James Cook's New World

by Lay, Graeme

  There was a long pause as the implications of this sank in. Then James asked, acidly, ‘Is Banks meeting the cost of these additions?’

  ‘Yes. It will run to several thousands, but he is paying for it all.’ He grunted. ‘So it was easy for Sandwich to persuade the other Sea Lords to agree to Banks’s demands.’

  They talked for another half-hour. Palliser reported that the naturalist’s party continued to swell. There would now be 16 servants joining the expedition and the flugelhorn players were confirmed. Banks had also invited Dr Samuel Johnson and his confidante James Boswell to come along on the voyage and document it. Listening to it all, James began to feel intensely dispirited. Banks was assuming more and more authority, knowing that he would be supported by his crony, Sandwich. It was not unlikely, he thought, that the formerly unthinkable could eventuate—that Banks would seek to assume command of the voyage, thereby making James’s position untenable. Already he felt, after hearing Palliser’s report, that he was losing whatever control he may have held over the expedition. He concluded, dejectedly, ‘If a new deck is to be added to Resolution, it will take weeks of work. So we cannot now hope to set sail in March.’

  Palliser nodded. ‘True. The departure will be sorely delayed.’ He picked up his pipe and tamped the bowl fiercely with his thumb. Looking down, he said, ‘I’m sorry about all this, Cook. None of it is your fault.’

  In spite of the frigid wind, James decided to walk home. Hat crammed on, cape collar turned up, he walked past Billingsgate and on towards Tower Hill. The London sky was slate-grey and the air was filled with drifts of coal smoke. Although the east wind was even more cutting, he ignored the cold, his mind seething with the implications of what Palliser had reported. The expedition could be imperilled by all this. Or, at the very least, delayed for weeks. Then, seeking to salvage some consolation from these maddening developments, he thought: our new child is expected in August. So I may yet be here for its arrival, which will be of comfort to Elizabeth.

  Seven

  A FORTNIGHT LATER JAMES TOOK A FERRY downriver to Deptford. Alighting at the wharf, then walking along to the naval dock, he stared at what was happening to Resolution. She was marooned in the graving dock like a stranded whale. Dozens of men—shipwrights and carpenters, aproned and betooled—swarmed along the dock and over her decks, hauling timber from carts, swinging it aboard with the aid of triangular shears, sawing planks and hammering frames and strakes into place. A burly, bearded man—the foreman, James assumed—was shouting orders at the carpenters while also directing the unloading of the timber. Sharing the dock with the workers was a crowd of onlookers—men, women and children—braving the cold and rain to witness the spectacle of Resolution’s well-publicised transformation. James stayed at the back of the crowd. Hatted, caped and wearing civilian clothes, he merged with the others. No one here knew who he was, no one knew he had commanded a ship that had sailed around the world, no one knew that he was the person who would command the ship they were all watching being converted to a rich man’s plaything.

  Still observing from a distance, James scarcely recognised the sloop’s profile. Her mizzen and mainmast had been removed to allow the top hamper to be added. The raised frame of her poop was out of all proportion to the foredeck, while her waist was now so high that it was almost level with the bow. And where now would the helm be? And how would the mainmast and mizzen be stepped? They were busy converting, he thought, a pit pony into a camel.

  As he observed this frenetic scene, another ferry appeared from upriver, pulled by six sailors. As it came closer to the dock, James saw several figures standing in the boat. They all wore fashionably coloured jackets and tricorns. One of them, taller than the others, had his foot up jauntily on the prow. His jacket was sulphur yellow, the cuffs elaborate, and his hat was tucked under his left arm. Two elegantly-gowned and wigged women sat on a thwart in the centre of the ferry. In front of James, the crowd became excited as someone recognised the leading figure. ‘That’s Joseph Banks!’ exclaimed a young man. A ripple of excitement went through the spectators. ‘Which one’s ’im?’ asked a stout, shawled woman.

  ‘The one wiv the yeller coat,’ said the young man, knowingly. ‘That’s the famous naturalist Joseph Banks.’ Unwilling to bear any more, James moved away.

  It was Elizabeth who found a report of the visit in the following day’s London Chronicle. They were sitting in the parlour after supper, having put the boys to bed. Elizabeth brought the paper closer to the lamplight. ‘James, listen to this. “The eminent naturalist Joseph Banks yesterday took a party of prominent Londoners to visit the additions to his ship, Resolution, at the naval dockyard in Deptford. The party included the First Sea Lord, Lord Sandwich and his friend Miss Ray, the painter Johann Zoffany, the French ambassador Comte de Guines, the distinguished Shakespearean actor David Garrick and the eminent botanist Dr Daniel Solander. Work on the additions to the ship was halted for several hours while Mr Banks showed his guests over the vessel, pointing out the cabins where his entourage for the forthcoming world circumnavigation will be accommodated. After the visit to Deptford the party returned to the city by ferry, where they dined as the guests of Mr Banks at his house in Soho Square.”’

  She offered the paper to James, who waved it away. ‘I saw the event, Beth. I have no wish to read about it.’ He scowled. ‘Banks has his retinue, I have my crew. That is what I am concerned about.’ He went to her and knelt in front of her chair. Placing a hand on her arm he said, ‘At least the delay affords me more time with you and our boys.’

  Placing a hand on her swelling belly, Elizabeth said, ‘Do you wish this one to be a girl, James?’

  ‘I do. Our daughter was irreplaceable, but another would compensate.’

  ‘That is my earnest hope, too. Another little Elizabeth.’

  ‘And if it is a boy?’

  ‘I have given that possibility some thought.’ She put her hand on his. ‘In honour of our King, and in thanks for his kindness towards us, I thought: George.’

  James nodded.

  There was a long silence, then she said, ‘I’m grateful, in a way, to Banks and his additions. They are keeping you with me for longer than I had hoped.’

  He smiled, tightly. Again he felt torn. He was needed here, by his wife, by his sons, by the new child. But he was also needed by his King and the Admiralty, to be at sea, to fulfil his sworn duties. This remained an insoluble dilemma.

  March came and went. April brought longer days and spring rain. The modifying of Resolution continued to drag on. Compounding his frustration, James was informed by the Admiralty that her companion vessel Adventure lay at anchor in Plymouth harbour, refitted and ready to sail. She would be under the command of Tobias Furneaux, who had served as second lieutenant on Samuel Wallis’s Dolphin during her world circumnavigation of 1766–1768. James received three letters from Furneaux in Plymouth, repeatedly asking when the expedition would be setting sail. James’s replies were terse. The refit of Resolution continued.

  To assuage his irritation at the enforced delay, James spent the weeks detailing the provisioning of the ships, discussing aspects of the voyage with Admiralty officials and interviewing the men he wished to join him in the officers’ quarters. Favouring two who had served him well on Endeavour, he invited Charles Clerke and Dick Pickersgill to be his second and third officers, and asked Hugh Palliser’s very experienced cousin, Robert Cooper, to be his First Officer. All three agreed eagerly. But as April melted into May, there was little more that he could do but wait, and read, wait and read. He devoured translations of the journals of those who had preceded him in the Great Southern Ocean, the Dutchman Sebald de Weert and the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lozier Bouvet, along with those of the flamboyant English explorer, John (‘Mad Jack’) Byron.

  At last, on 14 May, the modified Resolution was ready for her sea trial. With a senior naval officer on board as well as the pilot, she sailed on the tide from Deptford, bound for the Downs.

 
She didn’t make it past the Nore, on the south side of the Thames estuary. In exposed waters, whenever the wind caught her topsails, the vessel heeled alarmingly and proved impossible to get back onto an even keel. Resolution had become the very opposite of her proud name. The pilot immediately ordered her back into the estuary. In his report to the Naval Board—rushed to Captain Palliser at Whitehall—the officer aboard Resolution described her as ‘an exceedingly dangerous and unsafe ship’. Without bothering to inform Banks, Palliser and the Naval Board immediately ordered that the vessel be dispatched to the yard in nearby Sheerness and the additional decks demolished.

  The startling news was conveyed to James at Assembly Row in a note from Palliser. As soon as he received it, James arranged to meet with him again at Wills’s coffee house. After discussing the latest dramatic turn of events, James concluded to his naval colleague, ‘I can understand a lubberly fellow like Banks not knowing what he was doing by adding more decks, but Sandwich—the King’s First Sea Lord—should certainly have foreseen what would happen.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Did he not recall what happened to the Vasa?’

  Palliser looked blank. ‘I don’t know what you mean. Please explain.’

  James gave him a sharp look. Did none of these people read naval histories? ‘I thought you would have read of her,’ he said. ‘Vasa was a Swedish man-o’-war, built in the 17th century. A giant she was, over two 220 feet long. A thousand oaks were felled to build her.’

  ‘But what of it?’

  ‘She set out from Stockholm on her maiden voyage in 1628. She was less than a mile on the water when a gust of wind caught her. Foolishly designed, she rolled on her larboard side, took on water through her cannon ports and went straight to the bottom, in hundreds of fathoms. Many sailors were drowned.’

  ‘Good Lord.’

  James gave him a meaningful look. ‘Vasa was top-heavy. As Resolution became after Banks’s additions.’ He clenched his right fist. ‘The fools should have known.’

  Palliser became flushed with embarrassment. ‘And I should not have allowed Banks to have his way.’

  When Banks received word of what had happened, he went directly by coach to Sheerness. In the yard there, he saw immediately that the demolition—always a much faster process than construction—was well under way. A battalion of carpenters and shipwrights again swarmed over Resolution, this time tearing apart the added decks. Jemmies were at work, claw hammers were tearing out nails, planks were being prised from their framework, the superstructure was being sawn apart. The air was filled with the violent sounds of smashing and graunching. Discarded timber was tossed overboard, revealing the ship’s original bones.

  Banks watched from the dock, rendered speechless by the scene. Then, aware that his dreams were being jettisoned along with the discarded timbers, he began to scream like a madman. Running along the dock, dark hair flying, he yelled curses up at the carpenters, the overseers, the Admiralty officials. They looked back at his raging with amusement—one yob called out, ‘Who’s an angry boy, then?’, infuriating him even more. He snatched up bits of planking and hurled them back onto the decks. He was like an inmate from Bedlam on the loose. Then, realising that the decks were beyond restoration and that his task was futile, Banks stormed aboard the ship, went below and screamed at his servants, who had been aboard since it left Deptford. He ordered them and all their belongings from the ship. They came up on deck meekly, clutching their sea bags and personal effects, and walked down the gangplanks to the wharf, where they stood about confusedly, awaiting their master’s next orders.

  Banks returned home and wrote immediately to his friend Lord Sandwich. It was a long letter, which implored him to find another ship for the expedition. Banks even had one in mind, HMS Launceston, an armed ship of the line. On 2 June he received a frosty reply from the First Sea Lord, refusing to acquiesce in this latest scheme. Sandwich had at last realised what had been obvious to James when he first saw the modifications under way—that Banks’s hubris and ambitions had come close to placing the officers and crew of Resolution in mortal jeopardy.

  Thus the mutually admiring relationship between Joseph Banks Esq., adventurer, benefactor, botanist, collector, libertine and putative supernumerary on His Majesty’s Ship Resolution, and John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty and dedicated rake, was over.

  Now there was a need, an urgent need, to recast the expedition. A replacement botanist and an assistant for him had to be appointed, as well as another artist. James Lind too had withdrawn, while Dr Johnson’s and James Boswell’s presence in the retinue had always been more wishful thinking than likelihood. The expedition also needed an astronomer and an assistant astronomer. As for the crew, they needed to be hired by the Admiralty people. Already many of those who had first signed on had changed their minds and scarpered, mainly from fear of the unknown as the date for departure drew closer. But these were readily replaced. For every seaman fearful at the prospect of a world circumnavigation, there were two who were allured by it. Especially when Otaheite was mentioned as a possible port-of-call. The muster roll was regularly revised.

  James, Palliser and Stephens met frequently at the Admiralty offices to deal with myriad considerations: letters of credit that James would require in Funchal and Cape Town, supplies of baubles to be given to the natives they would encounter, the size of the livestock pens on the ship. James also met with members of the Victualling Board to finalise the provisioning lists. He was acutely aware that time was slipping away. Before they knew it, it was June. The departure time from Plymouth for Resolution and Adventure was set down for mid-July, or if possible earlier. But James still tried to ensure that he made time to spend at 7 Assembly Row, where there were other considerations.

  In the back garden young James and little Nathaniel were busy playing around the pond their father made for them last autumn. For once ‘flaming June’ had lived up to its name: the sky was deep blue and the heat intense, as if focused on the family garden through a magnifying glass in the sky. Today young James and Nathaniel were barefoot and shirtless, their trousers rolled up to their knees and their shoulders pink from the sun. James had taken the rocking-chair from the parlour out into the garden, and Elizabeth was lying back in it, hair loose, waving the hot afternoon air away from her face with a tasselled fan. The climbing rose, espaliered against the wall, was in full bloom, its white flowers star-bright against the bricks. Elizabeth had a nap most afternoons but not today, as James had agreed not to work or attend a meeting. Instead he played with the boys and their frogs.

  ‘There he is! Look, Papa, under that stone!’

  James, kneeling beside the pond, peered at the stone. ‘Yes, I see him. Which one’s that?’

  ‘Toby,’ replied Nathaniel. ‘He’s mine.’

  The frog had grown to the size of a half crown. Crouching beside the flat stone, it was mottled green and brown. Its bulbous eyes were black, rimmed with white, its tiny feet splayed. A pulse was beating in the patch on its neck. Nathaniel reached out and gently touched the little creature’s back. It immediately tensed, then leapt into the water, landing with a splash before floating. The boys had planted water-cress in the mud in the bottom of the pond, and it was now a flourishing miniature forest. Young James was holding his frog in his cupped hands. Carefully he held it out to his father. It was emerald green. ‘What’s yours called again?’ James asked.

  ‘Zachariah,’ the boy replied. ‘He’s my special friend.’ He slipped the frog into the little pond and it breast-stroked its way over to the turf island in the centre. Little James took out the handkerchief from his trouser pocket and carefully unfolded it. Inside were a dozen flies which he and Nathaniel had caught in the scullery. He called to the frogs, ‘Toby, Zac, dinner time!’ Both boys tossed the flies into the pond, then giggled as the frogs spotted them and snapped them up. Nan the goat looked up and added a sympathetic bleating to their laughter. Their father laughed, then walked over and sat on the gr
ass beside Elizabeth.

  She put her hand on his shoulder. He had removed his jacket, stockings, boots and wig. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he leaned against the rocking-chair. ‘They love the pond,’ Elizabeth observed. ‘It keeps them amused for hours.’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked around proudly. ‘Our garden’s like a miniature of the English countryside.’

  Elizabeth nodded. ‘Perhaps Toby or Zac will lay eggs before long.’

  ‘If one or the other is actually a lady,’ James said. He placed a hand on the mound of her midriff. ‘The child moves still?’ he asked, a little nervously.

  ‘Yes. It kicked me a minute ago.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Oh, James, can your departure not wait for another few weeks?’

  He looked away. ‘The sailing is already sorely delayed, Beth, as you well know. I must be gone by mid-July.’

  She replied flatly, ‘For the birth of all four of our children, you have been absent.’ There was an unspoken adjunct to this indictment, one of which they were nevertheless both dreadfully conscious: ‘And absent also for the deaths of two of them.’

  She removed her hand from his shoulder and placed it on her stomach. ‘I do hope that this one is a girl. And I do wish that you could be here when it comes.’ Her tone was reproachful, as it always was when the subject arose.

  James looked at her impatiently. ‘What use could I be if I were here? A man can do nothing useful at the birth of a child. I am not a physician or a midwife.’

  ‘No. But your presence in the house would be a comfort to me.’

  There was a long silence. Then he said, ‘The birth will be in August, will it not?’

  ‘That is the doctor’s estimation, yes.’

  ‘Then it is impossible, I will already be at sea.’ He looked up at her unyieldingly, but noted her watering eyes. ‘After all the delays we have suffered, there can be no further postponements.’