A Brief History of Circumnavigators

by Derek Wilson

  . . . when they got him in he was both speechless and motionless, for he had swallowed such a quantity of water that he was to all appearance dead. They held him up by the heels till he came to himself and he was perfectly well next day.16

  Byron’s next quest, since he had no intention of heading for New Albion, was the trade winds which would carry him as swiftly as possible across the Pacific. For several days progress was slow thanks to squally and variable weather. By the time he did, at last, pick up the south-easterlies he was becoming anxious. When the ships left Más Afuera on 30 April the crews were in good health. By 31 May he was reporting ‘my people fall down daily in the scurvy. The heat is excessive’.17 The ships were then in about 15°S. Had they pursued a more westerly course they would have discovered Tahiti. As it was they only encountered a few atolls which make up the northern limit of the Tuamotu Archipelago, of which Tahiti is a part. There was no anchorage and Byron, naming these seductively attractive places the Isles of Disappointment, sailed on.

  The travellers fared little better with the next pair of islands in the chain, to which Byron gave the name King George’s Isles. Not only was there no anchorage; the people were also hostile, crowding to the beach to brandish their spears and chasing after the ships’ boats in their canoes. Byron was in a dilemma – he did not want to provoke an incident which would lead to deaths on both sides but he desperately needed to bring off some boatloads of fresh food. Making signs to denote friendship had little effect, so Byron eventually resorted to a show of force. A single shot from one of his cannon proved sufficient to drive the islanders from the beach and into the palm groves beyond. Then, he was able to send his boats ashore to collect coconuts and scurvy grass.

  Byron continued due west in quest of the Solomons. But he had not forgotten that there were other potential objectives to Pacific exploration – the great south continent, for example:

  For a day or two before we made the Islands of Disappointment till this day we saw vast flocks of birds which we observed towards evening always flew away to the S°ward. This is a convincing proof to me that there is land that way, and had not the winds failed me in the higher latitudes as mentioned before, I make no doubt but I should have fell in with it, and in all probability made the discovery of the S° Continent. Indeed if it had not been for the sickness in both ships, I would still have attempted it by hauling away to the S°ward immediately from those islands. I remarked before that all the islands we have seen are well peopled. Now if there are not a chain of islands reaching to the continent how can we account for these peoples being here, situated we may say in the middle of this vast Southern Ocean?18

  Had Byron turned southwards he would not have found Australia but he would have made some of those discoveries which were now reserved for later, more single-minded explorers.

  The commodore was more concerned about the safety of his men. As well as illness he now had to contend with the navigational hazards of an ocean dotted with uncharted reefs, shoals, atolls and islands which offered no safe havens and were more dangerous than the empty sea. Night-time sailing was particularly difficult. The ships could only proceed cautiously with few sails set, trying not to lose sight of each other and ever on the watch for broken water ahead. Off-duty watches were frequently brought on deck in the small hours by the warning boom of the consort’s cannon or the cry of a nervous lookout who had confused the glint of moonlight on water for waves breaking over coral. And lost sleep was especially irritating to men weakened by scurvy, as most of them now were. On 29 June Byron abandoned his search for the Solomons and steered a north-westerly course in the general direction of the Philippines and that section of the Pacific which was, by now, well charted.

  For a month the ships crawled slowly over the ocean, the heat and humidity making it difficult for the men to work and lacklustre breezes scarcely stirring the sails. On 21 July Byron was prompted to make the exaggerated observation in his journal: ‘certainly this is the longest, the hottest and most dangerous run that was ever made by ships before’.19 By the time the expedition reached Tinian, in the Marianas, on 30 July there was scarcely a member of it who was not suffering from scurvy or enteric disorders.

