Publicly accessible
URL: http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/collections.html
copyright 2007, by Victoria University of Wellington
All unambiguous end-of-line hyphens have been removed and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line, except in the case of those words that break over a page.
1. Portrait of In colour Oil painting in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
2. Whitby harbour in the mid-eighteenth century Water-colour drawing by unknown artist. Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society.
3. ‘Draught of the Bay and Harbour of Gaspee’, 1758 Cook's first published map. B.M. Maps K.Mar VII 2(5).
4. ‘Plan of the Harbour of Great and Little St Laurence’ By Cook. Inset in a chart of the south coast of Newfoundland, 1765. Ministry of Defence, Hydrographic Department, Taunton, C58/71.
5. Portrait of
6. Portrait of
7.
(a) ‘A View of part of the West Side of Georges Island’ [Tahiti] Drawing by Cook. B.M. Add. Ms 7085, fol. 8.
(b) ‘The West Elevation of the Fort’ [at Point Venus, Matavai Bay] Drawing by Cook. B.M. Add. Ms 7085, fol. 8.
8.
(a) ‘A Plan of Royal or Matavie Bay in Georges Island’ [Tahiti] Drawing by Cook. B.M. Add. Ms 7085, fol. 8.
(b) Peaks of Matavai Bay Pen and wash drawing by Parkinson. B.M. Add. Ms 7345, fol. 44v.
9. Fortified pa on arched rock, Mercury Bay Drawing by Cook, after a drawing by Parkinson. B.M. Add. Ms 7085, fol. 25.
10. The watering-place in Tolaga Bay Drawing by Cook, after a drawing by Parkinson. B.M. Add. Ms 7085, fol. 21.
11.
(a) The Endeavour at sea Drawing by Parkinson. B.M. Add. Ms 9345, fol. 16v.
(b) The hull of the Endeavour Drawing by Parkinson. B.M. Add. Ms 9345, fol. 57.
12. ‘New Zealand War Canoe. The crew bidding defiance to the Ships Company’ Drawing by Spöring. B.M. Add. Ms 23920, fol. 48.
13. ‘A Chart of New Zeland or the Islands of Aeheinomouwe and Tovypoenammu lying in the South Sea’ By Cook. B.M. Add. Ms 7085, fol. 17.
14. Entry in Cook's Journal, 16 August 1770 From the original in the National Library of Australia, Canberra.
15.
(a) The reef where the Endeavour struck, 11 June 1770 Detail from ‘Chart of Part of the Sea Coast of New South Wales’. By Cook. B.M. Add. Ms 7085, fol. 39.
(b) ‘A Plan of the entrance of Ms 7085, fol. 42.
16. The Endeavour being careened Engraving by W. Byrne after Parkinson.
17. ‘A Map of the Southern Hemisphere’ By Cook; showing his proposed route by a strong continuous line (yellow in the original). Mitchell Library, Sydney.
18. The Resolution. In colour Water-colour drawing by
19.
(a) Portrait of
(b) Reinhold and
20. Portrait of Captain Cook, after
21. The ships watering by taking in ice, in 61°S Water-colour drawing by Hodges. Mitchell Library, Sydney, D 11, no. 26.
22. ‘Dusky Bay in New Zeland 1773’ Unsigned plan, probably by Cook. B.M. Add. Ms 31360, fol. 56.
23. ‘Family in Dusky Bay, New Zeland’ Engraving by Lerperniere after Hodges.
24. ‘The Fleet of Otaheite assembled at Oparee’ Engraving by W. Woollett after Hodges.
25.
(a) Portrait of Omai, after William Hodges Engraving by
(b) Portrait of O-Hedidee [Odiddy], after William Hodges Engraving by
26. The Resolution off the South Sandwich Islands Pen and wash drawing by Joseph Gilbert, in his Log. Public Record Office, Adm 55/107, fol. 205.
27. Portrait of In colour Oil painting in Government House, Wellington, New Zealand.
28. Portrait of the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, by Thomas Gainsborough Oil painting in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
29. Stählin's map of Russian discoveries, 1774. In An Account of the New Northern Archipelago (London, 1774), by Jacob von Stählin.
30.
(a) Portrait of
(b) Portrait of
31. Christmas Harbour, Kerguelen's Land Water-colour drawing by
32. ‘Cook's interview with Natives in Adventure Bay, Van Diemen's Land, 29 January 1777’ Unsigned drawing. Ministry of Defence, Naval Library, London.
33. Cook in Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand Water-colour drawing by Webber. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
34. A Tongan Dance Drawing by Webber. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
35. ‘A Human Sacrifice, in a Morai, in Otaheite’ Drawing by Webber, B.M. Add. Ms 15513, fol. 16.
36. Portrait of Poetua, by John Webber Oil painting in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
37. The Resolution at anchor in Nootka Sound Drawing by Webber. B.M. Add. Ms 15514, fol. 10.
38. ‘Chart of part of the Nw Coast of America. Explored by Resolution and Discovery, 7 March-3 October 1778. Public Record Office, Adm 1/1612 (Mpi 83).
39. The ships in the ice off Icy Cape, 18 August 1778 Drawing by Webber. Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.
40. Meeting with the Chukchi at St Lawrence Bay Drawing by Webber. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
41. ‘An Offering before Capt. Cook in the Sandwich Islands’ Engraving by S. Middiman and J. Hall after Webber.
42. Mpm 44.
43. Mrs Elizabeth Cook Oil painting by unknown artist. Mitchell Library, Sydney.
44. Portrait of Captain Cook, by In colour Oil painting in the National Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand.
The reproductions have been made by the courtesy of the Trustees of the National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum, Wellington, New Zealand, 44; His Excellency the Governor-General of New Zealand, Government House, Wellington, 27; the Trustees of the British Museum, 3, 6–13, 15a, 15b, 22–5, 29, 35, 37; the Trustees of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, frontispiece, 5, 16, 19b, 20, 28, 30a, 33, 34, 36, 40, 41; the Committee of the National Library of Australia, Canberra, 14, 30b, 31; the Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, 39; the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office, 26, 38, 42; the Hydrographer of the Navy, 4; the Trustees of the Mitchell Library in the Public Library of New South Wales, Sydney, 17, 18, 21, 43; the Right Hon. the Earl of Birkenhead, 19a; the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society, 2.
Nearly forty years ago
This biography, the summation of a lifetime's study of Pacific exploration, is the writing towards which my father's whole work as an historian was directed. His devotion to the eighteenth century, his antipodean wit, his recreating imagination, his fascination with the Pacific—over so much of which he was to travel in Cook's tracks from Nootka Sound in the north to
In completing the revision and seeing the book through the press I have had help from many quarters for which I am deeply grateful: in New Zealand from
Over many years my father became indebted to men and women in almost every part of the world for scholarly assistance. Many are listed in the prefaces to his editions of the Cook and Banks's Journal. It is impossible for me to list them all here, and all will, I am sure, accept that this book itself is the real acknowledgement of their advice and help and will, on their part, share our gratitude that a lifetime's work has been so magnificently completed.
T. H. Beaglehole
Victoria University of Wellington
John Tuke,The village of Marton-in-Cleveland, in the north-east corner of the North Riding of Yorkshire, where Cook was born, had not in the early part of the eighteenth century been touched by fame. No traveller, that we know of, committed to his journal any particular notice of the scatter of farm houses and cottages, on its gentle rise a quarter of a mile south of the road between Stockton and Guisborough; so far from prominence was it that it may indeed have shrunk since its earlier days, within its parish of five miles by two. It lay in an agricultural district, though moors and hills were not far away—a district well farmed, according to the standards of the time; the virtues of whose inhabitants were—so we learn from the worthy John Tuke,A General View of the Agriculture of the North Riding of Yorkshire (London, 1794).
Beyond the North Riding lay the county of Durham, and then Northumberland; Northumberland marched with the Border and on the other side of the Border was Roxburghshire. In the north-east corner of Roxburghshire was Ednam, the village where the poet Thomson was born; here also was born another person of more immediate interest to us. John Walker Ord, I am indebted for some relevant information to a letter from Mr Clifford Cook, of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire.History and Antiquities of Cleveland (London, 1846), 547.e son of a day labourer’. It is evident that the Cook family was strongly conservative in their choice of names for elder sons. There were six other children born to the couple, of whom four died young: Mary, born 1732, who died in her fifth year; Jane, born 173, who also died in her fifth year; another Mary, born 1740, who died at ten months; and a son William, born 1745, who died at the age of three. There were two survivors besides James beyond the year 1750, his sisters Margaret and Christiana.
A fitful light, as usual with the annals of the poor, plays on the boy's earliest years. A few months after his birth his parents went to another cottage—presumably, as they now had two sons, a larger one—and at some time thereafter his birthplace became the village ale-house, at the sign of the Bear. His father worked most regularly for a Mr Mewburn. When the baby became a small boy he went to learn his letters with Mrs Walker, whose husband farmed Marton Grange; the Walker family story was that this education of a promising youth was in return for his services round the place, running errands and watering stock. The Walker family story tended to move over into legend. Ord, who tells Cook's story in a very large footnote, 545 ff., writes in his elevated style, ‘Dame Walker was the daughter of the wealthiest farmer in the neighbourhood; and her husband, a respectable yeoman of the first class, resided at Marton Grange. Young Cook, then a mere lad, tended the stock, took the horses to water, and ran errands for the family; and in return for such services, the good old lady, finding him an intelligent, active youth, was pleased to teach him his alphabet and reading. Dame Walker was great-great-great grandmother to the author on the maternal side.’—The ‘intelligent, active youth’ would then be six or seven years old, and ‘the good old lady’, if she died in 1789, aged 89, as Ord says, would be in her mid-thirties. John Graves, The History of Cleveland (Carlisle, 1808), 197. I take it that Great Ayton had not changed essentially between 1736 and the beginning of the next century.
During young Cook's continuance at this village seminary it appears that he was never much regarded by the other boys of the school, and was generally left behind in their juvenile excursions; a circumstance, which can only be attributed to his steady adherence to his own plans and schemes, never giving way to thecontre-projetsof his associates. This, instead of conciliating their regard, naturally rendered them averse fromhis company. It has been asserted by those who knew him at this early period of his life, that he had such an obstinate and sturdy way of his own, as made him sometimes appear in an unpleasant light; notwithstanding which, there was a somethingin his manners and deportment, which attracted the reverence and respect of his companions.
The seeds of that undaunted resolution and perseverence which afterwards accelerated his progress to immortality, were conspicuous, even in his boyish days. Frequently, on an evening, when assembled together in the village, to set out in search of birds' nests, Cook might be seen in the midst of his comrades, strenuously contending that they should proceed to some particular, spot: This he would sometimes do, with such inflexible earnestness, as to be deserted by the greater part of his companions.Graves, 456, n.
How long Cook remained a village seminarist, with the leisure occupations of birds' nesting and argument, before he emerged on the world as a master of reading, writing, and arithmetic and (a little less so) of spelling; whether he spent the succeeding period exclusively in the employ of his father or Mr Skottowe and how wide was his farm practice, how far he rambled from Ayton, who made the next suggestion for the career of a likely lad—of all these things we are ignorant. But it seems as if something—proficiency in arithmetic?—marked him out as perhaps equal to the demands of commerce; for we next find him, in 1745, at the age of seventeen, a shop-boy with Mr William Sanderson, grocer and haberdasher, of Staithes. This was not regular apprenticeship, there were no indentures, it was trial on both sides; Sanderson was a wise and amiable man. The building which contained his house and shop was close to the sea, and as early as 1812 was pulled down lest it should be washed away, to be rebuilt in its present position in Church Street by his successors in business; Captain James Cook (London, 1907), 7.
The word respectable recurs. John Walker was greatly to be respected, a Quaker ship-master, ship-owner, and coal-shipper, who made a firm with his brother Henry, though it was to John exclusively that the young Cook was bound apprentice. The Quaker connection was powerful in the town—its first meeting house was built in 1676—and a Quaker dignity and restraint marked many of the stone and brick dwellings of the old town, among them John Walker's own house in Haggersgate, on the west side of the river, where Cook lodged with his master, and that of John Walker's mother, the late seventeenth-century building in Grape Lane on the east side, to which Walker removed in 1752. Mrs Walker's house and its attic in Grape Lane are popularly regarded as the premises where Cook lived and slept, but the dates make this impossible. John Walker's house in Haggersgate no longer exists. There seems to have been no connection between these Walkers and the farming family of Marton.
The coal trade, too, in which the Walkers were concerned, was one of the great trades of Britain, and opened vistas of the real metropolis. Coal was the ‘grand commodity of the northern counties’; Quoted in E. Lipson, Henry Taylor, Economic History of England (5th ed., 1948), II, 113.Memoirs of The Principal Events in the Life of Henry Taylor (North Shields, 1811). Taylor, nine years younger than Cook, went to sea in the coal trade when about 13, as a six-years' apprentice, and became master of a ship when 21. His experience, coal trade and North Sea, was much like Cook's, and his picture of the life is the best we have. He left the sea at 35, to become a ship and insurance broker at North Shields, and to carry on a valuable propaganda for coastal lights (with which, indeed, his book is largely concerned).
Apprentices worked hard, a man who had been one not many years after Cook tells us. i.e. Taylor. Taylor, 158. William Falconer, Dictionary of the MarineA Universal Dictionary of the Marine. I have used the 1789 edition.
Into this life plunged the young Cook, fugitive from retail trade—young, but at eighteen or nearly eighteen rather old for a beginning apprentice—and joined the men and boys so thickly recruited from the Yorkshire coastal villages. While seamen are in the nursery they do not have individual prominence; and, as might be expected,
Freelove and the Three Brothers, and his mate Robert Watson; for we have record of Walker himself sailing as master only for two passages of the Freelove from London in 1747, and for a month on the maiden passage of the Three Brothers to London, with Jefferson, a man of 32, as his co-master then. Watson was five years younger. Good men could rise young in that service. Walker's function from then, it is clear, was that of owner.
Cook's first voyage was in the The surviving muster-rolls are now preserved in the Whitby Museum.Freelove, a ship—that is a three-masted vessel, square-rigged—of 341 tons, 106 feet in length with a beam of 27 feet—somewhat the equivalent, indeed, of the vessel in which, twenty-two years later, he was first to go exploring, and built as a collier at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, in 1746. Walker must have acquired her immediately, or almost immediately, she was built. She carried a complement of nineteen—master, mate, carpenter, cook, five seamen, and ten ‘servants’ or apprentices. The birthplace and domicile of all these last is given in the muster-roll as Whitby, and they ranged in age from nineteen down to fifteen.
Walker had a new ship under construction, and it is said that Cook took part in her rigging and fitting out, invaluable experience again. She was the Kitson, 11, says she was ‘of some 600 tons’, and she ‘was still in existence near the close of the last [i.e. 19th] century.’ It seems doubtful whether a 600-ton ship could have been managed by a crew of nineteen, the number given in her muster-roll. An entry in the catalogue of a Cook exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, Green-wich, in the 1957–7, refers to her as ‘over 400 tons’, but gives no authority. Richard Weather-ill, I follow Kitson, 12, in this; but Three Brothers, apparently a quite large vessel.The Ancient Port of Whitby and its Shipping (Whitby, 1908), has no particulars.Freelove men, including six of the apprentices. Cook was one of these, and was in the ship continuously from 14 June 1748 to 8 December 1749. For the early part of this time she was in the coal trade; then, with stalls for forty horses, was chartered by government for some months as a transport, carrying troops that had been engaged in Flanders from Middleburg to Dublin and Liverpool.Three Brothers, William Drake master, convinced the officials concerned that the ship, ‘in which Cook was then serving’, sailed from Gravesend for Flanders in March 1747 and for Williamstadt in February 1748. Cook however was in the Freelove in 1747, and appears in the Three Brothers (master John Jefferson) only in June 1748—and she was then a new ship. The name Three Brothers may have been a popular one: the National Maritime Museum mentions another, 97 tons, taken up for transport duties at Whitehaven in December 1746.Mary of Whitby, owned by John Wilkinson and commanded by William Gaskin—some relative of Walker—for eight months to and from the Baltic, February to 5 October 1750, when he was discharged at London, He was next in a Sunderland ship, unspecified, till he returned to the Three Brothers for 1751 and 1752, her master being Robert Watson, the mate of his first voyage. In December of this latter year Watson moved as master to the Friendship, another new Walker ship, and with him went Friendship for two and a half years, with successive masters, after Watson, in John Swainston and Richard Ellerton: with the last-named of these men he seems to have formed a positive friendship. There is no doubt that he had learnt a great deal. The practice of seamanship, as well as its theory, has been adverted to, the rule of thumb, the line of coast alive in the mind. He had not been confined to one shore: he knew the North Sea and its further side, at least in ports from the Netherlands to Norway; he had been through the Channel and into the Irish Sea; but it was the east coast of England that had given him his most intimate experience, the experience of the inshore sailor. We shall see the deposit of that experience active in his mind on coasts far distant, as dangerous, still unknown.
We must beware of too much eloquence. The words quoted are those of Dr James Wilson, in the preliminary ‘Dissertation on the Rise and Progress of the Modern Art of Navigation' which he contributed to the second and third editions (1764 and 1772) of Robertson's book; he goes on, ‘the last [edition] I have seen, was in 1739; but some late writers seem to have abated the run of this book.’ Its full title was Quoted, by William Hutchinson, ‘Mariner, And Dock Master at Liverpool’, on p. 110 of his valuable volume beginning Taylor, 32.Elements of Navigation of Practical Navigation of John Seller, which, though first published in 1669, went through edition after edition for seventy years. Seller, a compass-maker and chart publisher of Wapping, gave rules,
Praxis Nautica: Practical Navigation: or, an Introduction to the whole Art. The Dictionary of the Marine lists a number of the ‘late writers’—e.g. Edward Hauxley, Navigation Unveil'd (1743), a perfectly conventional treatment in spite of its dramatic title; John Barrow, Navigatio Britannica (1750); and so on. Cook must have encountered Robertson's book later on. It is interesting to note that Art or Elements or Treatise or Complete Tutor—to place before his servant. One way or another, the young man would have learnt a little elementary astronomy and geometry, and how to use the more popular instruments; how to find a latitude and work out his position with the traverse board, how to allow for leeway and the other incidents of a ship's behaviour at sea. It is very possible that he had his own backstaff, or Davis's quadrant as it was now called, that old friend of mariners; probably he knew all about Hadley's quadrant, since Hadley invented it in 1731, though it may be doubtful whether he could afford to own one. He would probably on his experience not have seen much reason to differ from Halley—‘the celebrated Doctor Halley’—that the system of navigation in his time depended on the three L's of Lead, Latitude and Look-out,A Treatise and boiling down to Practical Seamanship. Hutchinson, in his second edition of 1787, adds (p. 106), ‘The latitude when it can be got by a good observation, with a good instrument, must be allowed to be the only guide we have in navigation; because it not only gives to a certainty, the ship's place, North and South, but it likewise helps us to form a judgment how far a dependance may be put on our reckoning, East or West; in proportion as the latitude by the account kept of the ship's way, agrees or disagrees with the latitude observed in the passage in general; so more or less dependance accordingly may be put upon the longtitude the ship is reckoned to be in.’ This is rather unsophisticated for 1787.
Cook's experience, to recur to that, was still a narrow experience: although not confined to the Narrow Seas, its widest sea was the North Sea. If the argument should be advanced by some battered captain that the North Sea should be experience enough for anyone, the answer would be No, for the complete sailor its coastwise and short voyage sailing was not enough. The coal trade, the Baltic trade were not the only nurseries of seamen. The Newfoundland trade was another highly-esteemed nursery, though not one into which York-shire boys normally entered. There were various Atlantic trades, and there were the long passages, out to India and China and back, which bred men ‘the most perfect in the open seas’. Hutchinson, 129; ‘From all that I have seen, the seamen in the East India trade are the most perfect in the open seas, and those in the coal trade to London the most perfect in difficult narrow channels, and tide ways…’Friendship, as next in the succession of her captains. To become master of a ship eleven years after becoming an apprentice could hardly be other than satisfactory to any man; and Cook must have been tempted. Instead, he volunteered into the royal navy as an able seaman.
Phrase from Kippis, 4. ‘… as He volunteered at Wapping on 17 June 1755; and the only recorded reason is that he determined to ‘take his future fortune’ that way;Gallery of Greenwich Hospital, part I (1831), 2.
The volunteer was sent to the Kitson and others spell his name Hamer, but he signs himself in his log/journal, Adm 51/292, ‘Jos. Hamar’. ‘Immediately’, not ‘a month later’, if we are to take literally the title-page of his The quotations and dates given in this chapter are from Cook's log, Eagle, Captain Joseph Hamar,Eagle log, now in the Atl. But Kitson correctly gives the date of his promotion as 24 July, going on the muster book, Adm 36/5533. It is possible that he began to keep a log even as A.B., inscribing the title-page later.s Ship Eagle, Kept by Jams Cook Masters Mate Commencing the 27th June 1755; And Ending the 31st of December 1756’; and the first of innumerable entries registering wind and weather. The master was the very capable Thomas Bisset. Work on the ship went forward; at the beginning of July the fleet at Portsmouth was ceremonially visited by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Anson, and the Duke of Cumberland; ships and admirals came and went; the master's mate recorded such happenings as '[20 July] Recd on Board 12 Chalder of Coals & 3 Cask's of Char Coal, wth other Stoars for Pursser, Empd in Makeing Points & Pointing Ropes Ends'—or the arrival of ‘his Majs Ship Giberalter’; on 27 July all the volunteers on board got two months' pay in advance; and at last, on 4 August, the Eagle sailed: ‘weigh'd & Came to Sail, Saw a water Spout to ye S.W.’Atl, unless otherwise attributed.
The primary aim of the navy was the interruption of French communication with the possessions of France in North America, an aim in which it had so far not been markedly successful. The earlier intention for the Bisset's log, Adm 52/578, 8 and 9 August 1755. Hamar, Adm 51/292, 29 September, ‘This day CaptEagle was that she should cross the Atlantic to the Leeward Islands. In July, however, this plan was changed, and Hamar was ordered on a cruise outside St George's Channel, between the Scilly Islands and Cape Clear on the Irish coast. He was to put himself under the command of Admiral Hawke. It was a cruise of no great glory. One day out a sail to the south was taken to be a French ship of war, and chased, but proved a Dutch merchantman. From day to day small vessels were chased, stopped and examined; and Hamar, short-handed as he was, did not miss the chance to press men when he could from the London-bound—three one day, four another.n Palliser Superceeded me in the Comand of the Eagle'.—Cook, 1 October, ‘Came on Board, Capt Palliser & tooke Possesion of ye Ship’.
Palliser was another Yorkshireman, from the West Riding, well-rooted in the gentry; the son of an army captain. Five years older than Cook, he had had twenty years' more naval experience: he had gone to sea at the age of twelve, in an uncle's care, passed his examination and become a lieutenant when eighteen (which was three years too early for a commission according to the regulations), been in the action off Toulon in February 1744, and got his first command in 1746, the year in which Cook began as Walker's apprentice. He had served in the West Indies and on the Coromandel coast of India
Eagle for the first time on 8 October. The cruise this time was down Channel and about its western approaches, under the general orders of West and Byng, rear-admiral and vice-admiral; but for the greater part of five weeks the Eagle was on her own. They were weeks of gales and squalls, hard on the sails, and no doubt hard on the sailors, as the ship chased any-thing in sight—vessels which usually turned out to be English, Spanish, Swedes, Hamburgers or Dutch, though she took two or three French ones, fishermen homeward bound from Newfoundland. In one chase forty leagues west of Ushant, 18 October, in a hard gale, her main topmast went by the board and the Frenchman escaped under cover of night; but next day, with a jury topmast, the Eagle fell in with the Monmouth, and the Frenchman being sighted again, the Monmouth took her. The prizes were sent in to Plymouth. The Eagle, with more than two hundred prisoners, continued cruising, ran into gales again in early November, carried away her main topgallant mast in a squall, and on the 13th was with West and Byng in the Bay of Biscay.
She was present at the end of the Palliser to Clevland, 27 November 1755, Adm 1/2292. Kitson, 20.Espérance, a French seventy-four short of fifty guns, which had eluded Boscawen's fleet on the other side of the Atlantic only to be maimed in the storms and brought up by West's squadron almost within reach of home: in a fight that for hopeless heroism was like that of the Revenge she was finally battered into surrender. She was to enter no British harbour as a prize, and Cook's log registers her last hours, on the afternoon of the 15th: ‘Recd on Bd from ye Esperance 26 Prisoners art 4 ye Esperance on fire there being no Posabillity of Keeping her above water’. And so she went down. A few days after this funeral rite Byng, having returned to the Channel, ordered West and half-a-dozen ships, including the Eagle, into Plymouth Sound for cleaning and refitting; and here she remained from 21 November to 13 March 1756. On 27 November Palliser wrote to the Admiralty Secretary with the perennial captain's plaint. He had a great many men on board, he said, who were supernumeraries belonging to other ships, and had been received at different times from them or from hospital, to make up a sufficient crew to go to sea. What ships they properly belonged to he could not tell, and nobody wanted them: forty-four were alleged to belong to the Ramillies, she needed only six, and her boatswain
The winter, so it seems, was marked for Cook by further promotion. ‘Am had a Survey on Boatswain's Stores, when Succeeded ye Former Boatswain’. This was on 22 January. It may have been only temporary. As boatswain he would have been responsible for ropes, sails, cables and anchors, flags, and (not unnaturally) boats; his pay would have risen from £3 16s to £4 a month. It was very satisfactory, though Palliser still refers to him as a mate, he continues to appear in other records as master's mate, and as such he may continue to be referred to here.
The cruise last completed laid down the pattern for the next fifteen months, in and out of Plymouth Sound and hanging round the French coast, a period broken by one savage duel with the enemy and two interludes of semi-independence for the master's mate. Palliser reports on his proceedings for March-April. Palliser to Clevland, 13 April 1756, Adm 1/2293; and his log, Adm 51/292, Part III.Windsor, and cruised in company with her until they both joined the Antelope, Captain Gayton, Palliser's senior officer, who ordered him further west off the Isle of Batz on the Breton coast. He and Captain Faulkner of the Windsor agreed to keep company as far as that island in case a French convoy then in Cherbourg should sail that night and elude Gayton. They encountered no convoy, only two little sloops, smugglers from Guernsey with tea and brandy for the English coast: the weather was too bad and they were too short of men to detain these sloops, so they took out their cargoes and let them go. On 4 April they joined company with a British squadron of three ships and two cutters; Palliser sent one of the cutters into Guernsey to fetch out pilots, and sent Cook into the other. Cook's log entries for two weeks now relate to this experience, beginning with the morning of 5 April: ‘Brot too on ye Star: Tack when I
e Cruzer Cutter, to take ye Command of her with Men, Arms, and Ammanishon. Modt & Clowdy. In Company wth ye Eagle, Falmouth, Greyhound, & Firret Sloop.’ Next day he makes a little drawing of the coast about Morlaix, with its buildings and rocks—already trying his hand, as if by instinct, on a ‘coastal profile’. On the 8th, off the Tragoz rocks, two large French sails, taken for frigates, were chased but made their escape into Morlaix, where the British could not follow; then on the 12th an order was received from Captain Keppel to repair to Plymouth Sound, whence next day Palliser wrote to the Admiralty. He was out again on the 16th. Meanwhile Cook was off on his own, in and out of sight of the squadron, having some hard squalls and rain, no doubt enjoying the exercise of authority as he fired a few shots to bring vessels to—until he went on board the Falmouth, the commodore's ship, on the 21st, to return to Plymouth. Here on the 27th he and his men transferred to the St Albans, another 60-gun ship, which sailed on the 30th and joined the fleet of ‘AdmEagle log, 22 May 1756 to 1 July.Eagle now part of Boscawen's fleet. Boscawen met no French fleet—the British purpose was blockade—but as explicit war came nearer (it was declared on 18 May) the Eagle's men began to die, and her log is a melancholy record. There was a little relief on 20 May, when in the Bay of Biscay she and the St Albans took two prizes, one ‘a ship from Santimingo’ with sugar and coffee (as Cook notes), and put boarding parties in both to carry them to port.Eagle log, 22 May 1756 to 1 July.e Triton prize’ and got her into Plymouth at the end of the month, only to be sent round to London with her. By the end of June he had her moored securely in the Thames, had taken an inventory of her rigging and stores, sent his men back to Plymouth, and followed them himself. Rejoining his ship on 1 July, he was plunged into a very busy month of refitting.
Palliser had been sent into Plymouth by Boscawen to land his sick men and his prisoners. He arrived on 3 June, on which day his surgeon and four men died, to add to the twenty-two who had been buried in the previous month; he put 130 men in hospital, ‘most of which are extreamly Ill’, including the two surgeon's mates; and as he had thirty-five men away in prizes, and was thirty-four short of his complement, he reported himself in a very weak condition. Palliser to Clevland, 3 June, 4 June 1756, Adm 1/2293. Palliser to Clevland, 17 June 1756 and endorsement, Adm 1/3293. Palliser to Clevland, 6 July, Adm 1/2293: but Cook's log notes continuous work on the ship, rigging, loading, etc., till they sailed on 4 August. Palliser to Clevland, 18 July, Adm 1/2293. Palliser to Clevland, 2 August, Adm 1/2293. Kitson, 22, gives the story more at large: ‘The report originated with the master of a Swedish trader, who, under examination, swore that he had seen nine ships off the Isle of Wight, flying a white flag, all large, and he estimated two to be 90-gun ships. He stated that he was boarded by a boat from one that he believed to be the flagship, and that after the boarding officer had returned to his ship, a gun was fired, and the whole squadron made sail. Very careful enquiry was made, and the portion of the Channel mentioned by the Swede was thoroughly searched, but no signs or tidings could be found of any French men-of-war having been in the neighbourhood, and the Swede paid the penalty of what seemed to be only an exercise of his imagination, by suffering a detention of some months in Portsmouth.’ Palliser log, 17 December 1756, Adm 51/292/III.Eagle Palliser took further thought. The sickness and mortality that had raged in his ship, he reported, was in great measure owing to the want of clothes: his men were nearly all landsmen, who had never been at sea till they were sent on board the Eagle, ‘Naked when they came on board being for the most part Vagabones not one in Twenty of them that had more than Shirt and one ragged Coat'. The established allowance of slops was not enough; when they became sickly he had to give them more, and he now wished to be indemnified for this over-expenditure of clothing.Eagle first helped to convoy a large number of merchantmen down Channel; then, one of a dozen ships, took part in the blockade directed by Boscawen, cruising some sixty miles west of Ushant, chasing whatever appeared, seizing an occasional prize: it was a long cruise, that hardly rose above routine, and by the time she was back once more at Plymouth, on 11 November, her men had again begun to die. That was the other routine. When an advance payment of prize money
She left again, her crew increased to 420, on 29 December—the blockade was winter work as well as summer—only to meet a very hard gale of wind off the Isle of Wight on 4 January 1757, ‘which blowed away most of our sails’, Palliser to Clevland, 6 January, 13 January 1757, Adm 1/2294; Palliser log, 30 January. Palliser to Clevland, 17 April 1757, Adm 1/2294.Medway, another 60-gun ship, Captain Proby, she departed to rejoin Boscawen. Five days later she had her moment of glory. It was an Atlantic action, its place given by Palliser as about latitude 48° and 2° W of the Lizard—that is about 180 miles southwest of Ushant. At 1 o'clock in the morning, through driving rain, a sail was seen to the north-west of the two English ships. They immediately gave chase: ‘let out the Reefs, & set Studding Sails & Clear'd Ship for Action', wrote Palliser in his log. The Medway, in the lead, omitted to clear for action, and was forced to bring to when nearly up with the chase to do so; by this time she had hoisted French colours. Proby, the senior captain, at first urged Palliser on, then wished him to shorten sail so that he himself might get into the action; Palliser, however, did not understand—possibly did not want to understand—the signals, and Proby managed only a few raking shots.
‘At 1/4 before 4’, writes Palliser, ‘Came along side the [chase] & Engaged at about Two Ships lengths from her the Fire was very brisk on both Sides for near an hour, she then Struck to us, She proved to be the Duc D'Acquitaine last from Lisbon, mounting 50 Guns all 18 Pounders, 493 Men, We had 7 men Killed in the Action & 32 Wounded, Our Sails & Rigging cutt almost all to Peices, soon after She Struck her Main & Mizen Masts went by the Board Employed the Boats fetching the Prisoners & carrying Men on board the Prize, Employed Knotting & Splicing the Rigging. Our Cutter was lost alongside the Prize by the going away of her Main Mast.’Palliser log, 30 May, Adm 51/292/III.
At the end of the day the prize's foremast also went by the board, and three of the Palliser to Clevland, 5 June, list of ‘Visible Defects’, Adm 1/2294. ibid.Eagle's men died of their wounds; another died two
Eagle herself had suffered badly, her masts and rigging and sails ‘very much shattered’, sails indeed ‘rent almost to rags’, almost all the running rigging shot away, her sides full of shot-holes, and stuck, like her masts and yards, with bars of iron.Medway took in tow. The latter had had only ten men injured from an accidental explosion of powder. The Duc d'Aquitaine was an East Indiaman of 1500 tons, commanded by ‘the Sieur D'Esquelen'; she had landed a rich cargo at Lisbon, whence she had sailed on her way round to Lorient, equipped for war and hoping to intercept a British convoy about to sail from Lisbon in charge of the 20-gun Mermaid, but before this desperate action had taken only an English brig from Cadiz.
The three ships put back into Plymouth together. Palliser found that his report made the Lords exceedingly happy, and he in his turn was made happy by their compliments. The prize was surveyed, found worth taking into the navy in spite of the 97 shot-holes through both her sides, and fitted out as a 64-gun ship under the same name. The Kippis, 4–5, ‘From the information of Minute Books of the Trinity House, Deptford, 29 June 1757.Eagle, put into order again within a month, on 12 July sailed for Halifax across the Atlantic, to join Rear-Admiral Holburne, second-in-command to Boscawen, who was now blockading the formidable stronghold of Louisburg. His fleet, formidable too, was thwarted by foul weather as well as French daring; and by the end of September the Eagle, victim of a violent storm, had begun to stagger home across the Atlantic, leaking, with jury-masts and improvised sails, and men going down sick in tens and scores. She reached safety; but Palliser's days in her were almost at an end. He handed over the command in February 1758. He had been without two of his most valuable warrant officers for many months. Bisset, the master, had been appointed to the Pembroke, a ship still building, on 28 April 1757, and had a good deal to do with her even before she was launched. He thus missed the Duc d'Aquitaine affair. In this affair his mate, Eagle and entered as master in the Solebay, a 24-gun frigate, Captain Robert Craig.
The Position of master in a ship of the navy was an honourable and responsible one, without parallel at the present day; rooted in history, to the time when for purposes of war the royal servants hired a ship with her ‘master’ and crew all together, and installed in her the necessary military persons to ‘fight’ her, men skilled in arms but innocent of navigation. The transformation of these men into officers acquainted with the ways of the sea and of ships came in due course, but the master remained, of inferior social position, appointed not by commission from the Admiralty but by warrant from the Regulations and Instructions; some of their duties were, on paper, very like a master's; but the master's were cumulative. He wore no uniform. His competence was certified when he passed his examination. In the end his capacity to find his position at sea was outdistanced by officers with scientific accomplishment
The Cook's ‘Solebays Logg’ is a small quarto, Adm 52/1033, 30 July—7 September 1757, according to its title-page, but the date of the first entry is corrected from 30 to 31 July. At the end of the book, after a large interposition of blank pages, is a small section heralded ‘Solebays Journal / Kitson, 29, says, ‘on 17th September James Cook was superseded by John Nichols as Master’; but there could quite easily have been a nine days' vacancy in the position. Kitson, 29: ‘entered upon his duties on 27th October, the twenty-ninth anniversary of his birth’. This does not allow for the change in the calendar instituted in 1752. The 27 October of his birth was Old Style: a strict reckoning of his birthday after 1752 would have been eleven days later, i.e. 7 November New Style. Bisset[t]'s log, Adm 52/978, finishes on 26 October, on which date he was appointed to the Solebay's duty was the patrol of the eastern coast of Scotland and of the Orkney and Shetland islands, against smuggling and ‘treasonable intercourse’ with France or Holland. Her base was at Leith on the Firth of Forth; there she had just returned and was at anchor in Leith Road when Cook joined her on 30 July 1757. He must have had leave in the month since his discharge from the Eagle, but how he spent it one can but speculate. He had pay in his pocket, and one guesses that he made his way from Plymouth to London, where, at the Black Swan in Holborn, he took the coach for Yorkshire, to visit his parents, and Stirling Castle.Eagle, and it was a very satisfactory one indeed. For the warrant made him master of the Pembroke, the almost new 64-gun ship, 1250 tons,
Simcoe had taken command of his ship while she was still on the stocks at Plymouth, and had watched over her launching on 2 June and her fitting out. Simcoe to John Clevland, secretary to the Admiralty, 19 April, 14 May, 2 June 1757.—Adm 1/2471. Adm 52/978, 3 January 1758.Pembroke on 8 December weighed and came to sail from St Helen's, where she had been anchored for a fortnight, and with other ships made down Channel. This was a cruise of a sort he was familiar with from his days in the Eagle, across the Bay of Biscay, somewhat further south than before, so that Finisterre and not Ushant became the point of reference, in the old routine of chase—one day he remarks on ‘the whole Fleet in Chase’;
This sort of activity was necessary though humdrum. The Pembroke, however, with Cook in her, was on the edge of greater things—was, in fact, about to play her part in one of the great reversals of history; and a reversal in an American theatre. The war that had been waged between Britain and France since 1754—undeclared
Eagle, as she chased the fishing-vessels from Newfoundland or the snows from the West Indies. There were the single ship actions—and he had seen the end of the Espérance, had helped to batter the Duc d'Aquitaine into surrender. In both the Eagle and the Pembroke he had had his introduction to that perennial and tedious strategy, the blockading of the coasts of France, the endless watchfulness through fair weather and foul. But none of this had tended towards victory: indeed, looking back from the end of 1757 the British could see little but defeat, or when not defeat, frustration—and it was in the hysteria consequent on such frustration that they had shot their Admiral Byng. Regular army officers had failed in America, General Braddock had been killed, colonial forces had failed, forts had been lost, the colonial line of defence pushed hither and thither, Indians had massacred, French strategy had been brilliant. There were, however, two factors which gave the French civil and military command in Canada some unease, even at the peak of prestige. They could see signs, first of all, that they had strained their manpower: their regular regiments were good, but the French habitant had had his fill of wilderness fighting. Secondly, to do this fighting and the miscellaneous army service that went with it, he had been taken away from his proper work of cultivation; and Canada faced a serious food shortage. Hence the importance to the French of their lines of communication, free movement from France of troops and provisions; hence the eyes at Quebec through the next eighteen months straining for signs of the transports that would bring troops, but even more important—additional troops being additional mouths—flour. And hence the strategy of French naval power—even the risks it was prepared to take in stripping away guns for the sake of supplies: a strategy of convoy and protection, of conservation of line-of-battle ships, not of seeking out some grand general encounter of fleets which might bring glory, but even with glory disaster. Against this the British
The safety of the French possessions in North America, and their enlargement, was pinned not merely on successful wilderness fighting but on the two great fortresses which guaranteed the Gulf of St Lawrence and the immense river—Louisburg and Quebec. Who had those had Canada: if they could be captured there would be an immediate revolution in the war, which would negate all French successes on the frontiers of the British colonies, and remove at once the pressure that constricted these to their narrow coastal ribbon. This was plain to Lord Loudon, British commander-in-chief in North America from mid-1756, and he had determined to go straight for Quebec as in his 1757 campaign, assembling troops and making his dispositions carefully for that purpose. If he could get Quebec, he was persuaded—and he was a careful planner—Louisburg could be attended to later. While he was planning, the extraordinary Pitt had at last come to power in England, backed by popular support and with ideas of his own. These dislocated Loudon's, without ensuring all the preliminaries to success. Pitt was convinced that Louisburg and Quebec must both be taken, but in that order; and he could argue powerfully that he was right, on the military principle that in proceeding to one objective, you should not leave a dangerous threat to your communications behind you. Undoubtedly Louisburg would have been that, if a powerful French fleet were based upon it. For Louisburg was a harbour as well as a fortress, just below Cape Breton, the northern tip of the south-eastern coast of Cape Breton island: as a harbour, it could accommodate a large fleet; as a fortress it commanded the approach between Newfoundland and Cape Breton island to the Gulf of St Lawrence; as a considerable town and a port, it was a thriving centre of trade and of the French fishery, and had been in the previous war the thriving headquarters of privateering enterprise against British colonial commerce. It was this last characteristic that led the redoubtable Colonel Pepperrell of Massachusetts, together with Admiral Warren, to attack and take the place in 1745. It had been handed back at the peace in exchange for Madras, regardless of colonial rage; since when the French, determined that it should not be taken again, had poured money and work into its improvement. It had a strong garrison. It had also, through a good part of the year, the protection of the dense fogs that hung over that part of the Atlantic ocean, a
Pitt, then, in 1757 wanted Louisburg, and set Loudon to take it. He was generous with reinforcements, despatching them with the squadron commanded by Holburne. But even a Pitt could not command the weather. Contrary winds and gales kept Holburne from Halifax till July, by which time the French, well up in British plans, had been able to install a strong fleet and their own reinforcements in Louisburg; and from late June to late autumn the protective fog was thick. The fortress could be still more strongly fortified. Loudon after a council of war very wisely decided to abandon the project for that season; the French fleet, needed at home, declined to waste time and resources fighting Holburne; and towards the end of September a great southerly hurricane caught the British ships eight or ten leagues off Louisburg, forced them towards the shore for two days, and in another day, if it had continued, would have destroyed them all. It was this tempest that had so badly battered the The date is from Simcoe's Eagle. Loudon paid for his wisdom, as he had grimly anticipated, by his recall. Pitt demanded brilliance, not Fabian strategy. He planned again for 1758; in that year he wanted both Louisburg and Quebec. His new general was Jeffrey Amherst, and one of Amherst's three brigadiers, for the Louisburg enterprise, was Pembroke log, Adm 51/686; but the dates given in various sources by no means coincide.Pembroke. They picked up transports, crossed the Atlantic by way of Tenerife and Bermuda, and were at Halifax by 9 May, the Pembroke having had
This time luck was indeed on the side of the British, ill-hap on the side of the French. The French fleet returning home from the Louisburg operation of the previous year brought ship-fever with it: two thousand men died on the passage, and at Brest ten thousand more. A Mediterranean action of March 1758 revenged the defeat of Byng. A great fleet that it was hoped to send across the Atlantic was kept at home to meet a rumoured British movement against the coasts of France. Hawke in the Bay of Biscay prevented any actual large despatch of ships. Of those that did succeed in slipping into Louisburg harbour four out of five ships of the line had come Adm 52/978.en flûte—that is, with stores in the room of guns. The fortress was effectively cut off from relief. The military and naval commanders at Louisburg could not agree, though that is unlikely to have affected the outcome. On the other hand Boscawen and Amherst co-operated to perfection; seamen not merely put the troops, the heavy naval guns and supplies on shore—losing a hundred boats in the process—but helped to serve the guns and siege works; and the weather, though unkind, was not unkind enough to render the fleet other than a secure base. Strong gales in the middle of June made the Pembroke and other ships cut their cables and put to sea, but they were back in two days. The French blocked the harbour-mouth by sinking four ships in it, but blocking the harbour was of little avail when the attack was from the land. On 26 June the siege guns opened up, and the batteries were steadily pressed closer to the walls. On 15 July a fast frigate, the Aréthuse, escaped with the ominous tidings for France. On 21 July a shell from a heavy battery exploded the magazine of the Célèbre, 64, and set fire to two other ships of the line as well: all three burnt
Pembroke writing);Bienfaisant was towed off, but the Prudent, aground at low tide, could not be moved and was set on fire. On 26 July the Governor surrendered.
