by Derek Wilson
One must have been a sailor, and reduced to the extremities which we had felt for several months together, in order to form an idea of the sensation which the sight of greens and of a good supper produced in people in that condition. This supper was for me one of the most delicious moments of my life . . .10
But there could be no dallying in this delectable haven. There was little more than a month to the start of the north-east monsoon. In that month Bougainville had to reach Batavia and stay there long enough to obtain supplies and repairs before taking once more to the open sea. Thus, after only eight days, the Boudeuse and the Étoile weighed anchor from Kajeli. Bougainville naturally did not indicate in his journal whether he had obtained during his brief stay what he had come to the Moluccas for. Perhaps he did not; Pierre Véron certainly had to return to the Spice Islands the following year for the vital plants upon which the prosperity of Île de France was destined to be founded.
On 28 September, after a good spell of sailing weather, the expedition reached Batavia. Like other commanders before him, Bougainville was anxious to expose his men as little as possible to the fever-haunted avenues and palaces of the city. Yet it took two and a half weeks to see his ships provisioned and put in readiness for the homeward stage of the voyage. By that time malaria and dysentery were rife among his crews and four men eventually died.
The Boudeuse and the Étoile left Batavia on 16 October 1768 and after a good crossing reached Port Louis on the north-west coast of Île de France. Bougainville and his men must have been delighted to be back among their own countrymen but they found the summer heat and humidity of the little colony oppressive. They also found the inhabitants bitterly divided by quarrels between the new governor, Jean Dumas, and representatives of the East India Company (Dumas was, in fact, recalled during the Boudeuse’s stay). Bougainville shared with the leaders of the community whatever information he had gleaned in the Moluccas and it was agreed that Véron should remain to help re-establish relations with the ruler of Kajeli. As soon as the new sailing season arrived he set out with the intendant of Île de France, Pierre Poivre, on an expedition to the Spice Islands which brought back specimens of clove and nutmeg trees for replanting.
The only remaining feature of interest about Bougainville’s voyage was the incident we have already mentioned when the French ship overtook Carteret’s near the island of Ascension. His offer of help to the British captain was undoubtedly genuine; he noted in his journal that the Swallow ‘went very ill’. But it was doubtless with a distinct twinge of pride that he watched the British ship which had set out months before his own fall far behind and disappear over the southern horizon.
The French ships sailed on and reached St Malo in March 1769. Bougainville closed his account of the voyage with what he obviously considered to be its most important achievement: ‘I entered it on the 16th in the afternoon, having lost only seven men, during two years and four months, which were expired since we had left Nantes.’11 Of the seven, only two had died of scurvy. The longest period spent at sea without anti-scorbutics had been five months and Bougainville noted that, had their arrival in the Moluccas been delayed by a few more days, he would certainly have lost several more men. What this voyage demonstrated was the maximum length of time sailors could survive without a proper diet.
Louis de Bougainville’s circuit of the globe was the first French circumnavigation, but it has another – and perhaps more intriguing – claim to fame: it was the first circumnavigation by a woman. When the Étoile’s crew was embarking at Rochefort, one of her officers, M. de Commercon, was approached on the quayside by a young man, named Bare, who asked to be taken on as a servant. After a few weeks at sea certain suspicion was being entertained about young Bare. ‘His shape, voice, beardless chin, and scrupulous attention of not changing his linen or making the natural discharges in the presence of anyone, other signs . . . kept up this suspicion.’12 How a company of raucous sailors – and French sailors at that – can have kept themselves from the simple and pleasurable task of verifying such a rumour, Bougainville does not tell us. Bare was, apparently, a strong and attentive servant. Commercon was the expedition’s botanist and Bare always accompanied him ashore, frequently carrying his heavy equipment over long distances. It was when Commercon landed at Tahiti to explore the local flora that all was discovered. The Polynesian men were, apparently, more observant than their French counterparts.
