New Zealand had been discovered by the Dutch navigator Abel Janszoon Tasman in 1643. This intrepid explorer had circumnavigated Australia, had discovered a bushy prominence to the south that he named Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) and had touched on the coast of New Zealand. He had not, however, mapped either Van Diemen’s Land or New Zealand in their entirety, and the latter might well have been a promontory of the fabled southern continent. Sailing east on a latitude of 38°, Cook hit New Zealand’s North Island on 7 October. His relief was so great that he gave the surgeon’s boy, Nicholas Young, a gallon of rum for being the first to spy land.
New Zealand was nothing like Tahiti. The landscape was rolling and green, and reminded Cook of the South Downs in England. Whenever he tried to land the Maoris were menacing, and even when given a display of the Endeavour’s might they seemed not to care. Eventually, Cook decided to demonstrate his good intentions by force: he would kidnap the first group of Maoris he met and take them aboard the Endeavour, whereupon, having fed them and given them gifts, he would release them again. This extraordinarily ill-conceived plan worked no better than might have been expected. On 10 October Cook sent three boats to surround a canoeful of Maori fishermen. Predictably, the canoe’s seven occupants objected: they defended themselves with spears and sticks; when the spears ran out they used paddles; when the paddles were gone they threw stones; and finally, in desperation, they attacked their would-be kidnappers with fish. Their opposition was so fierce that Cook’s men fired into the canoe, killing four of them instantly. The other three tried to swim to safety, but were captured and dragged on board. When they learned they were not going to be killed the captives cheered up slightly and, after consuming a gargantuan meal, allowed themselves to be sent to bed. Their acceptance of the ship’s hospitality did nothing to ease the officers’ embarrassment and remorse: to have killed four people in order to show how friendly the white men were was more than cack-handed; it was criminally incompetent. ‘Thus ended the most disagreeable day my life has yet seen that such may never return to embitter future reflections,’ Banks wrote in shame. To compound the disgrace, when Cook tried the following morning to return his three ‘guests’ he met such an angry reception that they refused to leave the ship and had to be sneaked ashore in the afternoon. However great and various his skills, the captain of the Endeavour could not count diplomacy among them.
When word spread that the captives had been treated well, and that the interlopers were not cannibals (which many of the Maoris were, according to Cook), a small degree of trust was established. As they sailed down the coast, Maoris came alongside in their canoes to trade for Tahitian cloth and, very occasionally, to stay the night. But, like the Tahitians, they were inveterate thieves and Cook’s men were forced repeatedly to take punitive action. When one young midshipman was outwitted by a nimble-fingered native he cast a heavy-duty line and, hooking his quarry in the backside, proceeded to play him like a fish until the hook broke, leaving its barb in his flesh. More often, however, they just shot them – usually with bird pellets, but often with musket balls; on one occasion they fired a cannon into their midst. Even Banks, who was more tender-hearted than Cook, was driven to remark: ‘this I am well convinced of, that till these warlike people have severely felt our superiority in the art of war they will never behave to us in a freindly manner’.
In this unsatisfactory fashion they all but circumnavigated North Island and on 7 February 1770 began their investigation of a landmass they saw to its south. Cook suspected it was yet another island – it was, indeed, South Island – and most people agreed with him. Banks, however, still hoped it might be a continent. In this he was supported by just ‘one poor midshipman’. The inhabitants of South Island were no friendlier than those to the north and, apparently, also given to cannibalism. On the odd occasion when the two sides came together to trade, partially gnawed human bones were in strong demand as mementos. As Banks wrote, ‘[they] are now become a kind of article of trade among our people who constantly ask for and purchase them for whatever trifles they have’. He himself bought four heads, complete with flesh and hair but without brains – ‘maybe they are a delicacy here,’ he pondered.