The day after the surrender, the master of the Holland to Lieut-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 11 January 1792. His letter is printed in Ontario Historical Society, Pembroke was ashore at Kennington Cove, where Wolfe had made his landing seven weeks before. His curiosity was much aroused by the behaviour of a man carrying a small square table, supported by a tripod; the man would set his table down so that he could squint along the top in various directions, after which he would make notes in a pocket-book. This man in his turn noticed Cook, and they struck up a conversation. He was a military engineer and surveyor in a regiment under Wolfe; he was making a plan of the place and its encampments, and the instrument he was using was known as a plane table; with it he was observing angles. His name was Papers and Records, XXI (1924), 18–19.Pembroke was moored in Louisburg harbour, and one cannot imagine that Cook and Holland parted immediately.
According to Holland, it was agreed by Wolfe and Simcoe that the British force could go straight on and take Quebec that autumn, as Pitt had planned, ibid., 19. R. A. Skelton, Pembroke, to raid and destroy French settlements at the Bay of Gaspé and other places on the Gulf of St Lawrence and at the entrance to the river—the northern part of what is now New Brunswick. It was inglorious service, though it did deprive Quebec of further provision, in the way of fish, as well as render the fishing population miserable and take a few of them prisoner. A few small prizes were taken also, what provision they had was transferred to the squadron—the Pembroke got some bread, butter and wine—and the seven line-of-battle ships, having burnt a sloop and a schooner, returned to Louisburg, where they lay at anchor from 2 October to 14 November. Rather more interesting and useful than these minor acts of war was a small piece of work done by Mr Cook; and we can perhaps see in this directly the influence of his captain and of his new acquaintance James Cook Surveyor of Newfoundland (San Francisco, 1965), 22; R A. Skelton and R. V. Tooley, The Marine Surveys of James Cook in North America 1758–1768 (London, 1967), 13. No
Adm 51/686, 10 October, 12 October 1758.
For Halifax, cold and windy as it was, this praise at least can be given, that its harbour did not freeze over, not even in the particularly long and hard winter of 1758–9, however much floating ice from the north knocked at the shores outside. Nor was that winter for seamen in general a time of vast excitement: there was little for anyone to record in his log beyond the wind and the weather—in January a very hard frost, then snow—and the routine of cleaning the ship, its repair, overhauling the hold, the rigging and sails, the receipt of stores, the movement of boats, the coming and going of ships, court martials for offences mostly minor (the fruit, no doubt, often enough of deadly boredom) and floggings round the fleet. Simcoe's men do not seem to have been penalised by this sort of savagery. Day after day a single line serves the Adm 51/686, 11 December. Adm 51/686, 52/978 (Cook), 6 January 1759. Adm 51/686, 11 January. Adm 52/978, 19 February. Adm 52/978, 13 February.Pembroke's master as a record of things remarkable; sometimes he runs to three lines, now and again to more. In December early one morning the house on shore where the sailmakers lodged is burnt down with the sailmakers' assistant and 24 yards of duck;Captain, is court-martialled on board the Pembroke for disobeying the surgeon's orders, and suspended for two months;e short rib in a very dangerous manner’;Am Punished Felix Flarity for Mutinous Beheavour at Cornwallis's Island Alexdr Lumsden Pursers Steward for Setling in the Ship & Selling Ten Gallns of Wine for a Watch, Jn° Tally for Selling the Watch for the Said Wine, & Ben: Hawkings for takeing Wine and Provisions out of the Steward Room, without the Pursers Knowledge, had a Survey on all the Pursers Stores Provisions & c.’
From that period, I had the honor of a most intimate and friendly acquaintance with your worthy father, and during our stay at Halifax, whenever I could get a moment of time from my duty, I was on board the ‘Mr Thos Jeffrey’ was Thomas Jefferys, ‘Engraver, Geographer to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales’ (to quote his bill heading), map, chart and print seller, of Charing Cross, c. 1750/71. After his death in 1771 he was succeeded in the business by his partner William Faden. See also pp. 51–2 below and p. 52, n. 1 below to this chapter. Ontario Historical Society, Pembroke where the great cabin, dedicated to scientific purposes and mostly taken up with a drawing table, furnished no room for idlers. Under Capt. Simcoe's eye, Mr. Cook and myself compiled materials for a Chart of the Gulf and River St. Lawrence, which plan at his decease was dedicated to Papers and Records, XXI (1924), 19.
Little, unfortunately, is known of See Charnock, Biographia Navalis, V, 259. He had the misfortune to be a member of Byng's court martial (‘his ship then lying at Portsmouth’). Duncan C. Scott, John Graves Simcoe (Toronto, 1905), has a page or two, including the information that he had a predilection also for the army and left a treatise on military tactics which was considered of value in its day—though apparently unpublished.
This has been suggested, but the title-page, though endearing, is a trifle deceptive: ‘The Young Mathematician's Companion, being a compleat Tutor to the Mathematicks; Whereby the Young Beginner may be early Instructed; those who have lost the Opportunity of learning in their Youth may with very little Pains, and in a short Time become Proficients in this delightful and instructive Science, and such whose Business it is to teach, may receive much Useful Assistance… . The whole Interspersed with delightful and Useful Questions, and adorned with proper Schemes in order to excite Curiosity, and form the Minds of Youth. By Charles Leadbetter, Teacher of the Mathematicks.’ London, 1739; 2nd ed. 1748. There are sections on arithmetic, geometry, plain and spherical trigonometry, astronomy, ‘Dyalling’, and a final one on surveying. The second edition is a full and meaty volume of 354 pp., and probably just what Cook needed.
The St Lawrence charts compiled at that time (if Holland's memory was correct) could indeed have been nothing more than compilations from the ‘plans in Admiral Durell's possession’—but
t Laurence’ published by Jefferys in 1757; though this may have been corrected in part by Simcoe from his observations when the Pembroke was with Wolfe's expedition at the mouth of the river in September 1758 (Chaleur Bay and Gaspé are really in the gulf); for alterations made by Cook and Holland ‘coming up the River’ could have been made only when the Quebec expedition was already in train, and could not possibly have been incorporated in any published charts which ‘came out prior to our sailing from Halifax for Quebec in 1759’. Any well-compiled chart of the Gulf, however, would have been useful, even before the fleet got into the river; and it is possible that Cook's contribution towards the taking of Quebec began in this way.
It is possible, too, or probable, that to this period belongs the first example of ‘sailing directions’ by Cook himself now extant—one of those ‘Descriptions for sailing in and out of Ports, with soundings, Marks for particular Rocks, Shoals, &c. with the Latt The d Longd, Tides, and Variation of the Compass’, which ships' masters were encouraged in general terms to produce and produced not very frequently. These directions are for the ‘Harbour of Louisbourg in Cape Breton’.Ms is now in the Houghton Library, Harvard.1 N (a few minutes out); the ‘Longitude by Computation’ is a blank. Although the final figure of the date is gone, it must have been 1758, to match the heading of the column, ‘Place and Time when there’; while the wreck of the Prudent, used as a mark, further confines the date. After 1760 these sailing directions would lose some of their value; for Cook also used as a mark for mariners the ‘Grand Battery’. In the spring of that year
The cold and studious winter drew to its end. All masters and captains were now faced with the completion of the business that
The one was the navigation, by a great fleet of line-of-battle ships and transports, of the noble four-hundred-mile estuary of the St Lawrence river, at the inner end of which, on the high abrupt cliff, the city and the fortress stood. That navigation the British were sure
Quoted by Kitson, 38.
There had been previous expeditions for the conquest of Quebec. The first was a New England enterprise commanded by Sir
Saunders and Wolfe sailed from Spithead on 14 February 1759. They found it impossible to get into Louisburg, the concentration point where they were to embark troops, because of the ice. This was on 21 April. They sailed on to Halifax. Here Durell was still lying, at the end of the month, detained at single anchor by ice and adverse winds, though they had expected him by then to be in the St Lawrence. Wolfe thought very meanly of Durell, and others have thought he might have got into the St Lawrence earlier than he did; but after the business was over Saunders ‘paid him the highest compliments’, and he was included in the House of Commons' vote of thanks. He bad been promoted rear-admiral of the blue while at Louisburg, and rear-admiral of the red in February 1759.—Charnock, V, 167–70. Adm 52/978. Adm 52/978, 17 May (p.m.) Wheelock is a rather shadowy figure. He had later West Indies and American service, commanded the Adm 52/978, 10 June 1759. Adm 51/686, 15 June 1759.Am] tackd Close along Side the Ice wch Stretch' away to the Ese as far as Coul'd be distinguished from the Mast Head.’t Jno Simcoe & fired 20 Guns half a Miniute between Each Gun.’Squirrel—good promotion, but he was to miss some exciting moments in the Squirrel later on.Sultan, 74, in 1778, and died in early 1779. Charnock, VI, 286.Pembroke, up to the Ile aux Coudres. He captured three provisioners, and learnt that Bougainville, on his return from France, had been able to slip into the river ahead of him with a small convoy, now safe at Quebec; he captured also a number of French river-pilots, by the simple expedient of tempting them on board by a show of French colours. Though his purpose may have been general reconnaissance—he landed some troops on the island and found it empty of inhabitants, as was Ile d'Orleans, all having departed for the city—he developed reconnaissance into a very useful piece of special work. He ordered one of his senior captains to take four naval vessels—two of which were the Pembroke and the Squirrel—and his three transports over to the Ile d'Orleans
d satisfied with being aquanted with ye Channel’;Squirrel, ‘she being the Western Ship in order to prevent any assault from the Enemy’.Squirrel lost her yawl. The French had hastily erected a battery to bombard the ships; it did a little harm, forcing them to change their positions, but could not be maintained for long and was withdrawn.
While these preliminaries, of sounding, marking and direction-finding, were going on, Saunders with his great fleet of ships of war, transports, and supplementary vessels, was slowly and irreversibly moving up the river, and, because of the care taken, in perfect safety: nine ships of the line and thirteen frigates to add to Durell's, and 119 transports. It may be noted that there were few ships of the greatest size: Saunders' flagship, the Adm 52/978. John Knox, C. P. Stacey, Neptune, carried ninety guns; Durell's, the Princess Amelia, eighty; the Royal William was an 84-gun ship, the Northumberland a seventy; but among the others the Pembroke with her sixty guns ranked as one of the largest. Saunders left Halifax on 13 May and Louisburg on the 15th, entered the gulf on 4 June, and on 18 June was anchored off Bic and Barnaby. A week later the whole fleet passed the Traverse, without losing a single vessel of any kind. We have Cook's log for 25 June: ‘at 11 Am a Sig for all Boats man's & arm'd, in order to go & Lay in the Traverse, as Buoys for the Ships to come up';Goodwill, who put his mate at the helm, and went to the stem himself with a speaking trumpet. ‘I went forward
An Historical Journal of the Campaigns in North America (London, 1769), 1, 290–1.Neptune, waiting on a special pilot at the Ile aux Coudres. It was a grim sight for Montcalm, and with grim acerbity, thinking of his own people, he remarked to a correspondent that there was now hope of having a good chart of the river ‘next year’.Quebec, 1759 (Toronto, 1959), 42.
While he wavered and worried, and time slipped by, there was a great deal for masters, and other seamen, to do. Every moment meant boat work. Wolfe's first action had been to land men and stores on the south end of Ile d'Orleans, and set up a hospital there. The position was fortified. At the end of June he began to occupy the Point Levis position, stimulated by Saunders through Wheelock. Opposition was weak, and before long a battery was set up, the Adm 52/978, 30 July.Pembroke's long boat helping the artillery: Saunders thus need not fear French guns driving his ships from their anchorage, and the British could bombard the city. Early in July, having discarded the idea of landing above it, Wolfe took some of his troops across to the north shore, east of the Montmorency falls—that is, east of Montcalm's entrenchments and other land defences, with the hope of somehow forcing a battle from that direction. Montcalm was playing for time. If he could hold out through the summer and early autumn, even at the cost of near-starvation, and avoid sacrificing his army to the better-trained British, then the river-ice, or its threat, would do his work for him. The time his enemies had was, after all, limited. Their small boats by no means had it all their own way. The French gun-boats or ‘floating batteries’ were active on the water; the French guns on shore discouraged too much rashness close in. Prisoners were taken by both sides. On the night of 18–19 July seven ships, including the frigates Diana and Squirrel, proved the feasibility of getting through the Narrows, under inefficient bombardment from Quebec, returned by the Point Levis guns. The Diana, fouled by a sloop, ran aground, the Richmond went to her aid, and the Pembroke—which otherwise seems to have been anchored off Point Levis from 7 July to 19 September—was involved: ‘at 2 pm’, says Cook, ‘Cut and Slipt pr order of the admch was Attackd by a Number of the Enemys Row boats, wch Row'd off as Soon as we got up … Sent the Long boate and 30 Men on Bd the Dianna to assist in geting her guns out, at 4 fired a 24 pd Shot at the Enemys Row boats going down the River.’ That passage through the Narrows and up the river in the end proved the secret of victory.
Meanwhile, and always, it seems, sounding continued. Wherever troops landed they had to be taken there in transports, ships' boats, flat boats; the nature of the shore and currents had to be known. A second, most formidable, attempt to destroy the fleet by fire, by sending down on the tide a hundred fathom-long chain of rafts loaded with combustibles and explosives and shot—this time not
Stacey, 74. Wolfe to Saunders, 30 August 1759, in Beckles Willson, Life and Letters of James Wolfe (London, 1909), 461. Saunders was present in a boat himself.
The boat activity continued. At some indeterminate time Cook may have had the adventure recounted by Kippis, without authority given. There is nothing inherently impossible about the story,
The Adm 1/482, 5 September 1759.Eagle, now in the Stirling Castle, was cut off by the enemy while sounding between the island and the Montmorency falls, and lost his ship's barge and its furniture, as well as one man killed; and it is not improbable that such a story should have been transferred to Cook, as a man who took soundings, and was later more known to fame.Stirling Castle's barge was certainly so taken, on 7 July; but Cook is not likely to have been in it. Bisset may have been, though there is nothing to indicate that he was. Kitson, 45, tells the story about Bisset; Carrington, 28, casts doubt on it.Pembroke and fourteen others, were stationed off Point Levis; there were eleven at Ile Madame, among them the Princess Amelia, Durell's flagship; and small vessels were cruising about and watching the shores singly. This was the scene on the British side at that moment.
Wolfe was persuaded that if he could not succeed by the end of September he, and his expedition, would have to go home, leaving Montcalm reprieved for yet another year. The crisis was close. He determined where he should land, at the foot of the cliff not far above the city—not at all the best place to land, and one that gave Admiral Holmes, said that seaman afterwards, ‘the most hazardous and difficult Task I was ever engaged in’. Stacey, 132. Adm 51/686, 12 September.
Modt& Cloudy weathrat 6 pm unmoord and hov'd in to half a Cable on the Best Bower, at midnight all the Row Boats in the fleet made a faint to Land at Beauport in order to Draw the Enemys Attention that way to favor the Landing of the Troops above the Town on the north Shoar, wchwas done with little oposition our Batteries at Point [Levis] Keept a Continuell fire against the Town all night, at 8 am, the Adm made the Sig for all Boats man'd and Arm'd to go to point Levi Weigh'd and Drop'd higher up, at 10 the English Army Commanddby Gen Wolf, attacked the french under the Comdof Gen Montcalm in the field of Aberham behind Quebec, and Tottally Defeated them, Continued the Pursute to the very Gates of the City, afterwards the[y] Begun to form the necessary Desposions for Carring on the Seize, adm Holmes hig[h]ste'd his flag on Board the Loestoff [Lowestoft] above the Town.Adm 52/978, 13 September.
It is curious that neither of these sailors mentions the fate of the generals. On 18 September Quebec capitulated, and British troops marched in: ‘at 6', says our master's log, ‘every Ship in the fleet Sent a Boat mand and Arm'd, und Adm 52/978, 19 September.r the Comd of Capt Palleser, who whent and took Poss[ess]ion of the Lower Town.’
That log, certainly now in the hand of a different master, Mr John Cleader, chronicles Cook's next movement: ‘I, came on board & supersceeded M Adm 52/978, Part V. The entry is for 30 September, though Cleader begins to write the log on Monday 24th. Wheelock's log, Adm 51/686, 23 September.r Coock the Master, who was apointed for ye Northumberland’. This movement took place on 23 September, ‘per order of Admiral Saunders’, says Captain Wheelock.
The 70-gun Charnock, VI, 345–6. He died in 1763. Skelton lists them, Northumberland carried a complement of five hundred: technically, like the Pembroke, she was a 3rd-rate. Her captain was Alexander, Lord Colville, who had been in that post since 1753. A little mystery attaches to the fact that the ship was now, simultaneously with Cook's appointment, given a second captain, William Adams, of the Hunter sloop, who had only the previous year been appointed commander: it may have been a personal favour to which Saunders consented, merely to give him rank as post-captain;Northumberland, that steady serious man, we must suppose him plunged once more in calculations abstruse to his fellows, perhaps exercising his unaided hand at bits of surveying; because it was probably this season, and the next one at Halifax, that he was referring to, when the young Lieutenant King, his eager admirer, in days to come listened to his conversation. ‘It was here, as I have often heard him say, that, during a hard winter, he first read Euclid, and applied himself to the study of mathematics and astronomy, without any other assistance, than what a few books, and his own industry, afforded him.’A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean…for making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere (London, 1784), III, 47. King did not get his facts always quite right.James Cook Surveyor of Newfoundland, 9, as Public Archives of Canada T.50/4; British Museum, Add. Ms 31360.9; Admiralty Library, Ms 20.
Meanwhile in England Saunders was going through his papers,
Saunders to Clevland, 22 April 1760, Adm 1/482. This is the large t Laurence, from the Island of Anticosti to the Falls of Richelieu: with all the Islands, Rocks, Shoals and Soundings … Taken by Order of r Vice-Admiral of the Blue, and Commander in Chief of His Majesty's Ships in the Expedition against Quebec in 1759.’ It bore a note by Saunders, dated ‘Pall Mall, May 1st 1760’, on its compilation: ‘This Chart was drawn from particular Surveys of the following Places; and Published for the Use of the British Navigators, by Command of the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty.’ The ‘following Places’ were ten in number (including the famous Traverse, both old and new) all appearing as insets on a larger scale, together with seventeen ‘profiles’ of the coast about the river; and there is the additional note, ‘The Distances between the Island of Coudre, the Island of Orleans, the Pillar Rocks, and Shoals in the South Channel were accurately determined by Triangles. The other parts of this Chart, were taken from the best French Draughts of this River.’ It seems to be the chart which Ms chart (221/2 in. × 1191/2 in.) of the St Lawrence in Cook's hand in the National Maritime Museum (from the Hydrographic Department of the Admiralty), inscribed ‘To The Right Honble the Lord Colvill Rear Admiral of the White Squadron of His Majesty's Fleet This Chart of the River St. Laurence from Green Island to Cape Carrouge is most Humbly Dedicated by His Lordships most Humble Servant Jam3 Cook.’ The reference to Colville as Rear-Admiral indicates that this must have been dedicated, if not drawn, after October 1762 (when the engraved chart had existed for two years), as his promotion came in November of that month; he hoisted his flag in Neptune 7 November. of Skelton, op, cit., 21, “presumably drawn after September 1759'. There is a copy, not in Cook's hand, in the Hydrographic Department. There is another copy in the Public Archives of Canada: this is pretty obviously by Cook himself, except for two sets of ‘Remarks’ in a clerkly hand of great neatness. These must all have some close relation with the Saunders/Jefierys chart, which Skelton and Tooley (Marine Surveys, 13) unhesitatingly identify with the chart of Holland's reminiscence (though for the dates, 1759–60, and ‘spring of 1760’ given by them one should read 1758–9 and ‘spring of 1759’). The suggestion seems inescapable that Holland confused his years. In the British Museum, Add. Ms 31360 (which is mainly a collection of Pacific charts) is, f. 14, a separate coloured drawing in Cook's hand; ‘A Plan of the Traverse or Passage from Cape Torment into the South-Channel of Orleans by Jam3 Cook’.North American Pilot, the collection which first appeared in 1775, and incorporated so much of Cook's work.
Colville's departure from Halifax on 22 April was a fortnight earlier than Durell had been able to sail the previous year, though it was a month later than his planned time of departure. Ice floes in the gulf and heavy winds had kept him in harbour; even two days after he had sailed the Adm 51/3925 (Adams), 24–5 April, 12 May 1760; Colville to Clevland, from Halifax, 10 April 1761, Adm 1/482. Colville (summarised) says the ice from the Gulf of St Lawrence and the Gulf of Canso never reached as far west as Halifax; it collected in compact bodies on the south coast of Cape Breton Island; we ran among it in dark night last year, it closed, and we were stuck for two days till the swell rose and made a small opening; luckily the weather was moderate.Northumberland with other ships was stuck fast in ice, and remained thus for twenty-four hours, still far short of Cabot Strait, while they had to run through a field of ice as late as 12 May.
The last scenes had been military, not naval ones. There was little for sailors to do at Quebec but see to the embarkation of troops, look after their ships, witness punishments—and, no doubt, make soundings, take angles, chart, sketch the shores, work up notes into sailing directions. The Adm 51/3925 (Adams), 12 July 1760. Cook made use of his name later on the coast of Australia. His career, with its unhappy end, is noticed in Charnock, VI, 386–7.Northumberland's master may have witnessed the hanging at the Vanguard's yardarm of one miserable fellow who with two companions left the hospital at Point Levis without leave; picked up out of a canoe a few days later they were all condemned to death for desertion, but on account of their families ‘whose subsistence must depend on their labour’ the court martial recommended lenity and the execution of only one; so ‘the Commodore having pardon'd two of them, they Cast Lotts who should dye, he whose Lott it was, was Executed Accordingly’.Vanguard parted a cable and fouled the Northumberland. The longboat of the Northumberland, her anchor caught in a transport's cable, was carried to the bottom, and there was four days' labour in getting her up, and probably some strong words from the master. On 22 September Captain William Adams went to the Diana, 32-gun frigate, and Nathaniel Bateman of the 20-gun Eurus came to the Northumberland in his place, and seems to have made more of an impression on Cook.
It is obvious that though the North American squadron continued to exist, there was little for it to do. The naval war was being conducted in the West Indies and the Mediterranean, in the blockade of the French Atlantic ports, in Indian seas. So the chief activity of those months in Halifax harbour once again seems to one who reads the logs to have been the activity of the bosun's mate, as he applied the standard dozen lashes for ‘neglect of duty’, with more exceptional numbers, even hundreds, for more exceptional offences. Some men seem to have been particularly cursed by fate. Edward Lovely is punished on 6 November ‘for thieft’; on 1 April he gets thirteen lashes alongside each ship for ‘Severall Crimes and Misdimeniours’, and next day twelve lashes similarly, being the remainder of his punishment; on 6 August 1761 Edward Lovely is sentenced to receive ‘600 Lashes & Vincent Dunnavan belonging to the Norwich to receive 500 lashes the former for absenting himself from the ship and the Latter for Desertion’, Adm 51/3925 (Bateman), 6 August 1761. It is hard now to distinguish the different degrees of turpitude. William Buckland got 12 lashes for staying on shore without leave, ibid., 12 August; Robert Boswell got 24 and James Barrett is ‘for absenting themselves from the ship without leave’, ibid., 20 August. Presumably the unlucky and savagely treated Lovely, charged in much the same way as these last two, had made a determined effort to desert. Adm 50/22.
Possibly the diversion was welcomed when the Adm 52/959 (Cook), 13 February, 2 March, 30 June 1762; Adm 51/3925 (Bateman), 28 December 1761 — 19 February 1762, 18 May 1762. Colville to Clevland, 10 April 1761, Adm 1/482. Adm 52/959, 25 July 1761.Charming Nancy, a snow from London, struck a rock at the entrance of the harbour and sank, and had to be raised; or when Colville at last thought time had come to exercise his men at gunnery and ‘fire'd at Marks'; or when there was a fire in the town and a party rushed on shore to help put it out. There was an outbreak of sickness in January 1762, but that could hardly be called a diversion: a suspicion apparently arose of some contagious element, because the dead were interred with their bedding and clothes, and the crew were set to scrub hammocks and ship.
On this scene, not of idleness perhaps, but of comparative leisure, on 10 July 1762 a brig arrived with the news that St John's in Newfoundland had surrendered to the French. It was a last flurry of French activity in North America, and it caused a good deal of British excitement. Under the provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 fishing rights on the coasts of Newfoundland had been divided between the French and the British—the French on the north and west, the British elsewhere. The hostilities of the present war had put an end to the French cod-fishery and placed an enorously profitable monopoly in the hands of the British. Now, thought the French, to seize the main town (true, an exceedingly small one) on the island, and to retain it until peace was negotiated, while destroying all possible British fishing establishments, would at once cast great confusion on the fishery and provide an excellent bargaining counter. St John's had never been well defended by land, what defences it had were in decay; the British fleet, which must be its only real defence (and the island's) was well scattered. To seize the place would be a gamble, but a gamble worth taking. A squadron of four ships and a bomb-ketch, with eight hundred picked troops, accordingly slipped out of Brest and through the blockade in a fog, received the surrender of St John's on 27 June, devastated the bays to the northward, and then concentrated their forces at the town, which they proceeded to fortify with some efficiency for the first time in its existence. But the gamble was not to succeed. Captain Thomas Graves, a new governor for Newfoundland, not yet arrived, was found at sea in the frigate Adm 52/959, 19 September (p.m.) 1761.Antelope, and urgently sent marines to reinforce the Isle of Boys, as a defensible position; then he made for Placentia, on the western side of the isthmus of Avalon, roughly opposite St John's, to raise defences there. Amherst, now at New York, apprised in haste, as immediately sent off a body of troops under his brother Lieutenant-Colonel William Amherst to be convoyed by an armed Massachusetts vessel, the King George. This vessel, however, joined Colville, who early in August had moved to Chedabucto Bay, at the north-eastern end of Nova Scotia; and on
Northumberland and Gosport, Captain John Jervis—a name bound for renown—sailed for Placentia without the transports. Here they strengthened the garrison with a party of marines, and having met Graves, sailed again with the Antelope and Syren added to the squadron, to cruise off the east coast of Avalon lest French reinforcements should be on the way. Off the Bay Bulls, south of St John's, Colville impressed fourteen men from a British sloop, and Jervis took a French one; then they moored in the Bay Bulls for a day or two to attend the rigging and take in water, and resumed the cruise. Off Cape Spear on 12 September the transports came up with them; the troops were landed next day at Tor Bay, three leagues to the north of St John's, and at once began their advance. They had artillery; on the 16th they were near enough to clear out a small adjoining harbour called Kitty Vitty or Quidi Vidi, which the French had blocked with shallops. The force was overwhelming, in spite of improved defences; there was nothing the French ships could usefully do, they could not even take off their troops; in a thick fog they slipped out of St John's, as they had slipped out of Brest four months before; and, a gale having blown the British squadron off the immediate coast, got clean away. Colville was highly indignant at this ‘shameful flight’ for no doubt he had expected a portion of glory. On 18 September the abandoned French commander gave in; and in the evening, writes the master, ‘came on bd Lieut. Cook of the Gosport, with an acct of the Surrender… .’Northumberland went into St John's. A day later, the 20th, arrived a man whom Cook had met before. This was Captain Palliser, despatched from England with a small but strong squadron as soon as the news was known. Thus there were concentrated at St John's, together with a number of ships such as the fishing harbour had not earlier seen, three men of signal importance for Cook's career, Colville, Graves and Palliser; and Cook again at this moment gave proof of his technical skill.
In Amherst's force was Captain J. F. W. DesBarres, like Holland a military engineer and surveyor who was to attain great eminence in the near future in North America; and in Conception Bay, to the west of the peninsula on which St John's stood, were the settlements of Carbonear and Harbour Grace, both of importance to the fisheries. Colville, on arriving in England, some weeks later, wrote to the Admiralty.
I have mentioned in another Letter that the Fortifications on the Island of Carbonera, were entirely destroyed by the Enemy. Colonel Amherst sent thither Mr. Desbarres an Engineer, who surveyed the Island and drew a Plan for fortifying it with new Works: when these are finished, the Enterprize's six guns will be ready to mount on them…. Mr. Cook, master of the Northumberland, accompanied Mr. Desbarres. He has made a Draught of Harbour Grace, and the Bay of Carbonera; both which are in a great measure commanded by the Island, which lies off a Point of Land between them. Hitherto we have had a very imperfect Knowledge of these Places; but Mr. Cook who was particularly carefull in sounding them, has discovered that Ships of any size may ly in safety both in Harbour Grace and the Bay of Carbonera.Colville to Clevland, 25 October 1762, Adm 1/482.
This sort of letter could do no master harm at the Admiralty. Nor did Cook confine his attention to Harbour Grace and Carbonear Bay. His ship was moored in Placentia road for a week, in the Bay Bulls for two days, and in St John's harbour for two and a half weeks: of all these places, and of a piece of the coast neighbouring St John's, he drew charts. He also wrote descriptions, appending the dates when he made his notes, incorporating them all in one large ‘Description of the Sea Coast of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island and Newfoundland’, with sailing directions added. He incorporates the similar work he had done in 1758; for the stretch of Nova Scotian coast from Cape Sambro to Cape Canso he mentions that of 1758, 1759, 1760 and 1762. He had never, it is clear, missed a chance for scrutiny; yet of this latter stretch he remarks, ‘A good Survey of this coast with the harbours thereon seems to be much wanting, it certainly would be found usefull to this Colony and to Navigation in general.’ This particular document has been printed in the Report of the Board of Trustees of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia For the Year 1958 (Halifax, N.S., 1959), from the holograph in the National Library of Australia, Canberra. With this copy are charts of Harbour Grace and Carbonear, and the river St John (New Brunswick). The Admiralty Library, Ms 20, also has the sailing directions, signed by Bateman and Cook, the charts mentioned in the text, and a page of views. All the charts are signed by Cook, except one of Halifax. There are holograph sailing directions for the St Lawrence in both the National Library of Australia and the Public Archives of Canada. Presumably all these manuscripts belong to the material handed to the Admiralty by Cook, as referred to by Colville in his letter quoted on p. 59 below. I have had the advantage of some independent typescript notes made on these Northumberland Mss by Mr Skelton.
Meanwhile the war was over. In North America the French were confined to New Orleans and the Mississippi valley. The Adm 52/959, 11 November 1762. Kitson, 59.Enterprize,
Northumberland regained her marines from Placentia, and on 7 October sailed from St John's for home in company with Palliser's three ships. With favouring winds, and a few chases, though no prize, they reached Spithead in nineteen days. On 30 October Colville struck his commodore's flag. He was promoted Rear-Admiral of the White. The master too departed. The last entry in his journal is for 11 November: ‘Strong gales and Sqly with Showers of rain, Clear'd out the Spirit room for takeing in the wine and Brandy, Ship-wrights Still on Board. Jas Cook.’
Mr Cook late Master of the Northumberland acquaints me that he has laid before their Lordships all his Draughts and Observations, relating to the River St Lawrence, Part of the Coast of Nova Scotia, and of Newfoundland.
On this Occasion, I beg leave to inform their Lordships, that from my Experience of Mr Cook's Genius and Capacity, I think him well qualified for the Work he has performed, and for greater Undertakings of the same kind.—These Draughts being made under my own Eye I can venture to say, they may be the means of directing many in the right way, but cannot mislead any.
Colville to Clevland, 30 December 1762, Adm 1/482.
The sole comment Mr Clevland wrote upon this communication was ‘Recd’. It cannot nevertheless have been without its effect.
Charts, Large and small, harbour plans, ‘views’, descriptions, sailing directions—all these things represent experience, professional education, a mastery of a particular sort. We recur inevitably to Holland's account of the good advice that Simcoe had given in the Halifax winter: ‘he told Capt. Cook that as he had mentioned to several of his friends in power, the necessity of having surveys of these parts and astronomical observations made as soon as peace was restored, he would recommend him to make himself competent to the business….’ Cook had made himself competent to the business, as if driven by a sober but compulsive ambition. What now? He must sometimes, as a thoughtful man, have considered the past seven and a half years, since he offered himself to the navy at Wapping: he could hardly have been dissatisfied with his advancement since then. He was now thirty-four; he had been fortunate in some of his friends—Walker, Simcoe, Holland—but they were not men who could send him rocketing to eminence, and eminence was a thing he could scarcely have dreamed of. He had worked hard, as it was natural for him to work hard. If he wished to meditate on experience, he could meditate not merely on his introduction to the plane-table and trigonometry and astronomy, but on the North Sea and the Atlantic; on enough battle to satisfy the ordinary man without particular taste for fire-eating; on the behaviour of men crowded by hundreds into ships and the mentality of sailors in general; on naval discipline and its accepted cruelty of hanging and flogging; on the appalling state of naval health. We know, from his subsequent words and actions, that there were things in his experience that revolted him. We would not know it from anything recorded as said or done by him up to this time, or for some time after. He assimilated his experience. He added to it, by getting married.
He took this step within six weeks of departing from the Why George Downing of Little Wakering? It is an odd little puzzle. The vicar of St Margaret's, Barking, was Christopher Musgrave, though it appears from the Parish Register, 1754–67, that his curate, R. Carter, carried out most of the marriages.Northumberland, on 21 December 1762. Of its preliminaries, any more than
He was to go again to North American waters, and again to where he had last been, to Newfoundland: this time not as the master of a line-of-battle ship, but as a surveyor. Simcoe's advice was bearing fruit. Cook was by no means the only surveyor sent out at this time. Under the treaty of Paris, signed on 10 February 1763, Britain was faced with an enormous acquisition of territory. Settlers were already heading into the interior—was not that the history of America ever since the first landings?—and the mapping of the country called for an effort as vast as its extent. Nor was the imperial territory as it had existed before the war adequately surveyed. The effort made was serious, and in the 60's and 70's an extraordinary amount of valuable work was done, the results of which put to shame contemporary recording of the counties and coasts of England. The two great names on the continent are those of men Cook knew, Holland and DesBarres, the former from 1764 ‘His Majesty's Surveyor General for the Northern District of North America’, and taking within his sphere of competence the province of Massachusetts Bay as well as Canada and the islands of the Gulf of St Lawrence. He worked for the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, and it is interesting to see the note on one or two of the coastal plans produced by his deputies that shoals and soundings had to be omitted ‘for want of Naval Assistance’. Admiralty, Hydrographic Dept., 9/73; A7353/77.
It seems highly probable that he had in his mind not merely a necessity, but the person to meet it. He had been impressed by Cook's activity after the restoration of the island; had conversed with this unusually active master, and been impressed by the conversation; had been impressed, too, by what was said of him by Colville and Palliser We can certainly rely on this information given by Graves to Clevland, 2 January 1763, Adm 1/1836.Ms 2180.Antelope in the river Tagus, 2 January 1763, on his return from his first season of government: ‘the Newfound Land station which I have been upon two years though only the last year as Governour, has been attended with many untoward and most perplexing accidents, which as they were totally unforeseen cou'd not but embarras the more.’
On economic matters his duty was to correspond with the Board of Trade. ‘Mr Graves having represented to us’, wrote that body, ‘that the imperfect Returns hitherto made by the Governors of Newfoundland have been chiefly owing to their want of a Secretary, Surveyor, or other Person, capable of collecting Information, keeping regular accounts and making Draughts of Coasts and Harbours, for which services there has never been any allowances, and that such assistance is now become still more necessary to the Governor of Newfoundland, by the enlargement of his Government, and his instructions to report as accurately as he can the conditions, fisherys, and other material particulars of a country at present little known. We beg leave to humbly submit to your Majesty, whether it may not be expedient that such an allowance should be made.’ ‘Representation’ of 29 March 1763, quoted by Kitson, 63–4, from the Shelburne Mss.
There were office delays, of course. Graves's letters to
I have this moment seen Mr Cook and acquainted him he was to get himself ready to depart the moment the board was pleased to order him, and that he was to have 10 shil
sa day while employed on this service—He has been to enquire for a draughtsman at the Tower, but as this is a Holidayhe found hardly any one there—There are some who draw there at 1 s6da day, and others who have two shillings a day—one of which last establishment he wants to have and is assured that the Board will continue any such Person who chuses to go on their establishment upon an application from your Office made for them. It is from thisclasssetthey allways send draughtsmen with Engineers or Commanding Officers who go abroad—The additional Pay they require from your office MrCook will acquaint you of tomorrow as soon as he can see them & propose their going. If he does not find their conditions to come wthin their own office establishment, I have desired him to advertise for a draughtsman—acquaint you by letter with the terms he can bring them to, and wait your commands, as to the hireing any such, and as to the time of his setting out for the Ship.There shou'd be a Theodilite and drawings instrumt
swhich will cost about 12 or 15 £ and is a thing the ordnance always allow their People—The officers of the Yard should be orderd to supply me with two or three spare Azimith compasses & a number of Pendants of any colour to put as signals on different Points for takeing the Angles as the Survey goes on—Graves to Stephens, 5 April 1763, Adm 1/1836.
Cook had been to the Tower because that was the headquarters of the Ordnance Office with its staff of technically-trained draughtsmen, one of which he as much as an ‘engineer’ would need for assistance. A week went by, and the sign of exasperation appears, in a note headed with some ambiguity ‘Tuesday noon 1763’.
Captain Graves Compliments wait upon MrStephens and beg to know what final answer he shall give to MrCook late master of the Northumberland who is very willing to go out to Survey the Harbour & Coasts of Labrador and the draughtsman he was to get from the Tower—as they both wait to know their Lordships resolution and the footing they are to be upon….Adm 1/1836. I date this note conjecturally as 12 April. The Tuesdays in that month fall on the 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th. It can hardly belong to the 5th, the date of Graves's earlier letter, on which it seems logically to follow, with its reference to getting a draughtsman from the Tower. On the other hand, Graves's letter of 18 April implies that all dubieties were now settled. The dates of Stephens's letter to Cook about instruments, 18 April, and Graves's to Stephens of 15 April, seem to show that Graves was not informed punctually of all the developments.