Bare had hardly set his feet on shore with the herbal under his arm, when the men of Tahiti surrounded him, cried out ‘It is a woman!’, and wanted to give her the honours customary in the isle. The Chevalier de Bournand, who was upon guard on shore, was obliged to come to her assistance, and escort her to the boat.13
The story she told, amidst many tears, to the commander was that she was a country girl orphaned at a young age, who, finding herself without money or friends, had refused to turn to the only occupation open to young women in such a situation. Instead she had donned masculine attire and found employment as valet to a Swiss gentleman. When she heard that the Étoile was bound for a voyage round the world she had been seized by a desire for the kind of adventure denied to all members of her sex. That was why she had approached M. de Commercon.
One would love to know more about Mlle Bare. Bougainville assures us that she completed the voyage with her honour intact, which says as much for the discipline of his men as it does for her resolution. Strange that she did not become a celebrity on her return, the subject of romanticised biography or ribald broadsheet. Certainly, in terms of circumnavigation hers was a singular feat and one which would not be repeated for many years.
By the time Bougainville reached home the most famous of all Pacific explorers was already in the South Sea on a course for Tahiti. The three voyages of James Cook belong more properly to the history of discovery than to the history of circumnavigation. Cook solved, almost singlehanded, most of the remaining mysteries of the world’s largest expanse of water; he added new islands and landmasses to the charts; he familiarised himself with the wind and current patterns of previously untravelled oceans; and he kept his ships free of scurvy and fever throughout months at sea. Yet, because he made mariners more familiar with the world’s oceans and opened up new routes, his travels profoundly affected the story of circumnavigation. This is particularly true of his second voyage which we will follow in some detail. But first we shall have to consider briefly the expedition of 1768–1771 which overlapped with those of Bougainville and Carteret.
James Cook was a thirty-nine-year-old ship’s master who had served on merchant and naval ships for twenty years and had latterly been employed as a marine surveyor of the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland. He had a keen mind, little encumbered by formal education. This made him both eager to learn from experience and able to assimilate, evaluate and accurately record information. Add to this the facts that he was methodical in his habits and quietly authoritarian in the exercise of command and you have a character ideally equipped to lead men into – and through – the unknown.
The main objective of the voyage which began on 25 August 1768 was the continuation of the work begun by Byron and Wallis, particularly seeking out the elusive Terra Australis which was still believed to lie to the south of the routes taken by earlier ships:
Whereas there is reason to imagine that a continent or land of great extent may be found to the southward of the tract lately made by captain Wallis in his majesty’s ship the Dolphin (of which you will herewith receive a copy) or of the tract of any former navigators . . . You are to proceed southward in order to make discovery of the continent above mentioned until you arrive in the latitude of 400, unless you sooner fall in with it. But, not having discovered it or any evident signs of it in that run, you are to proceed in search of it to the westward between the latitude before mentioned and the latitude of 350 until you discover it, or fall in with the eastern side of the land discovered by Tasman and now called New Zealand.14
So ran Cook’s secret
instructions. But the openly acknowledged purpose of the voyage was a purely scientific one. On 3 June 1769 the planet Venus was scheduled to pass between the earth and the sun, a phenomenon which would not recur for another 105 years. Mathematicians and astronomers were excited by this event because they believed it would enable them to calculate the distance between the two planets and between Venus and the sun, thus enabling the distance between the earth and her parent star to be determined for the first time ever. To do the job properly it was important to observe the transit of Venus from several locations. As part of the British contribution to this international scientific project, the Royal Society, supported by George III, who personally donated £4,000, proposed to send observers to the recently discovered island of Tahiti. Thus, Cook found himself making a journey to the South Sea accompanied by a scientific team led by the wealthy patron and amateur botanist, Joseph Banks.