  Tinian had been the salvation of Anson’s voyage. He had spent seven weeks there restoring his men and repairing his ship. His emaciated, debilitated crew gorged themselves on plentiful food and water which seemed to them the most delicious victuals they had ever tasted. Perhaps conditions had changed in twenty-three years. Perhaps Byron’s expectations were too high. Perhaps, being in a less desperate situation than his predecessor, he was more disposed to be critical. Whatever the reason, Foul-Weather Jack did not like Tinian at all. The water was brackish and full of worms. The centre of the island was overgrown with brush which tore shirts and trousers to pieces. Cattle were not plentiful as the Centurion’s journal had claimed and were to be found only at some distance from the anchorage. Because of the heat, meat was stinking before it could be got back to the camp. Fowls were plentiful ‘but the best of them are very bad tasted’. Some of the men were badly poisoned by eating the local fish. Flies and mosquitoes swarmed everywhere and two men died of fevers inflicted by insect bites. Scorpions and ants were scarcely less of a menace. The anchorage was so exposed that during one rough seven-day spell Dolphin and Tamar had to stand out to sea to prevent being driven onto the shore. As for the climate:

  I take this to be one of the most unhealthy places in the world, at least at this season. The airs are extremely violent and the sun so scorching that it is difficult breathing . . . I have been upon the coast of Guinea [the West African coast, known with good reason as ‘the white man’s graveyard’] and West Indies and even the island of St Thomas’s under the line [Sao Tomé, an island on the equator off the coast of Gabon]. I don’t remember to have felt it anything near as hot as it is here.20

  Yet, for all these complaints, the nine-week stay on Tinian proved highly beneficial. The sick, lodged ashore under canvas, revived quickly on a diet of fresh meat, coconuts, limes, sour oranges, guavas, bread fruit and paw-paw; And, before leaving, Byron was able to lay aboard a store of coconuts and fruit and also some wild boars some of the men had snared.

  Like so many others who had reached this point half a world away from home, Byron and his men could only think now of completing the voyage. The work which the commodore had been set or had set himself was behind him. He had done all he could at the Falklands. He had not found his islands of gold. He had crossed the Pacific with the loss of only two men. He had recorded all there was to record for the benefit of mariners who would follow after. It was enough. He was not an explorer at heart. The empty spaces on his charts did not lure him as they would lure Carteret and Cook. The Admiralty might send men to the Pacific but it could not make them explore. From the Marianas Byron made a north-westerly course around the Philippines and thence by way of the coast of Sumatra to Batavia. Here he received what must have seemed like a welcome back to civilisation; a thirteen gun salute from an East-Indiaman anchored in the roads.

  Batavia was the Dutch mercantile capital in the Orient, a place where Europeans of all nationalities mingled with Malays and Chinese. It had all the virtues of a well-laid-out modern city and all the vices of a cosmopolitan seaport. Broad tree-lined avenues shaded elegant houses. Company merchants, officials and even tradesmen lived in luxury. Byron noted that if a tailor paid a professional call he would do so in his own carriage, accompanied by two servants. No European, he observed, would so demean himself as to be seen walking. Batavia boasted a magnificent hotel which had ‘more the appearance of a palace than a tavern’. It was very expensive and was owned by a Frenchman who, it seems, was operating a lucrative racket with the Dutch governor general. The latter levied a fine of five hundred dollars on any Batavian resident who received a guest in his own home. Visitors, therefore, had no option but to pay monsieur le patron’s high prices which doubtless included the governor general’s commission. Batavia was a place
of bustling markets, brothels, cheap arrack – and death. Because of the swampland on which it was built it teemed with mosquitoes and other disease-bearing insects. Byron noted that Europeans died there ‘like rotten sheep’. He lost four of his own men from fevers contracted in this delusory paradise. He, therefore, kept his stay as short as possible and on 10 December he weighed anchor.

  Allegory of Magellan sighting Tierra del Fuego and the Straits named after him. Engraving by Jean–Théodore de Bry, c.1590.

  Sir Francis Drake, 1591. Painted by a follower of Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger.

  The Golden Hind engaged with Cacafuego. Engraving of 1603.

  Thomas Cavendish, engraving by Jodocus Hondius from Franciscus Dracus redivivus, Amsterdam, 1596.

  One of the drawings made by Peter Munday, an Englishman who visited China in 1637.

  Byron landing on the coast of Patagonia, 1764. From Account of Voyages. . ., 1773 by John Hawkesworth.

  Tahitians attacking Wallis in the Dolphin.