Graves was evidently casting round for a second-best, in case any part of the great scheme should break down; for he adds to this enquiry another—whether a schoolmaster was allowed to a fourthrate (which his Adm 1/1836. Stephens to Cook, 13 April 1763, Adm 2/722.Antelope was) as he had heard of a good draughtsman, in the Bellona, who was willing to go out in the Antelope on that footing. This was Michael Lane, of later note, and Graves did get him transferred. Nevertheless the governor was still kept in suspense: on 15 April he was writing to Stephens again: ‘You will excuse my
r Cook, the master and an assistant for him, and whither they are to go out with us.’s Cook, Town’ that Cook's, letter ‘of this date’, the 13th, about mathematical instruments, had been communicated to the Lords, and that he was directed to supply himself with the said instruments and to send the bill to the secretary
Graves's mind must somehow have been relieved of its immediate worry—which may indeed have fallen on him partly because of his enforced absence from London to deal with some unrest in the Graves to Stephens, 18 April 1763, Adm 1/1836.Antelope at Spithead. On 18 April he reminded Stephens that it had been decided to give him orders to purchase two small vessels of about sixty tons in Newfoundland—‘The one to send with Mr Cook upon the Survey of the Coasts and Harbours’, the other for anti-smuggling or police duty—as well as to build a new hospital at St John's. The orders had not come. ‘A change at the Board takeing place and my being order'd down to my ship on account of a mutiny amongst the Crew—the affair rested where it was and I am afraid is forgotten…. I beg you will please to remind their Lordships of these things, that I may go out with proper orders relating to it. The sending out Draughtsmen to Survey the Harbours, seems to Point out the necessity of their having a Small Vessell fit to use on that business.’
‘If the Navy Board have not orders to supply these extra stores, no reason I can offer will have any weight.' Obviously Captain Graves was becoming a trifle weary of ‘forms of office’. The Navy Board was ordered to supply the articles from the yard at Plymouth. Endorsement on the letter last cited; and Admiralty to Navy Board, as April 1763, National Maritime Museum, Adm/A/2546.
Whereas we have thought fit to appoint MrJames Cook , a Person well skilled in making Surveys, and MrWilliam Test belonging to the Drawing Room in the Office of Ordnance, to go to Newfoundland in His Majesty's Ship under your Command in order to be employed in making surveys of the Coast & Harbours of that Island, and in making Drafts and Charts thereof; for which the former will be allowed Ten shillings a day and the latter six shillings in addition to what he receives from the Board of Ordnance: You are hereby required and directed to receive the said two Persons on board, and bear them on a Supernumary [sic] List for Victuals only until your return to England; and to employ them during your stay at Newfoundland as you shall see fit on the Service abovementioned.Admiralty to Graves, 19 April 1763, Adm 2/90. Graves wrote from Spithead on the 21st. ‘By last nights Post I receiv'd' the order (Adm 1/1836); which testifies to fairly rapid communication.
On the same day Stephens to Cook/Test, 19 April 1763, Adm 2/90.Antelope and follow the orders of Captain Graves.Eagle.
Then it became obvious that the delays of office were not the only possible delays: Cook, ordered on 19 April to join the ship immediately in Plymouth Sound, did not make his appearance until 4 May, his name in the muster book being followed by a list of fifty-five men who had ‘run’—that is, deserted. Adm 36/4887. Admiralty to Navy Board, 26 April 1763, Graves to Stephens, 29 April 1763, Adm 1/1836. Admiralty to Graves, 3 May 1763, Adm 1/90. Graves to Stephens, from Plymouth Sound, 8 May 1763, Adm 1/1836. Admiralty to Graves, 27 May 1763, Adm 2/90; Admiralty to ‘Mr Smart, at Lambeth’, 27 May, Adm 2/722. Test made his career at home. Almost forty years later he became Chief Draughtsman at the Tower, in 1801, and retired in 1815 after 56 years in the Ordnance service.—R. A. Skelton, Nmm, Adm/A/2546.r Cook arrived here yesterday but without an Assistant, which defect I will endeavour to replace here if possible, under an expectation of the same encouragement their Lordships were to give Mr Test. The first employment I shall give Mr Cook will be to Survey St Pieres & Miquelon, before my getting there to surrender those Islands, to this end it would have been very convenient that one of the Sloops had been ready to sail with me who might have been detached to performe this Service, whilest I made some stay upon the Coast, to afford them the proper time before the surrender of those Islands to the French.’Spy, Captain Phillips.James Cook Surveyor of Newfoundland (San Francisco, 1965), 11, n. Further references to this work are simply to ‘Skelton’.
Newfoundland, a great triangle of ancient rock, thrusting out large peninsulas into the ocean as part of its general shape, has an infinite mass of indentations, bays, harbours, arms of the sea, which give it six thousand miles of coastline. This coastline is steep, bare, uninviting, fringed with the dangers of many rocks and shoals, and odd sets of the current; in the long cold winter cut off from access by the masses of Arctic ice swept down by the Labrador current—it is separated from Labrador by only a narrow strait—except for the always ice-free southern shore. Icebergs from the Greenland glaciers appear at any time, the greatest number in the months of spring, and they are dangerous. Fog is the other menace, fortunately not continuous, throughout the year. But the harbours are safe summer ones; although the land is rainy and the summers cool there are warm spells; the offshore banks were alive with cod, and as headquarters for the seasonal industry of fishing Newfoundland was as
Cook was to carry out many accomplished pieces of surveying, in one part of the world or another but nothing he ever did later exceeded in accomplishment his surveys of the southern and western sides of Newfoundland from 1763 to 1767. The North-eastern side of the triangle he was hardly to touch. He was so successful because he could deploy all the technique he had acquired from the military ‘engineers’; because he could work at times on land as well as from the sea; because, therefore, he could use, sometimes, instruments that required solid earth as their base. The theodolite of which Graves spoke to the Admiralty would have been perfectly useless on the deck of a ship. One must not overstate the matter. It is nevertheless highly significant not only that that is the first ‘mathematical instrument’ that Cook mentions as necessary, but that when he was looking for a draughtsman he went straight to the Drawing Room at the Tower—to what one might call, in fact, the head office of military survey in England. He went there, one may feel, as the pupil of Holland and the associate of DesBarres, to find a man who was capable of both the desk-work of compiling and drawing, and the instrumental field-work that he had mastered himself. He did not want a plain master's mate for his assistant, any more than he wanted to make only a running survey from the sea. This was the traditional method of surveying a shore: the ship's course, as she sailed along it, would be carefully noted and plotted; the outstanding coastal features equally carefully plotted from cross-bearings taken from the ship; the outline would be filled in by careful sketching. ‘The errors and omissions inherent in a survey of this sort arose from the difficulty of logging the ship's track and fixing her position with sufficient accuracy, from inability to determine the exact position of soundings and submarine features, and from the masking of some land features by others from the eyes of an observer close inshore.’—Skelton, 11.Journals of Captain James Cook, II, 509, n. 4.
‘A Chart of the Sea coast, Bays, and Harbours, in Newfoundland between Green Island and Point Ferrolle. Surveyed … by e year 1764.'—H.D. 342. R. A. Skelton, in ‘Mariner's Mirror, Vol. 40 (1954), 92–119, reproduces a detail of this, pl. 1(a).
Graves reached Newfoundland in the second week in June, and anchored in Trepassey harbour, just west of Cape Race, the southeastern point of the country. Besides the 50-gun Adm 1/1704, n.d. Instructions to Graves, 2 May 1763, Adm 2/90. Graves to Stephens, 20 October 1763, Antelope, he had under his command for the purposes of his government five smaller vessels, and his instructions provided for the deployment of them all in surveying as well as in police duties: ‘We have Ordered them to make Charts of all the said Coasts, with Drafts of the Harbours, noting the Depths of Water and Conveniences for fishing, and whatever Observations may Occur worthy of our Knowledge….’Nmm, Graves Mss, Grv/106, Sect. 9.Pearl, 32 guns, was to cruise on the coast of Labrador,
Terpsichore, between Cape Race and Carpoon, or Quirpon—that is, off the northern coast to its north-east extremity; the 32-gun Lark in the strait of Belle Isle, and thence along the west coast to Cape Ray, the south-western point; the 25-gun Tweed along the south coast, between Cape Race and Cape Ray. The Tamar was to spend her time with the fishing vessels on the Grand Bank. It was therefore the Tweed, Antelope at Trepassey, and embarked Cook, James Biddon and Peter Flower, ‘Supernumerary born for Victuals only being an Engineer & his Retinue’.Tweed's muster book, Adm 36/6901, 13 June 1763. They remained on the strength till the July-August muster.t Peters, where you are to afford him (who you are to take with you) all the assistance in your power by boats or otherways in taking an accurate survey of the Island[s] of St Peter and Miquelon with all the Expedition possible, that no Delay be thereby given to the Delivering these Islands up to the French.’Licorne, already there, but at the same hour arrived the French governor-designate, M. d'Anjac, in the Garonne, with fifty soldiers and a hundred and fifty men—merchants and fishermen, women and children. British settlers were to be removed, these were to be installed: Graves and Douglas were determined that not an inch of rock nor an ounce of authority should be ceded until the survey was completed and every secret (if there were any) laid bare. Douglas was even cautioned against handing over at all what Graves wrote as ‘Langly’—Langley or Langlade, the present Petite Miquelon, the southern part of that island, now joined to the northern part by a narrow thread of land: ‘that island has been separated from Miquelon upwards of four years by a passage a mile broad and two fathom deep. It affords little else than wood but lays between Miquelon and St. Peter's.’Nmm, Grv/106. The isthmus reasserted itself in 1781, but not on the charts, and there were many shipwrecks in consequence.
Cook got to work at once, ‘with all possible application’, on St Pierre, while Douglas held off the governor, ‘who was (you may believe with some difficulty) persuaded to remain on board with his troops, untill the fourth day of July when (the survey of S Douglas to Stephens, 3 May 1764, Adm 1/1704. These dates must again be interpreted according to ship time—i.e. 3 July PM is the afternoon of 2 July civil time; 12 July Captain's Logs, B.M. Add. t Peter's being compleated) that Island was deliver'd to him in form: and our Surveyor began with the other; the weather still continuing foggy and unfavorable.’Pm sent our Cutter under ye Command of a Midshipman to attend Mr Cook whilst he survey'd the Islands of Miquelon & Langley'; 12 July, ‘Am sent ye Longboat with 4 Days provisions for ye Men wth Mr Cook on ye Island of Langley’; 13 July, ‘Pm ye Longbt return'd from Langley not finding Mr Cook there, he being gone to Miquelon’;Am is the morning of 12 July civil time.e Shallop Tender & Cutter wth Mr Cook he having Finish'd ye Survey of that part of this Island Called Dunn.’ Tweed, Adm 51/1016. ‘Dunn’ appears to be what Cook called on his chart Dunne Harbour, represented now by Grand Barachois—‘a basin with a narrow entrance on its south-eastern side, only practicable for boats’ (Newfoundland Pilot, I (8th ed., 1951), 185) — which almost entirely occupies the northern part of the tongue of land between the two Miquelons, the Chaussee de Miquelon or Isthme de Langlade.t Peter's, Langly, and Miquelong, survey'd by order of H.E. Thos. Graves, Esq., Governor of Newfoundland, by Ms 17963.t Peter's under various pretences, untill towards the 17th, and then went to the Road of Miquelon—where we made shift to keep the Commandant in some sort of temper, untill the beginning of August; when, thro’ the unwearied assiduity of Mr Cooke, the survey of that Island too, was compleated.' The dutiful captain had had to expend something more than tactful words, on which he enlarges modestly.
I flatter myself Sir, that my Lords Comissioners will easily believe, that so delicate an affair, as keeping the French Governor so long on board; out of the exercise of his authority, the surveying of his Islands untill thebeginning of August, due to France since the 10th of June; and to have thereby occasion'd no disturbance, must have caused an expensive intercourse on my side [and he thinks the Lords might be induced to] grant me some consideration for the extraordinary expences I was put to; without having incurred which the Islands in question wou'd have remained unsurvey'd. Douglas to Stephens, London, 3 May 1764, and minute thereon, Adm 1/1704.
The Lords were not unsympathetic, and did not think the suggested £50 was too much to grant.
This survey completed, Douglas took Cook on board again and carried him according to orders to Ferryland, a small harbour on the east coast of the Avalon peninsula about half-way between Cape Race and St John's, whence he joined Graves at St John's. The The Navy Board made difficulties over paying for it. On 2 December 1763 it asked the Admiralty whether it should pay the bill.—NMM, Graves to Stephens (draft) The dating is not quite easy. Graves to Stephens, 20 October, says that the Hydrographic Dept., B. 188.Spy had not yet arrived, and did not arrive until 1 September, so that Cook was still without the help of the skilled assistant Mr Edward Smart. He was, however, to get a vessel of his own. During July Graves had used the authority given him before he left home to buy for the survey, at the price of £372 15s, a 68-ton schooner built in a Massachusetts yard in 1754, ‘together with her Boat, Tackle, Furniture and Apparell’.Adm/B/173. Then it said that under its rules it could not pay; for six months later the Admiralty ordered it to do so—Nmm, Adm/A/2561.Sally, and became the Grenville—in honour, we must suppose, of the man who was then Prime Minister and seems to have been a friend of Graves; and, as Graves reported, she was within three or four days of being ready for service when Cook joined him. As soon as she was ready Cook sailed her up to the northern end of the island to survey Quirpon and Noddy harbours, inside Quirpon island—where, on the western side of Quirpon harbour, he named Graves (now Jacques Cartier) island; ‘and from thence to York Harbour to take a compleat survey of that or any other good harbour he shou'd fall in wt on ye Labradore coast, and to employ himself in like manner on his return when ye Season shoud make it necessary to leave that Coast, this he has done with indefatigable industry haveing survey'd four harbours.’Antelope, St John's, 20 October 1763; Nmm, Grv/106.Grenville log for that period, or any other more detailed description, we have no idea how long Cook was at each place, or what precisely he did after his return to St John's. He seems to have returned towards the end of September.Pearl had sailed for England, ‘there being no occasion to detain her here and carrys some invalids sent hither from Louisbourg for a passage home.’—Nmm, Grv/106. On 30 October ‘by the Tweed’ he says, ‘By the Pearl C. Saxton who sailed from hence the 26th [October?] I acquainted their Lordships with my proceeding[s] till that time. The Schooner Grenvile has since return'd from the Northward wt our seeing the Terpsichore.' He had sent her with an answer to Captain Ruthven's many queries ‘some days since’.—Grv/106.
The governor reported to the Admiralty secretary on 30 October, beginning with the movements of ships. He proceeds:
The Tweed sails with these dispatches and I hope to leave the country about the same time. As M
rCook whose Pains and attention are beyond my description, can go no farther in surveying this year I send him home in the Tweed in preferance to keeping him on board [theAntelope], that he may have the more time to finish the difftsurveys allready taken of it to be layn before their Lordships—and to copy the different sketches of yeCoasts and Harbours, taken by yeships on the several stations by which their Lordships will perceive how extreamly erroneous yepresent draughts are, & how dangerous to ships that sail by them—and how generally beneficial to Navigation the work now in hand will be when finished indeed I have no doubt in a Year or two more of seeing a perfect good chart of Newfoundland and an exact survey of most of yegood harbours in which there is not perhaps a part of the World that more abounds.The inclosed Papers are the remarks made by the Captains of the Lark, Tweed and Pearl. M
rCook will lay before their Lordsh: yeoriginal Survey of StPeters Miquelon & Langley as allso Quirpon & Noddy harbours, Chateaux or York harbour & Croque, these though not so highly finished as aCopymay be, yet I am purswaded thier Lordships will think yeproperest to be deposited in thier Office.
Nmm, Grv/106. The instructions to captains to carry on the survey were apparently meant to be taken seriously. Douglas to Stephens from theTweed, Spithead, 8 December 1763, illustrates this: ‘Be pleased to lay before my Lords Commissioners, the herewith-inclosed Sketch of the Magdalen Islands in the Gulph of StLaurence; where the Sea-Cow fishery is carried on. And be moreover pleased to acquaint their Lordships, that agreeable to the commands of the Right Honourable Board of last April, between the beginning of September and the middle of October I took an incompleat one, of the whole Coast of Newfoundland, within the limits of the station prescribed me by their Lordships; viz: between the Capes Race and Ray. Which Sketch is (pursuant to the desire of the Captain Graves of the Antelope) now in the hands of MrJames Cooke; who was last Summer employ'd to survey the Islands of StPeter and Miquelon: which Survey we were not able to compleat before the beginning of August. One of the reasons of the incompleatness of the Draught last mention'd.'—Adm 1/1704. And see Palliser's letter, p. 84 below.
The To be precise, on 13 October 1763, at Shadwell. This is one of the bits of information Kippis (517) got from Mrs Cook. I owe most of the details in the foregoing passage to Mr A. W. Smith, ‘ Admiralty to Navy Board, 4 January 1764, A letter from the Admiralty to the Navy Board, 23 April 1764, refers to his death, and to Smart's (and his brother's) employment, in providing for Smart's pay. A certificate from Cook on the matter was enclosed.—Tweed anchored at Spithead on 29 November 1763. Cook, there is little doubt, lost no time in hastening to Mrs Cook and the son that had been born to him seven weeks earlier, another James.East London Papers, vol. 11, No. 2 (1968), 94–7. The house stood until 1959. The Assembly Row address remained until 1863, when the name was abolished and the house became 88 Mile End Road. In 1880 the ground floor was converted to a shop, projecting on to the small front garden (most of the other houses in the row were served likewise). No. 88 was in this century successively an emporium for women's apparel and a kosher butchery. An L.C.C. commemorative plaque was affixed to it in 1907, which did not prevent its later demolition. The rest of the row was spared, in shabby disrepair.Nmm, Adm/A/2555.Nmm, Adm/A/2558.
Sir, I learnt this day at the Admiralty of your arrival of which I give you joy, and have to acquaint you, that soon after my arrival, I gave my surveys into the board which was approved of, and was then order'd to draw a fair copie of S
tPeters and Miquelong to be laid before the King, these and the different Captains Sketches is finished and given in to the board. Those that you intend for the Board of Trade are ready. I had not the honour to see MrGrenvill when I gave in the Plan, but am convinced it was well received, as he made me an offer soon after (by MrWhatley Secretary to the Treasury) to go as one of the Surveyors to the Natral Islands, which I was obliged to decline, your favourable recommendation of me to this Gentleman, likewise, to the Admiralty, together with many other signal favours I have received during the short time I have had the honour to be under your command shall ever be had in the most gratfull remembrance and tho' Captain Pallisser, who is appointed to the command in Newfoundland is a Gentleman I have been long acquainted with yet I cannot help being sorry that you do not enjoy that officer longer.It is more than probable the Survey of the Island will go on untill compleatly finished, this usefull and necessary thing the World must be obliged to you for.
I shall do my self the honour to wait upon you as soon as you arrive in town and acquaint you with what has pass'd between Lord Egmont and me in regard to the North part of the Island. I am with great respect
Sir
your most Obtand Very Hble SertJa sCook.Cook to Graves, 15 March 1764,
Nmm, Grv/106. The ‘fair copie … laid before the King’ is now in the British Museum map collection, K. Top, cxix. 111. The ‘Natral Islands’ were presumably the Neutral Islands in the West Indies—St Vincent, Dominica, Tobago and St Lucia (the last an island of superb harbours). They were declared neutral by France and England—i.e. not to be colonised by either power—in 1730 and 1748; but the first three were ceded to England at the Peace of Paris in 1763. The French then clung to St Lucia, which, however, became British in the settlement of 1815.
The ‘Grenvill’ here referred to must certainly have been
Cook was already engaged in discussion with Palliser, so it would seem, on the borderland between geography and diplomacy, perhaps as a sequel to his meeting with Egmont; and a little historical
At the Book and Map seller at the large Gateway in Cheap-side Jn° Senex's Map Pub. in 1710 names Cape Ray and calls P
tRich Cape Pointu—this Map was drawen from the observations communicated to the RoySociety at London and the Academy at Paris— ‘To Hugh Pallisser Esq
r’,Adm 1/2300. Palliser must have sent the communication on to the Admiralty. I can trace no Senex map as early as 1710, or any beforeThe Coast of Newfoundland from Placentia to Cape Bonavista, No. 50 in hisAtlas maritimus &commercialis, 1728. The map of Captain John Mitchell, F.R.S. was hisMap of the British and French Dominions in North America, 1755, used for the peace treaty of 1783. Patrick Barclay,The Universal Traveller: or, a Complete account of the most remarkable voyages and travels … to the present time, a folio of 795 pp., has the B.M. date 1735. John Ogilby,America, being the Latest and Most Accurate Description of the New World… London, 1671, another folio. I presume that Mr Vanbushel may have been an acquaintance of Cook's, whom he knew to possess a copy of Ogilby.
Mitchel's Map—Pub 1755—Cape or Point Rich, which is left out of the late French Maps as if there was no such place seemingly because it is the boundries of their prevelige of fishing which extend from hence Northward round to C. Bonavista.The
Universal Travelleror Compleat account of Voyages by Pat. Barclay—1734-54, speaking of Newfoundland, I do not find he once mentions C. Ray or PtRich, but says their Journals was so confounded with names common to both sides of the Island that it was a difficult matter to tell which side there where [i.e. they were] upon, in the Gulf or on theNeside—At M
rVanbushels Gardener at LambethIn Ogilbys America Pub in 1671 is a Map without Date, that mentions Cape Ray only—this Historian doth not speak of Cape Ray but in one place, and there he must mean Cape Race—
I have seen no maps to day, but such as we see yesterday, except the above; neither have I met with any Historys or Voyages (and I have looked into several) that makes any mention of what we want—
J. Cook
Palliser was triumphant in rebutting the claim of the French ambassador that Cape Ray and not Point Riche was the really intended southern limit on the west coast of French operations. The enquiries which Cook made of old Newfoundland hands about settlement on the east coast seem less relevant.Hist. Rec. N.S.W., I, Part 1, 300–1, prints a letter from George Davis to Cook, Poole, 14 March 1764, on the subject. A note on one of Cook's maps (‘A Sketch of the Island of Newfoundland. Done from the last Observations. By James Cook 1763’; Admiralty Library, America, Vol. I, No. 21) seems to bear on this same investigation. It concerns the years of settlement at various places ‘All of which places the English have continued to fish at, since first settled’.
There were obviously discussions about the survey as well, between
Palliser to Stephens, 4 April 1764, Adm 2/2300. Admiralty to Navy Board, 13 April 1764, Navy Board warrant, 18 April 1764, Palliser to Cook, 29 April 1764, Grenville was laid up for the winter at St John's, and in need of stores. Before she could sail on survey she would have to be refitted and re-equipped, and manned from the commodore's, or governor's ship; she would have to return to St John's in time to hand over the men and be laid up again; thus a great deal of time that should be expended on the survey would be used up, with consequent inconvenience and confusion in accounting and command. Would it not be better to appoint ‘Mr Cook the Surveyor who is a Master in the Navy … master of her, to be charged with all stores and materials belong[ing] to her, with the apointment of a master of a 6th Rate’? The assistant-surveyor should be a seaman with some knowledge of surveying and drawing, and be mate of the vessel, paid as a master's mate of a 6th rate with an additional allowance of 3s or 2s 6d a day: ‘I flatter myself their Lordships will think that such a person, who has been brought up in the Navy, is better intitled to encouragemt than any young man who has been brought up in the Tower, that is meerly a draftsman, no seaman & without knowledge of either land or sea Surveying.’ (One is forced to conclude either that Mr Edward Smart had been a disappointment, or that there is here a little naval prejudice against the Ordnance service. It had not been Cook's feeling the previous year.) The vessel should bear eighteen or twenty seamen, ten to be borrowed from the several ships on the station, ten to be permanently borne as enough to sail and navigate her at the end of the season, across the Atlantic to Portsmouth, where she would be properly refitted and would arrive for the next season's surveying much earlier and in better condition than if she had been left at St John's. Thus, at no greater additional expense than 2s a day, ‘the service will be more compleatly perform'd, & with greater facillity and dispatch.’Lark, one of Palliser's squadron, to convey them to Newfoundland. The master and master's mate were to be allowed pay as if for a Sixth Rate—that is £4 and £2 2s a month respectively—‘and the former to be charged with the Provisions and Stores which shall from time to time to be supplied to the Schooner; and to pass regular
Nmm, Adm/A/2558. Stephens to Palliser, 13 April, in answer to his of 4 April; agreeing with all his suggestions, and saying, ‘Their Lordships have commended Mr Cook to the Navy Board to be appointed Master of the said Vessel & when you acquaint me with the name of the Mate their Lordships will order the Atl, Holograph Letters; Admiralty to Navy Board, 23 April (conduct money, etc.); 24 April (manning of the Grenville—two men from Pearl, Tweed, Lark, Zephyr, Spy); 27 April (Atl Hol. Lett.; to captains Spy, Pearl, Tweed, Zephyr, 24 April (on loan of men), Adm 2/90; to Captain Thompson, Lark, 24 April (to take out Cook and his men and lend him two men), Adm 2/91; to Palliser, 30 April (on loan of men), Adm 2/724; to Palliser, 2 May (on directions to Cook), printed in Life of Captain Cook, 38. There are a few other formal letters on this season's work in Atl, Holograph Letters, item 3 in which seems to be Grenville letter book, not in Cook's hand.Grenville, and allowed him a servant in addition to his sixth rate pay.Atl, Hol. Lett.Northumberland, of which he had been master for three years, was a third rate. Palliser told him to start on the survey as soon as he arrived in Newfoundland, and to keep a particularly attentive eye on the French fisheries.Atl, Hol. Lett.
The Cook's Palliser to Cook, 19 June 1764, Lark sailed from Portsmouth on 7 May 1764 for St John's, where, 14 June, began the log of the Grenville:Grenville log and journal, 14 June 1764–15 November 1767, in seven parts, make up Adm 52/1263, parts 1, 2, and 6 the log, parts 3, 5, and 7 the journal: there is not very much difference between them, and neither log nor journal is in Cook's hand, though each part is signed by him. The title-pages of parts 3 and 5 are rather fancy productions, and in part 5 ‘Schooner’ becomes ‘Brigg’. Some of the journal, though not by any means all of it, seems to be kept in civil time; the log is now and again a little fuller. Most of the quotations in the present account are from the journal, with occasional recourse to the log, but it does not seem necessary to give constant references beyond the dates in the text.Guernsey, whence was taken the man who was to be Cook's mate for the next two and a half years, and in future years an admiral, William
Grenville ran out of the harbour and stood north. Palliser had decided that the season's survey should be a continuation of that on the north coast in 1763, from Bauld Cape westward and then down the western coast a certain distance.Atl, Hol. Lett.Am the Master with the Cutter went ashore to Continue the Survey, Stood to the westward about a League off shore, brought too and sounded every mile’: the pattern is clear, as the schooner moves from harbour to harbour, the boats sounding, Cook with his theodolite on shore as much as possible, fixing his flags, measuring, sighting, Parker no doubt drawing carefully from offshore. On 6 August the log registers misfortune.
2pm Came on board the Cutter with the Master who unfortunately had a Large Powder Horn blown up & Burst in his hand which shatter'd it in a Terrible manner and one of the people that stood hard by suffered greatly by the same accident and having no Surgeon on board Bore away for Noddy Harbour where a French fishing ship Lay, at 8 sent the Boat in for the French surgeon at 10 the Boat returned with the Surgeon, at 11 Anchord in Noddy Harbour in 6 fathom water.
This untoward affair seems to have disabled Cook as an active surveyor for the rest of the month, though not as a commander. It was his right hand; it healed, but it bore a gash between the thumb and forefinger, and a large scar as far as the wrist, that had an identifying function fifteen years later. The schooner lay in Noddy Harbour till 25 August. Parker was sent off to survey Griguet Bay and the coast as far as White Cape to the south; the men, employed
Cook to Stephens, 13 December 1764, r with the Cutter went on shore with five Days provisions, in order to go on with the Survey’, and then day after day, with slight changes of wording, ‘the Master with the Cutter Employ'd on the Survey’, as he moved on to Old Ferolle—until, on 28 September, ‘the Cutter with the Assistant went to Survey the Bay of St Margaret’. This, with Point Ferolle, jutting out between it and the large St John Bay, was the southern limit of the survey on the western coast for 1764, and perhaps the accident of 1 October aided the decision: ‘AM sent the Boats to sound off and about point Ferrol, the small Boat got ashore on one of the Ledges which Bilg'd and fill'd, with the Assistance of the Cutter the people were Saved.’ Cook spent three days wooding, watering, and brewing, before sailing back round the north and east coasts to St John's, where he was moored on 14 October. On 1 November he sailed for England, had a good deal of stormy weather, put into Cutwater on 4 December, and was at Woolwich on the 12th. Thence he wrote to the Admiralty a letter which anticipated a busy winter. He had fair copies to draw of the surveys he had made this last summer, he said, which would occasion him sometimes to be absent from the schooner he commanded, and he proposed that she should be ordered to Deptford, where she would lie safer than at Woolwich. The Lords acquiesced.Atl, leaf from Grenville letter-book stuck in Hick's Endeavour log. Stephens to Cook, 18 December 1764, Adm 2/725; Dixson Library, Ms, Q140, 2.
The master had now his own house to go to, for the practice of a few months' domesticity; and here, on 14 December, simultaneously with his own arrival, he and Mrs Cook and the young James were joined by a second son, Nathaniel. We may infer pleasure on Cook's part, perhaps even a temporary inattention to the demands of his profession. If that were so, it could not have lasted long: there were his charts, and there was his ship. While the Grenville was at Deptford
Gentlemen. The masts sails and rigging of His Majesty's Schooner the Grenville being all or the most part of them Condemned by Survey, Permit me to set forth the utility of having her rigg'd into a Brigg, as I presume it may now be Done without much additional expence to the Crown, for Schooners are the worst of vessels to go upon any Discovery, for in meeting with any unexpected Danger their staying cannot be Depended upon, and for want of sail to Lay a Back they run themselves ashore before they wear; this I experienced in the Grenville schooner Last summer in the Straights of Belle Islse, when I see the Condition her Bottom is in it supprizeth me that she ever came off. A Brigg hath all these advantages over a schooner besides many more I could name, was I not applying to Gentlemen better acquainted with those things than my self. I only mean to give somereasons for my request, and pray you will be pleas'd to take these into your Consideration, and if they appear reasonable to order her to be rigg'd into a Brigg, as I Cannot help thinking but that it will enable me to Carry on the Survey with greater Dispatch, and Less Danger of Loosing the Vessel than she is at present.
Cook to Navy Board [22 January 1765], Dixson Library,
Ms, Q 140, 6. The letter, undated, appears among a number in the Dixson Library apparently extracted from theGrenville'sletter-book; the date is ascertainable from the Navy Board's reply, 6 February 1765 (from the same source), which begins, ‘In return to your Letter of 22nd past,’. The remark on worms is in another undated letter,Atl, in the stray letter-book leaf referred to in the previous note.
In this proposal the Gentlemen of the Navy Board—‘Your Affectionate Friends’, as they habitually subscribed themselves—in their turn acquiesced.
Palliser had his own plea, that the permanent complement of the vessel should be raised to twenty, which would avoid the inconvenicnces of borrowing men from the other ships of his squadron and returning them on time, and the inclination of such men to desert from a ship not their own; and as she was now thus independent she was given also her own armament of six swivel guns and twelve muskets. Palliser to Stephens, 6 March 1765, Adm 1/2300; Stephens to Cook, 5 April, Adm 2/725.Grenville's journal line by line and follow inch by inch the extraordinarily complicated coast that emerged on the chart, the mass of bays and harbours and inlets, capes and headlands, off-lying islands and rocks and shoals—the whole middle section of the southern Newfoundland coast—as Cook moved round the corner, as it were, from his St Lawrence base into Fortune Bay, up one side of it and down the other, and round to what was called (and he called) the Bay of Despair: a name now, by contrary, the Bay d'Espoir, though pronounced by local tenacity Bay Despair. He knew where he was going, there were plenty of names there already—fishermen had been using that coast for two hundred and fifty years; but this was precision. He spent a great deal of time on shore or in the cutter: as early as 12 June we have the entry, ‘AM the Cutter with the Master & Pilot Left the Vessel to Continue the Survey along the Coast’. The Grenville followed along, or remained at her moorings, as Cook pursued his instrumental work on shore, or took cross-bearings from the ship, and the boats were out sounding—here a day, there two days, a fortnight at Great St Lawrence to begin with, a week in Lawn Bay, a little to the west, a week within the Lamaline islands, a week in Harbour Breton in August, a fortnight in Ship Cove at the northern end of ‘Bay Dispair’ towards the end of the survey. The nature of the country was indicated by an episode of 14 July, when at Great Garnish, on the southern shore of Fortune Bay, ‘at 8 PM took two men on board that had been lost in the woods for near a month, they came from Burin intending to go to St Lawrence and were almost perishing for want of Subsistance’; and Burin was only a few miles north of St Lawrence, on the same side of the Burin peninsula. The nature of the coast is indicated by the accident a week later, when in the morning the ship—the surveying vessel herself, the brig, not the schooner—turning into Long Harbour, at the end of Fortune Bay, ran ashore upon a rock, had to be sheared up with her own yards, lightened of her water and ballast, and was not got off until midnight on a flowing tide. After completing the survey from Ship Cove on 25 September Cook overhauled and cleaned her down thoroughly; it took the carpenter some days properly to repair her forefoot. There was time to brew spruce beer again. He sailed from Ship Cove on 10 October to St John's, was for almost a fortnight in that fishy landlocked harbour, and sailed again, with Palliser and the rest of the squadron, on
Grenville was moored once more in ease at Deptford.
We have two letters of this winter from Palliser to the Admiralty secretary, bearing on the survey. The first reminds us that, while Cook was the full-time surveyor on the Newfoundland station, the captains also employed there were not exempt from the duties of observing and reporting and drawing what charts they could, and that even the commodore and governor found it wise to explain what might look remiss.
MrCook the Surveyor having been Employ'd under my Directions upon the Coasts where I have been Employ'd in His Majesty's Ship Guernsey, I beg leave to refer the Board to his Drafts and Remarks, & as the several Services I have had under my care have not allow'd me time to make such Surveys and Remarks myself, I desire you will be Pleas'd to move their Lordships to Signifie to the Navy Board that they have no Objection to their Paying my Wages.Palliser to Stephens, 14 December 1765, Adm 1/2300.
The second comes closer to the interests of the Surveyor himself.
Sir/M
rCook Apointed by the Right Honble my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to Survey the Sea Coast of Newfoundland, under my Direction, having finish'd his Chart of that part of the South Coast of Newfoundland Adjacent to the Islands of StPierre and Miquelon Including the said Islands; upon a large Scale of one Inch to a Mile, you will herewith receive the said Chart, which be pleas'd to lay before the Right Honble my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty.He having also the last Year deliver'd in to the Board his Survey of the North part of Newfoundland upon the same Scale, and having now prepar'd a Chart of that part with the Oposite part of the Coast of Labradore, including the Island and Straights of Bell Isle, likewise another of the abovemention'd Survey of part of the South Coast of Newfoundland, both upon a proper Scale to be usefull to the Trade and Navigation of His Majesty's Subjects, as a Publication thereof, I am of Opinion will be a great Encouragement to new Advanturers on the Fishery's upon these Coasts; be pleas'd to move their Lordships to permit M
rCook to Publish the same.Palliser to Stephens, 3 February 1766, Adm 1/470. Kitson, 79–80, first printed this letter, rather inaccurately, and made the date 1768.
This letter Mr Stephens minuted on 17 February. ‘Their Lordps are pleased to comply with his reqt by permitting Mr Cook to publish them.’
It may seem odd that the Admiralty, having appointed Cook specifically, in the national interest, to improve the general knowledge of the coasts of Newfoundland, and bearing the expenses of an annual survey, should be content to stop there, to accept the careful charts he brought back and put them in a cupboard and do no more. They could be copied, by hand, no doubt, for any particular naval need; but, a large number of seafaring men might have said, how absurd! And if that was to be the fate of the work which every naval captain and master was directed in set and stringent words to carry out, could captains and masters be blamed for sometimes taking instructions lightly? The admiralty had no hydrographic department—did not have one until 1795—and no hydrographer. Britain, for a competitive sea power, lagged ridiculously behind France, where the They are fully described in Skelton, 24–5, and Skelton and Tooley, Depô;t des Cartes et Plans de la Marine dated from 1720, and where a coruscation of geographers and cartographers were at work. The Admiralty engraved nothing and published nothing; the map and chart trade was a matter for private commerical enterprise, and however, conscientious some of those engaged in it might be, the general tendency was not towards scientific exactitude, the old chart appeared and re-appeared for generations, and stationers saw no need to blush. Cook had words of his own, later, with which to record his opinion of this British habit. At least the Admiralty put no obstacle in the way of a public servant like himself who wished to try a better article on the market; he was welcome to take the risk of having his own chart, made at the public expense, engraved and published at his own expense. Fortunately he was able to bear the cost: his surveyor's allowance added to his pay as master gave him a margin above the ordinary needs of subsistence. Very soon, therefore, after receiving Admiralty consent Cook must have gone to J. Larken, a highly accomplished engraver, with his manuscript charts—perhaps at the suggestion of Mount and Page, who had published his chart of Gaspé. He may have had time to oversee the engraving himself if Larken worked hard, but that would have meant the production of two elaborate plates in two months, which is most unlikely. Both were published in 1766. The first was ‘A Chart of the Straights of Bellisle with part of the coast of Newfoundland and Labradore from actual surveys Taken by Order of Commodore Pallisser Governor of Newfoundland, Labradore, &ca by James Cook Surveyor 1766.’ That is, it was the result of the latter part of Cook's work in 1763 and the Grenville survey of 1764. The second, produced in two sheets, was ‘A Chart, of Part of the South Coast, of Newfoundland, including the Islands St Peters and Miquelon, from
Marine Surveys, 14–16.The English Pilot The Fourth Book, the property of Messrs Mount and Page, which remained steadfastly uninfluenced by Cook, to mislead sailors who patronised that firm rather than Jefferys' until its last edition of 1794.
Apart from this important matter, there is little we know of Cook's activities in the winter of 1765–6. His correspondence is always interesting and enlightening. A letter to him from the Admiralty secretary, of 17 March, in answer to one of his two days earlier, shows both that he was beginning to get quick attention and that he was developing his surveying technique by preparing to spend an even longer time on shore. He now wanted a tent for shelter by night and in bad weather, as he frequently had to be absent from his schooner (he still calls her that) for a week or ten days, and Stephens signifies official approval. Stephens to Cook, 17 March 1766, Adm 2/726. Admiralty to Navy Board, 12 February 1767, directing that the sum of £16 16s, which Cook had expended on this service, be repaid to him.—ADM/A/2592. The quotation is from the second and third pages of the Preface to the fairly formidable Leadbetter of 1728. He recommends knowledge also of the ‘Immersions and Emersions of Grenville was moored in a cove on the west side of Bonne Bay, a small bay between the ‘Bay of Despair’ and ‘Bay Fochee’—Facheux Bay. Next day she sounded the coast along to the latter bay, was moored there with a hawser on shore till the 17th, the following morning sounded about a sunken rock three leagues off Cape La Hune, then surveyed the Penguin islands in the same vicinity, then for ten days was moored in Cape Cove, enclosed by the irregular peninsula of triple-peaked Cape La Hune. Here she was hauled ashore for scrubbing, and beer was brewed. In early July she was in ‘Fox Island Harbour’, a good deal of summer fog and rain interfering with the survey; then in a cove, probably Ship Cove, in the off-shore Ramea Islands; then, 17–22 July, in a harbour to the westward of White Bear Bay—to judge from the marks on the chart, Wolf Bay or Bay de Loup, where there is good anchorage between the steep-to shores. On 23 July she sailed off shore again to the Burgeo Islands, in thick fog, where she was moored in ‘Grandy's Cove’ till 5 August. Almost all through this period there was fog—which did not, however, stop the survey—until the last day, when it most fortunately cleared. Cook was able to observe an eclipse of the sun; knowing his habits in conferring names, we may conclude that this was on the minute Eclipse island. Why should he wish to observe an eclipse of the sun? He does not say, though when he observes an eclipse later in his life we are well enough aware of the reason. We may suspect Charles Leadbetter, to whose Compleat System of Astronomy he had given such close attention. Leadbetter had a passion for eclipses, he discoursed on them, made tables of them for years ahead, preached their utility to the mariner; for that person ‘being well skill'ed in Astronomy, he may, by the Knowledge of Eclipses … determine the true Difference of Meridians between London, and the Meridian where the Ship then is; which reduc'd into Degrees and Minutes of the Equator, is the true Longitude found at Sea.’Jupiter's Satellites, and the Times of the Transits of the Moon by the Fixed Stars and Planets’—quite useless to preach to mariners.Philosophical Transactions of the
Back from the islands to the main, to ‘Connure’ or Connoire Bay (the engraved chart straightens out the odd phonetic spellings of the log), and then ‘Tweed's Harbour’, 16–28 August: a name we must probably carry back to Captain Douglas's survey in the Boot-topping a ship meant cleaning the upper part of her bottom, and ‘paying’ or covering it with a mixture of tallow, sulphur, and perhaps other ingredients to discourage marine growth.Tweed in 1763, and see as applying to Cinq Cerf Bay. Then a maze of small harbours and islets off shore which brought the vessel to Port aux Basques, not far short of Cape Ray, for the fortnight 10–23 September, during which her sails and rigging were overhauled, and she was scrubbed and ‘boot-topped’.Guernsey, with three other vessels of his squadron, including the 32-gun frigate Niger, Captain Sir Thomas Adams. On board the Niger, lately returned from her patrol of the Strait of Belle Isle, was Niger sailed for Lisbon and England. Had Cook arrived two days earlier they might well have met at the ball with which the governor on 25 October celebrated the anniversary of the Coronation of George III; although (Banks tells us) it was ladies, not gentlemen, that Palliser was short of.The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks (Sydney, 1962), I, 14.