On 10 February the Endeavour rounded the bottom of South Island – ‘to the total demolition of our aerial fabrick calld continent’, Banks wrote sadly – and by the end of March the entire coast of New Zealand had been charted. The season was now too windy for a comfortable return via Cape Horn, so Cook took his ship west for a partial exploration of New Holland, after which he intended to sail to the Dutch East Indies and then, via the Cape of Good Hope, to Britain. It took them a few weeks to reach Van Diemen’s Land – which Cook did not investigate properly, and still thought was part of the mainland – whereupon they sailed up the east coast of New Holland. When Tasman made his epic voyage in the 17th century he touched Australia at many places but did not visit its east side, sailing instead to New Zealand before returning to the continent’s north-east corner. Cook had some 2,000 miles of uncharted coastline before him. He approached it with determination and, after his experience with the Maoris, some caution.
On first inspection the Aborigines were ‘exceedingly black’, and in voice ‘coarse and strong’, but essentially harmless – though Cook could tell from the smoke of their fires that they were following him as he sailed up the coast. Having established that he was not going to spend his journey fighting the natives, Cook’s next concern was to find a harbour where he could attend to his ship and take on food, water and fuel. After several disappointments he discovered, on 28 April 1770, a wide bay, fringed by promontories and inlets. Its shores were both geographically varied and rich in wildlife. Banks discovered so many new plants and animals, and did so with such enthusiasm, that what the Endeavour’s log called Sting Ray Harbour entered the charts as Botany Bay. So impressed was he by the spot that many years later, when asked where Britain should send its population of convicts, Botany Bay came immediately to mind. The ensuing settlement, at Cook’s old anchorage, Port Jackson, grew into the modern city of Sydney.
North of Botany Bay, where Cook spent just over a week, the journey became more difficult. The ships were bedevilled by shoals and outcrops of coral, which became more numerous the further they went. They had reached the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest animal structure, which stretched for 1,250 miles along the Australian coast. Working through an ‘insane labyrinth’ of islets, Cook had his men sound for depth night and day. Their efforts failed on the late evening of 10 June when, with a shudder, the Endeavour grounded on a lump of coral. ‘Scarce were we in our beds,’ wrote Banks, ‘when we were called up with the alarming news of the ship being fast upon a rock, which she in a few moments convinced us by beating very violently against the rock. Our situation now became greatly alarming.’ It was high tide – the worst possible level at which to hit a rock – and the Endeavour was shipping water fast. Cook used every means at his disposal to drag his ship off, but it was stuck fast. He could save it only by lightening it, and this he proceeded to do. Between 4.00 and 6.00 a.m. the crew flung overboard everything that was inessential to their purpose. Old food went out, as did iron ballast, stone ballast, barrels, spare barrels and the makings of new barrels. When this did not work they jettisoned six carriage guns and 50 tons of drinking water. Their efforts righted the ship but did not free it. By midday on the 11th the Endeavour’s four pumps could not clear the incoming water. Cook, who was not by nature a pessimist, wrote: ‘This was an alarming and I may say terrible circumstance, and threatened immediate destruction to us as soon as we were afloat.’ Riskily, he took his men off the pumps and ordered them to set anchors in the nearest lump of coral to stern. Then he swiftly wound his vessel free.
Against Cook’s prognostications, the Endeavour was still afloat – but only just. Even with every man on the pumps the water in the hold was 3 feet 9 inches deep and rising. In desperation, Cook resorted to fothering. This involved lowering
a sail stuffed with oakum and other fillers in front of the bow, then tightening it over the gaps. Cook had never used this technique before, but it worked. Within hours the water level had dropped and they were on their way again, the ship bandaged as if it had a sore tooth. Their ordeal was far from over: during the next two months they battled in and out of the reef, landed for food, water and repairs, and made a terrifying passage through a narrow channel separating the inner lagoon from the ocean. By the time they emerged in the last week of August, and were sailing west through Endeavour Strait, they were exhausted. But they were jubilant too. ‘I may land no more upon this eastern coast of New Holland, and on the western side I can make no new discovery the honour of which belongs to the Dutch navigators,’ Cook wrote in his journal. ‘But the eastern coast from the latitude of 38° south to this place I am confident was never seen or visited by any European before us.’ Landing at the continent’s northernmost promontory, to which he gave the name Cape York, he raised the flag and claimed the entire territory for Britain under the name New South Wales. His party fired three volleys into the air, to which the ship replied in kind, then everyone gave three cheers, rowed back to the Endeavour and sailed for home.
Cook reached Batavia in the Dutch East Indies on 7 October 1770, and sent a jubilant message to London: he had done all that was required of him and more; moreover, he had not lost a single man to sickness in the process. This last boast was premature. True, he had done well to keep his men free of scurvy, but he was now in disease-ridden Batavia, one of the world’s most notorious death-traps, where dysentery and malaria claimed the lives of some 50,000 people a year. It was reckoned a stroke of great fortune if a visiting captain left with more than half his crew alive. Could he have helped it, Cook would not have stayed there. But his ship was in wretched condition: apart from the coral damage, its hull had been eaten by worms and was in places just an eighth of an inch thick. The Dutch shipwrights did a professional job, for which Cook was grateful. While they worked, however, his men began to die. The surgeon Monkhouse was the first to go, on 5 November, followed by Tiata, Tupia and five others. Everyone fell ill, and when the Endeavour sailed on 26 December 40 men were too sick to move and only 20 were strong enough to man the ship. Escape from Batavia provided no relief. The pestilence raged throughout the ship, killing Green, Parkinson, Spöring and many more. By the time Cook reached Cape Town he had lost a total of 33 men, and another 29 needed urgent medical attention. One of the sick men died before he could be brought ashore, and another five expired in hospital. Having travelled so far, and dared so much, it was a horrible irony that the bulk of the Endeavour’s casualties should come from their first contact with ‘civilization’.
The ship was beginning to show the strain of its voyage, and the journey north did nothing to improve its condition. In the English Channel its rigging, sails and masts were so bad that something was breaking every day. But it brought them home safely, and in the early hours of Sunday 14 July 1771, Banks, Cook and Solander found themselves in central London. Here, in the insalubrious byways of Piccadilly, they shook hands and went their separate ways, Cook to the Admiralty, Banks and Solander to Banks’s London house. After almost three years aboard the Endeavour their partnership had come to a close.
Banks and Cook were both lionized by the establishment, but in different ways. The Admiralty congratulated Cook in a quiet but appreciative manner for having undertaken such a tremendous voyage, and promoted him to captain. The scientific community, meanwhile, were overwhelmed by the mass of information Banks had brought back and said he was ‘the glory not only of England but the whole world’. In response, Banks did nothing to dispel the impression that he alone was responsible for the expedition’s success. Soon it was accepted that he had been in charge of the whole undertaking. Considering Cook’s achievement, the modesty with which he received his small reward, and his impoverished circumstances – he lived in a small house in Mile End, East London; during his absence he had lost two children, the first a daughter who had been crawling when he left, the second a son whom he had never seen – it was perhaps unjust that Banks used his social status to grab the glory for himself. Ultimately, however, it was to the benefit of Cook’s career, for Banks’s fame became so great that he persuaded the Admiralty – the First Lord was a personal friend – to send a second expedition to the South Seas. As Banks said, ‘That a Southern Continent really exists, I firmly believe; but if ask’d why I beleive so, I confess my reasons are weak; yet I have a preposession in favour of the fact which I find it difficult to account for’. On these flimsy grounds Captain James Cook left England on 21 June 1772 aboard the Resolution – a converted collier – accompanied by the Adventure under Lieutenant Tobias Furneaux, bound again for Terra Australis Incognita. He did so without Banks, who decided at the last moment that the ships were too cramped for his liking and, when the Admiralty refused to alter them to his specification, flounced off to Iceland in a fit of pique.
Cook did not share Banks’s certainty that there was a southern continent, and even if there was he didn’t think he could reach it or, if he did, that it would be worth finding. But employment was employment, and it would be a pity if ‘the object of many ages and nations should not now be wholly cleared up’. The question could be settled ‘without either much trouble or danger or fear for it’. It would also allow him to explore the South Pacific and (a matter of navigational pride) to circumnavigate the globe in an anti-clockwise direction. He had also been instructed to test a new clock, developed by the watchmaker John Harrison, that promised to keep Greenwich Time without deviation, thereby solving the eternal problem of calculating longitude. To a navigator like Cook, this alone was worth the trip.
The Resolution and Adventure sailed through the Atlantic to the Cape of Good Hope, where they took aboard a quantity of livestock, and dipped south towards Antarctica. In late November, amidst high winds and cold so fearful that their sheep, pigs and chickens began to die, they met their first icebergs. They were astonished at their size: one was as high as St Paul’s Cathedral, others were two miles wide. And they were appalled by the danger they presented: ‘the mind is filled with horror, for was a ship to get against the weather side of one of these islands when the seas run high she would be dashed to pieces in a moment’. Weaving through the bergs, they attained 67° 15’S on 18 January 1773 to find their progress blocked by impenetrable sheets of ice. Cook therefore retreated a few degrees north and sailed east, following roughly the 60th meridian, towards New Zealand.
At Cape Town they had heard of a French expedition led by Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen-Trémairec that had, that very February, discovered land which its commander was convinced was part of the Great Southern Continent. To Cook’s satisfaction, this land was nowhere to be seen. As one of his officers gloated, ‘if my friend Monsieur found any land, he’s been confoundedly out in the latitudes and longitudes of it for we’ve searched the spot he represented it in and its environs too pretty narrowly and the devil an inch of land is there’. This, however, was their only discovery in four months of sub-Antarctic travel, and when Cook anchored off New Zealand for reprovisioning they were all heartily glad. But the men were physically healthy and, as Cook wrote on 23 March, ‘We’ve now arrived at a port with a ship’s crew in the best order that I believe was heard of after such a long passage at sea’.
The Adventure had become separated from the Resolution on 7 February and did not reach the prearranged rendezvous of Queen Charlotte Sound, in the strait between North and South Island, until 11 May. To Cook’s irritation, Furneaux had maintained neither the discipline nor the diet he expected of him. There had been several cases of insubordination and drunkenness, and scurvy had taken hold. Furneaux also seemed to have no sense of urgency, and gave every appearance of expecting to spend the winter in New Zealand. Cook told him that they would be leaving shortly for a further exploration of the seas east and south of the Society Islands, after which they would go north-west to refresh
themselves at Tahiti before returning to New Zealand. Conditions were not ideal for such a job but, as Cook wrote, ‘It nevertheless appeared to me necessary that something must be done’. They left on 7 June 1773.
The weather was not good. In heavy winds Cook’s helmsman was thrown in a circle over the top of the wheel. When he ordered another man to help, it made no difference: the second man was whirled onto the first and then, when the rudder swirled again, the first flew back on top of the second. Nevertheless, they made reasonable progress through a large quadrant of unexplored ocean, the only drawback being that Furneaux yet again neglected to feed his men properly: six weeks into the journey one man had died from scurvy and 20 more were incapacitated. Cursing, Cook repeated the instructions he had given him three times already, and headed for Tahiti. By late August they were on the island and were being accorded a rapturous reception by the Tahitians, who seemed to have forgotten the unpleasantness that had occurred during Cook’s last visit. They were soon reminded: the white men were accused of drunkenness and rape; in return, the Tahitians captured one man and stripped him of his clothes and possessions before sending him packing; an armed party was sent to retrieve the clothes; shortly afterwards the Tahitians resumed their petty theft. Thereafter relations settled into their normal pattern, save that both sides were now accustomed to the practices of the other and outbreaks of violence were less extreme. Tahiti was also more peaceful and more prosperous than on Cook’s last visit, with the result that the white men were able to obtain all the stores they needed and the Tahitians were less persistent in their thieving.
In all, it was a harmonious stay, and when the ships left on 18 September Cook’s lieutenant, Charles Clerke, wrote: ‘I must own that ‘tis with some reluctance I bid adieu to these happy isles where I’ve spent many very happy days, both in the years ‘69 and ‘73.’ It was not just the bounteous provisions – the pork this time lived up to every promise that had been made of it; the vegetables were also abundant and luscious – nor that the women were ‘very handsome and very kind, and the men very civil and to the last degree benevolent’. It was more that Tahiti’s paradisiacal surroundings felt like home to those who had been there before and that, as Clerke wrote, ‘we may with very great safety say we’ve got into a very good neighbourhood. In short, in my opinion, they are as pleasant and happy spots as this world contains.’ It was not so pleasant, however, as to deter a Tahitian from sailing with the Resolution, like the ill-fated Tupai before him. The crew called him Odiddy.
Off the Map Page 23
