Fighting the symptoms of consumption, Charles Clerke forged north and tackled the Arctic Circle again in June and July. The search was fruitless, and when the ships returned to Petropavlovsk, Clerke succumbed to the disease that had bedevilled him for the entire voyage. He was thirty-eight years of age. A stone memorial erected by the Admiralty marks the spot where Clerke was buried on a high hill overlooking the town.
After Clerke’s death, the expedition fell under the leadership of Lieutenant John Gore, who assumed command of the Resolution and appointed James King as captain of the Discovery.
Cook’s legacy would live on in many of the men who survived the voyage. William Bligh, George Vancouver, James King, John Ledyard and John Gore would all make names for themselves in the world of exploration and British naval history. As it happened, Gore’s son was one of the first free settlers to arrive in Australia, and Gore’s grandson, Graham, died during John Franklin’s doomed search for the same thing that had drawn John Gore to the bleak northern Pacific: the North-West Passage.
*
As is so often the case with these tales of adventure on the high seas, little thought has been given to the people left behind. When Elizabeth Cook received news of her husband’s death, she was stitching a waistcoat made of the tapa cloth James had brought back for her from his second voyage.
Her lot in life was not easy. Nine months after Elizabeth and James were married, she had given birth to their first child, a son, while her husband was at sea. Cook was at home for the birth of only two of their six children, and only three of them survived infancy. Joseph, George and the couple’s only daughter, Elizabeth, all died and were buried while Cook was away. All three of the Cooks’ children who made it to adulthood died young, and had no children of their own. Nathaniel was lost at sea at the age of sixteen when the ship he was serving on in the West Indies went down with all hands on deck during a hurricane. Hugh contracted scarlet fever and died at the age of seventeen while a student at Cambridge. And the eldest son, also named James, followed in his father’s footsteps and became a commander in the British Navy. He drowned at sea at the age of thirty-one. James and Elizabeth Cook left no direct line of descent.
Still, Elizabeth whiled away what spare time she had on an object that embodies hope. On the piece of mulberry-bark fabric brought back to England by her husband from a Pacific island half a world away, Elizabeth began to embroider delicate tendrils of foliage and flower buds to trim the garment she imagined he would one day wear at court – perhaps when receiving his knighthood.
The life of a naval wife in the eighteenth century was a precarious existence. With her husband gone for years on end and in the absence of any means of regular communication, a sense of uncertainty must have been a constant feature of Elizabeth’s life as she waited for her husband to return. Perhaps, in a way, it was a relief when she learnt of his death – the bad news she had been dreading for so many years had finally come. Or maybe, after he had managed to return home safely so many times after so many near misses, she believed him to be indestructible.
Given an Admiralty pension amounting to two hundred pounds per annum – the equivalent of roughly AUD$60,000 today – Elizabeth Cook kept her husband’s portrait with her until her death in 1835 at the age of ninety-three. Living in her home as her companion was her cousin, Isaac Smith, who had accompanied James Cook on his first voyage and was the first European to step ashore at Botany Bay. Perhaps anticipating the obsessive public fascination with her husband that would develop as the years passed, before she died it’s believed Elizabeth Cook burnt all of her husband’s personal correspondence with her. She seems to have judged the private moments captured between husband and wife too personal to share.
Elizabeth had no cause to complete her husband’s tapa cloth waistcoat. It now lies in the collection of the State Library of New South Wales. Alongside it is another poignant object that captures Cook’s intimate and tumultuous relationship with the Pacific. When the Resolution and the Discovery dropped anchor in Yarmouth in September 1780, the men on board carried with them a gift they had hand-crafted for their commander’s widow. Using timber from the troublesome Resolution, the men carved a tiny, coffin-shaped box, measuring just nine by seven centimetres. Along the edge of the box is an inscription: ‘Made of Resolution Oak for Mrs. Cook by Crew’. Inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the box has three silver plaques affixed to it. One is inscribed ‘Captain James Cook Slain at Owhyhee 14 February 1779’. The other two record places of note from Cook’s career: ‘Quebec, Newfoundland, Greenwich and Australis’, and, significantly, ‘Lono and the Seaman’s Idol’. Inside the coffin they placed a lock of Cook’s hair – presumably retrieved from the scalp returned to Clerke in Kealakekua Bay. It rests on a miniature watercolour depicting the moment of Cook’s death.