Stephens to Cook, 27 November 1766, Adm 2/726.
This winter at home was for Cook much like the last. At Mile End he enjoyed the company of his Elizabeth and his two infant sons. He arranged for the publication of a third chart. This incorporated part of his second one, some of it re-engraved, with the work of the 1766
Described by Skelton, 25; Skelton and Tootey, 16–17. It was printed in the t Peters and Miquelon with the Southern Entrance into the Gulph of St Laurence from actual Surveys Taken by order of Commodore Pallisser Governor of Newfoundland, Labradore, &c. by James Cook Surveyor, Larken sculp. 1767.’TransactionsPhilosophical Transactions for that year, LVII, 215–6.
An Observation of An Eclipse of the Sun at the Island of New-found-land. Aug. 5–1766 by
Mr Cook, a good mathematician, and very expert in his Business, having been appointed by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to Survey the Sea coasts of New-found-land, Labradore &c., took with him a very good apparatus of Instruments, and among them a brass Telescopic Quadrant made by Mr John Bird.
Being Aug. 5th 1766 at one of the Burgeo Islands near Cape Ray, Latd. 47de;36′19″, the South-west extremity of New-found-land, and having carefully rectified his Quadrant, he waited for the Eclipse of the Sun; just a minute after the beginning of which he observed the Zenith Distance of the Suns upper Limb 31°57′00″, and allowing for Refraction and his Semidiameter, the true Zenith Distance of the Sun's Centre 32°13′30″, from whence he concluded the Eclipse to have begun at 0h4′48″ Apparent Time, and by a like process to have ended at 3h45′26″ App.T.
Note, there were three several observers, with good Telescopes, who all agreed as to the moments of beginning and ending.
Mr Cook having communicated his observation to me, I shewed it to
This result, in terms of longitude measured not from Oxford but from London, as Cook put it on his chart, was equivalent to 3h.50m.4sec. or 57°31′ W. The modern determination is 57°37′ W of Greenwich, or 57°27′ from London—which argues remarkably good observation on Cook's part with his telescopic quadrant. From his figure he deduced for his sailing directions the longitudes of a number of other places on the south coast, adding latitudes from observations made on shore. Obviously he had now acquired the taste for astronomical determination of the longitude. On 11 March he wrote to the Admiralty suggesting that he should be given nothing so humdrum as a tent, but a reflecting telescope for the purpose, representing (to use the secretary's words, which would be much of a transcription of his own) ‘the great Utility it would be to Navigation to take the Longitude of the Head Lands on the Island of Newfoundland, and on the Continent of America’, and the frequent opportunities he had of doing it; and the Lords instructed the Stephens to Cook, 24 March 1767, Adm 2/727.
Meanwhile the Palliser to Stephens, 7 April 1764, Adm 1/2300; Stephens to Palliser, 7 April, Adm 2/724. Palliser to Stephens, 2 December 1766, and minute by Stephens thereon, Adm 1/2300. The ‘blue coat School’ refers to the Mathematical School or side at Christ's Hospital, founded in 1763 specifically for the training of boys for navigation: Captain Denis or Dennis commanded the Grenville was having her annual refit. A certain light is cast on naval administration by the note in her master's journal for 10 March, that on that day the ship's company received twelve months wages. The master himself had received a new mate. William Parker at the end of the 1766 voyage was promoted lieutenant, as master's mates frequently were when masters were not. He went to the Niger, and was succeeded by Michael Lane. Lane, a product of the mathematical school of Christ's Hospital and a young man of great ability, had been appointed, as we have seen, to the Antelope when Graves thought of him as a substitute for the defaulting Mr Test; Palliser in turn had had him transferred to the Guernsey in
r Cook,’ wrote Palliser to Stephens, ‘I wish you to alow me to recomend for his assistant (in lieu of the young man I before mention'd) Mr Mich Lane Schoolmaster of the Guernsy who draws well, is master of Surveying, was brought up in the blue coat School, served afterwards as Apprentice to Capt Denis, who is his friend & Patron at whose recomendation I took him into the Guernsy.—Mr Cook waits on you with this.—The other young man has a desire to go another way.’Bellona, in which Lane was schoolmaster; ‘apprentice’ I do not understand, unless Lane was to further his knowledge of practical navigation under Dennis's care; who ‘the other young man’ was I do not know.
The Grenville was ready to sail by 1 April 1767, when a pilot came on board to carry her to Woolwich, but even a pilot for that short passage in unpleasant weather could not prevent an accident: on the 5th ‘at 8 Am a Collier Named the Three Sisters Thomas Bloyd Master of Sunderland in Coming Down the River fell athwart our hause & carried away our Bowsprit Cap & Jibb Boom.’ They hauled alongside the David sloop, got replacements from on shore, had them rigged in a day or two, picked up their ordnance stores at Woolwich and Gravesend, and were off on the 10th. There was a good deal of bad language over this misadventure, it is alleged, and t. ‘This must have been a dead reckoning longitude.
Repeating his strategy of the previous year Cook went direct to his 1766 breaking-off point, the anchorage in Codroy Road, where he brought to on 15 May—his object being to complete the survey of the west coast, from Cape Anguille to Point Ferolle, his southern limit in 1763. This included a fairly straight stretch of shoreline, but
Minutes of Admiralty Board, 5 April 1768, Adm 3/76. This year they cost him £12 16s.Favourite, on the station. On the other side of the Point Riche peninsula is Old Port au Choix, at the southern end of the large open bay of St John, which runs round in the north to Point Ferolle. In this little port he hauled his ship ashore to clean her bottom, and left her while he went in the boat to survey the bay; then for some days he sounded as well from the ship, as far as six leagues out to sea. On 25 August he found ‘Our Ladies Bubies Nebn’; they become on the engraved chart (and we have a slight sense of Victorianism, a century too soon) Twin Islands. On 31 August he was back in the Bay of Islands, in York harbour, close to the entrance, at the beginning of twenty-three days of most
Grenville worked out of the harbour, carried away her foretopmast three days later, and on 14 October met Palliser and his squadron in St John's harbour. Topmast replaced, she sailed on 23 October, and after a remarkably quick Atlantic passage was in the Channel in sight of the Isle of Wight on 8 November: next day she picked up a Deal pilot.
This return to the Thames brushed disaster more closely than the minor collision at the moment of departure. The afternoon of 10 November turned to vile weather—‘a hard Storm of Wind & Excesive heavy Squalls and showers of Rain’—and Cook took in his fore topsail. One may best quote his journal:
at 4 Anchored above the Nore light it bearing ESE in 7 fathmwater with the small Bower and Veerd away to a whole Cable, that bringing her up let go Best Bower and Veerd away upon Both to a Cable & at 1/2 upon one & 1/2 Cable upon the other, was then in 6 fath Water, Struck yards & Topmasts. At 6 the Best Bower parted & we taild into shoal water & at 7 She Struck very hard; got a Spring upon the small Bower Cable, & cut the Cable in order to Cast her Head to the Soward & get her under Sail but the Spring Gave way & She cast to the Northward & directly a Shore upon a Shoal called the Knock; got the Topsail Yards & Cross Jack Yards down upon Deck & She lay pretty Easy until the f[1]ood made when the Gale still continuing she struck very hard & lay down upon her Larboard bilge; hoisted out the Boats & hove every thing overboard from off the Decks & Secured all the Hatchways, at 12 at Night there being no prospect of the gale ceasing took all the People away in the Boats, the Cutter made the Best of her way to Sheerness for Assistance. At 10Am[on the 11th] the Wearbeing modtcame on Board with proper Assistance from Sheerness Yard in order to get the Vessel off & found she had received Little Damage, began to lighten her by heaving out Shingle Ballast & Pigs of Iron Ballast &c and to lay out Anchors to heave her off.
In the afternoon the weather moderated. ‘At high water’ continues the journal, ‘the Vessel floted, hove her of & made Sail for Sheerness, at 5 anchored between Sheerness & the Nore light, Emp[loyed] Clearing the Decks & putting the Hold to rights.’ Next day the necessary spars and stores were brought off from the yard, the Deal pilot (whose part in all this, if any, is unnoticed) was discharged and a river pilot taken on board, a morning was spent rigging the yards
When Cook was on shore with the cutter at Sheerness he wrote a hasty note to Stephens, reporting the misadventure, and identifying the scene in rather different words, as ‘a shoal called the South End, the Upper End of Shoebury Ness’; and he wrote again immediately they had got the schooner off. Stephens to Cook, 12 November 1767 and 13 November (in answer to Cook's letters), Adm 2/727. Wilkinson to Banks, 18 December 1767, Kew Banks Correspondence, I, 15; quoted in Palliser to Stephens, 30 November 1767, Adm 1/2300: the letter is mainly about manning the Stephens to Cook, 11 April 1768, Adm 2/727; Minutes of Adm. Board, 12 April. It may be thought a little strange, administratively, that Stephens's letter conveying the decision should antedate the decision by one day.Niger's passenger of the 1766 season. Mr Banks had not lost his interest in Newfoundland and Labrador: Palliser had secured some costumes for him at Chateau Bay, and Niger this canoe, which he sent home in the Grenville. It was either washed overboard or Cook hove it overboard with everything else on deck—‘tho I have not been able to see Mr Cook to ask him about it,’ wrote Wilkinson, ‘… but if you'll please to send to him he will let you know whether there are any hopes of getting it by Advertising… .’The Endeavour Journal, I, 21–2 n. Niger from 1767 to 1771.Grenville at Deptford. He sent a fourth chart to Larken to be engraved, ‘A Chart of the West Coast of Newfoundland … by Guernsey, with the final paragraph, ‘Mr Pownel has promis'd to fix a day when Mr Cook may go to the office to take a Sketch of our Estates, from the large plan, and I will apply for a Coppy of the conditions &ca.’Grenville are in fact remarkably free from the notation of sickness or accident, as free as they are from that of crime and punishment. There may be some connection. Cook was a careful man. If there was one thing he respected, it was the lives of seamen. Some of his men served with him continuously, hard as the nature of the service was. They could, one imagines, see a purpose in it. In a service of that kind, apart from unforeseeable accident, men were likely to retain both their health and their discipline; and the work to go on.
The work: having considered Cook's methods, one may also consider, briefly, the finished products of his skill in his mid- and late thirties; and one must consider not so much the engraved versions of his charts produced by Larken, although these are accurate and beautiful enough, as the manuscript originals. It is not always easy, or even quite possible, to separate from the products of his own hand some of the copies made by his assistants in a style faithfully modelled on his, or drawn immediately from his surveys by, for instance Parker. Of the fifty or so ‘Cook’ charts preserved in various collections, however, we have God's plenty directly attributable to him, whether large coastal charts or ‘plans’ of ports and harbours. The large charts are indeed tremendous productions: the ‘exact trigonometrical survey’ of the west coast is about ten feet long, on an inch to the mile scale, and includes much inland topographical drawing showing the courses of rivers and the forms of lakes which as one might expect, were not taken over into the engraved versions; or the south coast chart, like the former in the Hydrographic Department of the Admiralty, three inches to the mile, stated to be ‘coppy'd from the original survey taken in the year 1764', and about six feet by three; or the other south coast chart in the same department, an inch to the mile, showing ‘the Sea-coast, Bays, Harbours and Islands’ between the ‘Bay of Despair’ and the two St Lawrence harbours, with inset plans of the harbours of Great and Little St Lawrence, Great Jervis, Harbour Breton, Boxey, Blue Pinion, St Jacques, and ‘Bande de La'Rier' (Bande de l'Arier or Belloram)—about eight feet by five, and a thing almost overpowering in its detail and colour as well as size. This was raising British hydrographic surveying to a new power.
One may analyse some of his construction and design, noting first that in his technique he follows tradition. With his training, it could hardly have been otherwise; his particular characteristic is the precision, the comprehensive and consistent exactitude, with which he applies the tradition. He draws his charts on a plane projection, generally oriented to magnetic north; rays drawn from the points of the compass roses cover the sea areas; the variation of the compass
Most of the preceding paragraph is simply a paraphrase of Skelton, 20. I could not hope to approach Mr Skelton's knowledge of the charts, or his critical skill, and he encouraged me to treat him in this way, rather than make a lengthy quotation.
The manuscripts, then, in addition to their technical competence, have some visual interest unmatched by the engravings, accomplished as these are. They have also the interest of displaying Cook's first contributions to topographical nomenclature. There is no difficulty in picking out his most characteristic names: not merely those of the ships on the station, but others like Grenville Rock, Sole bay; those of the English rivers he knew, transferred to wilder streams, Humber,
The quotations given by Skelton, 19, from Admiral Bayfield and Captain Boulton are highly illuminating. Admiral Wharton, also a very distinguished hydrographer, added his praise, quoted by Kitson, 80. But perfection is granted to no man, and there were minor dangers hidden from Cook.Collection of Charts of the Coasts of Newfoundland and Labradore, &c. which Thomas Jefferys published in 1769–70, with charts by Michael Lane, Joseph Gilbert, master of the Guernsey, and other naval officers; and later into that famous volume The North American Pilot. Cook's sailing directions, consolidated into The Newfoundland Pilot, were also published by Jefferys in 1769. Seventy years later, a hundred and more years later, when the professional hydrographers were again at work in that region of North America, the Gulf and its approaches they considered their predecessors. Most of them, they said roundly, were a danger to the seamen: throw away DesBarres and the rest. Two only could be trusted—Cook, and Lane.
Mr Cook, aware that he was a competent surveyor, but unaware that future ages would regard him as a classic, had plenty to do as the London spring of 1768 came on. Mile End, Deptford, Larken the engraver's, Mr Jefferys' shop, the Admiralty office, Palliser, who had another year to run in his Newfoundland government—one presumes non-professional friends as well as a circle mainly marine: people to see as well as the planning of the season's work, all would have made the weeks busy. He applied to the Admiralty for reimbursement of £28 for the repair of mathematical instruments and the expense of stationery for the ensuing summer, and the Admiralty made the grant on 5 April; Minutes of Adm. Board, Adm 3/76. ibid. It was not till 1773 that Lane's allowance was raised to the 10s a day given to Cook.—Admiralty to Navy Board 15 January 1773; NMM/ADM/A/2663.Grenville at all. The same minutes of the Admiralty Board that noted the resolve to repay him his instrument and stationery expenses, noted also a resolve to fit out a vessel to convey ‘to the Southward’ persons intended for a quite different purpose; and the same minutes that dealt
Grenville during Mr Cook's absence, at 5s allowance a day as surveyor over and above the normal schooner's pay, a new mate to be appointed with an allowance of 2s 6d a day.
The persons to be conveyed to the Southward were persons ‘intended to be sent thither to observe the Transit of Venus’; and by ‘the Southward’ is to be understood the Southern Hemisphere; and Mr Lane was to take Mr Cook's place in the Grenville because it was intended that Mr Cook should command the vessel fitted out for that purpose. We find ourselves, and Mr Cook, plunged suddenly into the middle of eighteenth-century science, or the post-Newtonian physical branch of it. Cook, we know, as he did not know, was about to begin on a series of immense voyages, which would add enormously to knowledge of the surface of the world. The primary purpose of the voyage now envisaged, however, was at once more limited and larger. It concerned the world not in itself, with all its detail of land and water, but the world in the universe. The method was to be astronomical, to determine not the latitude of a cape on an island in the north-west Atlantic, but the dimensions of the universe. Astronomy had its post-Newtonian triumphs in this century already, in between superficial geography, as it were, and the universe. Newton's theory of the shape of the earth had been confirmed by the observations to measure the arc of a meridian by the French expeditions led by La Condamine to Peru in 1735–43 and Maupertius to Lapland in 1736. French science took the lead in organising the observations with which it was hoped to mark the decade of the sixties: observations which, reaching outwards from the earth, would provide the data necessary for the calculation of the distance between the earth and the sun—which distance, in its turn, would serve as a unit for the measurement of the universe itself, as suggested by Kepler. The method for calculating the distance between the earth and the sun was the method of parallax: that is the method with which Cook, as a surveyor, was familiar, of observing angles with his theodolite at each end of his base line, and working out trigonometrically therefrom the distance to his marker. But now, though the base line might be something like the radius of the earth in length, the marker
It was provided—or we may speak in the present tense and say it is provided in human lives but rarely: at those times only when Venus is in a direct line between the earth and sun, and its black shadow as this passes across the face of the sun can be observed and timed. The time taken by such a ‘Transit of Venus’ depends on the rate at which the line joining the observer's eye to Venus sweeps across the face of the sun. If the earth were not rotating, this line would move at the same speed for all observers, but because it does rotate, the observer's end of the line moves at a speed determined by his position on the earth and by the apparent size of the earth as seen from Venus. The different times taken for the transit, as measured by different observers, can with much calculation yield the parallax, and hence the total distance from earth to Venus and earth to sun. The mathematician had also to remember that Venus appears to follow slightly different paths across the sun seen from different places. The thing of absolute importance was the so-rarely to be observed ‘Transit of Venus’ across the face of the sun. Not only were there factors in observation and calculation that had to be allowed for, but the incalculable weather could determine whether the transit would be seen at all. [In the typescript J.C.B. had noted that he was going to rewrite his explanation of the purpose of the observations of the transit. In rewriting the passage I have drawn on the knowledge of my colleague, Dr J. F. Harper. T.H.B.] It seems worth quoting here the original more resounding Latin of his 1716 paper, Methodus singularis quá Solis Parallaxis sive distantia à Terra, ope Venèris intra Solem conspiciendae, tuto deteriminari poterit: ‘Ac sane vellem diversis in locis ejusdem Phaenomeni observationes à pluribus institut, tum ad majorem adstruendam ex consensu fidem, tumne Nubium interventu frustraretur singularis Spectator, eo spectaculo quod nescio an denua visuri sunt hujus & subsequentis seculi Mortales; & a quo pendet Problematis nobilissimi & aliunde inacceai solutio certa & adaequata. Curiosis igitur syderum scrutatoribus, quibus, nobis vita functis, haec observanda reservantur, iterum iterumque commendamus ut, moniti hujus nostri memores, observationi peragendae strenue totisque viribus incumbant; iisque fausta omnia exoptamus & vovemus, praeprimis ne nubili coeli importuna obscuritate exoptatissimo spectaculo priventur; utque tandem Orbium coelestitum magnitudines intra arctiores limites coercitae in eorum gloriam famamque sempiternam cedant.’—Philosophical Transactions, XXIX (1716), 460.
Joseph Nicolas Delisle, one of the elders of a large family of astronomers, mathematicians, geographers and cartographers, was the man who deployed a vast correspondence and organising power, after Halleys death, to ensure that the astronomers of the western world should perform their scientific duty in 1761. The little-known importance of Delisle is rightly emphasised in Harry Woolf, The Transits of Venus (Princeton, 1959) a volume which, however, devotes less attention to the event of 1769 than to that of 1761.
Into the Pacific Ocean: but where, in that large expanse, with which geography was so inadequately acquainted?—To some point where, for the six hours' duration of the Transit, the phenomenon would be clearly visible, well above the horizon, and the danger of interference from clouds would be minimal. This was obvious to Dr Thomas Hornsby, the professor of astronomy in the University of Oxford, when in 1765 he reminded the C. Hutton, J. Shaw & R. Pearson, Admiralty Secretary to Morton, 15 August 1766, Adm 2/540.Phil. Trans. abgd, XII (1809), 265–74.
There the thing rested, so far as formal discussion was concerned, until November 1767, when the Council of the Society, perhaps beginning to feel some urgency, set up a Transit Committee. This committee decided that observers should be sent to Fort Churchill in Hudson Bay, to the North Cape, and to the South Seas. It suggested names. The last of these names was that of Mr Dalrymple: ‘a proper person to send to the South Seas, having a particular Turn for Discoveries, and being an able Navigator, and well skilled in Observation.’ 19 November 1767, Transit Committee, in Council Minutes, Vol. V, 189. Royal Society Council Minutes, 18 December 1767. Dalrymple to Dr Morton, 7 December 1767, R. S. Misc. Mss III, f. 14.
No contemporary would deny that For Dalrymple's life, see Howard T. Fry, Alexander Dalrymple (1737-1808) and the Expansion of British Trade (London, 1970).
It is not certain what practical accomplishment Dalrymple had as a sailor. He thought he had a great deal, though he had served no apprenticeship and had never, in the technical sense, commanded a ship. He certainly, as we have seen, persuaded the P.R.O., Chatham Papers 30/8, Vol. 31, f. 11. According to Kippis, 15–16, it was Dalrymple's idea to be given a brevet commission in the navy, as Bougainville, an army officer, had been.
… Whether the continent exists or not may perhaps be uncertain; [wrote Smith with more caution than Dalrymple himself exhibited] but supposing it does exist, I am very certain you will never find a man fitter for discovering it, or more determined to hazard everything in order to discover it.
The terms he would ask are, first, the absolute command of the ship with the naming of all the officers, in order that he may have people who both have confidence in him and in whom he has confidence; and secondly, that in case he should lose his ship by the common course of accident before he gets into the South Sea, that the Government will undertake to give him another. These are all the terms he would insist upon.
The ship properest for such an expedition, he says, would be an old fifty-gun ship without her guns. He does not, however, insist upon this as a
sine qua non, but will go in any ship with a hundred to a thousand tons. He wishes to have but one ship with a good many boats. Most expeditions of this kind have miscarried from one ship's being obliged to wait for the other, or losing time in looking out for the other.
Adam Smith to Shelburne, 12 February 1767,Atl, CarringtonMsPapers 79: 7.
Once again we do not know how Shelburne replied. Nor was Shelburne the First Lord of the Admiralty. It is clear, however, that Dalrymple was not particularly interested in observing the Transit of Venus, or the far reaches of astronomy; attending
Terra australis incognita, the unknown southern land—or, more hopefully, nondum cognita, not yet known but in due course to be revealed: the brief words trail a long history, are aromatic with an old romance, as of great folios in ancient libraries, compassing all philosophical and geographical knowledge, with pages and double-pages of maps whose very amplitude and pattern ravish the mind; and they present us also with one of the great illusions. It was an illusion raised by abstract thought, buttressed by fragments of discovery that seemed to fit into a likely pattern, demolished by experienced fact. There is a southern land, of course, and even now it is not fully known; but it was not this of which so many generations dreamed. The Antarctic is the fact which has survived; and Antarctica is not the provincia aurea, the golden and spicy province, the land of dye-woods and parrots and castles, the jumble of fable and misinterpretation that was piled on Greek reasoning and
We do not need, for our present purpose, to probe deeply into the history of classical thought on this subject. We may note the fundamental speculations of Pomponius Mela, about A.D. 50, and Claudius Ptolemy, the brilliant Alexandrian astronomer of the second century. Both accepted the theory of the spherical earth, though they differed on its nature: Pomponius Mela pictured a sphere consisting of land, or rather a number of continents, surrounded by water; Ptolemy one of water, or rather a number of seas, surrounded by land. Ptolemy's Cosmographia, first printed in 1477, with maps, was largely the basis of Renaissance geographical thought; but Pomponius Mela, with a southern hemisphere largely ocean, washing the shore of a continent, in this one respect, seems to have been more influential on the future. To both, nevertheless, a continent was essential; the physical argument had to be accepted that to maintain the equilibrium of a spherical earth flowing motionless in space a landmass in the southern half was necessary to balance the familiar land-mass of Europe, Asia and Africa in the northern half. Two hundred years before Ptolemy was printed, Marco Polo went to China. His account of his travels was widely circulated in manuscript, and was first printed, in German, in 1477, the year of Ptolemy's first printing; and Marco Polo seemed, in a way to validate the continental hypothesis. For the text of Marco Polo, as written and printed, became confused. He described his homeward
The Book of Ser Marco Polo, ed. H. Yule (3rd ed., London, 1903), II, 276.Lucach regnum’ has Mercator in his world-chart of 1569; and ‘Beach provincia aurifera quam pauci ex alienis regionibus adeunt propter gentis inhumanitatem’, ‘Beach the golden province where come few foreigners because of its people's inhumanity’. The great ‘Typus Orbis Terrarum’ of Hanc continentem Australem, nonnulli Magellanicam regionem ab eius inventore nuncupant’: ‘This southern continent some call the region of Magellan after its discoverer’. To Ptolemy and Marco Polo, had by that time been added the real discoveries to Terra australis nondum cognita,of actual voyagers, not of Magellan alone: there were the East Indies, Tierra del Fuego, Magellan's strait, the Mar del Zur or South Sea, El Mar Pacific, Nova Guinea, the Islas de Salomon: a host of Spanish names mingled with the Latin. The age of exploration was born, the cartographers were endlessly busy; after Columbus came Balboa, first of western men to set eyes upon the Pacific; after him Magellan, first to drive a line across the ocean and reveal its staggering immensity; after him three centuries of agitation, elucidation, and verification. Agitation certainly there was, because no process of discovery ever went on in a serene air of regular and passionless scientific development: elucidation, because the process produced problems, sometimes, more easily than it solved them; verification, because in a day before men could navigate scientifically, no geographical statement could
The great difficulty of Pacific exploration was not merely the immense size of the ocean—‘a sea so vast that the human mind can scarcely grasp it’, as one of Magellan's chroniclers wrote This was Quiros lays it down that navigation is ‘an art that does not admit of ignorance or carelessness’, and then has to go on to admit the inevitability of ignorance in matters of longitude. It is not quite true that seamen threw up their hands: they did their best with estimation or ‘dead reckoning’. For Quiros see Celsus Kelly, La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo (Cambridge, 1966), I, 50–2.
After Magellan and a few attempts, costly in men and ships, to follow his route, official Spanish enterprise in the Pacific settled down into regular trading voyages between Acapulco in Mexico and Manila on the other side of the ocean. A feasible return passage was found in the westerly winds of forty degrees north. The Spaniards, on their earlier voyages, encountered a number of the Marshall and Caroline islands, north of the equator, as well as New Guinea, but never the principal group of the northern ocean, Hawaii: they were always well south or well north of it. There were, however, three connected Spanish voyages of great endurance and some success, independent of this regular trade: all in the forty years from 1567, all based on the Peruvian port of Callao, all marked by a quite violent mingling of personal qualities and ambitions, jealousies and rebellions—a history wherein the secular passions for conquest, settlement and gold vied with the Franciscan yearning for conquista espiritual, new and noble empire founded on a peaceful Christian subjection of heathen people. These were the voyages of Alvaro de Mendaña and the pilot
Not until 1595 could he do so. Official hostility and tardiness had been underlined by the Pacific incursion of
The immediate future, however, needed no light from Spain. The next century of Pacific exploration was almost entirely in the hands of the Dutch: not quite entirely, because one must remember Dampier and the buccaneers on the fringe. The Dutch were the best cartographers of the seventeenth century; they made important advances in naval architecture; they organised a great overseas trade, and a great eastern empire. The empire was a commercial empire; their exploration was an aspect of trade. As the empire was that of the Dutch East Indies Company, so the exploration was that approved of by the Company, the value of discoveries was judged by the Company; though again one must say not entirely so. The Company, or its captains in their passages from the Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies, placed fairly solidly on the map the western coast of Australia—their New Holland—and a good part of the southern coast. Exploring the north coast, they registered its essential outline, though they were never able to decide whether that north coast was altogether continuous, nor whether New
The ‘Dieppe’ maps, so called from a group of cartographers at Dieppe in the sixteenth century, and particularly one referred to as as the ‘Dauphin’ map, have been held to be renderings of the Australian coast-line, and to point to Portuguese exploration. Andrew Sharp's discussion (Duyfken, two months before Torres sailed through the strait, resulted from exploration of its possibility. There is no real reason to think that Australia had been discovered by any European before, or that the ‘Dieppe’ group of maps, to which an occasional geographer still pins his faith, had anything to do with Australia at all.The Discovery of Australia, Oxford, 1963, 2–14) is pretty conclusive.Terra australis incognita; but its shore-line was unpromising, its cliffs and sand-dunes called up no vision of Locac, the Dutch deemed its people poor and abject; and within less than forty years after its first sighting a Dutch seaman had circumnavigated it, without laying eyes on it—except for the island, Van Diemen's Land or Tasmania, that sits off its south-eastern, coast. This was the voyage of
Not the great Company only, however, had its men in the Pacific, nor did all explorers come from the west. While the Dutch were still experimenting in their approach to eastern trade, through Magellan's strait, one tempest-driven captain, Dirck Gerritsz or Gerrards, in 1599, reported seeing the snow-covered mountains of the great south land, stretching off from latitude 64° in the direction of the Solomon Islands. In 1624 the Orange, from a fleet that set out to attack the Spaniards in Peru, reported two sightings, the first in latitude 50°, the second in 41°. This was doing better than the first Dutch expedition which had the continent for its objective, that of
We are in the eighteenth century. It was a busy century, in science and speculation and writing, in economic expansion and war, in building and art; a revolutionary century, far beyond the confines of politics and social relations. Mathematical physics and chemistry made immense steps; botany, zoology, physiology, astronomy, geography, were all in movement. The great names are thick. Science had not become part of a polite education, but it was written about, lectured upon, demonstrated, applied, made elegant. Newton was the elder prophet; innumerable followers preached. Leadbetter represents one class of them; Robertson, with his instruction of rising navigators, another. Navigation could not fail to be affected. There was an important discovery in the ascertaining of latitude—the method of ‘double altitudes’, before and after noon, which could be utilised for days when a noon sighting of the sun was impossible: we shall find double altitudes thick in the records of Cook's voyages. This was due to Cornelis Douwes of Amsterdam, who about 1749 worked out logarithmic tables for the method. Accurate results in calculation depended not merely on tables but upon accurate observation, accurate measurement, and the century was a great age of scientific and mathematical instrument makers. Hadley's octant, farther developed by
Astronomers and mathematicians did not lose their interest. There were those who thought that the prospect of a large reward would stimulate sufficient ingenuity; disasters at sea directly attributable to errors in reckoning were all too frequent; the British government, alarmed at some of these, in 1714 offered £20,000 to anyone who could produce a ‘generally practicable and useful method’ of fixing longitudes at sea within thirty miles at the end of a six weeks' voyage, and lesser rewards to persons who, without solving the problem, made some appreciable contribution towards its solution. The act of Parliament which regulated the matter also set up the Board of Longitude, ‘for the discovery of longitude at sea and for examining, trying and judging of all proposals, experiments and improvements relating to the same.’ 12 Anne, cap. 15; and see Journals II, XXXIX, n. 1.Rake's Progress, of 1736, a comparatively peaceful lunatic working away at a solution. There were, in fact, two ways of solving the problem: the astronomical-mathematical, and the mechanical. About the first enough has been said. The second depended on the production of a clock, a ‘watch-machine’ so highly sophisticated that it would go at
The British Mariner's Guide, which conveyed instruction in his system. In 1766, as Astronomer Royal, he published the first number of the Nautical Almanac, which contained tables based on Mayer's, calculated for every day in the following year at three-hour intervals. He had reduced the process, after the initial observation, to arithmetic and not very advanced trigonometry. It was not quite simple: there had to be corrections for refraction and parallax, as George Witchell had applied corrections to Cook's figures for the solar eclipse; the local time of observation also had to be corrected by astronomical means. The calculations, to begin with, took about four hours, but improvement in the system reduced this time to a quarter of an hour—anyhow for a mathematician. The ordinary conservative sea captain tended to look at this estimate rather morosely, and to cling to his dead reckoning. We shall see a more lively interest in Cook, without being able to say exactly when he learnt the technique. As for the ‘watch-machine’ or chronometer, that life-work of the practical genius
Meanwhile we may return to discovery, and to thought upon discovery. On the borders of two centuries, the seventeenth and eighteenth, and not in the Pacific at ail, we have a voyage that strikes the new note of science. It is the South Atlantic voyage from which Halley, investigating the variation of the compass, brought back his material for the first isogonic map, together with a method of finding longitude through the occupations of the fixed stars—another method useless to sailors without tables or instruments or mathematics. He brought back as well reports of land that were, like so many others, illusory. On the borders of two oceans, the Indian and the Pacific, Dampier failed in a voyage on which he had hoped to reveal the east coast of Australia: at least he cut in two the old conception of New Guinea and could indulge his passion for natural history. Neither Halley nor Dampier showed great capacity for dealing with insubordinate men. The year of Cook's birth was the year hi which For the memoir or memoirs of Buache, see Theorie de la Terre, the first volume of the great Historie Naturelle, in 1749; in 1752, when the brilliant Maupertius published the Lettre sur le Progres des Sciences addressed to Frederick the Great, he was serving his second year in the Three Brothers, looking forward perhaps to becoming a mate; in 1756, when the President de Brasses, stimulated by Buffon and Maupertius, published bis magistral Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes, he was in the Eagle, master's mate, under Palliser; in 1757, when Le Centinent Austral (Paris, 1893), 412–13.
There are parallels between French and English thought on the uses of a continent, and we may note that French writings, plans and actions no less than English caused disquiet in a temporarily revived Spanish empire. For a brief while Spain was prepared to name the Pacific as a Spanish preserve as much as it was in the sixteenth century; the return of Anson in 1744 with a galleon's treasure was regarded in England much as the return of Drake in the ibid., 335.Golden Hind had been. The Falkland Islands were regarded as a key to the Pacific, Spain accordingly would tolerate French settlement there no more than British. Yet how to keep French or British out of that ample ocean, if they were determined to get in, under the excuse either of science or of peaceful trade? There is an obvious connection between the publication in war years, 1744–8, of Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca of 1705, and Anson's famous voyage; and Campbell's two thousand folio pages are a continent in themselves, his eloquence, addressed to ‘the Merchants of Great Britain’, rolls with an appropriate thunder. ‘Let us maintain Trade, and there is no doubt that Trade will maintain us. Let our past Mistakes teach us to, be wise, let our present Wants and Difficulties revive our ancient Industry.’ Let us plant, a new colony for the benefit of trade. He, wastes no time on cosmic principles, will not indulge in hypothesis, knows how far he may safely be dogmatic. ‘It is most evident, from Captain Taxman's Voyage, that New Guinea, Carpentaria, New Holland, Antony van Diemen's Land, and the countries discovered by de Qtdros, make all one Continent, from which New Zeland seems to be separated by a Streight; and, perhaps, is part of another Continent, answering to Africa, as this, of which we are now speaking, plainly does to America. This Continent reaches from the Equinoctical to 44° of South Latitude, and extends from 122° to 188° of Longitude, making indeed a very large country, but nothing like what de Quiros imagined; which shows how dangerous a thing it is to trust too much to Conjecture
Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca, I, xvi.Terra australis incognita; such a settlement would greatly increase our shipping and seamen, ‘which are the true and natural Strength of this Country, extend our naval Power, and raise the Reputation of this Nation; the most distant Prospect of which is sufficient to warm the Soul of any Man, who has the least regard for his Country, with Courage, sufficient to despise the Imputations which may be thrown upon him as a visionary Projector, for taking so much Pains upon an Affair, that can tend so little to his private Advantage.’Voyage.
In the commentary of dc Brosses on the voyages, collected in his Histoire, we have a different spirit; for de Brosses was an intellectual of the eighteenth-century French kind, a philosophe, a lover of mankind as well as of the civilisation of his own country. Commerce and naval power, certainly, were not to be despised while Britain so visibly affected the universal monarchy of the sea; but the fame that discoverers should pursue was the fame of scientific knowledge. The President traversed the voyaged in the southern hemisphere, in the regions he called Magellanica—the Atlantic; Polynesia—the Pacific; Australasia—the
On this the war, with all its ravaged provinces, was the harsh commentary. After it was over, a Scotsman, John Callander, in his Callander's production appeared in three volumes in Edinburgh, 1766–8. He plundered other books besides de Brosses; see Kippis, 184.Terra Australis CognitaJournals I, lxxxi-lxxxiii.Terra australis incognita: some wise and knowing people, he conceded, took it to be merely a chimera. Yet one should not be too hasty, too peremptory: it might exist, and for the sake of science and of navigation be extremely worth the finding. Such, it appears, must have been a popular view. The volumes of voyages had done their work. Twenty years later the first biographer of Cook looked back and fully remembered ‘how much his imagination was captivated, in the more early part of his life, with the hypothesis of a southern continent. He has often dwelt upon it with rapture, and been highly delighted with the authors who contended for its existence, and displayed the mighty consequences which would result from its being discovered.’
Dalrymple regarded himself as a scientific specialist. Trade, which he was so much interested in stimulating in the East Indies, in the South Seas had little interest for him; he gave his attention to a particular sort of voyage, with one single object. His researches had yielded the harvest that he brought out in two volumes in 1770 and 1771 as ibid., 12 ff. after 124. This odd argument is perhaps founded on something that Cook himself was later to observe, the penchant of a number of islanders for bleaching their hair with a plaster of clay. ibid., xx.A Historical Collection of Voyages… in the South Pacific Ocean, the first devoted to Spanish voyages, the second to Dutch. This was a valuable work. Its argumentative part he had already printed in 1767 in An Account of the Discoveries made in the South Pacific Ocean, Previous to 1764—previous to 1764, presumably, because that was
Historical Collection, I, xxviii-xxix.must be a Continent on the south’. He shows this. He introduces an ingenious argument from the existence of ‘fair-haired people’ in the islands, a fact ‘entirely contrary to the common circumstance within the tropic’.discovered on the east side; and it appears more than probable, that Tasman's discovery, which he named Staat's Land, but which is in the maps called New Zealand, is the western coast of this Continent…. The north of this vast Continent appears to be hitherto undiscovered…. Although the signs of land seen by Roggevein, previous to the discovery of Easter Island, denote the vicinity of the continent, it is from his description of that island we are enabled to form some idea of the adjacent Continent; no voyage hitherto performed, points out so strongly the original of the Peruvian manners and religion.’sublimity of conception, followed by
dauntless and perseverant resolution… .’ Much was still within the power of men, ‘rather emulous of the glorious spirit of that age, than devoted to the mercenary, or indolent disposition of the present’;Historical Collection, I, xvii-xviii.
Meanwhile, even before Dalrymple returned from the East, the British Government had shown itself not quite immune to ideas of Pacific discovery. As long ago as 1749, just after an earlier war, Anson had persuaded his colleagues on the Admiralty to prepare an expedition, and only protests from the agitated Spaniards had prevented it from sailing; and a strain in Anson's strategic thought, the acquisition of the Falkland Islands as the key to the Pacific, had been transmitted to Lord Egmont, First Lord of the Admiralty from 1763 to 1776. Egmont was interested in the continent, wherever it might lie; he was also interested in a grand conception of oceanic control, not merely through control of the Magellanic entrance, the southern, but also through that of a northern passage—the North-West Passage, in fact, in which, despite all failures to find it, there were still devout believers. 70 control both those entrances would give, obviously a strategic command superior to anything else that could exist. Hence the despatch in June 1764 of the first post-war expedition, that of Commodore the Byron's instructions are entered in P.R.O., Adm 2/1339; their policy is examined in Wallis's instructions also are in WfLO., Adm 2/1332; and see Dolphin and Tamar, instructed to examine not the south Pacific but the south Atlantic—any continental mass that might exist ‘within Latitudes convenient for navigation and in the Climates adapted to the Produce of Commodities usefull in Commerce’, the Falkland Islands, and a ‘Pepys Islands alleged to lie in the Atlantic somewhere east of the Falklands; having done which, they were to pass into the Pacific and up to Drake's New Albion, about latitude 380 on the North American coast, examining that coast closely as far northward as possible for a passage through the land, returning through it to England if it existed; if passage there was none, they were to make
Journals I, Ixxxiv-lxxxvi.Dolphin again, in August 1766, under the command of Journals I, xc ff.
There were in France, at the same time, ambitions nourished not dissimilar to those so freely fed in England, though the merchants of France seem to have been less concerned than were individual patriots, administrators, or adventurers. De Brosses had his influence. The Falklands stretched a beckoning-strategic hand. There was Bouvet's cape. There were Frenchmen anxious for a continent that would provide a secure port of call for their ships on the long passage to India, there was a French obsession with spiceries, wherein a Pacific settlement might snatch a world-trade from the Dutch, there was a natural French, rivalry with the British—why should unimpeded Albion monopolise all the profits of that to-be-discovered hemisphere? The French contemporary of Byron and Wallis is Bougainville, aristocratic, brilliant, a fellow of the Bougainville can be quite fully studied in J. E. Martin-Allanic, Bougainville navigateur et les découvertes de son temps (2 vols., Paris, 1964.).
All this was quite distinct from the astronomical ambitions of the R.S. Council Minutes, 15 February 1768.