And this time a circumnavigator was provided with a vessel specifically chosen for the purpose. The lessons of the Wallis-Carteret voyage seem to have been learned and the Admiralty, having considered and rejected several small naval ships currently available, decided to buy a Whitby-built collier, the Earl of Pembroke, for the task. She was small (106 feet overall), sturdy, young (laid down in 1764) and had adequate storage space for the provisions needed on a long voyage. Equipping her with new masts, six guns and an outer sheathing to her hull (wood and flat-headed iron nails, not copper) transformed this merchant vessel into his majesty’s barque Endeavour. The Admiralty had learned another lesson from previous expeditions. This was that it was very difficult to keep a group of ships, or even two ships, together on long passages. The risks of slower vessels being separated from their flagship, lost at sea or simply hampering the work of the commander far outweighed any advantages which might be gained by mutual support and strength of numbers. So, on 25 August 1768, Endeavour sailed alone.
She took the conventional route via Madeira and the Cape Verde Islands to Brazil. She reached Tierra del Fuego at the height of the southern summer and Cook then took her round the Horn. His instructions ordered him to do so. The Admiralty had concluded from the experiences of Anson and Wallis that, at the right time of year, it was better to risk the storms off the Cape than the possible delays of the Straits. And Cook was lucky. Even a giant sleeps sometimes and, though Cook had to tack far to the south against the prevailing westerlies, he met none of the savage gales that other mariners had experienced. There were even days of flat calm when Joseph Banks could be rowed away in a boat to shoot birds for his collection and the table. Cook was able to approach within a few miles of Cape Horn itself and describe it accurately while Charles Green, the astronomer, correctly computed its longitude. By 13 February, when his ship was well into the Pacific, Cook could allow an element of self-congratulation to creep into his journal:
... we are now advanced about 120° the westward of the Strait of Magellan and 3½° to the northward of it, having been 33 days in doubling Cape Horn or the land of Tierra del Fuego, and arriving into the degree of latitude and longitude we are now in without ever being brought once under our close reefed topsails since we left Strait la Maire, a circumstance that perhaps never happened before to any ship in those seas so much dreaded for hard gales of wind, insomuch that the doubling of Cape Horn is thought by some to be a mighty thing and others to this day prefer the Straits of Magellan.15
It would be wrong to say that Cook had dispelled that dread. Just off the Falklands there lies the ‘tall ships’ graveyard’, an area of ocean floor littered with the remains of vessels so battered by the winds and waves of the Horn that they had to be scuttled. Hundreds of others were not so fortunate as to be able to lay their bones where they wished. No mariner looks forward to rounding the Horn, yet many, like Cook, have found the experience an anticlimax. What Cook did establish was that the dangers could be minimised. He concluded, and on his next voyage proved, that the best way to double the Horn was from west to east, in order to take advantage of the prevailing winds. This, the southern summer, and that element of luck every deep-sea man needs could rob the notorious passage of much of its terror.
Exactly two calendar months later, after a trouble-free run before the trades, Endeavour anchored at Tahiti. Three months were spent in this South Sea ‘paradise’ and all the visitors enjoyed their stay. The scientists did their work. Cook observed and recorded the geography and customs of the island. And his men availed themselves of all the pleasures extended to them by the lithe, smiling natives – pleasures which, they were delighted to discover, had not been exaggerated by Wallis’s mariners. Cook had the usual problem of theft to contend with. Tools, weapons, clothing and scientific instruments disappeared with alarming frequency. Even inside the well-guarded stockade things were not safe. The Polynesians could insinuate themselves silently through the smallest spaces and make off with their spoils. The scientist in Cook was fascinated by this very strange culture but when it came to practical matters, such as stealing, the Christian in him could not make allowance for a different set of moral values. His reprisals and threats sometimes puzzled and angered his hosts. An even more serious incident occurred as Endeavour was being made ready to depart. Two of his men decided not to leave this tropical heaven. They disappeared into the hills accompanied by their Tahitian lovers and with the connivance of the girls’ families and friends. If Cook had tolerated this minor desertion he could well have found himself with a serious mutiny on his hands. He had to take drastic action, even at the risk of alienating the islanders. So, he arrested some of their leading men and held them until the fugitives were delivered up. The captain only resorted to force reluctantly but his determination, when necessary, to impose his will on a people whose friendship and cooperation were important indicates the root cause of those misunderstandings which bedevilled many South Sea expeditions and eventually cost Cook his life.