SAM NEILL
This extraordinary little ditty-box is carved of wood from the Resolution, and it was a gift from the crew to Cook’s widow. I suppose to a modern eye, it’s slightly macabre because it’s carved in the shape of a coffin, and inside is a lock of what is presumed to be Cook’s hair and an amazing little painting of his death. But it’s a beautiful little thing because, somehow, it contains so much emotion.
It is a tiny thing, yet it inspires great pathos – not just because it is a deeply personal memento that captures a tragic moment, but also because it reflects the respect and love his crew held for James Cook. Despite the moments of resentment the men on board the Resolution felt towards him on occasion during the third voyage, at the end, he was Lono, and they worshipped him: ‘the Seaman’s Idol’. There could be no finer memorial for Cook as a leader of men.
Professor Dame Anne Salmond has proposed that, at his end, Cook became a prince of the Pacific. A revealing exchange occurred on Ra’iatea during the first voyage, when Cook was approached by a chieftain who asked him the name of his marae. Cook took that to mean the place he would be buried, which he thought was a peculiar question to ask a seaman, given they were usually buried at sea. But to Polynesians, a marae was the hub of a man’s identity. What Cook was being asked was to identify the place that was his spiritual hub – where his soul resided.
When Cook’s remains were buried at sea in Kealakekua Bay, the ocean itself became his marae. That was where his memory would persist. For better or worse, his identity – his soul – would be tied to the Pacific and its people forever.
It was in the Pacific Ocean that James Cook found immortality.
SAM NEILL
After my journey, I don’t know whether I now feel more or less connected to the Pacific. I’ve got a much clearer idea of how I came to be here. That’s to say, my forebears came here 150 years ago, and I just thought that was what happens. But every act of possession is an act of dispossession. There’s no denying that. So I’m grateful for the time I’ve spent in the Pacific, my home. I know we live in precarious times, but this great ocean will surely outlast humanity. The Pacific will endure, its timelessness and immensity a reservoir of stories for whoever, or whatever, follows us all.
PHOTO SECTION
Captain James Cook, 1728–79, Nathaniel Dance, 1776. Perhaps the best-known portrait of Cook, depicted in full dress uniform and holding his own chart of the Southern Ocean. Cook sat for this portrait before his final voyage to the Pacific.
State Library of Victoria, H32508
Sam Neill reading on a beach in New Zealand. Take a close look at the book in his hands. It can seem that Captain Cook is everywhere, and yet really, we know so little about him. SAM NEILL: We don’t get much from [Cook’s] logs . . . But the fact he kept going back to the Pacific – he couldn’t stay away – shows he was completely taken by the place. In the end, it wasn’t just that he changed the Pacific . . . the Pacific also changed him.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
Sam Neill with Josiane Teamotuaitau, Tautira Bay, Tahiti. On arrival in Tahiti, Cook and his men formed friendships with the locals –
although the give and take was not always equal.
JOSIANE TEAMOTUAITAU: Tahitians are very pragmatic . . . When Cook and the other Europeans arrived on the island they tried to make the best of it. They knew they couldn’t fight guns. So this trade began: these exchanges, these friendships.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
Venus Fort, after Sydney Parkinson, 1773. The fort was erected at Matavai Bay for Cook’s observation of the 1769 Transit of Venus. In spite of this daunting construction, the Tahitians managed to distract the guards, get inside and make off with the quadrant on which the success of the measuring of the Transit of Venus relied.