His Majesty, well disposed, granted the Society £4000, ‘clear of fees’. As this was additional to the ship and its company, to be provided by the Admiralty, one must allow that the British Grown was doing its duty by science. It appears that the Council was still naive enough to assume that Dalrymple would be appointed commander of the ship. The matter was clarified at a Council meeting of 3 April. A letter from the Admiralty, first, announced the purchase of a ship, ‘a Cat of 370 tons’, for the expedition, and enquired who was to go and what instructions the Society wanted given to her commander. Admiralty secretary to Kippis, 16, makes the defecate comment that Hawke ‘possessed more of the spirit of his profession that either of education or science’. Dalrymple, in his later reminiscences, says that offers were made to him ‘that the instructions for the voyage should be entrusted to him, and the Officer commanding the vessel be positively ordered to follow his opinion, on the compliance with which his promotion was to depend’; but Dalrymple still refused to go, since his Paramour pink in 1698—a civilian in command of a naval vessel on a scientific voyage, whose difficulties with his officers had been painful;Cuddalore, sailed by Captain Baker, and his longest ocean passage of nineteen days, to suggest—let alone insist—that he should have the command of a voyage to the Pacific Ocean The answer of course is that Dalrymple was a man with a mission, and that he did not conceive his mission to be limited to observing the transit of Venus. On this same 3 April he attended on the Council; he was told of the Admiralty sentiment; and, quite consistently and finally, he declined the voyage.Cuddalore experience had taught him ‘that a divided command was incompatible with the public service in such voyages.’—‘Memoirs of European Magazine, 42 (1802), 325. It is hard to know what to make of this, except that it is meat unlikely that the Admiralty or anyone connected with it, would have made the ‘offers’ he refers to. He may have been referring to his discussions with the
All this is traditionally considered part of the biography of Cook. The history of Pacific exploration is part of the biography of Cook; the fact that Cook became an observer of the Transit is part of his biography; the fact that Dalrymple became a sort of natural and perpetual critic of Cook's proceedings is perhaps part of the biography of Cook, though much more of that of Dalrymple. In relation to Cook's command of the Transit voyage, however, Dalrymple's cultivation of the Kippis, 17, note: ‘From the information of
We may look once more at its context, not merely naval. A voyage to the Pacific was a voyage to an ocean that had been criss-crossed repeatedly for two centuries—in certain directions only, and within certain limits. For certain persons it had always been the abode of an illimitable hope. As the eighteenth century moved on the hope was not less; the age of enlightenment had its own romance. But tike light that was growing was a clear one, dry, wide. It would dissipate the ancient hope. It would not destroy romance for the romantic. To say that in this decade of the 1760s science had taken control of geography and navigation would be absurd. None the less, we are at the beginning of an era in which a man gifted enough in practical ways could add the clarity of science to his own clarity of mind. For geography and navigation that meant a change of method and a change of hope.
Dalrymple, in the memoir he wrote of himself, said that the Draft introduction, to The ship for the command of which Cook had been selected, early in April 1768, was the Endeavour. Just bought into the navy, she was not yet fitted out. More than one person later claimed the credit of selecting her: Dalrymple, springing to another conclusion, said he did so; Palliser, possibly the victim of defective memory, said that he and Cook did so. It is not likely that either claim could be justified.European Magazine, 42, 325. This statement is not entirely accurate otherwise. Palliser's claim is reported by Kippis, 17. The relevant documents (Admiralty, Journals, I, 605–6.Tryal sloop, lately taken into dock at Deptford for repair; she would need sheathing with wood or copper as a protection against the ship-worm, and would not be ready before the end of May, but there was no suitable vessel at home that could be sooner fitted. A sloop in naval parlance was any small vessel with a small number of guns; the Tryal, built in 1749, can-ied fourteen. The Admiralty agreed, with direction that the shipwrights should work overtime if necessary; and then had the idea that the Rose might be considered, because the ship should sail early in the spring. The Rose was a 24-gun frigate of 1740, even then ready to receive men. This was 10 March. The Navy Board replied eleven days later: the Rose was ‘the best there was at home in good condition’, but she, could not stow a sufficient quantity of provisions for the contemplated voyage; why not buy a cat-built vessel, which would be roomy enough? One of about 350 tons could be picked up in the Thames. Now a cat-built vessel, or cat, was exactly the east-coast collier, or her type, strongly built, of shallow draught, certainly without the lines or the speed of a frigate, as different from the Dolphin of Byron and Wallis as could
Voyage towards the South Pole, Ms. F1.Valentine and the Earl of Pembroke, both about the suggested size. The Deptford yard officers acted with zeal, surveyed even a third vessel, the Ann and Elizabeth; and on 27 March reported in favour of the second-named.
She was bought. ‘The Deptford Yard Officers to Navy Bond, 97 March 1768, Adm 106/3315.Earl of Pembroke,’ ran the Yard report, ‘Mr Thos. Milner, owner, was built at Whitby, her age three years nine months, square stern back, single bottom, mil built and comes nearest to the tonnage mentioned in your warrant and not so old by fourteen months, is a promising ship for sailing of this kind and fit to stow provisions and stores as may be put on board her.’
Even an excellently built, comparatively new collier had to go into dock; and by the time the work on her was done and all hope of a
Admiralty to Navy Board, 5 April 1768, ATL, Miscellaneous material relating to Cook's voyages.Tryal sloop. How was the ship to be fitted?—the Navy Board enquired on 29 March, in reporting the purchase to the Admiralty. By what name was she to be known? She was to be ‘sheathed, filled, and fitted in all respects proper’ for the service she was to be engaged on, replied the Admiralty on 5 April, to receive six carriage guns of four pounds each and eight swivel guns, and to be registered on the list of the Endeavour.Adm/A/2606; entered Adm 2/237.Teredo navalis of tropical seas, the sheathing was filled with nails with large flat heads. Unlike the experimental Dolphin, the Endeavour was not sheathed with copper, which presented a problem in repair far from home and had led to corrosion of ironwork. On 18 April the Yard officers were reporting that several of the masts and yards were defective, reducing their value to £56 17s; in the end practically all these had to be renewed. Next day, for ‘quicker dispatch’, they proposed that certain joiners' work should be done ‘by task’; on the 25th they announced that the ship would be ready to receive men the following week. Then, though matters had been pushed so hard for a month, came a severe interruption. An anonymous fragment of journal tells, us something: ‘The Ship had been bought into the Service and an order from the Admiralty directed that she should be fitted for the intended Service with the greatest dispatch—Every other business in the Dockyard was laid aside till this order was fulfilled—But she was suffered to lay in the Dock during three weeks afterwards of very hot weather and receivM much damage from it—the Expedition seemed now to be totally forgot; owing it was thought to the tumults and riots of the Seamen in the River….’
Meanwhile, at the beginning of April, as we have seen, the Admiralty had communicated with the Royal Society Council Minutes, 5 May 1768. Royal Society Council Minutes, 19 May 1768.Transactions; he was introduced by Captain John Campbeil and agreed to accept the office in return for £120 a year for victualling himself and the other observer (an agreeable addition to naval rations) and whatever gratuity the Society should think fit. At the same meeting Mr Green, an astronomer by profession, agreed to accept a fee of 200 guineas for the voyage, and 100 guineas a year if it lasted more than two years.Dolphin,
Wallis, though a good commander, was not a gifted explorer, and for a large part of the time that he was in the South Seas he had the ill hick to suffer from sickness; but he had one piece of amazing good luck in discovery which would mark out his voyage forever, and was
Dolphin: a sloop misnamed the Swallow, so aged, badly fitted out and painfully slow that her commander, Swallow followed the Dolphin in a four months' passage of the Strait which was one of the longest and most agonising on record. At the western entrance, as difficult weather blew up, they parted company—the Dolphin into the ocean, the Swallow forced back into the Strait. They did not meet again. Wallis's instructions were to look for the continent west of Gape Horn, where he might pick up its coast in longitude 100° or 120° W; having found it, he might return round the Horn, or if driven too far north, by way of the East Indies. If he had not found it, he was to search north-west to latitude 20° S, and then refit in China or the East Indies for his homeward passage. The writers of instructions were all too hopeful of making a westing from the Horn or the Strait, and by the time Wallis, driven north-west from the start, crossed the hundredth meridian he was at about latitude 38°. Early June brought him into the Tuamotus, slightly north of 20°, a succession of atolls and islets he named with proper feeling after the royal dukes—until, on the 18th of the month, he came to an island such as dreams and enchantments are made of, real land though it was: an island of long beaches and lofty mountains, romantic in the pure ocean air, of noble trees and deep valleys, of bright falling waters. Man in his cool dwellings there was not vile—after one skirmish with a large canoe fleet in the bay where the Dolphin anchored—nor woman neither; welcoming and tender were the brown beautiful girls, with tattoed thighs and chaplets of sweet-smelling flowers, though a little mercenary it is true—so that the ship almost fell to pieces as ardent spirits in her company wrenched out the nails that were the price of love. There was a Queen, one Oborea, all dignity, tall and strong, who lifted the ailing Wallis like a child over bad places in the road, yet wept when he announced his departure. Grief indeed was then general. There was abundance of food produced in a delightful climate; the climate itself almost made sick sailors well. This spot it was that Wallis called King George the Third's Island, annexing it to the dominions of that monarch, this bay of his anchorage Port Royal Bay. It was the island of Tahiti, famous name, the heart of
Five weeks later he departed westward. He picked up other islets in no way comparable to his great discovery, including the two northernmost of the Tongan archipelago, whence he changed course north-west, to refresh again at Tinian, one of the Marianas; he sailed round north of the Philippines, south to Batavia, refitted at the Gape, and brought home his news. Not merely did that news include the announcement of King George's Island, but also an exact position for it, astronomically ascertained at Port Royal Bay by ATL, note by Wallis in a copy of his journal, 20 August 1766. B.M., Add. Dolphin—latitude 17° 30′ S, longitude 150° W. This unusual purser had arrived at the longitude by—to use bis qaptain's words—‘taking the Distance of the Sun from the Moon and Working it according to Dr Masculines Method which we did not understand.’The Discovery of Tahiti (London, 1948), 135.Dolphin's master's mate some person from whom, the news could not be kept—perhaps Lord Egmont himself?—scribbled a note on Wallis's discoveries, not only those mentioned in this journal, ‘but others 20 leagues to the south of Georges Island, which are hitherto kept secret… . But Gapt Wallis and his First Lieutenant being both exceedingly ill when at George's Island, in an unknown part of the world, at this immense distance from any possible assistance, & having only one single ship, it was too hazardous under these circumstances, to coast the Continent (which they had then actually in view) and afterwards thought most prudent on their return, not to
Ms 47106, quoted by Carriogton in Robertson, xxvii-xxviii.
That was one necessary decision. There were earlier ones, as we have seen, on the command and naming of the ship, and her furnishing with stores and provisions (it is fairly clear that the Admiralty was thinking of a two years' voyage). The command: there was still a point to settle. Cook was to command, and in nautical parlance he would be the captain, but the captain of a ship might not necessarily be a captain in a navy list. This one was a master, taken only for the time being—so it seems—from the Newfoundland survey, and it may be that the Lords had no intention initially of giving him a higher rank; for a commission instead of a warrant might simply, on a long view, limit his usefulness. Why commission a man who was so exceedingly useful as a master, and one who—be it added—might very well lose and not gain income by the change? This seems to be the deduction from the remark that ‘It was once proposed that C. Cook should only have a Mate as the second in Command, with 35 Seamen’, Admiralty Minutes, 25 May 1768, Adm 3/76.Journals, I, cxxvi.Gosport; that name-sake, however meritorious an officer, becomes merely a curiosity for a footnote. The new lieutenant was commissioned the same day, ‘required and directed to use the utmost dispatch in getting’ the ship ‘ready for the sea accordingly, and then falling down to Gallions Reach take in her guns and gunners’ stores at that place and proceed to the Nore for further orders.' He went to work with energy; orders and warrants and his own communications followed thick and fast. Another officer was immediately appointed, Mr Zachary
The supplies kept pouring into that capacious hold: The relevant documents are calendared in Journals, I, 610 ff.stouerkraut, a preparation of fermented cabbage: a supply of two pounds per week forseventy men for twelve months was supplied, and Cook was to report to the Victualling Board on his return ‘how he had found the same to answer.’ He was given 1000 lb of ‘portable soup’, cakes of a sort of glue or meat essence, that could be boiled with pease or oatmeal on the three banyan or meatless days of the week Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and would not anyhow spoil whatever nutritive value the pease and oatmeal had. There were robs of lemons and oranges, syrups preserved with sugar, the invaluable juices being deprived of their virtues in the boiling down process. There was a wort or decoction of malt held by the Irish physician Experimental Essays, which had reached a second edition in the previous year, were supplied also. Saloup, that popular drink, was thought worth taking. There was going to be a good deal of reporting to be done. Wallis's surgeon, John Hutchinson, was reporting already on some of these things. It is odd that the Admiralty could ignore so completely the work on citrus fruits of Treatise of the Scurvy of 1753 might have saved the lives of innumerable sailors. There is no indication that Cook ever heard of it. This again is odd, because Palliser, advised by Lind, had had striking experience of the value of lemon juice on a voyage to India and back in 1748, and a rob was no substitute for the fresh fruit. There was, of course, the difficulty of keeping the fruit in a fresh state.
Cook himself with particularity applied for scientific instruments; and as he wrote out his applications at the Admiralty Office and received immediate replies from the secretary it appears that he was perfecting his technique of explaining on the spot what he wanted and losing no time over paper pleas. ‘In order to make surveys of such parts as His Majesty's Bark the Endeavour under my command may touch at, it will be necessary to be provided with a set of Instruments for that purpose.’ Cook to Stephens, 8 July 1768, Adm 1/1609. ibid., and Cook to Stephens, 20 July 1768, Adm 1/1609; Admiralty to Navy Board, 21 July 1768, Cook to Stephens, 25 July 1768, Adm 1/1609. Cook to Stephens, 27 July 1768, Adm 1/1609. The micrometer cost £13 18s.—Admiralty Minutes, 27 July, Adm 3/76. Royal Society Council Minutes, 5 May 1768, Vol. V, 315–16.Adm/A/2609, Adm 2/238.
Then there was the miscellany of trifles for winning the friendship of islanders and carrying on trade with them—nails, mirrors, fishhooks, hatchets, red and blue beads, scissors, even a few dolls.
An expedition is not merely a ship or technology or trade-goods, it is men. The men who served with Cook over the next ten or eleven years provide an interesting study in human nature and capacity, and some of those who joined the Endeavour were with him till the end. Officers naturally stand out with more prominence, though now and again a ray of light makes vivid, for good or ill, one of the able seamen or other inhabitants of the vessel whom casual fate in that century picked up and turned into circumnavigators. Of Zachary Hicks, commissioned as second lieutenant, it would be agreeable to know more. He was a Londoner, born at Stepney in 1739, and carried on board the seeds of tuberculosis—how acquired we do not know, but it was a plague to which seamen were not immune. He entered the navy at Ripon, which is some distance from Stepney, whether as a volunteer or a pressed man, and when, again we do not know—probably not pressed, as the records refer to him as a midshipman; he was in sloops as A.B., master's mate, and acting lieutenant from 1766 to 1768, and in March of the latter year was given a lieutenant's pay, two months before his appointment to the Endeavour
Dolphin under both Byron and Wallis, so that he knew already more about the Pacific and its islands than anybody else in the ship. Under Wallis he was one of the men who had taken over the chief responsibilities of the voyage, and he was indeed an excellent subordinate. He is a particular type of sailor—perhaps, if he were not an American, a particular type of Englishman; in eleven years more to be a captain through sheer force of survival, never an admiral; a man of commonsense, able practice, and ceaseless activity, without scientific learning, with some dogmatic fancies but no real imagination; a great sportsman who has gone after wild cattle on Tinian to provide fresh beef for the Dolphin, who will go after the wild duck in Tahiti, the kangaroo and the stingray in Australia; who is ready for any expedition into any country anywhere, of pleasure or of duty. A third man, quite different from these two, a lieutenant before the voyage was out, but for most of it indifferently A.B., midshipman or master's mate—the lines are indifferently drawn—was Charles Clerke. A farmer's son from Weathersfield in Essex, entering the navy in 1755 at the age of twelve, captain's servant and midshipman to be, he was now 25 and looking forward to a commission. A young fellow ripe for every sort of excitement, he was bound to be on the mizen-top of the Bellona when the mast was shot away in a celebrated action with the Courageux in 1761, bound to survive and crawl half-drowned up the chains. He too was in the Dolphin with Byron, but served in the West Indies during Wallis's voyage. He had enough mathematical ability to become a good scientific navigator, and was a good observer of natural phenomena. Brave as well as experienced, he was also,
Other men came with Gore from the Dolphin, joining their new ship after only three or four weeks on shore—Endeavour. Molyneux became master, Pickersgill and Wilkinson his mates. Molyneux undoubtedly had intelligence, though Cook was never to trust him completely; he was, like so many of his fellows, intemperate with drink, which was a defect in a master. Wilkinson was to keep an unusually articulate journal. Pickersgill was the most interesting of the three. Another Yorkshire-man, not twenty when the voyage began, he ended it as master; a good observer, able and amiable, a natural romantic, a little oversensitive, a little given to the grandiose concept and the swelling word, yet a successful subordinate, he was to do good work for Cook. At some latter stage he also went down before intemperance; and then, taken away into independent command, was struck by disaster. The bottle played havoc with too many of these young men, and we have to remember again what century it was. Niger for some years from 1763, and thus had been on the Newfoundland station; he was literate and accurate in observation, and one regrets that only a small portion of his journal has survived. He had a conscientious surgeon's mate in Endeavour. There are some more responsible and experienced young fellows, like Grenville, and now is a ‘very expert’ help in surveying; and there are some rather odd young fellows as well.
There is not much that can be said collectively about the crew. It was a young crew: few of them had passed their thirtieth year, very few were as old as their captain. Few of them achieved any particular distinction, except of being black or parti-coloured, sheep; many got drunk, and stole liquor whenever they could; practically all went after women; a few tried to desert, more talked about deserting; some were rash, quarrelsome, disobedient or ‘mutinuous’—that is, they swore at the master; some were flogged. Granting the custom of flogging, and the regulations of the navy, they were not flogged excessively. Cook would have no scenes in the Cook to Navy Board, 13 June 1768, Adm 106/1163. Cook to Navy Board, 16 June 1768, Adm 106/1163; Navy Board to Cook, 17 June, Michael Lewis, Endeavour like those he had witnessed in Halifax harbour. We may regard it as a triumph of administration that in that overcrowded ship there were so few unpleasant scenes avoidable by any human agency. On the whole that crew was to win the captain's respect in most of the situations to which destiny had called them from their separate corners of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. There were two or three from farther afield, like James Maria Magra from New York, and Antonio Ponto from Venice, and John Dozey from ‘the Brazils’. The British navy took what it could get; Cook, on this voyage, took what he was given. He did struggle over one matter: that was the ship's cook (there were other cooks: the captain had a cook, the lieutenants had a cook). ‘Honble Gentlemen,’ he expostulated to the Clb.England's Sea-Officers, (London, 1948), 239.
At the beginning of August, the Admiralty, which had started off with a total complement of seventy, decided to raise it to 85, including a dozen marines—a sergeant, corporal, drummer, and nine privates. This meant more provisions; wonder and admiration grow at the infinite capacity of Messrs Fishburn's collier. Cook might have felt disconcerted at this, particularly since it was only twelve days since he had heard, officially, that he was to take a scientific party with him, as well as Mr Green and his servant; if so, he made no recorded sign. We may feel disconcerted ourselves, reading through the ship's muster-books, to find rising out of the The Act was 22 Geo. II. Section XXXI reads, ‘Every Officer, or other Person in the Fleet, who shall knowingly make or sign a false Muster or Muster-book, or who shall command, counsel or procure the Making or Signing thereof, or who shall aid or abet any other Person in the Making or Signing thereof, shall, upon Proof of any such Offence being made before a Court-martial, be cashiered, and rendered incapable of further Employment in His Majesty's Naval Service.’
One comes to the civilians, and first to Mr Green, who has already appeared before the Council of the Royal Society, and may be regarded for practical purposes as a civilian.Aurora. A purser was not incited, but was expected, to do better for himself than his pay would indicate. At Barbados he had fallen out with Maskelyne, who nevertheless had a high enough professional opinion of him to insist on his appointment by the Endeavour was
Mr Joseph Banks is the young gentleman we have already encountered so briefly in the harbour of St John's, two years before, at the end of his summer's holiday, in the Thomas Pennant to Banks, 10 April 1768; Niger, about to attend the Governor's ball. He is now twenty-five years old, since 1766 a Fellow of the Royal Society, and bent on greater things in the way of travel. He is one of those fortunate beings, an eighteenth-century English landed proprietor, with an ample income that would continue to rise, partly, and largely, through his own good management of his estates, partly through family bequests. The issue of some generations of Lincolnshire land-owners, seated at Revesby Abbey
Herbal, extended to the other phenomena of schoolboys' natural history, butterflies and beetles and shells, extended with time to all the branches of natural history; and his own original passion, as things turned out, was important for the the science of his time. Not Homer, not Virgil or Ovid, but Linnaeus was the god of his idolatry. A few semi-philosophical ideas he accumulated; but what he was really after was the detail of the natural world. There was no limit to Banks's curiosity, within limits—if one may put it in this way—laid down by himself. His father died when he was eighteen. He was virtually his own master from that time. As soon as he came of age he bought a house in London. His good looks, his charm, his enthusiasm, his interests, brought him excellent friends, from Endeavour. When he first put the notion to the The Banks Letters (London, 1958), 662.
Joseph Banks Esq rFellow of this Society, a Gentleman of large fortune, who is well versed in natural history, being Desirous of undertaking the same voyage the Council very earnestly request their Lordships, that in regard to MrBanks's great personal merit, and for the Advancement of useful knowledge, He also, together with his Suite, being seven persons more, that is, eight persons in all, together with their baggage, be received on board of the Ship, under the Command of Captain Cook.Royal Society Council Minutes, 9 June 1768.
The Admiralty may have taken a little time to digest this, and perhaps consider it with Cook; for not till 22 July was Cook formally ordered to receive Green and his servant and baggage, and Banks and all his people and baggage, ‘bearing them as supernumeries for Victuals only, and Victualling them as the Barks Company during their Continuance on Board’. Stephens to Cook, 22 July 1768, Adm 2/94, Clb.
Everybody liked Solander—Dr by courtesy, not right; how could a learned Swede not be Dr? Ten years older than Banks, five years younger than Cook, Daniel Carl (the second name assumed to distinguish him from another Daniel) Solander was one of the favourite pupils of Linnaeus, and when the London natural historians urged the master to send some one to England to spread the Linnaean gospel, he was the chosen man. He arrived in 1760. Acute and encyclopaedic in his knowledge, yet an ever-diligent and unostentatious student, modest, cheerful and friendly to all his acquaintance, his popularity among the scientists and the collectors was great. He was a sort of touchstone. He liked London. He refused to go to the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences as its professor of botany. London was charmed. In 1763 he became an assistant at the British Museum, organising the vast Sloane collection, and
Banks, as we have seen, took a ‘suite’: two artists, a secretary, four servants, and—for he was an Englishman—two dogs. The first of the artists was Sydney Parkinson, the young son of a Quaker brewer of Edinburgh. Apprenticed to a woollen-draper after his father's death, his talent for drawing would out, and he came to London, where his flowers and fruits attracted the attention of the natural historians. Banks employed him, had been going to take him on his abandoned northern journey, and found him an indispensable choice for this larger one, in which botanical investigation, he intended, would bulk so greatly. Parkinson was indeed to find much to do. His talent did not stop with the pencil or the brush; he was intelligent, highly observant, sensible, sensitive, serious, with ever-expanding interests in the new, so un-Quaker world where his life was now cast; a slight dark wisp of a young man, long-nosed, with long thin fingers, a rather prim little mouth; a young man of the highest moral standards. His fellow-draughtsman, Solander to Linnaeus, 1 December 1768, in Arvid H. J. Uggla, ‘Svenska Linné-Sallskapets Arrskrift, xxxvii-xxxviii (1954-5), 64.
they are to proceed under the direction of Mr. Banks, by order of the Lords of the Admiralty, on further discoveries of the great Southern continent, and from thence proceed to England by the Cape of good Hope…. No people ever went to sea better fitted out for the purpose of Natural History, nor more elegantly. They have got a fine library of Natural History; they have all sorts of machines for catching and preserving insects; all kinds of nets, trawls, drags and hooks for coral fishing; they have even a curious contrivance of a telescope, by which, put into the water, you can see the bottom to a great depth, where it is clear. They have many cases of bottles with ground stoppers, of several sizes, to preserve animals in spirits. They have the several sorts of salt to surround the seeds; and wax, both beeswax and that of theMyrica; besides there are many people whose sole business it is to attend them for this very purpose. They have two painters and draughtsmen, several volunteers who have a tolerable notion of Natural History; in short Solander assured me this expedition would cost Mr. Banks ten thousand pounds.Ellis to Linnaeus, 19 August 1768;
J. E. Smith ,A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus, and other Naturalists(London, 1821), I, 230–2.
‘All this’, concluded Ellis, ‘is owing to you and your writings.’ That may be true. It is fairly clear that Banks, however lavish he was in expenditure over equipment—and one could easily add to the list that Ellis gives—could not have spent £10,000. It is quite clear that neither the Admiralty nor Cook had the idea that any part of
There was also among the ship's company a goat. This animal had already contributed to Pacific history. Sailing in the Dolphin with Wallis, on the first morning at Tahiti she had cleared the deck of all visitors by butting one of them unexpectedly on the behind. She had supplied milk for the officers, and this was to be her function again.
On 30 July the Lords of the Admiralty signed Cook's instructions. Cook's original copy of his instructions has disappeared. They were regarded as lost until the 1920's when they were found in the Public Record Office, Adm 2/1332, with other ‘secret’ instructions of the period. They were first printed in the Navy Records. Society's Chapter IX of Anson's Naval Miscellany, III (1928), 343–50. Another copy was found in Clb. In the Journals they will be found in I, cclxxix-cclxxxiv.Voyage is devoted to ‘Observations and directions for facilitating the passage of our future Cruisers round Cape Horn’. By standing a good distance south, argued Anson, ‘in all probability the violence of the currents will be hereby avoided, and the weather will prove less tempestuous and uncertain’.Dolphin surveys, plans and ‘views’; and he was to record all the additional things of the sort he could. He was ‘to endeavour by all proper means to cultivate a friendship with the Natives, presenting them such Trifles as may be acceptable to them, exchanging with them for Provisions (of which there is great Plenty) such of the Merchandize you have been directed to Provide, as they may value, and shewing them every kind of Civility and regard. But as Captn Wallis has represented the Island to be very populous, and the Natives (as well there as at the other Islands which he visited) to be rather treacherous than otherwise you are to be Cautious not to let yourself be surprized by them, but to be Constantly on your guard against any accident.’ If he was not able to make a landing, he was to find some other place for the observation within the limits of latitude and longitude laid down by the
These additional instructions were devoted mainly to the Southern Continent.
Whereas the making Discoverys of Countries hitherto unknown, and the Attaining a Knowledge of distant Parts which though formerly discover'd have yet been but imperfectly explored, will redound greatly to the Honour of this Nation as a Maritime Power, as well as to the Dignity of the Crown of Great Britain, and may tend greatly to the advancement of the Trade and Navigation thereof; and 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 CaptnWallis in His Majesty's Ship the Dolphin (of which you will herewith receive a Copy) or of the Tract of any former Navigators in Pursuits of the like kind…. [on leaving Tahiti] You are to proceed to the southward in order to make discovery of the Continent abovementioned until you arrive in the Latitude of 40°, unless you sooner fall in with it. But not having discover'd 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 35° until you discover it,or fall in with the Eastern side of the Land discover'd by Tasman and now called New Zeland.
These, it may be remarked, are excellent instructions, drafted by someone—whoever it was—who knew the extent of geographical conjecture. If the continent was where it was said to be, this course would infallibly reveal it; and to sail south from Tahiti (if there was anything in the Dolphin's view of the cloud banks) was a much more economical procedure than to try to sail west from Cape Horn. Then, as a second-best, New Zealand anyhow must exist—a distant part which though formerly discovered had yet been but imperfectly explored: all being well it could hardly elude the search. If he should discover the continent, then Cook was to explore as much of the coast as he could, and bring back all possible observations, charts, views and hydrographic details—a list almost as inclusive as if he were setting out on a season's work in Newfoundland. That was not all: the Lords wished to know about the nature of the soil and its products, beasts, birds, fishes and minerals; they wanted seeds of trees, fruits and grains, and an account of the native inhabitants, if any, and friendship, alliance and trade with them; the discoverer was ‘with the Consent of the Natives to take possession of Convenient Situations in the Country in the Name of the King of Great Britain; or, if you find the Country uninhabited take Possession for His Majesty by setting up Proper Marks and Inscriptions, as first discoverers and possessors.’
‘But if you should fail of discovering the Continent before-mention'd, you will upon falling in with New Zealand'—New Zealand, we see, was taken for granted—ascertain its latitude and longitude; and—the demands are fewer than for the continent—‘explore as much of the Coast as the Condition of the Bark, the health of her Crew, and the State of your Provisions will admit of’; reserving provisions sufficient to reach a known port where enough could be obtained for a passage to England, either round the
With all this was provided a note for Cook to display to any of his superior officers in the navy he might encounter, safeguarding the secrecy of the instructions, and ordering that he should be given any assistance he stood in need of.
These were the official instructions. It seems likely that the Lieutenant may have read with great attention also a paper of ‘ These ‘Hints’ are preserved in manuscript in the National Library of Australia, Canberra. They are printed in Hints offered to the consideration of Captain Cooke, Mr Bankes, Doctor Solander, and the other Gentlemen who go upon the Expedition on Board the Endeavour’, prepared by the Earl of Morton, President of the Royal Society, who was not to live to see the expedition return.Journals I, 514–19. James Douglas, 14th Earl of Morton (1702-68) was president of the Maker, and all who are able on board, Passangers and others should be obliged to attend upon those occasions.’
A large part of this paper, not unnaturally, was devoted to matters of scientific observation—first the Transit, then the Continent (‘A Continent in the higher Latitudes, or in a rigorous climate, could be of little or no advantage to this nation’), then the people of any continent that was found, on whom Lord Morton suggested what would be, in modern terms, a comprehensive study in social anthropology; then its Animal, Vegetable and Mineral Systems. ‘These open so vast a field,’ as he justly remarked, ‘that there is no room in this place for descending to particulars’. If we look ahead, as at this stage we may, we shall find that Lord Morton's Hints, ‘hastily put together’ as they were, no less than Cook's instructions from the Admiralty, provide an analysis of the journal and other reports which, after three years, he was to hand in to his astonished masters. We must allow for the non-appearance of a continent.
What discussion led up to the second part of Cook's instructions nowhere seems to be recorded. Nothing, however, could have been more logical. It would have been foolish not to take advantage of having a ship at Tahiti, if Wallis's men had actually sighted a continent—almost, as it seemed, from Tahiti. If they were deceived, but the shore of a continent came anything like as far north as Dalrymple made it, then a trip to 40° south—more than 20 degrees of latitude south of Tahiti—must infallibly pick it up. As to the secrecy of the instructions, they were probably only conventionally secret, an aid to fobbing off possible inconvenient enquiries from Spain. The details were not known; but everybody at all interested knew about the Transit of Venus. There was the usual amount of government mystery; the usual balloons were flown by the press—the The quotations are from the Gazetteer, the Public Advertiser. ‘It is said’ that two sloops of war were to go in quest of the missing Swallow, to rendezvous at the newly discovered island, and from there to attempt the discovery of the Southern Continent. ‘On the other hand, we are told that no further discoveries in the South Seas will be attempted for the present.’—‘We are informed’ that the principal and almost sole national advantage of George's Land is, ‘its Situation for exploring the Terra Incognita of the Southern Hemisphere.’—‘The gentlemen, who are to sail in a few days for George's Land, the new discovered island in the Pacific ocean, with an intention to observe the Transit of Venus, are likewise, we are credibly informed, to attempt some new discoveries in that vast unknown tract, above the latitude 40.’Gazetteer, 13 June; ibid., and Public Advertiser, 20 June; Gazetteer, 18 August 1768.
At home there were arrangements. Cook collected his final pay as master of the Skelton and Tooley, We get this information from much later correspondence, John McAllister of Philadelphia, Frances Wardale's son, to J. L. Bennett, Mrs Cook's executor, 17 October 1851; National Library of Australia, Banks, I, 153. Green to the Secretary, R.S., 28 November 1768.Grenville, and no doubt turned it over to Mrs Cook. Before he left he seems to have sold to Jefferys his rights in his published Newfoundland charts.Marine Surveys, 8–9.Nk 9528.Endeavour had weighed from Gallions Reach for a leisurely passage to Plymouth. Thence on 14 August Cook sent for Banks and Solander, who were still enjoying their London farewells; and there after arriving they had a ten days' wait, while the shipwrights completed their cabins and the wrong winds blew. The ship's company were paid their two months' wages in advance, and warned not to expect any additional pay at the end of the voyage—despite which they were well satisfied, reports Cook, ‘and expresse'd great chearfullness and readyness to prosecute the Voyage.’Journals I, 3, and n. 2 on that page.Endeavour and an English frigate, and accused the historian of the voyage of deliberate concealment.A Voyage round the World (London, 1777), I, x. ‘The same authority which blew off M. de Bougainville from the island of
The next five or six weeks were pleasant ones, an Atlantic passage in the north-east trade winds, with intervals of sunny calm in which Banks went out in a boat with gun or net, collecting birds and fish and floating shells, exclaiming at the beauty of Portuguese men-of-war, while Solander busily described, and Parkinson equally busily drew. There were glimpses of Tenerife and Boa Vista, in the Cape Verde islands. Cook early put the men to three watches instead of two—a humane idea officially inculcated, not always adopted—which gave them eight hours continuous rest off duty instead of four. Hooks and lines, pipes and tobacco, were distributed. Green worked at the education of his shipmates in scientific navigation: ‘The Obsns of this Day are pretty good’, he wrote in his journal not long after leaving Madeira, ‘the Air being very Clear, but might have made more, and better, if Proper Assistance could have been had from the Young Gentlemen on board’;Journals I, 9, n. 2.
He could have called at Port Egmont in the Falkland Islands and got water. He wanted more than water, however, he wanted live stock and all the fresh food he could get, he wanted to heel and clean his ship, and Rio de Janeiro had a good reputation with the English; Byron, indeed, had met with a flattering reception there. Were not England and Portugal allies of more than fifty years? Since Byron's visit Bougainville had been treated with incivility, which Cook did not know; if he had known, he would probably have reflected that Bougainville was French. His own expectations were rudely dashed. He sent Lieutenant Hicks to explain his presence to the Viceroy and to ask for a pilot. Hicks was detained until Cook should appear himself, instead of a pilot came a customs officer and a guard boat. When Cook went on shore he was informed that none but himself and his boat's crew would be allowed on shore, and certainly no passengers. When Banks and Solander dressed up in their best to call on the Viceroy they were turned back. When Cook went on shore again a guard was put in his boat and he was accompanied everywhere by an officer. He was to be allowed to buy provisions, but only through an agent appointed for the purpose. Rather than suffer such restrictions he refused to go on shore at all, and proceeded to argue with the Viceroy by way of ‘memorials’, which Banks, II, 311, 1 December 1768. Banks wrote very indignantly to Morton also on the same date, ibid., 313–15.
The fact of the matter was that the Viceroy could not bring himself to believe that the Endeavour was a ship of the royal navy; certainly no ship ever lóoked less like the royal navy than the Endeavour. What was she then? He very much suspected she was a merchantman, and if a merchantman, a smuggler. Naval practice could be imitated, commissions could be forged. British seamen had a leading reputation on the South American coast as smugglers; dishonest papers were a commonplace of their trade. The Viceroy was a soldier, not a sailor; his many years of distinguished frontier service had not brought him well acquainted with science. It was very well for Cook to tell him about the Transit of Venus, but was not that a cock-and-bull story, a patent blind? If it was true that, as Cook reported, ‘he could form no other Idea of that Phenomenon (after I had explained it to him) than the North Star passing thro the South Pole’, that did not brand him as a complete fool, administratively speaking. If the ship were indeed a naval one, and Mr Banks, with his talk about the use of scientific researches to mankind, were indeed a philosopher and not an engineer come to spy on the land, what was a philosopher doing in a naval vessel? Men were slipping ashore, that was certain, whether as smugglers or spies. ‘Those That like it may Take a Trip in disguise’, said Gore.Journals I, 27, n. 2.Endeavour's longboat was carried away in an unusual storm of wind and rain, he lent help without question to reclaim her; and he must have turned a blind eye on a good deal of surreptitious invasion of the shore. And he patiently answered all Cook's, and Banks's, memorials.
As for Cook, one is glad that the episode lasted no longer. He did not shine in this sort of pointless diplomacy. Never had he written so much, so ineffectually, nor come so close to pomposity. The correspondence is all printed in ibid., 29.Journals I, 487–97.vis-à-vis the representative of the sovereign of Portugal; feeling it incumbent upon him to state that tame acquiescence in the proceedings of that potentate would render him ‘unworthy of the rank in His Britannick Majesty's Service which I now have the honour to bear’; considering that ‘my Court’, as well as ‘the King my Master’, was a phrase that might have a useful part in his protests. It is a far cry from the log of the Newfoundland surveyor, or even from the daily entries in his Endeavour journal. He did, in the time at his disposal, compose a truly immense letter to the King his Master, or at least the secretary of the Admiralty, detailing with solemnity the whole history of the encounter,
There were some punishments while the ship lay here, which may indicate that dissatisfaction was not confined to the captain and the gentlemen. John Thurman, pressed at Madeira, got a dozen for refusing to assist the sailmaker; so did another seaman, who tried to desert, and a marine who abused the officer of the watch; so did John Reading, the boatswain's mate, for being remiss in carrying out execution on the previous two. A more serious matter was the drowning of a man who had been with Cook ever since the beginning of the Newfoundland survey, Peter Flower, who fell overboard as the ship turned down the bay on sailing and could not be rescued—‘a good hardy seaman & had saild with me above five years’. He was replaced by a Portuguese. In spite of all the difficulties, the three weeks' stay had been well worth while in supplies and work on the ship, cleaning, caulking, rigging, minor repairs. She was ready for her next two thousand miles, to the Strait of Le Maire, a passage that could have its own difficulties of variable winds and squalls and currents. She was a week getting out of the bay and to sea. ‘This Morn thank god we have got all we want from these illiterate impolite gentry’, wrote Banks on 2 December; but they were still to get a surprisingly polite letter from the Viceroy wishing them a good voyage. On 7 December they were free of the pilot and the guard boat and were turned south.
It was five and a half weeks before they were securely in the Strait, weeks of good seamanship for Cook, with some moments of great
The editor was Banks, I, 213. Banks, I, 207.Astronomical Observations later published could have a different explanation: one error of nearly a degree, of Tierra del Fuego, he found ‘not at all surprising, if we consider, that although the air was extremely clear when these observations were made, yet the sea ran so high that it filled the quarter deck three times while they were observing; and the motion of the ship was so great the Captain Cook did not attempt to observe’.Astronomical Observations … (1788), 95.
Cook had diffićulty getting into the Strait of Le Maire. The weather was boisterous; he was driven back past Cape St Diego, the western entrance point, three times by the force of the tide-race; at one point indeed the ship was pitching her bowsprit under water. At length the wind and sea moderated. He was able to send Banks and Solander ashore in a little cove outside the strait, Thetis Bay, while the ship plyed off and on: ‘At 9 they return'd on board bringing with them several Plants Flowers &ca most of them unknown in Europe and in that alone consisted their whole Value’Journals I, 44.
It was a commodious bay, about half-way through the strait on the Tierra del Fuego side, good holding-ground everywhere, with plenty of wood and fresh water, and large quantities of edible greenstuff, a sort of wild celery and one of the varieties of ‘scurvy grass’, berries, few birds, few fish except shellfish, a few seals and sea-lions swimming in the bay, a few primitive people. The last were encountered when Cook and the gentlemen went on shore, while the ship was mooring, to look for a watering place. Cook thought them ‘perhaps as miserable a set of People as are this day upon Earth’. The men were naked, the women wore a small apron of animal skin, unless for warmth they flung the skin of a guanaco or a seal over their shoulders; their dark copper colour was varied with streaks of
Endeavour's first introduction to primitive man: this the natural history that Banks studied on his first afternoon. Next morning early, the seamen being busy wooding and watering, and Cook beginning to survey the bay, he started out on a larger expedition. The morning was one for high spirits, the sun shining as on a fine day of May at home: Banks, Solander, Buchan, the four servants were accompanied by Monkhouse the surgeon, Green the astronomer, and two sailors to help carry the baggage. Their intention was to get as far as possible into the country behind the harbour, ascending a ridge of hills where spots showed clear of trees.
They pushed up through thick woods till mid-afternoon, when they arrived at a clear spot—what they had taken for turf, which now turned out to be a sort of waist-high bed of birch, growing in ankle-deep bog, about a mile across. They kept on across two-thirds of this, when Buchan was seized by a fit. With some difficulty lighting a fire, where the servants and sailors stayed with him, Banks, Solander, Monkhouse and Green pressed on to the top and the alpine plants they sought. The temperature went down, the antarctic wind brought blasts of snow; the idea of returning to the ship that night was abandoned, in favour of finding a sheltered spot where another fire and a ‘wigwam’ could be built. The cold seemed infinitely worse, and Solander insisted, to Banks's horror, on lying down to rest in the snow for a quarter of an hour; Richmond, one of the black servants, was almost in the same state. Somehow they got Solander to the fire. Richmond would not move, so his fellow-black, Dorlton, and a sailor, the least affected by cold, were left to guard him under the promise of early relief. The relief was sent, but the three could not be found: they had discovered a bottle of rum and drunk themselves stupid. The sailor turned up about midnight. Banks and four men went out again and found where he had left the negroes, but not even the whole party could get them to the fire through the darkness and the snow and the birch, nor was it possible to light another fire on the spot: they were therefore left covered with branches, and the others set themselves to outlast the snow. In the morning the two
Meanwhile Cook had finished surveying the bay before the weather again deteriorated, when strong southerly winds, with snow, hail and rain brought in such a swell and surf on the shore that no boat could land. In this gale he lost a kedge anchor, which was used to aid the longboat in watering. The ship proved her quality by ‘riding very easey’ broad side to the swell. ‘I never knew the Ship to roll more at sea’, said Molyneux the master,Journals I, 46, and n. 4 on that page.
Cook had now to pass the Horn—or rather, as a Horn passage involved much more than merely sailing from one side of a particular point of land to the other, he may be said to have come to a critical period in his passage from off the east coast of South America, in a latitude of about 50° S (he reckoned it himself from his first sighting of Tierra del Fuego on 11 January, for which date his latitude was 54°20′), to a corresponding position off the west coast. This was a passage of something like 1500 miles. He passed Cape Horn only twice in his life, making westward on the present voyage, eastward as he drew towards the end of his second one. The westward passage was in general more difficult technically than the reverse, because it meant sailing into the teeth of the prevailing winds, and when Cook came to plan a second voyage, he planned on the basis of sailing with the westerlies. The traditional entrance into the Pacific, however, was from its south-east corner, whether through the Strait of Magellan or round the cape. Late January could be regarded as the height of summer. Summer off the Horn did not guarantee an easy time for the sailor: although Cook did not expect
The immediate object was to get south-west. The first day or so brought rain and squalls, then there were a few hours of calm and clear weather in which the ship drove fast to the north-east in a current, so that when a light northerly breeze sprang up, Cook loosed all his reefs and set his studding-sails to make up the lost ground. Not often did a captain carry full sail in those parts, and most of the weather Cook had for five weeks was far from encouraging it. ‘Fore part fresh gales and squally with hail and rain remainder moderate and clowdy’, Cook would give a fairly regular report in his journal; or ‘Former part fresh gales, latter light airs and clowdy’; or ‘Fore and middle parts little wind and dark clowdy weather …. hazey rainy cold weather…. Clowdy and sometimes drizling rain…. Fresh gales with heavy squalls…. in the night hard squalls with rain and afterwards hazey rainy weather.’ It was under these conditions that he at first worked his way along the coast, within islands (charting a new one), until he could be certain of Cape Horn; having satisfied himself, the comments he sets down in his journal are very characteristic.
It appeared not unlike an Island with a very high round hummock upon it: this I believe to be Cape Horn for after we had stood to the Southward about 3 Leagues the weather clear'd up for about a 1/4 of an hour, which gave us a sight of this land bearing then WSW but we could see no land either to the Southward or westward of it, and therefore conclude that it must be the Cape, but whether it be an Island of it self, a part of the Southermost of Hermites Islands or a part of Terra del Fuego I am not able to determine. However this is of very little concequence to Navigation, I only wished to have been certain whether or no it was the Southermost land on or near to Terra del Fuego, but the thick Foggy weather, and the westerly winds which carried us from the land prevented me from satisfying My curiosity in this point; but from its Latitude and the reasons before given I think it must, and if so it must be Cape Horn and lies in the Latitude of 55°59′ South and Longitude 68°13′ West from the Meridian of Greenwich, beeing the mean result of Several Observ
nsof the Sun andMoon made the day after we left the land and which agree'd with those made at Straits Le Maire, allowing for the distance between one place and the other, which I found means very accuratly to determine.
JournalsI, 49. Cape Horn is the southernmost extremity of Horn Island, the most southerly of the Hermite or Cape Horn group. Its position, as given in the South American Pilot (14th ed., 1956) is 55°59' S, 67°16′ W.
This position, considering the conditions under which Cook and Green made their observations—the weather, the heaving platform on which they stood—is remarkable. Cape Horn is indeed the extremity of an island. The latitude given is, according to the most modern computation, exactly correct; the longitude a little less than a degree too far west—in that latitude less than forty miles. Cook, being now about to take his departure from the land, goes on in his journal to an excellent succinct description of the coast he has seen, from the northern entrance of Le Maire Strait, and refers to his chart. The appearance of Cape Horn and Hermites Islands, he says,
is represented in the last View in the Chart which I have drawn of this coast from our first making land unto Cape Horn in which is included Strait Le Maire and part of Staten land. In this Chart I have laid down no land nor figure'd out any shore but what I saw my self, and thus far the Chart may be depented upon, the Bay[s] and inlets are left void the openings of which we only see from the Ship … . [because of short and imperfect accounts] it is no wonder that the Charts hitherto published should be found incorrect, not only in laying down the land but in the Latitude and Longitude of the places they contain; but I can now venter to assert that the Longitude of few places in the World are better assertain'd than that of Strait Le Maire and Cape Horn being determined by several observations of the Sun and Moon, made both by my self and MrGreen the Astronomer.
JournalsI, 52–3.
There was no trivial boasting about this. It was a careful statement of fact.
Cook, always attentive to his instructions, stood well to the southward, ‘in order to make a good Westing’, though not as far as Anson had recommended, to 61° or 62° ‘before any endeavour is made to get to the westward’—and he had reflections on this. So far as possible, he stood south-west, until the evening of 30 January, when he found himself in latitude 60°10′ and longitude 74°30′; a calm followed, then the wind backed. ‘At 3 am wind at ESE a Moderate breeze, set the Studding sails, and soon after 2 birds like Penguins were seen by the mate of the watch.’ Studding-sails again, to astonish later Cape Horn seamen: and it was not till the afternoon of the following day that he took them in and took a reef in his topsails.
From the foregoing observations it will appear that we are now advanced about 12° to the westward of the Strait of Magellan and 3 1/2° to the northward of it, having been 33 days in doubbling Cape Horn or the land of Terra del Fuego, and arriving into the degree of Latitude and Longitude we are now in without ever being brought once under our close reefe'd Topsails since we left strait la Maire, a circumstance that perhaps never happen'd 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.
JournalsI, 57–8. Also, a different line of argument, ‘The Longitude by account [dead reckoning] is less then that by Obsern37’ which is about 20 Miles in these high latitudes, and nearly equal to the Error of the Logg Line before mentioned: this near agreement of the two Longitudes proves to a demonstration that we have had no Western current sence we left land.' It proves as well his skill in dead reckoning. We learn from Pickersgill that the observers were also using the star Regulus and the occultation of the planet Saturn.—JournalsI, 57, n. 4.
Reasoning from the ships' journals he had read, particularly those of the Dolphin, Cook found himself ‘no advocate’ for the Strait passage; he found himself differing also from the advice of Anson to avoid the Strait of Le Maire and run down to latitude 61° or 62°. That, he said, is what I think no man will ever do that can avoide it, for it cannot be suppose'd that any one will Stear South mearly to get into a high Latitude when at that time he can steer West, for it is not Southing but Westing thats wanting, but this way you cannot steer because the winds blow almost constantly from that quarter, so that you have no other choise but to stand to the Southward close upon a wind, and by keeping upon that Tack you not only make southing but westing also and sometimes not a little when the wind Varies to the northward of west, and the farther you advance to the Southrd the better chance you have of having the winds from that quarter or easterly and likewise of meeting with finer weather, both of which we ourselves experience'd. Prudence will direct every man when in these high Latitudes to make sure of Sufficient westing to double all the lands before he thinks of Standing to the Northward.Journals I, 59.
It may be argued that Cook has come to a conclusion not very different from Anson's; but there is a difference, he has thought the matter out for himself on the basis of his own experience as well as his scrutiny of the experience of others, and he has expounded it with lucidity.
For the next few weeks the winds had a good deal of south in them as well as west, and Cook was able to make a fairly consistent northwest course, except once or twice when north-westerlies set him south by west. He was still to have some strong gales or squalls, gloom and rain: on 16 February he shipped a sea which carried away his driver boom, and next day the main topsail split; observations on the 23rd were impeded by the rolling of the ship as seas broke over the quarterdeck; but next day, wrote Banks, the wind had ‘settled at Banks, I, 235. Banks, I, 237.Ne; this morn found studding Sails set and the ship going at the rate of 7 knotts, no very usual thing with Mrs Endeavour.’rs Endeavour had logged 130 miles; on 17 and 18 February, in south-westerlies, 132 and 140 miles. There were also calms, when the slaughter of sea-birds continued. As March came on the temperature rose—‘pleasantly warm’, noted Banks at first, ‘and the Barnacles upon the ships bottom seemd to be regenerate’.
Ten days into March the winds turned easterly. It was fine pleasant weather, and Cook returned his men to three watches. The guns that had been struck down to the hold for the Horn passage were mounted again. Tropic birds began to appear. After a week came westerlies for a while, which pushed the course to the north, taking the ship a little more quickly across the Tropic of Capricorn. Men-of-war birds and ‘egg birds’ or terns joined the tropic life in the sky, both thought not to fly far from land, but there was no land.
Banks, I. 239. Banks, I, 240.Endeavour's track. As for the theorists of balance, ‘The number of square degrees of their land which we have already chang'd into water sufficiently disproves this, and teaches me at least that till we know how this globe is fixd in that place which has been since its creation assignd to it in the general system, we need not be anxious to give reasons how any one part of it counterbalances the rest’ Journals I, 66.
As the ship sailed into warmer waters there happened a poignant and needless episode that reminds us how desolation can oppress the human heart even in a crowded company. A quiet young marine, William Greenslade, asked on sentry duty by a companion to look after a piece of sealskin, had taken a piece of it to make a tobacco pouch; being immediately found out he was so persecuted by his fellow marines as betraying the honour of their corps that when in the evening the sergeant was about to take him to the captain to complain, overcome by the blackness of despair he slipped overboard. Poor William Greenslade may have been forgotten in a few days by these over-righteous men, because excitement was at hand. In the first days of April, latitude about 19°S, a succession of easterly winds drove the ship ahead rapidly; and on the 4th in the morning land was sighted to the southward, ‘by ibid., 69, n. 4. ibid., 69. ibid., 70. Thrums or ends of thread all over a piece of cloth would give it a shaggy appearance. Thrum caps were worn by sailors. Cook found the name useful: there was a Thrum Cap in Halifax harbour, and he used it for small islands both in Newfoundland and in r Banks (to ye Honour of ye 2d watch which was then upon deck)’, we are told by Pickersgill, also probably a member of the second
Lagoon Island.’Taio, taio! they called—Friend, friend!—but would not come on board. The wind settled in the east; clouds, squalls and rain were followed by gentle breezes and a clear sky; the Endeavour ran under an easy sail all that last night, in the morning the pinnace was hoisted out to lie over a reef which the Dolphin had hit at the entrance to Royal Bay, and at 7 a.m. the anchor went down in 13 fathom. It was Thursday, 13 April. There lay the beach, the river, the valley, the green romantic heights. It was Matavai Bay, it was Tahiti.
This passage from Plymouth to Tahiti must be reckoned a remarkable piece of seamanship, and one is to remember that it was Cook's first long ocean passage. However one may estimate the element of luck, it is clear already that he could wring every advantage out of luck. Without looking for a continent, he had already, by working his way farther west in the higher latitudes of the Pacific than anyone
To do justice to predecessors, one may however compare him with Roggeveen. Cook went south to lat. 60°4′, when his longitude was 74°10′ W; Roggeveen south to lat. 60°44′, long. 67°56′ W (of Greenwich, translating from E of Tenerife, and accepting his calculations as more or less correct). Roggeveen went as far west as 86°38′, in lat. 53°11′; Cook was not as far west as that until he was in lat. 51°16′. But Cook kept on a north-westerly course from the time he rounded the Horn, so that in lat. 34° (approximately) he was in long. 120°54′ W. But Roggeveen, from his long. 86°38′, had made in for the South American coast, altering course westerly only about lat. 34°, when he was in long. 74°52′. Cook, on the other hand, had increased his longitude steadily from the time he rounded the Horn, so that when he was in lat. 34° his longitude was 120°54′ W.
They were in good health, almost eight months after they had left England. Four men had died through accident, one by suicide; none from sickness. This would have seemed to the generality of captains and ships' surgeons a remarkable fact. True, there were a few men—very few—upon the sick list with slight complaints. Banks, at the end of March, had suspected himself of scurvy, and dosed himself successfully with lemon juice. Cook, his pen at the page in his journal devoted to ‘remarkable occurrences’, paused to meditate, not on winds and currents, or longitude, or the variation of the compass, but on this matter of good health. He put it down to the regular serving of sauerkraut and portable soup to all ‘the people’, and of wort—the decoction of malt—to every man who showed the least symptom of scurvy; ‘by this Means and the care and Vigilance of Mr Munkhous the Surgeon this disease was prevented from geting a footing in the Ship.’ He did not think earnestly of the onions of Madeira, the wild celery and scurvy grass and fresh water of Tierra del Fuego. He did write words which show that he had got beyond flogging as an inducement to dietary change, and could consider the sailor's mind rather than his back as the effective area of persuasion. The Sour Krout the Men at first would not eate untill I put in practice a Method I never once knew to fail with seamen, and this was to have some of it dress'd every Day for the Cabbin Table, and permitted all the Officers without exception to make use of it and left it to the option of the Men
Journals I, 74. ‘A damn'd honest fellow': I give this phrase as Cook originally wrote it. Both in his Ms journal and in the Mitchell copy he deleted the word ‘damn'd'—in obedience, one supposes, to polite convention, because he can hardly be thought to have feared to outrage the tender minds of the Admiralty, or to be considering the rhythm of his prose. In the later Admiralty copy of the journal, which did not include the objectionable expression, he inserted other words, to make the passage run, ‘the inventer according to their phras an honest fellow’. We get a little, amusing, light on Cook as well as on his men.
Cook was not the first to put his finger on this characteristic conservatism. The significant thing is that he began to find means of counteracting it.
Strictly speaking, this statement should be modified now, because of the motor-road that has been cut right round the island.There is no general agreement that Tahiti is the most beautiful island in the Pacific; but it is generally agreed that it is a beautiful island, and to its first discoverers it seemed paradisal. Coming to it after so many atolls, lagoons encircled by a broken rim of sand and coral, islet-studded, they saw a great volcanic upthrust high in the sea, rising from mere hilly slopes to five thousand, six thousand, seven thousand feet, forested and green till the final peaks; a land also of deep valleys and quick rivers. Almost round the slashed mountainous mass runs a narrow band of level fertile ground, widest at the north-west end, in places failing altogether, so that the steep hillside falls straight to the rocks of the sea;
Matavai Bay, except for north-west and westerly winds, provides excellent shelter, and in the months when Wallis and Cook were there, those winds hardly blow. It is a superb bay, its long line of black volcanic sand backed by the tall innumerable pillars of coconut trees with their wild crowns, immobile and sculptured in a hot still noon or moon-charmed night, streaming like vast bunches of pennants on a rising wind; given sobriety by the deep green of the sandhaunting
mape or chestnut, their arms extending in benedictions of plenty. If one stands on the flat sandy point that is the extremity of the bay, in fine weather, with gentle impulses of water from east and west meeting and mingling at one's feet, their level hardly altered by the tide, and gazes inwards, one sees a perfect curve, beyond and above it the cleft uneven lines of the nearer ridges—‘uneven as a piece of crumpled paper’ as
Cook had followed Wallis to the heart, the centre of Polynesia, geographically speaking. In the next ten years he was to find how far the Polynesian people had spread upon the ocean, was to remark differences between their different branches, was to account for differences as best he could, while he recognised certain things as fundamentally the same. Of certain preconceptions he could not rid himself: with island business to do, he needed some authority with whom to bargain; he felt, like other discoverers from Europe, that every considerable island or island-group should have a king; he felt that social and individual morality in relation to property rights should be the same as European morality. Wherever he got his own ideas from, he was inclined to fancy vague feudal systems before him; but how could a man, however perceptive, in a few weeks understand a language that was simple yet subtle, understand all the institutions and relations of chiefship, understand the implications and the indications of tapu, the sacred, the forbidden, the penalty-ridden; understand the structure of society and its classes; apprehend courtesies and obligations; separate the ritual of sex from orgiastic displays, or an island freedom from the commercial libertinage of
The name the island was known by to its inhabitants was learnt soon enough—Otaheite, The ‘O’ is really untranslatable. It is an article prefixed to proper names when in the nominative case. O Tahiti, ‘It is Tahiti’.O Tahiti might equally well be rendered ‘The Tahiti’. Other examples are the personal names ‘Oborea’ and ‘Otoo’ for O Purea, O Too; or the name of the district, Oparre for O Pare.marae—the coral-stone structures of courtyard and ‘altar’, small or large, that almost innumerably dotted the land, the centres of religious ceremonial for families or communities or craftgroups; highly important when they belonged to chiefly families, the importance of whose members themselves might be measured by
marae, immensely tapu or sacred, surrounded with sacred trees, ministered to by a priesthood the very language of whose invocations was an esoteric thing; less important as social rank declined, yet, whether the centre of human sacrifice or of a more ordinary ritual, the abode of awe and the visiting-places of gods. Tahitian society, that is—as was to become apparent to the European mind only gradually—Polynesian society in general, was in its own terms a profoundly religious society. The secular also was sacred. Chiefs—the ari'i—were sacred in their degrees; most sacred of all were the ari'i rahi, particularly the three great heads of clans who might in some sort present to men from a different world the quality of ‘kings’. The ari'i commanded and was obeyed; he was addressed in special forms; his person, his clothing, his possessions were protected by tapu; he had, as we have seen, his marae; he had his mountain and his promontory, his symbols of authority, his staff and spear; his authority extended even to the rahui, the laying of a prohibition in his district on the use of the produce of land or sea or industry, for his own convenience or that of the community—to anticipate a festival, to conserve maturing breadfruit, or fish in the spawning season. The sanctity of the ari'i rahi extended even beyond all this, to the ground on which he trod, his very presence; when he came men stripped off their clothing to the waist, women below their shoulders, as they did when passing by houses that belonged to him, or the sacred images connected with his tapu. He himself could never appear in public on foot, nor enter the house of a subject, and consequently was carried on men's shoulders, staying only in houses set aside for the purpose; and there was protection in this for the subject, to whom the ground was indispensable, who did not wish his dwelling to become in an instant the property of his chief. The commoner who infringed any of the chiefly tapu would, it was believed, either die or be afflicted by o‘ovi ari'i, ‘chief's leprosy'. An ari'i first-born was regarded with a particular veneration, all the more if male: he was recognised immediately as the head of the family, and his father, or his mother, took on the role of regent. A regent of course may exercise considerable power. But the power of the ari'i rahi or his regent was not equal to his privilege, his social consequence; he could not command the obedience of other chiefs, even in his own district; there was great scope for personality. Hence Wallis's acceptance of Oborea, or Purea, as a queen, the magic of her name in England; hence Cook's bafflement, sometimes, as his experience continued, over who might be the really great man with whom he should deal.
We need pay little attention to sub-orders of chiefdom: the great bulk of the population were manahune, or commoners, the fishermen, the cultivators of taro or yam, the gatherers of coconuts and breadfruit and bananas and the wild upland plantains, the labourers of house-building and canoe-building and stone-carrying. They looked after the pigs and fowls and dogs that marked the island animal economy; they included the hereditary retainers of ari'i called teuteu—taken by Cook, quite wrongly, for slaves. There were skilled handicraftmen, able artists who could tattoo buttocks and thighs. Their women beat out and stained the fabric of bark cloth, tapa, which was the substance of clothing—the loin-cloth or maro, the skirt or pareu, cloaks and mantles—and was bestowed in ceremonial gifts; wove mats and sails; pounded food. There were differences enough in personality among them, as among chiefs, though few among them could resist the temptation proffered by European goods, whether useful to them or useless, but particularly nails and edged tools; commoners as well as chiefs were highly curious; islanders generally turned out to be ‘prodigious expert’ as thieves. It was the less restrained young women of this social order who provided seamen with such advantageous entertainment, the lithe and laughing girls who were always ready to dance, whose impromptu dances on the beach seemed to the graver mind so often lascivious. Island sexual morals took on a delightful simplicity to the first visitors; and although it was not quite simple, there is reason to think this Central Polynesian culture as profoundly permeated with sex as it was with religion. Certainly there was a great deal made of the sexual relation in the institution of the arioi, the people whom Cook could not otherwise describe than as ‘strolling players’; and to the uninstructed view, their ‘libertinage’ and their practice of infanticide might seem much more impressive than their secular and religious functions in the social pattern. They were a trained and graded society, celebrating in dance the seasonal festivals and those that marked the great events of communal life—like the birth, marriage or inauguration of ari'i—and providing a great part of the mime, drama and wrestling that were favourite social diversions. They toured the island group in fleets of consecrated canoes, were met with gifts and with joy; their god was the god of peace and fertility. It is probable that Cook was entertained by arioi more often than he knew.
It is probable that, more often than he knew, some simple, well-intentioned action of his own, some effort to impose order, was entangled in a web of island preconceptions, understandings, etiquette,
Cook had obviously given some thought to his instructions and to Lord Morton's hints; he was anxious to regularise trade, keep up the value of his trade goods, and obviate the confusion and quarrels that would arise from lack of direction. Immediately he arrived in Matavai Bay, therefore, he issued his carefully drafted ‘Rules to be observe'd by every person in or belonging to His Majestys Bark the Endevour, for the better establishing a regular and uniform Trade for Provisions &ce with the Inhabitants of Georges Island'; and the first of these rules was ‘To endeavour by every fair means to cultivate a friendship with the Natives and to treat them with all imaginable humanity’. Secondly, trade for provisions was to be carried on only through a properly appointed person, except with the captain's special leave. Thirdly. ‘Every person employ'd a Shore on any duty what soever is strictly to attend to the same, and if by neglect he looseth any of his Arms or woorking tools, or suffers them to be stole, the full Value thereof will be charge'd againest his pay according to the Custom of the Navy in such cases, and he shall recive such farther punishment as the nature of the offence may deserve.' Fourthly, ‘the same penalty’ would be inflicted for private trading with ship's stores. Fifthly, ‘No Sort of Iron, or any thing that is made of Iron, or any sort of Cloth or other usefull or necessary articles are to be given in exchange for any thing but provisions.’Journals I, 75–6; and I print a draft on pp. 520–1.
People came off to the ship with fruit, upon which a great value was set, and when Cook and a party landed, they saw no evidence of plenty. Those who had been there before, indeed, were astonished at the depopulation of that part of the bay: where were the hogs and fowls, where was ‘the Queen's house’ (the great house for The father was Vaetua i Ahurai, chief of Tefana or Faaa; arioi performances), where was the Queen? Next day it became plain that population had moved to the west, whence came many canoes and whither Cook went to look for a larger harbour and to ‘try the disposission of the Natives’. Their disposition was hospitable and friendly, apart from their tendency to pick pockets—Solander lost
ari'i's eldest son—Tepau i Ahurai Tamaiti;tamaiti means ‘the son’. For convenience I refer to him as Tepau.
By the end of a week all was going well. Banks and Solander were the principal managers of trade, exchanging beads for coconuts and breadfruit: nails in this traffic at first seemed to have lost their value. Values fluctuated; sec Molyneux, ibid. Wilkinson has the proviso that the men were ‘to Take Care to be upon their guard for there own Safty as the Indians are very Tracherous.’—p. 84, n. 2.Journals I, 82 and n. 4 on that page, and Banks, 275, on the price of coconuts, ‘6 for an amber colourd bead, 10 for a white one, and 20 for a forty-penny nail’. Hatchets and axes were also on the scene.taio, who exploited him to the best advantage: ‘this might be productive of good Consequences’, wrote Molyneux the master, ‘but the women begin to have a share in our Freindship which is by no means Platonick.’Journals I, 553; cf. Wilkinson the master's mate, ‘we find the woman of this Island to be very Kind In all Respects as Usal when we were here in the Dolphin.’
Meanwhile the old hands of the The ‘gown’ was in the form of the native B.M. Add. Dolphin had rediscovered their Queen—a Queen in adversity. Her rank was not less, her appearance was still distinguished, but obviously she was less regarded. Molyneux found her in Banks's tent and took her on board, where Cook made much of her, his most successful present being a child's doll, which—he says with an unexpected stroke of humour—‘I made her understand was the Picter of my Wife.’ This she paraded about the shore till she made that great man Tuteha so jealous that he had to have a doll too. She had a husband, Amo; a ‘bed-fellow’, one ‘Obadee’, that did not prevent her from angling for Banks; and a principal attendant, whom Cook knew as Tobia—Tupaia, a priest and adviser of importance. What had happened to lower her dignity and raise Tuteha's could not at this time be disentangled. Tuteha's very prominence, however, brought him into difficulties, the first of which arose from the affair of the quadrant. No sooner was the fort completed than the observatory was set up inside and the astronomical quadrant taken ashore in its box. Next morning it was gone. In spite of walls and sentries some nimble fellow had slipped in, stolen the heavy and precious article and made off with it—information soon came—to the eastward. A reward was announced for its recover. Banks and Green rushed to pick up Tepau, found that he knew the instrument had been unpacked and who the thief was, and through the whole of a sweltering day, with the chief and a pair of pocket pistols for protection, were bent on the chase, uphill and down. Finally they got back every essential piece, and on the way home met Cook coming up with a party of marines in support. Cook's, first impulse had been to seize all the large canoes in the bay, in addition to the persons of Tuteha and others, until the quadrant was returned; later, learning that Tuteha was certainly quite innocent, he left orders that the chief should not be molested. By some mistake he was, when a canoe that put off from the shore was stopped, and was sent from the ship to the fort, where he was detained expecting death. On Cook's return he was immediately freed. The situation was a little difficult, because, although he gave Cook two hogs before he left, he was clearly displeased. Next day he demanded by messenger an axe and a shirt in return for the hogs; pending their delivery the supply of provisions stopped. Reconciliation came, however, in two more days: Cook, Banks and Solander
tiputa, an upper garment slipped over the head, through a hole like the South American poncho.arioi house, and the supply of provisions was resumed. The impression of this chief's power was strengthened when Molyneux and Green took the pinnace twenty miles to the eastward in search of hogs and fowls; after nearly losing their boat in the surf, they were told that nothing could change hands without Tuteha's permission. ‘I can foresee that it will be a hard matter for us to keep up a freindship with Tootaha his demands being too exorbitant for us to comply with’, writes Cook in his log;Ms 27955, 8 May 1769.
The days moved on from that point without great untoward incident. There were minor thefts—even Banks's particular friend Tepau stole nails—and attempted thefts; at one stage water casks seemed attractive booty; iron and iron tools were always tempting. There were ceremonial occasions of display, occasional minor quarrels. Banks noted down the native name of the island, and the Tahitian versions of English names—Tooté for Cook, Tapáne for Banks, Torano for Solander, and so on. The long-boat was found honey-combed with teredo. Cook had a plot of ground turned up and planted English seeds there. There was an overnight visit to Tuteha and Purea in the chief's district on the west coast, in the hope of securing a supply of hogs; the hope was illusory, Cook had his stockings stolen from under his head while still awake, Banks lost his jacket and waistcoat, Parkinson (Journal, 31) writes that ‘Mr Banks lost his white jacket and waistcoat, with silver frogs’—so that Banks cut an elegant figure even in Tahiti.
The preparations at Fort Venus he describes in his report to the
The astronomical clock, made by Shelton and furnished with a gridiron pendulum, was set up in the middle of one end of a large tent, in a frame of wood made for the purpose at Greenwich, fixed firm and as low in the ground as the door of the clock-case would admit, and to prevent its being disturbed by any accident, another framing of wood was made round this, at the distance of one foot from it. The pendulum was adjusted to exactly the same length as it had been at Greenwich. Without the end of the tent facing the clock, and 12 feet from it, stood the observatory, in which were set up the journeyman clock and astronomical quadrant: this last, made by Mr. Bird, of one foot radius, stood upon the head of a large cask fixed firm in the ground, and well filled with wet heavy sand. A centinel was placed continually over the tent and observatory, with orders to suffer no one to enter either the one or the other, but those whose business it was. The telescopes made use of in the observations were—Two reflecting ones of two feet focus each, made by the late Mr. James Short, one of which was furnished with an object glass micrometer.
Phil. Trans.LXI (1771), 397–8.
On Friday, 2 June, writes Molyneux, a useful supplement here to Cook, the winds and weather were not very promising: ‘the Captain and Mr Green is entirely employ'd getting every thing compleatly ready. I was order'd to prepare for Observation & had a Telescope ready accordingly, every thing very quiet & all Hands anxious for Tomorrow.’ Journals I, 559.
This day prov'd as favourable to our purpose as we could wish, not a Clowd was to be seen the whole day and the Air was perfectly clear, so that we had every advantage we could desire in Observing the whole of the passage of the Planet Venus over the Suns disk: we very distinctly saw an Atmosphere or dusky shade round the body of the Planet which very much disturbed the times of the Contacts particularly the two internal ones. DrSolander observed as well as MrGreen and myself, and we differ'dfrom one another in observeing the times of the Contacts much more than could be expected. M rGreens Telescope and mine were of the same Magnifying power but that of the Drwas greater then ours.ibid., 97–8.
The ‘Atmosphere or dusky shade’, or what he calls also the penumbra, was visible during the whole transit, Cook says elsewhere, and appeared to him to be ‘nearly equal to 1/8th of Venus's semidiameter’, and the ‘first visible appearance’ of Venus on the sun's rim, very faint, was that of the penumbra, at 21 minutes 50 seconds past 9; while after 3 p.m. when the transit was completing, Cook found the limb of Venus difficult to distinguish from the penumbra, and ‘the precise time that the penumbra left the Sun could not be observed to any great degree of certainty, at least not by me.’ Cook to Maskelyne, 9 May 1771, Royal Society Council Minutes, 11 July 1771; Phil. Trans. LXI (1771), 410–11.Journals I (2nd ed.), 692–3.
It remained to collate the results of the other two parties. Hicks, Clerke, Pickersgill, and Saunders, a midshipman, had gone in the pinnace round to the eastward, and observed from an islet on the reef they called ‘Lord Mortons Island’—Taaupiri or Isle Nansouty. Pickersgill returned highly pleased with every circumstance, ‘so that if the Observation is not well made it is intirely owing to the Observers.’Journals I, 98 n. 1.
One might have thought that Cook would now be ready to leave Tahiti, the purpose of his visit being carried out; but in fact the observation of the Transit marks only a half-way point. The delayed celebration at a banquet on 5 June of the King's Birthday, which drew from the chiefs the toast of Kihiargo—they could come no nearer to King George—and made Tupaia particularly drunk, was but an episode of entertainment on the British side. There were many observations that Cook was still to make, in different spheres, some of them among his most valuable ones, and Banks was a very busy man. Cook himself wanted to overhaul his ship and his stores thoroughly before he went continent-hunting in higher latitudes; he also, his first responsibility off his shoulders, wanted to become more closely acquainted with the geography of the island and to chart it properly. Work about the ship was going on all the while: she was careened, says Cook—not dragged on shore, but heeled over where she lay, and ‘boot-topped’, that is her foul bottom was cleaned off to as near the keel as possible and coated with a mixture of pitch and brimstone, she was caulked and painted, her rigging closely inspected and repaired, spars varnished, cables restored, powder dried, provisions inspected. It was slow work, one reason being that the men were divided between the ship and the shore.
The longer the ship stayed, the more could be learnt about Tahitian life—or at least could be seen or experienced, without always being understood. The surgeon was forcibly assailed for picking a flower from a sacred tree on a marae, an infringement of tapu no native person would have been guilty of. Gore, finding that bows and arrows were in use, challenged Tepau to an archery contest, which broke down when it was found that in this exclusively chiefly diversion the Tahitians shot only for distance and not at a mark. There was further entertainment by ‘travelling musicians’, arioi, flutes and drums and voices again. The Indians, says Banks, asked in return for an English song, which was so enthusiastically received that one of them desired a passage to England to learn to sing. Banks was so greatly interested in custom and so friendly with Tepau that he was able to enlist himself in a mourning ceremony, in which Tepau, fantastically attired in shells and a feathered mask, was ‘chief
tapa or native cloth round his waist and blackened with charcoal, in the company of two women and a boy similarly decked, rushed about and terrorised anybody they met: it was all very inspiriting. Banks, too, recorded carefully the process of tattooing as he saw it carried out on a young girl, until she could bear it no longer. Some of the visitors, much taken with this sort of adornment, had their own arms marked before they left. There was from time to time a native dish to try, pork or a pudding from the Polynesian ‘earth-oven’, steamed between layers of hot stones and green leaves. A culminating point was the dog presented by Purea, a diplomatic return for some theft in which she had been implicated, at first to her surprise rejected; but similarly cooked it proved very sweet meat—‘few were there of us but what allowe'd that a South Sea Dog was next to an English Lamb', says Cook. The South Sea dogs were vegetable fed. So were the South Sea rats, which Tahitians did not eat but British seamen did, as we learn from Molyneux: ‘shooting of rats is not only a pleasant but a profitable amusement as they are also good eating & it is Easy to Kill 1000 in a day as the ground swarms & the Inhabitants never disturb them.’Journals I, 559.
One morning, as June advanced, there was a stir among the natives at the fort, among whom was Purea, and stripping their garments from their shoulders, like all the standers-by, they went out to meet some new arrivals. These were a chief called Oamo or Amo, with a boy about seven years old, carried on a man's back, ‘altho he was as able to walk as the Man who carried him’, and a girl of perhaps 15 or 16. Neither young person was allowed by the Tahitians to enter within the fort. This Amo must be a very extraordinary person to be received with such ceremony, thought Cook, who was none the less puzzled to see so little notice taken of him after the ceremony. But it was not Amo who was the really extraordinary person, it was the boy: ‘we was inform'd that the Boy was Heir apparent to the Sovereignty of the Island and the young woman was his sister and as such the respect was paid them, which was due to no one else except the ibid., 104. See the ‘Note on Polynesian History’, Arreedehi which was not Tootaha from what we could learn, but some other person who we had not seen, or like to do, for they say he is no friend of ours and therefore will not come near us.’ari'i rahi of Papara, on the south of Tahiti-nui, and he was now that son's regent. He himself was also the eldest son of the daughter of the chief of Haapape, in which district lay Matavai; he was therefore distinguished there. He married Purea, the daughter of the chief of Faaa, an important district in the north-west corner of the island. Tepau, an eldest child, was her brother. The family had a marriage connection with the family of Tuteha, the chief of Paea, the district abutting on Papara—a man whose other connections, and his personal force, gave him power from thence northwards round to Haapape. One of these connections was with Tu, the ari'i rahi of Pare, or of a rather larger district, the Porionu'u, between Faaa and Haapape. (So often was the name of this district heard that it appears, as ‘opooreonoo, on Cook's chart, given to the whole of Tahiti-nui. He was Tu's great-uncle, and Tu was the ‘some other person who we had not seen’, not because he was no friend, but because he was a timid young man completely under Tuteha's thumb, and Tuteha thought he was better out of the way. Cook was to see enough of him on later visits. The girl who came with Teri'irere was not his sister but Tu's sister, also a first-born child, and she was the designated wife of Teri'irere.Journals I, clxxxii, and also p. 104, n. 1.Journals I, clxxxii-clxxxiv.
Meanwhile the stealing of attractive articles went on. Cook's
ibid., 101.
It was a thing which weighed on the humane man for the rest of his life, and on humane men among his officers, this question of the transmission of the evil to the people of the South Sea; and where there were so many islands, innocence in one case was not necessarily innocence in another. The mutual attraction of the sexes—his men, the island women—Cook did not have to read Wallis's journal to foresee. He may even have foreseen, in general terms, episodes so ridiculous as the rivalry and the ‘éclaircissement’ between Banks and the surgeon over young women; and it would certainly have been most unfortunate if either of these had shot the other. ibid., 102, n. 1, and Parkinson, 32. ibid., 99. ibid., 98–9.Dolphin's men had contracted it at the island, as far as he knew; yet by early May some of his own men had—‘sad work among the People’, to quote the master Journals I, 556.e Ship … this distemper very soon spread it self over the greatest part of the Ships Compney but now I have the satisfaction to find that the Natives all agree that we did not bring it here.’Dolphin and the Endeavour were free of the unpleasant responsibility. There had been two other ships visiting the island, ten or fifteen months earlier, at a harbour to the eastward called ‘Ohidea’ or Hitiaa; they had had a woman on board, and had carried away the brother of the chief of that place. Thus was accounted for various old pieces of iron, at first supposedly but not certainly from the Dolphin, which had been seen about, and an axe of strange pattern which Purea had brought to be sharpened. Also, said the Tahitians, these ships ‘brought the Venerial distemper to this Island where it is now as common as in any part of the world and which the people bear with as little concern as if they had been accustomed to it for ages past.’
Early on the morning of 26 June he set off eastward in the pinnace with Banks to make the circuit of the island. For about ten miles there was no reef. At 8 o'clock they landed and walked while the boat rowed along, the shore sounding, a rough walk at times between the sharply rising hills and the beach, encountering nothing very remarkable till they came to Hitiaa, where they were shown where the ships had lain—Spanish ships, as Cook thought them—and where their men had camped on shore. They kept on walking, found they could not in that way reach the bottom of the great bay between Tahiti-nui and Taiarapu, and called in the boat for the last stage, so that they were able to lodge the night with friends on the northern side of the Taravao peninsula. Cook inspected this muddy canoe-portage next morning; beyond it, he was told, was enemy's country, subject not to Tuteha but to ‘King Waheatua’. Although the people encountered as the travellers walked on were strangers they proved as friendly as anybody else, not least the magnate Vehiatua, the ari'i rahi of Taiarapu, ‘a thin old man with very white hair and beard’, says Banks, found sitting with his daughter ‘near some pretty Canoe awnings’ on the shore of the beautiful Vaitepiha Bay. To reach his side of the bay they had been ferried across a large river in a canoe; now they walked again, accompanied by his young son, along the edge of fine cultivated country, with a marae on every point and others inland, and almost innumerable large double canoes drawn up on the beach—until tiredness drove them into the boat. They rowed till dark, when they put into a little creek and spent (surprisingly, as they thought) a supperless night in a deserted arioi house. Nor could they get provisions next morning, although they met friends, until, after rowing with a native pilot round the south-east point of the island, the steep Pari or cliffs above them and the broken dangerous reef outside, they came to a flat called Ahui and a plentiful harbour. Here they saw a fat goose and turkey-cock, left by Wallis at Matavai Bay. A less grateful sight, at one end of a house, was a semi-circular board to which were fastened fifteen human jaw-bones. For what purpose? Cook could not find out.
The tour continued, all this day in the boat, inside the reef, past a fruitful and populous coastal fringe, to a halting-place for the night—the night of the 28th—in the district of Vaiuru, within the
marae, built of worked coral stone and basalt, which Purea and Amo, in their colossal pride, had raised to the honour of their infant son Teri'irereJournals I, 112–13; also Banks, I, 303–5.ari'i that Tuteha and Vehiatua had joined to overthrow the pretensions of the Papara family. There were smaller marae near by, and many large altars, or fata, bearing the remains of sacrificial food set out for the gods; and the beach between them and the sea was thickly strewn with human bones—the bones of the Papara men killed six months before. The jaw-bones of Ahui were trophies of this battle. Cook and Banks measured the prodigious thing, before they went to rest in Purea's house, and learnt something of the fate which had descended on its makers. The next day, the last of June, they rowed up the west coast, a slow passage through reefs and shoals, to some part of Tuteha's domain, visited him the following morning and by evening had trodden their path back to Matavai Bay and the fort. They had been out on their circuit for six days and five nights; something more than thirty leagues, was the estimate; and the ‘Plan or Sketch’ which Cook had drawn, ‘altho it cannot be very accurate yet it will be found sufficient to point out the Situations of the different Bays and harbours and the figure of the Island and I believe is without any material error.’ Later comers found it remarkably accurate.
It was time, the captain thought, to depart. With the advance of the season provisions were growing short, the only breadfruit was a small late harvest brought down from the hills, and the natives were using a ‘sour paste’ made from it earlier, preserved in pits. The fort
ibid., 555 (5 May). ibid., cxlvi. The midshipman was J. M. Magra or Matra, later British consul at Tangier, whence (in 1790) he wrote to Banks on the subject of the Journals I, 556 (7 May).Bounty mutiny, and then adverted to the Endeavour.Journals I, 116.
The last job about the ship was renewing the stocks of both bower anchors, which had been eaten away to destruction by the worm. And then there were two additions to her company. More than one Tahitian had wished to join her. Cook was reluctant to take away anyone whose return he could not foresee, but Banks was eager. Tupaia the priest, Purea's adviser, had been much with them; he was a man of intelligence, of encyclopaedic local knowledge, came of a family of famous seamen, and had already provided a long list of islands from which it was possible to construct some sort of map, so that Cook agreed that he might be a help in discovery. Banks the collector, the man of fortune, overbore Cook: ‘Thank heaven I have a sufficiency and I do not know why I may not keep him as a curiosity, as well as some of my neighbours do lions and tygers at a larger expence than he will probably ever put me to; the amusement I shall have in his future conversation and the benefit he will be of to this ship, as well as what he may be if another should be sent into these seas, will I think fully repay me.’ Banks, I, 312–13.Endeavour sailed from Matavai Bay.
Cook did not at once turn south in pursuit of his instructions. He thought it better first to look at the nearby islands of which he had heard. He did not land at Moorea, nor at Tetiaroa, some eight leagues north-west of Point Venus, a low uninhabited island where the Tahitians went for fish and refreshment, but after taking a nearer view of the latter and noting the position of Tubuai Manu, forty miles to the west of Moorea, bore away farther westward for Huahine, about a hundred miles distant from Tahiti. Webb and Gibson both got their two dozen and were returned to duty. Gentle breezes led Tupaia to pray to his god Tane for wind (when he thought a wind was coming, said Banks), and whether or not with his assistance the ship, passing round the north of the island, was anchored on the afternoon of 16 July within the reef on its western side, in a fine deep harbour called Fare. It was here that Tupaia really began to prove his mettle. As the ship manoeuvred he made a man dive down to
Banks, I, 323.His Britannick Maj. Ship Endeavour, Lieut t Cook Commander 16th July 1769. Huaheine. The chief promised never to part with it, and he did not.
Leaving this harbour, Cook crossed over to another on the near side of Raiatea, twenty miles west: Teava Moa, the ‘sacred harbour’ of the Opoa district, where stood the most revered marae of all Polynesia, Taputapuatea, an inmost heart. Tupaia went through his propitiation ceremony again, though this was his own native island; Cook, faithful to his instructions, hoisted the English flag and took possession of the island and its neighbours. Next day sounding and coastal surveying went busily on, while Banks inspected boathouses and canoes and measured a great canoe under construction—the Raiateans were famous canoe-builders—and the surgeon managed trade, much to the disgust of some on board, who wanted to acquire curiosities; instead they got fresh pork and as much fruit as they could eat.Journals I, 144, n. 2. Pickersgill was very indignant: This day Trade Oligopoliz'd on Shore by the Surgeon &c whilst the most Trifling Thing was not admitted to be Purchas'd on board even by the Petty Officers a Centinal being Putt on each ganway on Purpus while the 2d Lieutn (Mr. Gore) stay'd on the Qr Deck all day.' Wilkinson, the other master's mate (also a petty officer) remarks about the pork and fruit that it was ‘the Captains Chief Steady [Study] to get for them.’
Among the islands neighbouring Raiatea which Cook had annexed for his royal master were two inconsiderable ones he had merely sighted, the atoll Tupai or Motu Iti a few miles north of Borabora, and Maurua or Maupiti, a high island rather more to the west: to these, with Huahine, Raiatea-Tahaa and Borabora he gave the collective name Society Isles, ‘as they lay contiguous to one a nother.’ The three main ones were worth having, in point of beauty. Anciently dead and shattered volcanoes, they were striking objects from the sea; Raiatea the largest and highest though by no means as high as Tahiti, Borabora the smallest and most fantastically dramatic. They had smooth and secure harbours. So much like Tahiti in general character and produce, they gave the naturalists little that was new; although without Tahiti's superabundance of breadfruit, their cultivated plantains and yams called forth the admiration of the seamen. The people seemed more open and free. The number of human jawbones hung up as trophies certainly argued a good deal of free and open violence.
In the morning of 9 August the wind, coming round to the east and steadying, carried the ship through the reef, and Cook made sail to
Banks, I, 329.
For the first few days it was possible to hold a fairly direct southerly course, while Tupaia expatiated upon islands, and the captain himself and Banks, one imagines, began to compose their immensely valuable descriptions of the life of Tahiti and the neighbouring island group. The weather was agreeable. Four days from Raiatea, in latitude 22°26', an island was sighted to the east, and this one at least was prophesied by toa or casuarina on its more level parts close to the shore, without barrier reef but fringed all round with a coral bank. As the ship could not get in close and Cook had no wish to stay he sent off the pinnace with Gore, Banks and Tupaia, to see if they could land and acquire any knowledge from the inhabitants of what lay to the southward. These inhabitants, in their bright red or yellow stained tapa garments, with their lances and spears of toa wood, proved a little belligerent, trying to seize the boat; so that, after the harmless discharge of a musket or two and some inconsiderable trade, Cook, having made the circuit of the island, hoisted her in again and made sail. He ignored Tupaia's pleas to turn west: not in that direction lay his instructions. Within the next week the weather began to deteriorate: as it got colder the island hogs and fowls, taken for a sea stock, unused to any diet but their native vegetables, began to sicken and die; neither did the store of those vegetables, other than yams and plantains, last well. Sea birds were abundant, albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters. The great Pacific swell discouraged any thought of land, though as early as 16 August a line of cloud in the east tempted the ship off her course for part of the morning. August 25 was the anniversary of her departure from England. The gentlemen brought out a piece of Cheshire cheese and tapped a cask of porter, and ‘livd like English men’, said Banks. There had been too much tapping of other casks, he thought, by surreptitious persons without need to celebrate, but at least they had not filled them up again with salt water, as he was told was the habit. Within a few days of this, died unexpectedly the boatswain's mate,
At the end of the month a comet was seen, a phenomenon observed also at Greenwich and Paris. September came in with squalls and gales and rain, high seas and cold, and more than once Cook brought to. On the first day of the month, in the afternoon, he found he was beyond the parallel to which his orders took him, in latitude 40°22′, and longitude 145°39′ W. He decided, with some regret, that he had come far enough: ‘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 then stand back to ye northrd on the same track as we came; but as the weather was so very tempestuous I laid a side this design, thought it more advisable to stand to the Northward into better weather least we should receive such damages in our sails & rigging as might hinder the further prosecutions of the Voyage.’Journals I, 161.
do I wish that our friends in England could by the assistance of some magical spying glass take a peep at our situation: DrSolander setts at the Cabbin table describing, myself at my Bureau Journalizing, between us hangs a large bunch of sea weed, upon the table lays the wood and barnacles; they would see that notwithstanding our different occupations our lips move very often, and without being conjurors might guess that we were talking about what we should see upon the land which there is now no doubt we shall see very soon.Banks, I, 396.
If friends of Cook could have invoked this magical glass they might have wondered whether he retained any rights in his own cabin.
‘Our old enemy Cape fly away entertaind us for three hours this morn’: it is Banks again, 5 October, about latitude 38°, and some were sure the clouds were land. A paler sea had for some days again caused frequent sounding, without bottom. The 6th came with settled weather and gentle easterly breezes, before which the ship sailed slowly, making once more a little northing. At 2 p.m. a boy at the masthead, Nicholas Young, shouted Land!—and by sunset the line, no bank of cloud or fog, could be seen from the deck. At noon next day it was still about 8 leagues away, high land; below the heights smoke was rising; the weather was still clear; before nightfall a bay was descried, and the inland ranges appeared higher than ever. ‘Much difference of opinion and many conjectures about Islands, rivers, inlets &c. but all hands seem to agree that this is certainly the Continent we are in search of’, are the words Banks commits to his journal that night. Banks, I, 399.
‘Certainly the Continent we are in search of’? Were these, then, the first steps, or the first European steps, on that fabled shore? Banks might think so. Others, even if not all hands, thought so. The titling of a number of Pickersgill's charts begins, ‘A Chart of Part of the So Continent …’.Journals I, 262, n. 5. His chart of the coast between Poverty Bay and the Court of Aldermen has the note ‘(N.B. This chart was taken before this country was found to be an island).’Zeehaens bocht, where Tasman had ridden out the stormy Christmas of 1642. Obviously the only thing for Cook to do was to obey his instructions, and to explore as much of the coast as the condition of the bark, the health of the crew, and the state of his provisions would admit of. This, large as was the sum total of his observations on mankind—on the ‘Indians’ of this country—obviously was his leading and immovable thought over the next six months; and whereas his Tahitian experience was so much in the discovery of men, this one was in the discovery, quite remarkably rounded and complete, of a country.
A discovery, none the less, immediately concerned with men; for he had landed. The first two days were disastrous, all that Cook deplored and Lord Morton had warned him against, all with the best intentions. These Indians, clearly, did not regard the stranger as someone automatically to be welcomed. Cook, seeing a number of them on the west side of the river, crossed over in the yawl to meet them, leaving the pinnace at the river entrance. When they made off he and his party walked two or three hundred yards to look at some huts; at this four men rushed out from the trees on the eastern side to seize the yawl, which, warned by shouts from the pinnace, dropped downstream closely pursued; the pinnace fired, first over the pursuers' heads, then directly at them, and one fell dead. His three companions stopped, startled by this novelty in killing. Cook went back to the ship. He landed again next morning, this time with the marines, on the river's west bank, to face a body of hostile people on the other side, flourishing their weapons and leaping in a war dance. He managed to bring them to a parley; to his surprise, they understood Tupaia perfectly; twenty or thirty of them swam over to him. In spite of presents given them they remained truculent, snatching at the English weapons, Tupaia was full of warnings; when one of them fled with Green's hanger Cook felt forced to have him
Journals I, ccxi, 171.
I can by no means justify my conduct in attacking and killing the people in this boat who had given me no just provocation and was wholy igernorant of my design and had I had the least thought of their making any resistance I would not so much as have looked at them but when we was once a long side of them we must either have stud to be knockd on the head or else retire and let them gone off in triumph and this last they would of Course have attributed to thier own bravery and our timorousness.ibid., ccxi, printed from a fragment in the Mitchell Library.
That did not seem quite right and he tried again, beginning, ‘I am aware that most humane men who have not experienced things of this nature will cencure my conduct’, and omitting those last miserable phrases with which, after all, he had tried to buttress self-justification, ‘and let them gone off in triumph …’. For Cook's final version of his account see Banks, I, 403.Journals I, 171.
The following day some wood was cut and the three youths, full of ship's food and reluctant to leave, were put ashore. Out of some two hundred armed natives who assembled only one man seemed conversable, crossing the river to receive presents; Cook therefore to avoid a further clash, took his men back to the ship. Early next morning, 11 October, he stood out of the bay. What would he call it: Endeavour Bay? He thought so, then changed to
On the first afternoon, in a calm, several canoes came along-side and some men even on board, to trade their paddles for Tahitian cloth. Three stayed overnight, and reassured more cautious visitors in the morning that their hosts did not eat men. The three captured youths, when first put on shore, had seemed afraid of being killed and eaten by their enemies. Were these savages then cannibals? There was then no further evidence, and the men departed. This was off the flat headland Cook called Cape Table, whence the land trended south-south-west on the outside of a peninsula to the Isle of Portland, much like its namesake in the English Channel; and hauling round the south end of this island he found himself in a large bay. It was large enough to contain subsidiary bays; behind its white cliffs, sandy beaches and houses, a well-wooded interior ran back to hills and mountains patched with snow; but as Cook slowly followed its coast, he could find no harbour or watering place, while more than once he had to disperse hostile canoes with shots fired wide from his four-pounders. On the 15th, abreast of a point which was the south-west limit of the bay, there was a more serious incident. Several canoes came out to the ship and sold her some ‘stinking’—that is, smoked or dried—fish; ‘however, it was such as they had, and we were glad to enter into traffick with them upon any terms.’ Then a man cheated the captain of a piece of red cloth, offered in exchange for a dog-skin cloak, and the canoes all put off, only to return with more of the fish. Bargaining went on during which Tupaia's servant-boy, Taiata, was over the side; he was suddenly snatched into a canoe, the canoe fled, the ship opened fire, in the confusion the boy
Sailing north at first further out at sea, he was off the peninsula—Mahia—two days later, and the natives began to come out to the ship continually. They were now very friendly. Past the ‘remarkable head’ he called Gable End Foreland he sighted two promising bays, in which he determined to try for water and see a little of the country. The more southerly one he could not fetch, but in the other, ‘Tega-doo’ Parkinson uses the form Te Karu. ‘Tegadoo’ illustrates the difficulty Cook had sometimes in reducing a native word to English, as well as in determining a place name. It may be derived from Wild celery was a genuine celery, Te ngaru, breakers or the heavy surf his informant thought he was referring to. See Journals I, 183, n. 1.tauranga, an anchorage: it was correctly Uawa. The cove, at the bottom of a great green amphitheatre, we know now as Cook's Cove. Wood and water abounded, wild celery and ‘scurvy grass’;Apium prostratum. The ‘scurvy grass’, Maori nau, botanical Lepidium oleraceum, was once very common on New Zealand coasts, but few living eyes have seen it, except in a herbarium, as it has been eaten out of existence by sheep and cattle.
Next day he rounded East Cape, which he had ‘great reason to think … the Eastermost land on this whole Coast’, passed Hicks Bay (Lieutenant Hicks being the first to sight it), and Cape Runaway, off which a number of suspiciously heavily armed canoes were sent hurrying off to shore by a round shot fired over their heads; and was in the large opening in the coast he was to call the Banks, I, 425. On the name see Journal, I, 202, n. 3. It was a second choice; he at first intended to use a native name, probably ‘Opoorage’, from Purangi, the name of the stream he called ‘Oyster River’.
The weather was clear for the observation. Unfortunately while Cook and Hicks were on shore attending to it a man in a visiting canoe cheated Gore, on board the ship, of a woven cloak he had agreed to exchange for a piece of cloth; and as the canoe moved off, with paddles shaken defiantly, the furious Gore seized a musket and shot the man dead. ‘I must own’, says Cook, that this ‘did not meet with my approbation because I thought the punishment a little too severe for the Crime, and we had now been long enough acquainted with these People to know how to chastise trifling faults like this without taking away their lives.’ And probably to assert land-claims, which was a matter Cook could not guess at. To quote later Maori reminiscence: ‘Our tribe was living there at that time. We did not live there as our permanent home, but were there according to our custom of living for some time on each of our blocks of land, to keep our claim to each, and that our fire might be kept alight on each block, so that it might not be taken from us by some other tribe.’—Beaglehole, Journals I, 196.The Discovery of New Zealand, 89.pa, on promontories and
He and Banks were not the only curious observers. The people were tenacious of memory; more than eighty years later, when Cook's countrymen had come to New Zealand as settlers, an ancient chief, tupua, goblins or demons, were kind, and gave food: something hard like pumice-stone but sweet, something else that was fat, perhaps whale-blubber or flesh of man, though it was salt and nipped the throat—ships bread, or biscuit, salt beef or pork. There was one who collected shells, flowers, tree-blossoms and stones. They invited the boys to go on board the ship with the warriors, and little Te Horeta went, and saw the warriors exchange their cloaks for other goods, and saw the one who was clearly the lord, the leader of the tupua. He spoke seldom, but felt the cloaks and handled the weapons, and patted the children's cheeks and gently touched their heads. The boys did not walk about, they were afraid lest they should be bewitched, they sat still and looked; and the great lord gave Te Horeta a nail, and Te Horeta said Ka pai, which is ‘very good’, and people laughed. Te Horeta used this nail on his spear, and to make holes in the side boards of canoes; he had it for a god but one day his canoe capsized and he lost it, and though he dived for it he could not find it. And this lord, the leader, gave Te Horeta's people two hand-fuls of potatoes, which they planted and tended; they were the first people to have potatoes in this country. There are other traditions, brief lights: none as circumstantial as this.Discovery of New Zealand, 88 ff., reprinted from John White, Ancient History of the Moori, V (Wellington, 1889), 121–8.
Delayed two days beyond his intentions by foul weather and easterly winds Cook did not sail till early on 15 November. Before he left he cut the ship's name and the date on a tree near the watering
It is to be noted that Cook did not here, or anywhere else in New Zealand, take possession of the whole country, as many New Zealanders fancy he did. On the ‘consent of the Natives’, see his instructions, Journals I, cclxxiii.Journals I, 212.
The familiar pattern of native behaviour was repeated, this time with more danger. A crowd assembled in their canoes, from which a few persons were allowed on board and given presents; then others tried to carry off the buoy of the anchor, the muskets and a gun were fired, the people fled, it took Tupaia's good offices to bring them back. Cook moved the ship farther out, and, with Banks and Solander landed on the island. Almost at once they were surrounded by two or three hundred armed and jostling men, some of whom broke into a war dance while others tried unsuccessfully to seize the boats; pushed back by small shot beyond a line drawn on the sand they rallied more than once, until the attentive Hicks, swinging the ship round, fired her guns over their heads. This dispersed the mob, and they became ‘meek as lambs’. Cook could peaceably load the boats with celery, intending to sail next morning. But next morning the wind fell calm, thereafter turning to the north. He flogged three sailors for robbing sweet potato plantations during the night, and settled down to some days of trafficking, mainly for fish, filling his casks, gathering greens, sounding the harbour, and visiting as much of the country as possible. It was more thickly populated than those parts further south, the people more elaborately tattoed, some of their canoes more elaborately carved; the bay itself beautiful, with many good anchorages, the hills and valleys round it, forests and cultivations, beautiful also. Cook called it the Bay of Islands. Early on 5 December he weighed anchor with a favourable wind, which changed in the afternoon and then faded away altogether, so that shortly before midnight the ship was almost carried on shore by a current; escaping that the ship struck a sunken rock, from which she fortunately went clear without damage. In the morning she was once more safely at sea.
Cook now had ahead of him an extremely difficult period. It displays his temper and his patience at their best. He had to undergo a month of weather that varied from contrary winds of no great strength to furious gales, in which he was determined to abandon neither the land nor his purpose of fixing its position. For the first ten days he tacked off and on up the last hundred miles of the eastern coast, past bays and promontories and a long straight ‘desart shore’ that he religiously described and charted with an accuracy which would have given lesser men pride under the most favourable conditions. A few canoes came out once or twice; from them he learnt that the land would soon turn west to a point that could only, he thought,
Cook's position for the North Cape was 34°22' S, 186°55'W, or 173°5' E. The position as now accepted is 34°26'S, 173°4' E. The most northerly point of the country is in fact Kerr Point (a slight bulge rather than a point) just west of North Cape, a little less than 34°25' S in latitude. Cook's reckoning was 34°30' S, 187°25' W (172°42' E); the modern position is 34°28' S, 172°38' E. His North Cape is just as accurate—even more so, with an error of only one minute in longitude.Journals I, 228.
Nor was the gale yet over, nor the struggle to keep the coast in view without running on to it, nor sober reflections. On 2 January 1770 there was no land in sight, and a wind blowing right on shore and ‘a high rowling sea’ from the west made dangerous any closer approach. Until the 6th south-westerlies continued. Beating against them, Cook by the 4th was as far south as the Kaipara harbour (his False Bay): he had missed a good deal of the land, though standing north-west again he could judge its direction. What he could see struck him, like that on the other side, as desolate and inhospitable, another ‘desart coast’ and obviously dangerous: ‘this I am so fully sencible of that was we once clear of it I am determind not to come so near again if I can possible avoide it unless we have a very favourable wind indeed’. ibid., 230. Admiral Wharton, in a footnote to his edition of Cook's first journal, p. 178, remarks, ‘The mingled audacity and caution of Cook's navigation off this coast must awake the admiration of every seaman.’Zeehaens bocht of Tasman. Into one of these inlets Cook determined to go. The ship was foul; she needed small repairs, wood and water, as well as cleaning; her men needed another taste of the land. After plying on and off for the night he passed a ledge of rocks, keeping clear, with the help of the boats, of the north-west shore towards which a strong current drew him; saw a startled sea-lion rise up, a canoe cross the
At that moment he would have been surprised to learn something else he did not know. He was not the only European sailor to have been on the northern shores he had lately left. Saint Jean Baptiste within an opening somewhat to the south which Cook had called, without entering,
The deep inlet to which Cook had come is a precipitous place, and only at its southern end, so far down that Cook never had time to explore it, does any real expanse of flat country begin; but the steep high hills were clothed in dark green, the land was ‘one intire forest’. Into the cove ran an abundant stream of sweet fresh water; the waters of the sound rendered up god's plenty of fish, its shores illimitable quantities of the wild celery and scurvy grass that were the delight of Cook's heart. He had come in the season of fair weather; for though the winds can tear down in fury from the heights and rain fall heavily, for the first fortnight of his three weeks' stay there was little to record but gentle breezes and a clear sky. There was much work to do: ‘rest’, for Cook's men, tended to be the refreshment they got from change of labours and change of diet, but refreshment they certainly got, and they had their hours of wandering. Few of them were immune to the sound of bird song across the water, so charmingly recorded by Banks two days after the ship anchored. ‘This morn’, he wrote, ‘I was awakd by the singing of the birds ashore from whence we are distant not a quarter of a mile, the numbers of them were certainly very great who seemd to strain their throats with emulation perhaps; their voices were certainly the most melodious wild musick I have ever heard, almost imitating small bells but with the most tuneable silver sound imaginable to which maybe the distance was no small addition. On enquiring of our people I was told that they had observd them ever since we have been here, and that they begin to sing at about 1 or 2 in the morn and continue till sunrise, after which they are silent all day like our nightingales.’ Banks, I, 455–6.korimako, enter the literature of New Zealand, though doubtless his notes were accompanied by those of other victims of the collectors' gun; for Banks and Solander had arrived in another natural historian's paradise. It was plants rather than birds, however, that filled their bags; it was mankind, also the study of the natural historian, that for a moment appalled their minds. For a moment, because in spite of the horror that cannibalism inspires, one must admit that in its discussion there is a certain element of the agreeable.
Like a number of other New Zealanders, the people of the sound introduced themselves with a shower of stones, but in general they
tapa. Their savagery was more directly visible. The day following the ship's arrival Cook, Banks, and Tupaia visited a cove not far away, where, with a dog then cooking, were bones obviously human and not entirely picked, about which Tupaia got all the information that native mime did not convey. Next morning, alongside the ship, another bone was handed over, ‘and to shew us that they had eat the flesh they bit and naw'd the bone and draw'd it thro' their mouth and this in such a manner as plainly shew'd that the flesh was to them a dainty bit.’ Journals I, 236–7.
Cook's primary interest, however—to repeat—was geographical, and while work on the ship went on he had the boats out, exploring and surveying in every direction. The inlet must, he thought, be not far from the Murderers' Bay where Tasman had lost four of his men: Tasman's bay was in fact distant about seventy miles, and Tasman was unknown to the tradition of the tribe he was now meeting. He made two excursions towards the sea along this western shore and found a good harbour but nothing else except forested hills. Then came a more remarkable expedition. On 22 January he set out in the pinnace in the opposite direction, towards the end of the inlet. After rowing twelve or fifteen miles against the wind he could neither reach nor see it; so at noon he landed on the eastern side and, leaving Banks and Solander to botanise, climbed with a sailor up the steep flank of a hill—part of a ridge the highest point of which is called Kaitepeha The point has been most accurately identified by Charles and James Cook and New Zealand (Wellington, 1969), 62–5.
Journals I, 240.
The last expedition was to the mouth of the inlet, where Cook landed on the western point and once more climbed a hill, this time ‘pretty high’, he raised another pile of stones, with a silver coin, a few musket balls and beads inside it, and a piece of an old pendant flying from the top. This hill gave him a view of the coast to the north-west and an island about ten leagues off which he called after Endeavour had already been there; they promised not to pull it down, and received presents of silver threepenny pieces and spike nails stamped with the broad arrow, things likely to be preserved. The post was planted on the highest
On the afternoon of 5 February the ship was warped out of the cove and got under sail, but in faint and variable winds, falling to a calm all night, had to anchor until the following morning, when a renewed light breeze took her out of the sound and round Cape Koamaru into the strait. Cook's first purpose was to pass the strait. He does not give it a name: Banks is the man who tells us it is to bear the captain's own name, and we may suspect Banks of insisting on the point. When the captain had passed it, what then? We learn his intentions from his actions and from a conversation he had with the old man on Motuara, on the day he took possession. He had ‘some conjectors that the lands to the The name Cook got may have been Sw of this strait (which we are now at) was an Island and not part of a continent’; and the old man said that there were ‘two Wannuaes, that is two lands or islands that might be circumnavigated in a few days, even in four.’ These two ‘wannuaes’ or whenua he called ‘Tovy-poenammu’, or Te Wai Pounamu, and it was the short circumnavigation of these that Cook thought he was engaged upon even while he was in the strait. There was a third land, a large one, which could be sailed round only in many moons, on the east side of the strait, and obviously Cook had been on its coasts already. Its name was ‘Aeheino mouwe’.He hi no Mani, ‘a thing fished up by Maui’. See Journals I, 243, n. 3; and also The Southern Districts of New Zealand (London, 1851), 155–6, and Maori Place-Names (Wellington, 1942), 89–91.Te Ika no Maui, ‘the fish of Maui’. As for the other two, clearly there was misunderstanding on Cook's part, perhaps on the old man's, perhaps on Tupaia's. One of them must have been Arapawa, the island that formed the north-east side of the sound, and this could be circumnavigated in a few days, even by canoes; the second was Te Wai Pounamu, ‘the Water of Greenstone’, so called because of the river-beds of its west coast where the green stone or nephrite was found of which weapons and ornaments were made—not, as Cook supposed, the ‘green Talk or stone’ itself. To circumnavigate this land, or whenua, would take moons also not days; it is not improbable that, as Pickersgill said, Cook's informants ‘had but a very Imperfect knolledge’ of it.Journals I, 243, n. 2. Pickersgill's report, quoted in that note, is more easily understood, than Cook's—‘3 lands’, one to the north (three months to circumnavigate); a second, ‘which we was upon’ (the island Arapawa, on the eastern side of Queen Charlotte Sound—four days to circumnavigate); and the third ‘Towie poe namou’ (Very Imperfect knolledge').
Cook passed the strait. It has its dangers, as he found. He was scarcely into it, in the early evening, four miles off the two small islands he called the Brothers, when the wind fell calm again and the ebb tide drove him almost on to the rocks about one of them; he was saved by his anchor in 75 fathoms with 150 fathoms of cable out and by a small change in the direction of the tide as it met the island, roaring past the ship like a mill-race. It took three hours to weigh the anchor again, after which he could make over for the eastern shore, where the wind and the tide combined swept him through the narrowest part of the passage, and he could stand away south by west for the most southerly point of land in sight. This he called Cape Campbell, after the eminent officer who had introduced him to the ‘Mr Gore notwithstanding Yesterdays run was of opinion that what he saw yesterday morning might be land, so he declard on the Quarter deck: on which the Capin who resolved that nobody should say he had left land behind unsought for orderd the ship to be steerd Se.’—Banks, I, 468.
Ten very trying days followed, in weather that swung between calms and hard gales from the south, dark and gloomy, with a head sea, carrying away small spars, splitting sails. Cook clung to the coast desperately, tacking off and on, for a time losing ground, sometimes in a fair interval seeing it distinctly, but not certain that it was continuous; making a good stretch one day in a temporary favourable wind till he was off the high bluff he called Cape Saunders (another admiral remembered), about which the land appeared green and woody and hilly, and there were two or three inviting bays. He was anxious not to lose time, however, and resisted the temptation to land—only to be driven by the last day of February a hundred and twenty miles to the south, and even farther to the east. Next day in heavy weather from the west he stood north again from latitude 48°, a large south-west swell persuading him there was no land in that
The Banks quotations are from I, 470, 471, 472.
As Cook turned north in the south-west swell so indicative of an empty ocean, to get in touch with the land, and passed the small rocky Solander's Isle, he looked east. He still asked himself whether he had sailed outside a strait a week before, because now when he looked there appeared an open channel, about which his officers had no doubt; but, he says, when he came to lay down the most southerly land upon paper from the bearings he had taken he hardly had a doubt that this was joined to the rest of the country, with a large bay on either side of the connection. We are given a curious instance, in Cook, of the evidence of the eyes being overthrown by a more abstract reasoning; For discussion of this point see Banks, Journals I, 263, n. 2. If Cook had been deceived by his eyes, looking from the western end of the strait, it would have seemed natural—any-how under certain conditions of cloud and atmosphere.I, 473, and n. 3 on that page; Journals I, 266, n. 1.Journals I, 265–6.
There was a generally favouring wind, and the chart delineates this westerly shore without a break. For some days the great mountain chain was still white; even some of the valleys seemed covered with snow—glaciers, inching their way down through forest to the sea. The ship was coming up with Tasman's coast. On the 20th the wind veered to the north-west, with hazy weather, rain and squalls. Cook, forced to stand for a while to the west, gave the name Cape Foulwind to the prominent point he sighted on coming back to the land; and hereabouts and further up to the north one may note that Tasman, closer in, provides a better rendering of its outline than he does. Like Tasman, he remarked on the great, the ‘prodigious’, swell; on the 22nd, when he was no more than three or four miles off a bluff and rocky head, he was ‘under a good deal of apprehension’ that he might be obliged to anchor, but good seamanship kept the vessel from driving nearer the shore. By noon on the 23rd she was off
Cook described in his journal, with brevity but feeling, the western coast he had sailed up. There must, he thought, be a continuous chain of mountains from one end of the country to the other. As he was not read in polite literature he did not use the word romantic, but spoke of prodigious heights, barren rocks, snow that perhaps had lain since the creation; no country upon earth could appear with a more rugged and barren aspect; or it is mountains standing back behind wooded hills and valleys; always hills rising from the sea, and forest. Such broad statements come easily enough from the pen. One would like a closer impression than we have of the process by which Cook produced his whole chart of the country's coastline—2400 miles in less than three months. No drafts or trial scraps of paper have been preserved, no pages of calculation, no reference anywhere to work spread out in the great cabin—and one must assume that sometimes the captain had the use of his own quarters. It was almost entirely a running survey from the sea, with a constant eye on compass bearings and sextant angles, though when in harbour for as long
Wales, working later over the records of the voyage, and puzzled by the lack of evidence, concluded that Cook ‘determined the ship's place from time to time by means of a series of triangles, which he carried on all round the island, and which formed a continued connection of the situations of the ship with remarkable objects inland, and the principal points of the coast; and he made no farther use of the log than to connect those points of the track which the ship was in when he took his angles and bearings.’ — Wales, Astronomical Observations … (1788), 108.h. The situation of few parts of the world are better determined than these Islands are being settled by some hundred of Observations of the Sun and Moon and one of the transit of Mercury made by Mr Green who was sent out by the Roy Society to observe the Transit of Venus.’Journals I, 274. We may compare with Cook's own words those of Mascarin, which was on the northern New Zealand coast in 1772: ‘As soon as I obtained information of the voyage of the Englishman, I carefully compared the chart I had prepared of that part of the coast of New Zealand along which we had coasted with that prepared by Captain Cook and his officers. I found it of an exactitude and of a thoroughness of detail which astonished me beyond all powers of expression, and I doubt much whether the charts of our own French coasts are laid down with greater precision. I think therefore that I cannot do better than to lay down our track off New Zealand on the chart prepared by this celebrated navigator.’—H. Ling Roth, Crozet's Voyage to Tasmania … (London, 1891), 22.
Of the chart—and the passage should be quoted in full, because these words too are part of the portrait of Cook, with his anxious regard for the fact, his awareness of some merit, his denial of a claim too great:
The Chart which I have drawn will best point out the figure and extent of these Islands, the situation of the Bays and harbours they contain and the lesser Islands lay[ing] aboutthem. And now I have mentioned the Chart I shall point out such places as are drawn with sufficient accuracy to be depended upon and such as are not, beginning atCape Pallisserand proceed roundAehei no mouweby the East Cape &ca. The Coast betweenthese two Capes I believe to be laid down pretty accurate both in its figure and the Course and distance from point to point. The oppertunities I had and the methods I made use on to obtain these requesites were such as could hardly admit of an error; from the East CapetoCape Maria Vandiemenaltho it cannot be perfectly true yet it is without any very material error, some few places however must be excepted and these are very doubtfull and are not only here but in every other part of the chart pointed out by a prick'd or broken line. FromCape Maria Vandiemenup as high as the Latitude of 36° 15′ we seldom were nearer the Shore than from 5 to 8 Leagues and therefore the line of the Sea Coast may in some places be erroneous; from the above latitude to nearly the length of Entry Island we run along and near the shore all the way and no circumstance occur'd that made me liable to commit any material error. Excepting Cape Teerawhitte we never came near the shore between Entry Island and Cape Pallisser and therefore this part of the Coast may be found to differ something from the truth. In short I believe that this Island will never be found to differ materialy from the figure I have given it and that the coast affords few or no harbours but what are either taken notice of in this Journal or in some measure point[ed] out in the Chart; but I cannot say so much forTovy-poenammu, the Season of the year and circumstance of the Voyage would not permit me to spend so much time about this Island as I had done at the other and the blowing weather we frequently met with made it both dangerous and difficult to keep upon the Coast. However I shall point out the places that may be erroneous in this as I have done in the other. From Queen Charlottes Sound to Cape Campbel and as far to theSwas the Latitude 43° will be found to be pretty accurate, between this Latitude and the Latitude 44°20′ the coast is very doubtfully discribed, a part of which we hardly if att all saw. From this last mentioned Latitude toCape Sounderswe were generally at too great a distance to be particular and the weather at the same time was unfavourable. The Coast as it is laid down from Cape Saunders to Cape South and even to Cape West is no doubt in many places very erroneous as we hardly ever were able to keep near the shore and were some times blowen off altogether. From theWest Capedown toCape Fare-welland even toQueen Charlottes Soundwill in most places be found to differ not much from the truth.
JournalsI, 275–6.
Moderate as this statement is, we may think it still goes a little too far in its claims, unless we remember that Cook is thinking of the general line of the coast. His Banks's Island is a peninsula; but unless it is examined close to, it looks very like an island. What we now call Stewart Island is a peninsula; but the isthmus connecting it with Tovy Poenammu, or the South Island, is very conjecturally delineated. The coast-line from Cape Farewell to Point Jackson, and on the western side of the Hauraki Gulf, is not, we may think again,
Journals II, 173–4, 579–80.
As for the interior of the country, that must be left to future generations—it was, after all, the size of the United Kingdom. Cook had landed at six places on the North Island and two on the South Island, and had spent altogether about seven weeks ashore. In that time an extraordinary amount of information had been collected, and the journals, within their limits, are encyclopaedic. Admittedly, Banks was with Cook, but could ever discoverer have more literally obeyed instructions to observe and describe the place and people of his discovery? Banks and Solander sailed away with four hundred new plants; Cook with admiration not merely for the face of the country—its timber, its evident fertility, its promise for settlement—but for its inhabitants. He had found no king or ‘great prince’, but a people evidently divided, and of differing degrees of prosperity; a people strong, well made, active, ingenious, artistic, brave, open, warlike, void of treachery. On the whole, after a bad beginning, he had managed to get on well with them. The only trouble in Queen Charlotte Sound had arisen from a minor affray in which a boat's crew of his own men had gone out of bounds fishing and had fired on two canoes coming (as was fancied) to attack them; they had concealed the affair from Cook, who learnt later, first that one New Zealander had been killed, and then that he had not. All New Zealanders were liars, said Tupaia, who had a meaner opinion of this people than Cook had, and objected to cannibalism. Cook himself, in time, though he never lost his fundamental sympathy for them, was compelled to recognise some less amiable characteristics than those he now catalogued. To the enquiring mind their evident likeness to the South Sea people he had met already posed a problem. They had ‘the same Notions of the Creation of the World Mankind &ca… indeed many of there Notions and Customs are the
The two explicit parts of the instructions, the Transit, and (failing the continent) New Zealand, had been dealt with: the captain could go home. What did the instructions say about that?—‘either round the Journals I, 272–3.Journals II, 112, n. 2, from P.R.O., Adm 55/108.Se and clear weather.’ It was 31 March. In the afternoon he took his departure from Cape Farewell; next morning New Zealand was lost in rain and cloud.
Tasman, in November 1642, had picked up the western coast of Tasmania, or Van Diemen's Land, had rounded the island to the south, and left the eastern coast in the latitude of about 41°34' some-where near St Patrick Head, where a wind in his teeth stopped him from following the north-west trend of the shore. Sailing east, he discovered New Zealand. Cook, sailing west from New Zealand, and from Cape Farewell in latitude 40°30', hoped to pick up the coast of Van Diemen's Land where Tasman had left it, and trace the coast of New Holland northwards from that point. What he should expect to find it was impossible to say, whether a continuous coast or a congeries of islands, or a coast broken by a strait leading through to some inlet on the north coast, or whether in due course he would arrive plump on the coast of New Guinea as a part of New Holland, or would be guided into some certainty about the discoveries of Quiros. On board the Endeavour were at least two pieces of evidence which cast some light on the New Guinea question, arguing—or, as Cook might say, ‘conjecturing’—that, there was a clear passage between it and New Holland. One of these was the ‘Chart of the South Pacifick Ocean’, in Dalrymple's pamphlet of 1767, the copy of which he had presented to Banks. It had a number of strongly individual features, the existence of some of which, to a person able to check, would have cast doubt on the credibility of others; but it did show, clearly enough, a strait south of New Guinea, and a track for Torres marked through it. The other piece of evidence was the strait shown in the maps provided by Robert de Vaugondy for the volumes of de Brosses: from these maps Cook deduced ‘that the Spaniards and Dutch’ had ‘at one time or a nother circumnavigated the whole of the island of New Guinea as the most of the names are in these two Languages’; which was all the more curious because ‘I allways understood before I had a sight of these Maps that it was unknown whether or no New-Holland and New-Guinea was not one continued
Journals I, 410–11. De Brosses's plate V might well seem conclusive.
In a day or two the wind turned to southerlies; then in a few days more to a week's gentle breezes from the north that sometimes dropped to light airs or a calm, so that Banks could go out shooting birds in the warm weather, and the crew were on a not unpleasant routine of picking oakum and working up junk, while the carpenters repaired the yawl, and the sailmaker took the spritsail topsail, worn to pieces, and mended the topgallant sails with it The spritsail topsail, according to Alan Villiers, was of no use anyway. It was ‘a sort of hangover from the days when a small mast was stepped cumbrously on the end of the bowsprit and sail set from a light yard which hoisted on it… . Its successor in Cook's time, this sprits'l-tops'l, was little if any better, except that being set from a light yard (or “sprit”) hauled out along the jib-boom and sheeted to the arms of the spritsail-yard inboard of it on the bowsprit, it did not strain the headgear so much.’—Captain Cook, the Seamen's Seaman (London, 1967), 133.
The long procedure of coasting began, in which two thousand miles of shore, brought out of the shades, were placed in a firm line on the chart. If Cook could have prefigured exactly the four months that lay ahead of him, until he should round the northern tip of New Holland, he might have paced his deck uneasily; as it was, the weather cleared, the winds were manageable, he had a good view of the coast as he sailed, sometimes two or three miles off it, sometimes increasing his distance to three or four leagues. As he advanced past promontories and bays the names of admirals and captains and other naval persons advanced with him, interspersed with metaphor and experience and reminiscence, plain characteristics, and—later—his own emotions. There were few resources for nomenclature his chart did not illustrate in the end: even in the first few days he had Ram Head, Cape Howe, Mount Dromedary, Bateman Bay, Point Upright, the Pigeon House, Long Nose, Red Point. He turned the south-east corner of the land at Cape Howe and steered north, bringing to not infrequently at night, sometimes tacking off shore and in again in the morning: for there was a high surf beating on the shore all along. Beyond the surf the appearance of the country, in those first days, was agreeable enough, moderately high with gentle slopes, grass-grown here and there though mainly covered with trees. Banks, in a week, expressed himself differently: “The countrey tho in general well enough clothd appeard in some places bare; it resembled in my imagination the back of a lean Cow, covered in general with long hair, but nevertheless where her scraggy hip bones have stuck out farther than they ought accidental rubbs and knocks have entirely bard them of their share of covering.' Banks, II, 51. He is describing the country about Jervis Bay.
On the afternoon of the 27th Cook put off in the yawl with Banks, Solander and Tupaia to see if he could land. The surf made it impossible. This seems to have been between Bulli and Bellambi Point, about nine miles north of Red Point (Port Kembla). See Edgar Beak, ‘Cook's First Landing Attempt in New South Wales’, in Royal Australian Historical Society Journal and Proceedings, Vol. 50 (1964), 191–204. The landing attempt and the ship's movements can be pictured quite clearly from the flat land above the beach.
In the morning enough water was found for the ship's needs in a small stream and in holes dug in the sand. There was plenty of wood, there was plenty of fish. Having come into a harbour, Cook surveyed it thoroughly and explored the country round about it as far as he could in the week he stayed there—and the wind kept him longer than he had intended. He wrote a favourable account of it, perhaps too favourable; for though it was ‘capacious safe and commodious’, a good deal of it was also shallow. Green made the latitude 34°. The land was low and level, its soil in general poor sandy stuff, though some of it was rich, some mere swamp; shrubs; palm trees, mangroves grew, with greater trees, heavy and hard—probably black-beans and casuarinas. The sand and mud flats fostered pelicans and other waterfowl, the oysters, mussels, and cockles which formed a large part of the native provision; parrots and cockatoos were beautiful. Banks describes animals that may have been bandicoots, dingos, native cats, and the dung of something—could it have been a stag? he wondered—that must have been a kangaroo. Gore the sportsman went out over the shallows at high water and struck a number of huge
For the process of naming see Sting ray's harbour.’ On this he had second, third and fourth thoughts, as he considered in his journal another kingdom of nature and its princes: ‘The great quantity of New Plants &ca Mr Banks and Dr Solander collected in this place occasioned my giving it the name of’—Botanist Harbour? Botanist Bay? The famous name at last was written—‘Botany Bay’;Journals, I, ccix and 310, n. 4.