  John Harrison’s first chronometer, 1735.

  John Harrison’s fourth pocket chronometer, 1759. Cook took one of these on his second voyage and called it ‘his never-failing guide’.

  Captain James Cook, 1776. Painted by Nathaniel Dance.

  Louis XVI at Versailles commissioning La Pérouse’s expedition. Painted in 1817 by Nicolas–André Monsiau.

  A Maori war canoe attacking Cook. Watercolour by Sydney Parkinson, 1769.

  James Forbes’s Marco Polo. Painted by T. Dove.

  The version of Slocum’s conversation with President Kruger published in the Cape Town Owl, 5 March 1898.

  If the crews felt cheated out of their indulgence in the flesh pots, Byron made it up to them two months later when, after an uneventful crossing of the Indian Ocean, Dolphin and Tamar reached Cape Town. The men enjoyed three weeks’ shore leave and took every opportunity to get drunk on the local wine. After this the expedition enjoyed a trouble-free run for home waters, though the Tamar was deflected to Antigua for her rudder to be rehung. The Dolphin reached home on 9 May 1766, and Byron hurried to the Admiralty to make his report.

  Their lordships declared themselves well pleased with a voyage which had demonstrated British maritime supremacy and paved the way for the occupation of the Falklands and further Pacific exploration. Moreover, the Dolphin had lost only six out of her complement of 153 officers, sailors and marines – and not one of those six had died of scurvy. The Pacific ghost had been laid.

  Byron was immediately involved in urgent Admiralty plans for a follow-up expedition. Anglo-French colonial rivalry had grown to a new intensity and there could be no backing off. When the Florida storeship had returned in June 1765 with Byron’s report on the Falklands, Captain John McBride had been despatched to the islands to land a party of marines at Port Egmont and thus establish a British colony. McBride had reached the Falklands in January 1766. During the course of his survey of the islands in the frigate Jason he had encountered the French inhabitants, informed them that they had no right to be in his Britannic majesty’s territory without permission, and offered to convey them to a French port of their choosing. Naturally, they declined to move and McBride, who had no authority to use force, had to content himself with dark threats. By this time the Spanish government had become alarmed. They saw the security of their fragile American empire severely threatened by the activities of more powerful maritime nations. They, accordingly, claimed the Malvinas as their own sovereign territory. Their French allies willingly conceded the point, since this seemed the best way of keeping the strategic Falklands base ‘in the family’. Bougainville was, therefore, instructed to hand over his settlement to a representative of Spain. In December 1766 he set out on this mission.

  By the time Byron returned, the diplomatic situation had become very delicate. French and Spanish representatives were protesting about British naval activities and the Cabinet was divided. The ‘doves’ were unwilling to provoke open war over a handful of distant, bleak islands and urged the impossibility of defending Port Egmont against an enemy who could easily send a large contingent of ships and men from South America. The ‘hawks’ insisted that, at all costs, British rights to the Falklands and free navigation in the southern hemisphere must be defended.*

  The Earl of Egmont was, of course, one of the ‘hawks’. In Cabinet he vigorously defended the actions of his captains and at the same time he hurriedly and secretly prepared a new expedition to reinforce the British settlement and carry out further Pacific exploration. The summer months passed in frenzied activity. Dock workers at Deptford and Chatham hastily prepared vessels for a long sea voyage. Angry letters passed between Paris, Madrid and London. No one, not even Egmont’s government colleagues, knew his plans in any detail. The Cabinet wavered. The expedition was on; then it was off; then on again. The little fleet was manned, provisioned and moved to Plymouth, where it awaited instructions. On 13 August Egmont, frustrated by opposition to his plans, resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty. But, before his resignation could take effect, he sent instructions to Plymouth for his ships to set sail immediately. On 21 August, the Dolphin, accompanied now by the Swallow sloop and the storeship Prince Frederick weighed anchor. They were well past the Scillies before anyone who might want to recall them knew that they had put to sea.