Finally leaving the Society Islands behind on 9 August, the Endeavour set course due south into the unvisited latitudes of the Pacific. After three weeks there was still no evidence of land and Cook decided that he could not carry out a complete examination of this stretch of ocean:
I did intend to have stood to the southward if the winds had been moderate, so long as they continued westerly, notwithstanding we had no prospect of meeting with land, rather than stand back to the northward on the same track as we came; but as the weather was so very tempestuous I laid aside this design, thought it more advisable to stand to the northward into better weather, least we should receive such damages in our sails and rigging as might hinder the further prosecutions of the voyage.16
But Cook was still determined to pursue his westerly course farther south than any previous captain and to seek land where European expeditions had sought it before. He even offered a gallon of rum to the first man to sight it. The prize fell to Nick Young, a ship’s boy, who, at 2 p.m. on 6 October, shouted excitedly from the masthead and pointed to the horizon dead ahead. The next day Endeavour stood into a broad bay that was obviously part of a considerable land mass. Officers and scientists gathered in eager groups along the ship’s rail pointing out to each other mountains, forests and signs of habitation. Surely, here was the long-sought continent, and they were the first to make the greatest discovery since Columbus. The captain was more circumspect. The position they had now reached was very close to that in which Abel Tasman had located a stretch of coast which he had named New Zealand. But the Dutchman had not known whether the mark newly-added to his chart represented an island or the tip of something stretching far to the South. It was Cook who, during the next six months, sailed right round the two islands, thoroughly surveyed the coastline and established that New Zealand was a landmass comparable in size to Great Britain and occupying a place in the southern hemisphere almost identical to that occupied by his homeland in the northern. More importantly it afforded him timber, water, fish, meat and vegetables – especially the invaluable wild celery and scurvy grass.
But the
story of the first contact of Europeans with Maoris was not an altogether happy one. The islanders, a warlike, cannibalistic people, were naturally frightened at the strange sight of the Endeavour, especially when men put off from her in ‘canoes’ which they rowed backwards. Had these newcomers got eyes in the back of their heads? In most cases the Maoris reacted with a show of hostility. Inevitably, although Cook ordered his men to be reticent in the use of force, the end result was that the white men, just as nervous as the indigenes, opened fire, killing and wounding several of the natives. However, in many cases the travellers were able to break through the barrier of initial fear and suspicion. They established friendly relations with some communities, bought food from them and bartered freely for such curiosities as weapons, tools and the preserved heads of the villagers’ consumed enemies.
Having now found a point of reference on the old charts, Cook was well placed to tidy up some more loose ends. He knew that if he steered due west he should fall in with what Tasman had named Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) and that, by coasting it northwards, he should be able to determine its size. If he then continued in the same general direction he could discover what lay between it and New Guinea. This course should provide further information about New Holland (Australia) and, particularly, whether or not it and New Guinea were part of the same landmass. This route would also have the advantage of probable frequent landfalls and, therefore, fresh food. Cook probably expected to locate more islands in the area represented on his chart by an empty space. He certainly did not realise that the stage was set for the momentous discovery of the entire eastern coastline of the Australian continent.
Foul weather carried the Endeavour northward of Cook’s intended course and as he approached, and then passed, the chart location of Van Diemen’s land (it was marked 3° too far to the eastward), the captain grew anxious. Sea birds and driftwood indicated a near shoreline and the storm was driving him sharply towards it. Yet it was quite invisible through the all-enveloping grey of rain, mist and cloud. The nights were particularly hazardous. Endeavour rolled forward under reefed sails while the leadsmen took constant soundings. On the night of 18/19 April 1770, Cook took in all sail and hove to. It was as well he did so; at dawn the south-east coast of Australia was clearly visible.