SP Lohia Collection, 5469_007
Chart of the Island Otaheite, Captain James Cook, 1769. Matavai Bay and Fort Venus can be seen at the northernmost point of the large island.
David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries
Mr Banks Shows the Indians the Planet Venus on the Sun, artist unknown, 1769 (engraved c.1771). For his part, Mr Banks is looking closely at the three women he will persuade to spend the night in his tent. Venus prevails.
State Library of NSW, c2856
Parkinson’s Nose Flute Player, after Sydney Parkinson, 1773. The model for this picture might have been Taiata, Tupaia’s servant (and some say nephew) who accompanied him on the voyage and, like his master, died in Batavia.
State Library of NSW, D Q78/10, FL3746793
Utensils and Tools, after Sydney Parkinson, 1773. Did ship’s artist Sydney Parkinson realise he was recording a technology and artisanal way of life that would not survive exposure to the West?
State Library of NSW, D Q78/10, FL3746797
A Scene in Tahiti with Two War Canoes and a Sailing Canoe, Tupaia, 1769. This painting, which also shows a longhouse, with pandanus, breadfruit, banana and coconut trees and taro plants, is one of eight existing paintings by Tupaia, the Tahitian priest and navigator. Until 1997 these paintings were cryptically attributed to the ‘artist of the chief mourner.’ Then a letter from Joseph Banks came to light where he wrote, ‘Tupaia, an Indian, learned to draw in a way not unintelligible.’ The young fop was not very woke – it’s a remarkable work in a new medium for Tupaia.
Bridgeman Images, BL3743002
Filming on the beach in Tahiti. Originally, the Pacific television series planned to visit every Pacific nation seen by Cook – but the demands of Pacific flight schedules, film crews, and budgets meant some countries were regrettably omitted. Their stories are no less important, and will no doubt be told by others as the re-examination of Cook and the Pacific continues.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
Chart of the Society Islands, with Otaheite in the centre, Tupaia, 1769. Tupaia’s chart, drawn from memory, with the names of the islands inscribed by Cook. Two world views come together on the same page.
Bridgeman Images, BL3292585
Sam Neill at Taputapuatea Marae, the hub of Pacific navigation and spiritual life for 1000 years.
SAM NEILL: Taputapuatea is the spiritual heart really of Polynesia. It’s a very sacred place. It gives me the same sort of feeling I’ve had at the pyramids in Mexico or at Stonehenge . . . I don’t really understand it, if I’m honest.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
The Marae of Mahaiatea, Tahiti, or Great Morai of Oborea, after Wilson, 1799. Designed and built under Tupaia’s supervision after he was banished from Ra’iatea, it’s reputedly the largest ever built. Today it lies in ruins.
National Library of Australia, 919.6 W749
Sam Neill with Moana’ura Walker, Humutu Valley, Tahiti.
MOANA’URA WALKER: The French missionaries put into people’s minds if they go to their traditional places of worship they’ll be visited and haunted by ghosts . . . Once we started worshipping just one god, everybody forgot the rest of them . . . And every god had a purpose that was linked to a specific cultural practice.
Photo by Sally Aitken, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
This monument at the Tūranganui (Gisborne) River mouth marks the spot where Cook stepped ashore, bearing arms and, apparently, the best of intentions. ‘Hints’ issued by the Royal Society suggested Cook ‘exercise the utmost patience and forbearance with respect to the natives . . . check the petulance of the sailors, and restrain the wanton use of firearms . . .’ Things did not go to plan.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
Sam Neill greets a Māori performer with a hongi at the Waitangi Treaty Ground. Cook’s hongi – the exchange of sacred breath – with a Māori warrior at Tūranganui brokered a peace of sorts. Without Tupaia as translator, there may have been no peace at all.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
A War Canoe, of New Zealand, engraving after Sydney Parkinson, 1770. A waka toa, Māori war canoe, crammed with warriors energetically expressing their contempt for the visitors, with many graphic expressions of what they plan to do with them as soon as they land.