  The expedition which now set out turned into two expeditions and is of interest because it shows how two very different captains handled the problems of circumnavigation. Egmont had intended to refit the Dolphin and the Tamar for a second voyage but, because the Tamar was away in the West Indies undergoing repairs, his subordinates had to cast around for another vessel. They chose a twenty-year-old, sixth-rate, fourteen-gun sloop, the Swallow, which had never been out of home waters. She was a sluggish craft, dependable in heavy seas but not a fast mover under full sail. Nor was her limited below-deck space adequate for the amount of supplies necessary for a long voyage. She proved to be a nuisance to the expedition’s leader, Samuel Wallis, but to her commander, Philip Carteret, she was like a millstone, hindering his chances of a successful voyage and also his career prospects.

  Wallis was a thirty-eight-year-old, conventional, competent officer whose entire life from the age of twenty had been devoted to the Navy. He served in peace and war and commanded his first ship at the age of twenty-eight. He seems to have been quite popular with his men and, if he was unimaginative, he was conscientious. He went by the book, kept his own counsel, did not readily confide in his officers and was jealous of his authority. In all his years of service he had never sailed farther than the Atlantic. Carteret was thirty-three and the Swallow was his first command. Promotion had come more slowly, perhaps because he had not been present in a major theatre of war. Yet he was a good officer. At least, that was the opinion of Captain the Hon. John Byron. Carteret had served several times under Foul-Weather Jack and Byron had specifically asked for him to be appointed to his 1764 expedition. He returned from that voyage as first lieutenant in the Dolphin. By temperament Carteret was adventurous, impatient, intolerant and quick to take offence. The two captains were thus as different from each other as the ships they commanded. Carteret, doubtless, expected that his superior would take him into his confidence and rely heavily on his experience as a circumnavigator. Wallis seems to have been determined to keep his junior in his place. There were several officers and men who had sailed on the Byron voyage and their new commander probably felt that he had to stamp his authority on the new expedition. He may even have regarded Carteret as something of a threat.

  Whatever the reasons for their estrangement, the two men did not get on. At the outset Wallis refused to reveal his secret instructions to the captain of the Swallow. Carteret, like everyone else on board the three ships, assumed that they were going to provision and equip the Port Egmont settlement, where he was to relieve McBride and the Jason. Only after they had been at sea for three weeks and it was necessary to make plans for a rendezvous in the event of the convoy being s
plit up, was Carteret made privy to Wallis’s real intentions. These were to make for Magellan’s Straits where the Prince Frederick would be despatched to the Falklands and the other two ships would sail westwards to continue the work of Pacific exploration. Carteret was stunned when he realised that he was expected to sail his inadequate craft round the world. Wallis was scarcely less annoyed when, day after day, the progress of his fleet was held up by the ill-named Swallow.

  But the frustrations of the Atlantic crossing were as nothing compared with what befell the expedition in the straits. They reached Cape Virgin Mary on 16 December and Wallis ordered Carteret to go ahead and act as pilot. So, into the confusion of narrows, shoals, contrary currents and changeable winds the young captain steered his lumbering sloop. It was a ridiculous situation. Given a more manoeuvrable craft Carteret could have accomplished what was demanded of him, but the Swallow simply could not cope. Tacking in limited space was almost beyond her. When the wind was ahead she could only turn through it by being rowed and towed by two of her boats. It took ten days for the Swallow to lead her companions to safe anchorage at Port Famine, 150 miles within the Straits.

  After three weeks during which the Dolphin and Swallow took on wood and water and stocked up with victuals from the Prince Frederick, the storeship was sent off to Port Egmont. Carteret employed part of the time contriving makeshift modifications to improve his ship’s performance. He widened the rudder in the hope of making her more responsive to the helm. But as soon as they left harbour on 18 January and sailed out into the teeth of the westerlies Carteret discovered that his ship was just as unmanageable as before. It was obvious that if Wallis persisted in using Swallow as his guide through the twisting, rock-strewn waterway he ran the risk of reaching the Pacific when the best of the summer weather had passed. There had to be a change of plan. Over the next few days, Carteret assailed his commander with written suggestions. Wallis rejected them, one after another. The letters between the two men just managed to remain within the bounds of civility: