph and George. Having buried all three of them while Cook was at sea, Elizabeth must have farewelled her husband for a third time with a very heavy heart.
The physical and psychological pressure of commanding a ship on the high seas meant very few mariners stayed at the helm for as long as Cook. It had been barely a year since he had returned from the second voyage, so he’d had little time to recover. Yet he was determined to set sail again. Why? Was he addicted to the thrill of the chase – an extreme adventure junkie like the modern-day war correspondents who are drawn to danger like moths to a flame? Was it simply that Cook suffered from a terminal case of itchy feet and couldn’t abide sitting still for long? By doing so, he was turning his back on a prestigious, not to mention safe and sedentary, appointment at the Greenwich Hospital. Of his decision he wrote to his old employer and friend, the Quaker sea captain John Walker, that the confines of the hospital were ‘far too small for an active mind like mine’. But there certainly was something else at play. Although Cook was enjoying the advantages that came with his elevation in social standing, without the inherited wealth that kept so many of his new peers afloat, he was unable to offer his family the financial security he wanted for them. And the third great British expedition into the Pacific had the potential to be his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
In 1775 the Admiralty planned the third voyage in response to an Act of Parliament that offered a £20,000 prize to the person who discovered the fabled North-West Passage. Scientists had reached the conclusion that the open ocean could not ice over and so proposed that there might be a direct sea passage across the Arctic Circle. Yes, it was the Great Southern Continent all over again, but in the northern hemisphere and this time with a cash bonus – the equivalent of £3 million today, or almost AUD$5.3 million. That’s a great deal of financial security.
The quest for the Passage would, over the coming century, claim many lives. To find a way across the northern latitudes would offer another way of getting to Asia other than via the perilous and protracted routes that rounded Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope. The projected rewards and savings in expenditure for those plying their trade between Asia and Europe were incalculable. Travel time would be dramatically reduced and there was a better chance that the valuable trade goods would make it to their intended destination in one piece. Britain was not alone in coming to this realisation, but it did intend to be the first European nation to discover and chart the Passage.
The British had another good reason to venture back into the Pacific. In August 1773, a young Ra’iatean man named Mai – or Omai – had come aboard the Adventure, Cook’s companion ship on the second voyage, which had dropped anchor at the island of Huahine. Like Tupaia before him, Mai decided he wanted to travel to England. And also like Tupaia, he had been dispossessed of his lands by warring parties and thought that if he formed an alliance with the British they would help him defeat his enemies.
When Mai arrived in London in October 1774, Joseph Banks welcomed him with open arms. The Englishman was undoubtedly thrilled that he had an all-new South Sea Islander to squire about town after the death of Tupaia in Batavia had deprived him of the opportunity to impress his high-society friends with his ‘exotic’ Tahitian companion. Now the fates had delivered him a substitute, and Banks made sure Mai was the toast of the town.
The Weekly magazine, or, Edinburgh amusement, 1774, volume 25
The Native of Otaheite, who was at court the other day, had received some instructions for his behaviour in addressing His Majesty, but so great was his embarrassment when His Majesty approached him, that he forgot everything but that of kneeling; and when his conductors endeavoured to make him speak to the King, he could only stretch out his hand, and get out the familiar phrase of How do you do? which, it seems, was the first English phrase he learnt . . . His Majesty freely shook him by the hand . . .
He hobnobbed with King George and the ladies of the court, and sat for a now celebrated portrait painted by the foremost artist of the day, Sir Joshua Reynolds. If that wasn’t enough, long after Mai had returned to Polynesia, he inspired a pantomime that was the hit of the season in 1785: Omai: or, a Trip Round the World. In it, Omai – the heir to the Tahitian throne – was bequeathed to Londina – Britannia’s daughter. You don’t have to look too hard to find the subtext in that plot.
After he had been swanning about London for almost two years, it was decided it was high time that he returned to Tahiti. There’s no record of what he thought about the idea – not that anyone asked his opinion it seems. In the meantime, the old warhorse from the second voyage, HMS Resolution, and
the ship intended to be its companion, the Discovery, were being refitted in the naval yards. Being the micromanager he was, under normal circumstances Cook would have overseen the work himself. But he was tied up preparing his account of the second voyage. So he entrusted the work to men he assumed knew what they were doing. It was a fateful decision. Before embarking on the second voyage, Cook had described the Resolution as ‘the ship of my choice’ and ‘the fittest of any service of any I have seen’. With what was to come, his affection for the ship would be short-lived.
*
On 12 July 1776, Cook set sail from England for the last time.
York Courant, 18 June 1776
On Monday Omiah, the Otaheitean, took his leave of his Majesty, and yesterday set out for Portsmouth, where he is to embark on board Capt. Cook’s Ship, in order to return home. Yesterday, Capt. Cook, of his Majesty’s Ship Resolution, who is going out for the third time on further discoveries to the South Seas, took leave of his Majesty, he being in a few days to sail in company with the Discovery, Capt. Clerke, now at Gravesend, on the said voyage.
The two ships were home to a floating farmyard of livestock – a sheep, cows, goats, ducks, geese, chickens, peacocks. Not to mention the horse Mai intended to take back to Tahiti with him. The animals had been herded onto the ships as gifts from King George III to the people of the Pacific. Which was all very well and good, except he didn’t have to worry about feeding them.
Cook had been instructed to round the Cape of Good Hope and then proceed directly to Tahiti. But with a shipload full of bleating, mooing, honking and gobbling animals fast running out of food, he was forced to change tack. In January 1777 he turned his ship towards Van Diemen’s Land – or lutruwita, as it was known to the Aboriginal inhabitants. It’s worth pausing to note here that the Aboriginal languages of lutruwita were all but lost in the attempted extermination of the Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples in the nineteenth century. In recent years, palawa kani, the language of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people, has been painstakingly revived from remnants remembered into the twentieth century and colonial documentary records. And yes, those lower-case letters are deliberate; it is the style adopted by the Tasmanian Aboriginal people of today.
The Pacific Page 22