State Library of NSW, DQ78/10, FL3746802
Head of Otegoongoon, Son of a New Zealand Chief, the face curiously tataou’d, Thomas Chambers after Sydney Parkinson, 1773. Cook noted, ‘The marks in general are spirals drawn with great nicety and even elegance . . . they have such a luxury of forms that of a hundred which at first appeared exactly the same no two were formed alike.’
SP Lohia Collection, 5469_023
Sam Neill with Emeritus Professor Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Ship Cove, Totaranui/Marlborough Sounds.
EMERITUS PROFESSOR NGAHUIA TE AWEKOTUKU: Moko can be menacing and fearsome and ugly. But it can also be erotic . . . desirable . . . appealing. There’s a mixed aesthetic. Even today people meet moko Māori, and they don’t know quite where to look. It’s very funny.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
A view of a perforated rock in Tolaga Bay in New Zealand, after Sydney Parkinson, 1773. Banks described this pierced rock as ‘far superior to any of the contrivances of art’. To the Māori, it was known as Te Kotore e te Whenua – the anus of the land.
David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries
A Maori bartering a crayfish with an English naval officer, Tupaia, 1769. In his journal, Banks noted: ‘The genius for caricature which all wild people possess led him to caricature me and he drew me with a nail in my hand delivering it to an Indian who sold me a lobster.’ Of course Banks presumed he himself was not seen as wild.
Bridgeman Images, BL3283459
Portrait of Sir Joseph Banks, Benjamin West, 1788. Banks, an inveterate collector, wears a Māori flax cloak and is surrounded by objects from New Zealand and Polynesia.
Alexander Turnbull Library, 22796842
Horatio Robley, Seated with His Collection of Ssevered Heads of Maori, Henry Stevens, c.1900. Probably the most egregious example of a colonial collection. Horatio Robley served with the British Army in New Zealand in the nineteenth century. On his retirement back in England, he built up his collection of toi moko, thirty-five heads in all. Their repatriation to New Zealand was finalised in 2014.
Wellcome Library no. 664088i
Ship Cove, Queen Charlotte Sound, John Webber, c.1788. Ship Cove (or Meretoto) became Cook’s favourite anchorage in the Pacific – he described it as a ‘very snug cove’ – and he visited it on each of his three Pacific voyages. It was here that Cook’s men first observed the Māori practice of cannibalism, and where the trade in toi moko began, Banks exchanging a pair of white linen undershorts for a preserved head.
Museum of New Zealand, 1991-0005-1
Kiley Nepia, Peter Meihana, Raymond Smith and Sam Neill at Ship Cove.
KILEY NEPIA: Kaitangata, or the eating of people, wasn’t for protein or the eating of nutrients. It wasn’t an everyday occurrence. It was very rare. You’re talki
ng about strict tapu rules, so a specific type of person would have carried out that ritual. Not everybody was permitted to do those things.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
Sam Neill at Ship Cove in the Marlborough Sounds, taking advantage of a welcome chance to relive the rowing exploits of his childhood holidays in these waters.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
Map of the Coast of New Zealand. A coloured version of Cook’s New Zealand chart, produced to enhance one of the many publications of his voyages rushed into print in the early nineteenth century. The chart is remarkably accurate, with the exception of Banks Peninsula, shown as an island, and Stewart Island, shown as a peninsula – the hazards of doing a running survey from a ship offshore and not seeing some landform distinctions.
SP Lohia Collection, 5469_027
The Warrior Chieftains of New Zealand, Joseph Jenner Merrett, 1846. Hone Heke, his wife Hariata and Kawiti. Heke and Kawiti were the chief leaders of the rebellion in the Far North of New Zealand in 1844–46. This was the first serious resistance to British rule, two years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Heke is popularly remembered for cutting down the flagpole above Kororāreka (Russell) four times.
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