The wind was all important. The southerly continued for two and a half pleasant days, then began to hesitate; on 8 May it turned for a day or so to northerlies and briefly to the west, so that at night Cook stood off, except when it was north-west or west, when with a light moon he made the best of his way along shore to the northward. It went again to the north on the 13th for a day, and thereafter to the south; until, on the 21st, when in about latitude 24° the coast changed direction to north-west, the south-easterlies began, gentle breezes with ‘clear weather’ or ‘serene weather’ or ‘fair weather’. Now he
ibid., 316. He is describing the country as the coast ran northwards from Banks, II, 62.
With Smoky Bay behind, there was a day of thunder, squalls and rain—even hail, as the wind changed finally to settle in the south; and then came the first tricky piece of navigation. A pattern was beginning to be imposed. At sunset on the 15th breakers were seen ahead, on the larboard bow, though the ship was five miles from land and in twenty fathoms. Cook hauled off to the east and brought to. A strong southerly blew all night: nevertheless in the morning he
Banks, II, 64.Journals I, 318, n. 3.
There had been on the previous night, while the ship lay at anchor, a grave breach of discipline, ‘a very extraordinary affair’ which came upon
Some Malicious person or persons in the Ship took the advantage of his being drunk and cut off all the cloaths from off his back, not being satisfied with this they some time after went into his Cabbin and cut off part of both his Ears as he lay asleep in his bed.
The furious captain went into the matter.
The person whome he suspected to have done this was MrMagra one of the Midshipmen, but this did not appear to me upon inquirey. However as I Know'd Magra had once or twice before this in their drunken frolicks cut of his Cloaths and had been heard to say (as I was told) that if it wasnot for the Law he would Murder him, these things consider'd induce'd me to think that Magra was not altogether innocent. I therefore, for the present dismiss'd him the quarter deck and susspended him from doing any duty in the Ship, he being one of those gentlemen, frequently found on board Kings Ships, that can very well be spared, or to speake more planer good for nothing. Besides it was necessary in me to show my immediate resentment against the person on whome the suspicion fell least they should not have stoped here.
Yet it was puzzling. Orton was a man not without faults, but he had not designedly injured any man in the ship.
Some reasons might, however be given why this misfortune came upon him in which he himself was in some measure to blame, but as this is only conjector and would tend to fix it upon some people in the Ship whome I would fain believe would hardly be guilty of such an action, I shall say nothing about it unless I shall hereafter discover the Offenders which I shall take every method in my power to do, for I look upon such proceedings as highly dangerous in such Voyages as this and the greatest insult that could be offer'd to my authority in this Ship, as I have always been ready to hear and redress every complaint that have been made against any Person in the Ship.
JournalsI, 323–4, and the notes to those pages, on Cook's deletions and rewriting.
The thing is more than a storm in a teacup, and one would like to have Cook's earlier drafts of these passages, as well as the modifications we do have; for it casts some light, of which we have too little, an odd and dubious light, on the human nature and strains of the voyage. In what ways was Mr Orton to blame? Who were the persons Cook would fain believe innocent? The allusions make for curiosity. And do we not begin to see, not merely the indiscipline of the age, not merely ‘resentment’, but a little of the interior of the captain's mind—his sense of justice, here defeated; his regard for evidence, in other matters than marine surveying; his picture of himself as a commander?
Meanwhile he landed to inspect the country, finding a channel strewn with shoals, leading to a lagoon skirted with mangroves and pandanus, sparse woods growing in a dry and sandy soil, eucalypts and grey birch; no people, but clear signs of them in smoke and fires that they had just left, and small bark shelters against the wind. Banks remarked the ants' nests, the green hairy stinging caterpillars drawn up in rows, a ‘wrathful militia’, on the mangroves, and the great variety of plants—some of them known from the islands and the East Indies, not all new as at Endeavour was between Great Keppel island and the main, the shoals became embarrassing: Cook was forced to anchor in sixteen feet of water, a bare two feet more than the ship's draught, while the master, sounding ahead, found only 2 1/2 fathoms. Luckily the wind veered for a short time to a north-easterly, so that he could stretch back a few miles and anchor in 6 fathoms for the night; in the morning the boats found a passage out through the islands. He not unnaturally thought it wise to shorten sail and bring to the following night. Next day, as he came round Cape Townshend into Shoalwater Bay, there seemed to be islands everywhere before him, islands out at sea. He had to tack suddenly to avoid shoal water, then sent a boat ahead. The difficulties are reflected clearly enough in the journal, without excitement.
A little before noon the boat made the Signal for meeting with Shoal water, upon this we hauld close upon a wind to the Eastward but suddenly fell into 3 1/4 fathom water, upon which we immidiatly let go an Anchor and brought the Ship up with all sails standing and had then 4 fathom course sandy bottom; we found here a Strong tide seting to theNwbw1/2W at the rate of between 2 and 3 Miles an hour which was what carried us so quick Jai Jai Jaily upon the Shoal… . Having sounded about the Ship and found that there was sufficient water for her over the Shoal we at 3 oClock weigh'd and came to sail and stood to the westward as the land lay having first sent a boat ahéad to sound. At 6 o'Clock we Anchord in 10 fathom water a sandy bottom about 2 Miles from the Main land… .
JournalsI, 330.
Opposite the anchored ship appeared the mouth of an inlet. Cook, as if drawing breath, decided to put in here for a few days, to wait until the moon increased while he examined the country; and judging the inlet, when he got inside, to be a tidal river with a considerable ebb and flow, he thought he might lay his ship ashore to clean her bottom. There were spots suitable, he and Molyneux found; but the whole neighbourhood had one decisive defect—not a single drop of fresh water could be found. He therefore stayed only two days at this place that he called Thirsty Sound. It was not a river, it was a long channel separating islands from the main. Cook took bearings from a hill at the entrance, and went in a boat through
A boat was ahead sounding. Just after noon there was a repetition of the episode of a few days before: the boat signalled shoal water, ‘we hauld our wind to the ibid., 333. Banks, II, 77.Ne having at that time 7 fathom, the next cast 5 and than 3 upon which we let go an Anchor and brought the Ship up.’Magnetical head or Isle as it had much the appearance of an Island’—
Journals I, 342.
There was something the captain was unaware of. It was the ibid.Nbw1/2w, and two low woody islands, which could be taken for mere rocks above the water, N1/2W. ‘At this time’, says Cook, ‘we shortend sail and hauld off shore Ene and Nebe close upon a wind.’ There were those who, after his story appeared, accused him of rashness and argued that he should have anchored. He could have answered that he was not on the edge of a shoal, or in a bay preparing to land. His intention was not to risk danger but ‘to stretch off all night as well to avoid the dangers we saw ahead’—the dubious island-rocks, and according to Banks, shoals—‘as to see if any Islands lay in the offing, especialy as we now begin to draw near the Latitude of those discover'd by Quiros which some Geographers, for what reason I know not have thought proper to tack to this land, having the advantage of a fine breeze of wind and a clear moonlight night.' That is, he had the ideal conditions for night sailing that he had exploited before. He had a man heaving the lead continuously, and the ship being under way was in the best state for manoeuvring. ‘In standing off from 6 untill near 9 oClock we deepen'd our water from 14 to 21 fathom when all at once we fell into 12, 10 and 8 fathom. At this time I had every body at their stations to put about and come too an anchor but in this I was not so fortunate for meeting again with deep water I thought there could be no danger in standg on.' The gentlemen were at supper: they must, they concluded in Banks's words, have passed over ‘the tail of the Sholes we had seen at sunset and therefore went to bed in perfect security’;Endeavour stole along under double-reefed topsails. ‘Before 10 o'Clock' (we return to Cook) ‘we had 20 and 21 fathom and continued in that depth untill a few Minutes before a 11 when we had 17 and before the Man at the lead could heave another cast the Ship Struck and stuck fast.’Journals I, 343–4. The ship had been here passing just northward of Pickersgill Reef, which is about three miles long north-west and south-east. Four and a half miles north of it the next—Endeavour—reef stretched for five miles east and west. This reef is in two sections. It appears from the work done in reclaiming the ship's guns in January-February 1969 that she struck at a point three-quarters of the way from the eastern end of the eastern section; not the main reef, but a small detached upthrusting ‘bornic’ just in front of it. This is now marked by a steel peg.
Within an instant Cook was on deck; sails were taken in, boats sounding round the ship, yards and topmasts struck, anchors carried out for heaving her off. In some places about here were three or four fathoms, in others ‘not quite as many feet’ of water, a ship's length from the starboard side as much as twelve fathoms, even more astern. She would not budge under any strain, but was making little or no water, while the horrible sound was heard of her bottom scraping on the coral underneath. Everything heavy that could be thought of was thrown overboard—the six guns and their carriages, half a ton each, iron and stone ballast, casks, decayed stores, a general miscellany of fifty tons and more. She had struck at high water at night; at high water twelve hours later, with all this lightening, she still would not move. Fortunately there was a flat calm, the grating of her bottom ceased; but as the tide went down again she heeled to starboard and began to make water. Everybody, including the gentlemen, took to the pumps in quarter-hour reliefs; there were four pumps, but one of them had rotted and would not work. Banks admired the coolness of the officers; he was surprised at the unusual absence of oaths among the men; he had understood that under such circumstances sailors generally ran riot and plundered the ship. Some hope was now born from the old belief that night tides rose higher than day tides, and while the pumps worked Cook got all ready for another attempt at heaving off. The leak was gaining: if the ship did come off into deep water she might go straight down. This risk had to be taken: what alternative was there? The tide rose high and higher, she floated; she was hauled off, after twenty-three hours. While the leak still gained a mistake happened ‘which for the first time caused fear to operate upon every man in the Ship.’ A new man measuring the depth of water in the ship took it from a different level and reported a terrifying increase. Realisation of the mistake caused an equal reaction; vigorous pumping gained upon the leak. The anchors were brought in, except the small bower, which had to be cut away with the cable; the stream anchor cable also was lost. The foretopmast was sent up, the ship was got under sail, and she edged in for the land, six or seven leagues distant. If she could not make it there were the two low woody islands seen at dusk two days before, still visible—Hope Islands—surely they could be reached? While she sailed she was fothered—that is, a sail sewn with tufts of wool and oakum and spread with sheep's dung was dragged over the place of the leak, which was thus partially plugged by the force of the water itself. This is a marginal note in one copy of the journal.—r Magra to his Duty as I did not find him guilty of the crimes laid to his Charge.'Journals I, 347, n. 5.
He was in a river-mouth, the banks well suited to laying a vessel ashore. Cook lost no time in emptying the hold and adjusting the ship's trim so that the carpenter could get at her forepart. The few sick were installed in a tent: of these only Tupaia and Green were at all serious cases, the first undoubtedly with bad symptoms of scurvy, the second with some illness unspecified. Tupaia went fishing and rapidly cured himself, Green recovered a little more slowly. Banks and Solander were out plant-hunting. The armourers were busy making nails and bolts. Cook climbed the highest accessible hill to look at the country, ‘a very indifferent prospect’, mangroves on the low lands, higher land barren and stony. By the 22nd the bow of the ship was ashore. At low tide, the damage could be inspected. The coral rock had gone right through her bottom on the starboard side in a clean cut, but by a most extraordinary piece of good fortune a lump of the rock had come away and stuck in the hole: this, with the fother and other bits of rubbish, had stopped a fatal inrush of water. The close and heavy build of the floor timbers had prevented more widespread damage of the severer kind; nevertheless, part of the sheathing under the larboard bow was gone, with part of the false keel, ‘and the remainder in such a shatter'd condition that we should be much better of, was it gone also;' the fore foot and
Parties sent into the country to forage brought back a few pigeons, palm cabbages, wild plantains and taro. All these ate pretty well, as long as the taro experiments were confined to the leaves; ‘the roots were so Acrid that few besides my self could eat them’, says Cook. What was there that he could not eat? Fishing with the seine, which began badly, improved so as to provide fresh food for the whole ship's company. There seemed to be no game animal on land, unless the animal of which fleeting glances were several times caught (once by Cook himself)—about the size of a greyhound, slender, mouse-coloured, swift, with a long tail, jumping like a hare—was a game animal. Banks began to refer to it as ‘the’ animal. Then there were one or two ‘wolves’, probably dingos or native dogs; and the thing so oddly described by a seaman, ‘about as large and much like a one gallon cagg as black as the Devil and had 2 horns on its head, it went but slowly but I dard not touch it’ Banks, II, 84.Journals II, 366.
Turtle led to what might have been a highly embarrassing episode. Traces had been seen of the native people by the hunters and naturalists. It was not till after three weeks had gone by that a few of them, shy and suspicious like those of
Before the end of June Cook had his young gentlemen surveying the harbour. At 3 o'clock on the morning of the 29th he himself and Green observed an emersion of Jupiter's first satellite, which gave them a remarkably accurate longitude for the place; His result was 214°42′30″ W—i.e. 145°17′30″ E, the now accepted longitude being 145°15'. He made another observation of the emersion on 16 July, which gave him 145°6′15″ E, not quite so good, with a mean of 145°11′52 1/2″.Journals I, 361; Banks, II, 95. The different copies of Cook's journal show more than one version of Cook's own words: in the holograph he has improved on himself by copying Banks.
In any case, would the ship ever get out of that narrow-mouthed harbour? The wind, the wind! Day after day it blew from the southeast, in gentle breezes, fresh breezes, strong breezes, very fresh gales. Was the blessing become a curse? There had been a few hours of a land breeze once only, very early, while repairs were still in progress, and much as an enforced stay might profit natural history, how long could this harbour-bound existence go on withoutimperilling the voyage itself? If, in the end, the ship survived the reefs and shoals, would she be pinned down by the monsoonal change? Reefs and shoals would have to be risked. By 19 July everything was on board, there was nothing to do but work on the boats and the decayed pumps, or try to strike turtle or gather greens or hunt the animal, or fish. At last, on the 29th, there was a calm, followed by a light breeze from the land. Cook hove up the anchor and sent a boat to the bar. The tide was on the ebb, there was already six inches less water than the ship drew. The wind went back to south-east, gales and squalls with rain. Cook determined to warp out. At first it blew too fresh. August came. On the 3rd he tried. The ship tailed up on the sand on the north side of the river, and he had to moor her just inside the bar. He laid his coasting anchor and cable outside, to be ready for the flood. Early next morning it fell calm again, and in two hours he was off the harbour's mouth and under sail, farewell bade to the Se the way we came as the Master would have had me done would be an endless peice of work, as the winds blow now constantly strong from that quarter without hardly any intermission—on the other hand if we do not find a passage to the northd we shall have to come back at last.’Journals I, 370.
He would try sailing northward closer to the land. It was now 10 August. He crept back past shoals and reefs and islets till he was between a headland on the main and three high islands lying outside it. There now seemed a clear open sea ahead, all danger past. Illusion: the headland became Cape Flattery. To the north, from the mast head appeared more land, more breakers, a great reef. Cook hauled in for the land and anchored under another headland, his Point Lookout, which he climbed for the view—to the west a flat sandy plain running in ten or twelve miles to the higher country, with its smokes and fires; to the north broad sand and mud flats running out from the mangrove belt to sea, a group of small low islands, shoals smaller and larger, and the three high islands; to the east the dangers he had come in from. He determined to visit one of the high islands and scrutinise the scene from there, sending Molyneux to the north again in the yawl. Next day he went with Banks in the pinnace to the northernmost and largest island—Lizard Island, so called from the only animal inhabitants—and looked out from the bare 1100 foot top. Two or three leagues distant was the reef, stretching north-west to south-east till it was lost in the haze. Mortification, however, was mixed with hope: on this reef the sea from the east broke high, as if on outermost defences; through it were ‘breaks or Partitions’; between it and the islands was deep
These islands were the Howick group. The Cook Passage.
A ‘well growen Sea’ was rolling in from the south-east and breaking on the reef, with 150 fathoms under the ship without bottom. In that sea she leaked more, but not more than one pump could deal with, and the danger seemed trifling. Cook brought a greatly relieved mind to consider his position. Obviously there was nothing to fear from the direction of the sea, and he was outside the ‘Shoals &ca—after having been intangled among them more or less ever sence the 26th of May, in which time we have saild 360 Leagues without ever having a Man out of the cheans heaving the Lead when the Ship was under way, a circumstance that I dare say never happen'd to any ship before and yet here it was absolutely necessary. It was with great regret I was obliged to quit this coast unexplored to its Northern extremity which I think we were not far off, for I firmly believe that it doth not join to New Guinea, however this I hope yet to clear up being resolved to get in with the land again as soon as I can do it with safety and the reasons I have before assigned will I presume be thought sufficient for my haveing left it at this time.'Journals I, 375–6.
The wind was at ESE and then changed to EBN, which was right upon the reef where the sea was breaking, ‘and of course made our clearing of it doubtful’. Cook stood north with all the sail he could set for the rest of the day and till midnight, then tacked and stood to the Sse. He had run two miles when the wind fell quite calm, and he was left to the mercy of the waves. To anchor in that vast deep was impossible. Before dawn the roaring of the surf could be heard; when the day came it could be seen, only too clearly, not a mile away; and towards it the ship was being resistlessly impelled. Her men by now knew the nature of the reef, a perpendicular wall standing up from unfathomable depths, at which the whole ocean hurled itself, flooding over the top in a chaos of smashed water and foam, or withdrawing, infinite force all reversed, for another ruinous blow. In that tremendous surge the heavy-timbered Endeavour might have been a cork: except that the cork would have gone over with the foam, or back with the retreat, while the Endeavour would smash and sink in a moment. Yet men will struggle: if there was no wind to fill the sails the boats must tow; the pinnace was under repair but the yawl and the longboat were hoisted out, and with the help of sweeps from the aft ports got the ship's head round to the northward; the carpenter got another strake on the pinnace and she was sent down too. At this time the ship was perhaps eighty yards from the breakers; one sea washed her and then fell into the trough before its final rise and descent; a seaman was heaving the lead; and on the deck Green, helped by Clerke and Forwood the gunner, with what was either the last refinement of professional coolness or stark insensibility, was taking a lunar. Suddenly a little breath of air moved, blew for a few minutes, faded, the merest cat's-paw; the ship moved with it about two hundred yards; it blew again as briefly and again she moved outwards. About a quarter of a mile distant a narrow opening appeared in the reef; the boats and the sweeps together got her abreast of this, when the force of the ebb tide, gushing out, carried her a quarter of a mile off. By the end of the morning the boats had made the gap something between a mile and a half and two miles. Then the struggle became one with the
It has been ‘the narrowest Escape we ever had and had it not been for the immeadate help of Providence we must Inavatably have Perishd’, said Pickersgill; and he was not the only one to heave a sigh. Cook's own words at last show signs of strain, as of a man dropped suddenly from extremest peril, the climax of unremitted effort, into exhausted reaction. His mind, so self-contained, suddenly opens. It would be wrong not to quote him again at length.
It is but a few days ago that I rejoiced at having got without the Reef, but that joy was nothing when Compared to what I now felt at being safe at an Anchor within it, such is the Visissitudes attending this kind of Service & must always attend an unknown Navigation where one steers wholy in the dark without any manner of Guide whatever. Was it not for the Pleasure which Naturly results to a man from his being the first discoverer even was it nothing more than Sand or Shoals this kind of Service would be insupportable especially in far distant parts like this, Short of Provisions & almost every other necessary. People will hardly admit of an excuse for a man leaving a Coast unexplored he has once discover'd, if dangers are his excuse he is then charged with Timerousness & want of Perseverance, & at once pronounced the most unfit man in the world to be employ'd as a discoverer, if on the other hand he boldly encounters all the dangers & Obstacles he meets with & is unfortunate enough not to succeed he is then Charged with Temerity & perhaps want of Conduct, the former of these Aspersions I am confident can never be laid to my Charge, & if I am fortunate to Surmount all the Dangers we meet with the latter will never be brotin Question, altho' I must own that I have engaged more among the Islands & Shoals upon this Coast than Perhaps in prudence I ought to have done with a single Ship, & every other thing considered, but if I had not I should not have been able to give any better account of the one half of it, than if I had never seen it, at best I should not have been able to say wether it was Main land or Islands & as to its produce, that we should have been totally ignorant of as being inseparable with the other & in this case it would have been far more satisfaction to me never to have discover'd it, but it is time I should have done with this Subject Wchat best is but disagreeable & which I was lead into on reflecting on our late Danger.This extract is from the Mitchell Library copy of the journal, printed in
JournalsI, 546–7, a version a little closer to Cook's original thoughts, before he had had the advantage of scrutinising Banks's more elevated account of the whole episode. The danger was then so vivid in his mind that in his entry for the 16th he wrote, ‘It pleased GOD at this very juncture to send us a light air of wind’; but later consideration of the chances apparently led him to dismiss the Deity as a likely agent of salvation. He nevertheless preserved the name Providential Channel. His later version of the passage quoted (JournalsI, 380) is shorter.
This, we may guess, is hardly Cook composing a public statement—hardly even, with its reminiscences of his instructions, a commander justifying himself to the Lords of the Admiralty; it is a man, not unduly nervous but emerging from one of the dark places of the soul, communing with himself, passing judgment on himself.
For a short time he considered returning outside the reef through Providential Channel. That, however, would have meant waiting indefinitely for the right wind; and once outside, the reefs might force him so far from the land that he could not answer the question that now filled his mind. What the alternative to a strait beyond New Holland might mean for him in practical terms—what long cast round. New Guinea—he does not, curiously enough, ever discuss; as if the question, anxiously as he felt it, could really meet with only one answer. He therefore settled to keep close to the main, then eight or nine leagues within, whatever risks that might entail, first staying a day at anchor while the pinnace was properly repaired. The other boats were sent to the reef, then dry, to see what provision they could find, and regained the ship loaded down with the meat of the great cockle or Over all the reefs and shoals noted down by Cook on his chart north of the Endeavour Reef he spaced out in capital letters the word LABYRINTH. ibid., 384.Tridacna. In the morning—18 August—he stood north-west towards the land, two boats ahead, sounding constantly over a most irregular bottom. The only way to follow with accuracy the next three days' sailing is to follow it on a chart tracing with attentive patience the course described line by line in the journal. Cook anchored from sunset to daylight. When daylight came he resumed his struggle through a sort of insane labyrinthJournals I, 382.a which are too numerous to be mentioned singly'.
At daylight on 21 August, after another night at anchor, seeing for once no danger ahead, Cook made all the sail he could towards the northernmost land in sight. In two hours the shoals appeared again, but the northernmost land revealed itself as islands, separated from the main by a passage sown with shoals, through which, however, with boats ahead on each bow and a man at the masthead, he made his way on a strong flood tide. At noon he was through. The nearest part of the main, ‘and which we soon after found to be the Northermost’, bore west a little south. It was the end of the land, ‘the Northern Promontary of this country’, and Cook named it York Cape. He gave it the latitude of 10°37' S for the north point, corrected in the Admiralty copy of his journal by himself to 10°42', and 10°41' S for the east point; and the longitude of 218°24' W—i.e. 141°36' E. The position as now received is lat. 10°41' S (presumably the north point), longitude 142° 32' E.Sw and WSW so that I did not doubt but what there was a passage.’ To the north-west, as far as sight could carry, was nothing but islands. Just before sunset on that day Cook carried out his final act of annexation. His words have become classic.
Having satisfied my self of the great Probability of a Passage, thro' which I intend going with the Ship, and therefore 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; but the Eastern Coast from the Latitude of 38° South down to this place I am confident was never seen or viseted by any European before us, and Notwithstand[ing] I had in the Name of His Majesty taken posession of several places upon this coast, I now once more hoisted English Coulers and in the Name of His Majesty King George the Third took posession of the whole Eastern Coast from the above Latitude down to this place by the name ofNew South Wales, together with all the Bays, Harbours Rivers and Islands situate upon the said coast, after which we fired three Volleys of small Arms which were Answerd by the like number from the Ship.
JournalsI, 387–8.
Classic words: but what did they mean, or what did Cook intend them to mean? In the first place, we may note that, however the present page of his journal runs, in taking possession of this eastern coast (without the agreement of the aboriginal inhabitants) Cook did not give it the name of New South Wales, or any name at all, though when he found a name he may have called it New Wales by analogy with Dampier's New Britain, earlier detached from New Guinea. New South Wales was a name that emerged later, certainly not before he despatched a copy of the journal to the Admiralty. In the second place, we are unaware what proportion of the country Cook thought he was annexing under the head of ‘coast’: how far into the interior did the ‘coast’ run? Did the ‘Rivers … situate upon the said coast’ include river systems back to their sources? We may conclude that the resounding statement meant no more than a vague assertion of authority over a quite vague area, a gesture which the discoverer thought he was bound to make. The island on which he made the gesture was called Possession Island.
Time spent sailing next day was rather short, as Cook advanced into his passage, his He was anchored on the Rothsay Banks, extending sixteen miles west from the southern point of Prince of Wales Island, which forms the northern coast of Endeavour Strait To the south of these banks are Red and Wallis Banks; between them and Rothsay Banks is deep water, but Cook, standing north-west, had put that behind him. ibid., 391.Endeavours Straight. From 10 a.m. to noon he stood south-west, past the islands in the north; from noon for three or four hours north-westerly, till at the signal for shoal water from the boats he anchored, over a bank where the depths fell next morning, 23 August, on the same course, from eight to three fathoms.Carpentaria or the Northern extremety of New-Holland and had now an open Sea to the westward, which gave me no small satisfaction not only because the dangers and fatigues of the Voyage was drawing near to an end, but by being able to prove that New-Holland and New-Guinea are two Seperate Lands or Islands, which untill this day hath been a doubtfull point with Geographers.’Journals I, 390. Cf. 411, on the ‘two Seperate Lands or Islands’: ‘however we have now put this wholy out of dispute, but as I beleive it was known before tho’ not publickly [a reference to Dalrymple?] I clame no other merit than the clearing up of a doubtfull point.' The best channel through Investigator in 1802.
Those shoals! He cannot but recur to them. He had done his best with his chart; but as a conscientious hydrographer he must say to seamen who might come after him that he did not believe he had one half of them laid down; and how could he lay down every island, ‘especially between the Latitude of 20° and 22°, where we saw Islands out at Sea as far as we could distinguish any thing’? He could not deny that his work had some value, that it was solidly founded.
However take the Chart in general and I beleive it will be found to contain as few errors as most Sea Charts which have not under gone a thorough correction, the Latitude and Longitude of all or most of the principal head lands, Bays &camay be relied on, for we seldom faild of geting an Observation every day to correct our Latitude by, and the observation for Settleing the Longitude were no less numberous and made as often as the Sun and Moon came in play, so that it was impossible for any material error to creep into our reckoning in the intermidiatc times. Injustice to MrGreenI must say that he was Indefatigable in making and calculating these observations which otherwise must have taken up a great deal of my time, which I could not at all times very well spare. Not only this, but by his Instructions several of the Petty officers can make and Calculate these observations almost as well as himself…. ibid., 392.
He is carried away by his fervour to recommend the lunar method to all sea officers; to assert his hope for the extended publication of the Ephemeris.
Before the journal proceeds with the voyage it devotes some pages, as was proper, to the description of this eastern side of New Holland. They do not convey the idea that the captain admired the country greatly, apart from its bays and harbours. In the south low and level, more to the north of no great height, indifferently well watered, indifferently fertile, with no great variety of trees and most of the large ones too hard and ponderous to apply to many uses, the land by nature produces hardly anything fit for man to eat, though a great variety of plants hitherto unknown. Land animals are scarce; kangaroos are good eating. Some of the birds are beautiful. The sea is indifferently well stocked with fish, though the various sorts are excellent in their kind; on the reefs are cockles and clams of a prodigious size, and in the waters nearby great numbers of the finest green turtle in the world. Botanical things, says Cook, are wholly out of his way to describe, ‘nor will this be of any loss sence not only Plants but everything that can be of use to the Learn'd World will be very accuratly described by M He repeats this nonsense in a letter to John Walker after he got home, 13 September 1771 (r Banks and Dr Solander.' At the end of his description he remembers that his New Holland is not as barren and miserable as Dampier and the Dutch found the western coast; it is in the pure state of Nature; grains, fruits and roots would flourish here, there is provender for more cattle than ever could be brought into the country. He finds the naked people not unattractive, straight-bodied, slender-limbed, with features far from disagreeable, voices soft and tunable; ornamented simply, some of the men with a bone three or four inches long run through the bridge of the nose—what the seamen called a spritsail yard—some on Possession Island with breastplates of pearl shell (though these were a different people); with few weapons, but adept in the use of dart and throwing stick; with shelters of sticks and bark, canoes of bark or dugout logs; a primitive race indeed. Yet Cook bursts into a panegyric that almost persuades one that he had spent the voyage reading Rousseau: ‘From what I have said of the Natives of New-Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched people
Journals I, 508–9), so one must presume that he was rather taken with it.
The dangers and fatigues of the voyage were not quite over. Cook wanted to touch on the coast of New Guinea and accordingly stood away north-west. From Booby Island he had a short afternoon's sailing before the wind fell calm and he anchored for the night. While the anchor was being weighed the following morning the cable parted and the ship drove. A day of frustrating work did not recover the anchor; it was not till the morning of the 25th that he had it and could resume his course. In the afternoon the water began to shoal rapidly again, and again the ship was brought up with sails standing, in six fathoms, with hardly two fathoms over a rocky bottom all round her except the way she had come—and it was almost high water, with ‘a short cockling sea’. A fortunate escape, thought Cook, from the most dangerous sort of shoal, which did not show till you were almost on it—and then the water looked merely as if shadowed by a dark cloud. He was on the Cook Shoal. ‘This was one of the many fortunate escapes we have had from shipwreck for it was near high-water and there run a short cockling sea that would soon have bulged the Ship had she struck… .’—ibid., 403. Banks, II, 145.n Dr Solander and myself, indeed we three have pretty constant employment for our minds which I beleive to be the best if not the only remedy for it.’
Home was still half the world away. Cook was bound first for Batavia, which he wanted to reach as soon and as safely as he could. He knew it was a port well equipped for the repair of ships, and his leaky Endeavour might well need heaving down; so he would sail to the south of Java and through the Strait of Sunda. It would have been agreeable to settle the question whether, as New Holland and New Guinea were different countries, their inhabitants were different peoples, still the point was of very little if any consequence (he is almost apologetic over mentioning it), and there was no other discovery to be made in these seas; to Batavia therefore. A rather tedious passage it was to be, of just over five weeks, with one break only. The water soon deepened, and though Cook sounded constantly to begin with he felt himself released from the necessity of anchoring at night. He steered west of south-west and south-west, sometimes a little puzzled by the charts he had, irritated by faulty compilers and dishonest publishers, but unable to delay himself for the sake of correcting them, and unwilling to jeopardise his ship in more shoal water, over more foul ground. He sighted the most
Journals I, 417.
Gore returning with a hopeful report, was sent back with money and goods, only to return again with news of a bay to leeward where both anchorage and provisions could be obtained. While the ship was being moved there Dutch colours were hoisted on shore, as they were next morning on the beach at the anchorage. Gore, despatched still again, was taken to the ‘king’ of the island, the local rajah, who explained somehow that he could supply nothing without the permission of the Dutch governor or factor. Early in the afternoon this person and the king came on board, were entertained to dinner, liberally liquored, given presents, and in return promised as liberally to provide all the supplies Cook wanted. Both Solander and Spöring had enough Dutch to make the factor, one Lange, a German, know what they were. But when Cook himself landed next morning with Banks and a party to return the rajah's visit, he found the promises so far hollow: there were on the beach none of the buffaloes that he wanted to buy, or sign whatever of preparations for trade; instead Lange talked of a letter he had just had from Concordia (from which the ship had been seen) on the subject of trade and presents to the natives; and though there was dinner with the rajah, little could be
It was 21 September when Cook sailed. It was 1 October when he came in sight of Java Head, the south-west extremity of the island of which Batavia, that great centre of Dutch commercial activity, was the capital and the port. He had had good weather most of the time, on this due west then more northerly course, but either no time to make observations—he may have been busy writing up his journal—or Green had ceased to work on them; for his longitudes were strangely erroneous during almost the whole period—almost four degrees too far west by 30 September, almost three on 1 October. A strong westerly current ran, as he realised, and he allowed 20' a day for it: ‘this allowance I find Answers’, but it did not answer at all, and there was some worry lest he had overshot the entrance to the Strait of Sunda. We have an excellent illustration of the fallibility of dead reckoning, even with the best of navigators. The weather turned squally on the last day and the main topsail was badly split. After two years the voyage was having its effect: ‘many of our sails are now so bad that they will hardly stand the least puff of wind.’ ibid., 427.Swallow, last seen by Wallis in the Strait of Magellan in April 1767, had called at Batavia ‘about two years ago’, and so she had survived the Pacific; some was what might be
Endeavour, and that he was bound for England; Hicks, a little more communicative, went so far as to say she came from Europe.
This was off Bantam Point, the north-eastern extreme of the strait; thence four days of slow and painful sailing, labouring against strong currents, past almost as many islands, reefs and shoals as were met within the Great Barrier, anchoring and weighing with light winds from the land, brought her into Batavia road. There, on the afternoon of 10 October, by Cook's time, he found an English East Indiaman, and learnt that it was 11 October. Another boat came on board him, to enquire who he was. Both its officer and his people, notes Banks, ‘were almost as Spectres, no good omen of the healthy-ness of the countrey we were arrivd at; our people however who truly might be called rosy and plump, for we had not a sick man among us, jeerd and flouted much at their brother sea mens white faces.’ Banks, II, 184.
Batavia, said Cook, was certainly a place that Europeans need not covet to go to. ‘Founded by the Dutch on the ruins of Jakarta in the early seventeenth century, it had been instrumental in extending their empire through the East Indies, had sent vast riches to the Netherlands, seen the coming and going of fleets, had provisioned and loaded and mended them; gained a reputation as ‘Queen of the Eastern Seas’. It was a queen that stank to heaven, corrupt and filthy. At the end of the century an earthquake choked the streams with mud and turned the surrounding country into a swamp, the tree-lined canals which the Dutch built, on the pattern of home, became torpid ordure-choked tanks of disease. Both in the city and out of it mosquitoes bred infinitely; the fresh food for which the sailor pined betrayed him. In the eighteenth century, with a mortality of something like fifty thousand a year, the place was one of the deadliest on earth. Little wonder that the seamen who greeted the Endeavour had a spectral look. Even then, Cook might have got away from the East Indies with relatively little damage, had it not been for a call he made later. Meanwhile, Batavia had its efficiency as well as its fevers.
Preliminary to Cook's application to the authorities for their help in repair, he called on the carpenter for a report. Mr Satterley gave a faithful one, within his competence; for he could not see everything.
The Ship very Leakey (as she makes from twelve to six Inches prHour) Occationd by her Main Keel being wounded in many places and the Scarph of her stern being very open. The False Keel gone beyond the Midships (from forward and perhaps farther) as I had no opportunity of seeing for the water when haul'd a shore for repair). Wounded on her Larboard side under the Main Channel where I immagine the greatest Leak is (but could not come at it for the water). One Pump on the Larboard side useless the others decay'd within 1 1/2 Inch of the bore. Otherwise Masts, Yards, Boats & Hull in prety good condition.
JournalsI, 432.
Satterley and all the other officers were agreed that the ship must be hove down and her bottom inspected before she could safely leave for Europe. Her safety was further ensured in that thunderous climate by fixing an ‘electrical chain’ to the top of the main mast: this, on her second night in harbour, warded off a thunderbolt which shattered and carried away the main mast of a Dutch Indiaman lying a quarter of a mile off, with only an iron spindle rigged. Cook, making formal application to the governor-general and council for assistance, was granted everything he asked for; then, after making proper calculations, found he would have to apply also to this exalted body for a loan of money—5000 rix dollars—where-with to meet the expense; and then found his business would be delayed because someone had translated the English expression ‘heave down’ wrongly. Nevertheless, on 18 October he took the ship from her anchorage in the road across to the outlying Cooper's or Kuyper Island, where, and at its companion Onrust, the Dutch had their equipment, and the crew were put to clearing her of all her stores and ballast. Cook was rather nettled that his own men were not allowed to do the actual work of repair, of which they were quite capable, according to naval regulations; but the Dutch had their regulations also. It was not till 6 November that the officers of the yard at Onrust took the ship in hand.
Three days after Cook's arrival at Batavia a Dutch ship sailed for home. He just had time to write the Admiralty secretary a few lines by her to say where he was. Ten days later, he learnt, a fleet would sail; and to its commodore, Captain Kelger of the This was pretty clearly the copy in the hand of Kronenburg, he entrusted a very precious packet—a letter to Mr Stephens, a shorter one to the Ms, known earlier as the Corner copy. It was this that was printed by Admiral Wharton in 1893. Its nature is discussed in Journals I, ccxviii-ccxxi.a, They were words much more heavily laden than those which the Lords were accustomed to hear read out, and as a flat record of fact they may still take one's breath away. They included one puzzling statement about the mishap on the reef: ‘this prove'd a fatal stroke to the remainder of the Voyage', because of the time taken up in repairing the damage. There are other brief paragraphs, a mixture of plain satisfaction, modesty, and even apology—which one can say reflect very accurately certain aspects of the captain's character, both his professional pride and his sense that he himself is a man under command. The journal that he now sends has been kept ‘in the best Manner I was capable off’; the ‘whole transactions of the Voyage’ are set down in it ‘with undisguised truth and without gloss’. The charts and plans have been made with all the care and accuracy that time and circumstances would admit of: ‘Thus far I am certain that the Latitude & Longitude of few parts of the world are better settled than these.’ Mr Green's assistance has been very great. The ‘many Valuable discoverys made by Mr Banks & Dr Solander in Natural History and other things usefull to the learn'd World cannot fail of contributing very much to the Success of the Voyage.' As for the ship's company, ‘In Justice to the officers and the whole crew I must say that they have gone through the fatigues and dangers of the whole voyage with that cheerfullness and allertness that will always do honour to British Seamen, and I have the satisfaction to say that I have not lost one man by sickness during the whole Voyage’ (he must have forgotten Forby Sutherland, or did sickness mean only scurvy?). Then, after the breath-taking summary of work done (and the Lords may have had their breath equally taken by the statement that not one man had been lost through sickness in two years), there is another summary:
Altho' the discoveries made in this Voyage are not great, yet I flatter my self that they are such as may merit the attention of their Lordships, and altho' I have faild in discovering the so much talk'd of southern Continent (which perhaps do not exist) and which I my self had much at heart, yet I am confident that no part of the failure of such discovery Can be laid to my Charge… . Had we been so fortunate not to have run a shore much more would have been done in the latter part of the Voyage than what was, but, as it is I presume this Voyage will be found as Compleat as any before made to the South Seas, on the same account.The whole letter is printed in
JournalsI, 499–501. The last sentence of the quotation runs in Cook's draft, ‘I presume that this Voyage will be thought as great and as compleat if not more so than any Voyage before made in the South Seas on the same account.’ He may have thought that the phrase ‘if not more so’ looked like boasting.
We are left wondering what precisely this writer meant by the remark that if the ship had not run on the reef, that ‘fatal stroke’, much more ‘would have been done in the latter part of the Voyage than what was’. What limit had he put to the voyage? In the terms of his instructions his presence on the eastern coast of New Holland and its charting were already an addendum, a sort of large work of supererogation. Even after all the strokes of fate the part of his chart he had had to leave conjectural was only a quite small part. From the first settlement of Sydney to the end of the eighteenth century there was minor coastal exploration that corrected or clarified Cook's chart. The position at the beginning of 1801, in relation to Cook, is thus summarised by Flinders, in the lucid and admirable introduction to his ‘The following openings or bights had been seen and named by captain Cook, but were yet unexamined: Then there were the reefs. When Flinders came to work carefully north from Hervey Bay, he found Cook's longitudes fairly constantly and progressively in error, due initially to an overcalculation of the width of Hervey Bay by sixteen miles, and then to the trend of the coast to the west. He thought Cook was out at York Cape by 35 miles. But the authority of Cook was so great, even for a precisian like Flinders, that he wrote, of one point in his Prince of Wales Channel, ‘the position of almost every island in this neighbourhood is so different in his chart to what I make them, that it has occasioned me much perplexity and uneasiness.’— ‘The Islands discover'd by Quiros call'd by him Astralia del Espiritu Santo lays in this parallel but how far to the East is hard to say, most charts place them as far to the west as this Country, but we are morally certain that he never was upon any part of this coast.'—Voyage to Terra Australis (1814), I, cciii: ‘On the east coast of New South Wales from Bass’ Strait to Bustard Bay in latitude 24°, the shore might be said to be well explored; but from thence northward to Cape York, there were several portions which had either been passed by captain Cook in the night, or at such a distance in the day time, as to render their formation doubtful: The coast from 15°30' to 14°30' was totally unknown.Kepppel and Shoal-water Bays; Broad Sound; Repulse, Edgecumbe, Cleveland, Halifax, Rockingham, and Weary Bays. To the northward of these were Weymouth, Temple, Shelburne, and Newcastle Bays; and perhaps many others which distance did not permit our great navigator to notice. There was also a numerous list of islands, of which a few only had been examined; and several were merely indicated from a distant view.’Voyage, I, 349.Journals I, 376. De Brosses's plate IV places ‘Terre du St Esprit’ in New Holland, on the coast of a sort of bulging Queensland. The map in Harris, Vol. I, has nothing of this sort.
As soon as the ship anchored Banks went ashore with Solander to live, tried a hotel and then hired a house next door to it, sending for Tupaia and his boy Taiata also. These two were transported with the sights of the town. Tupaia brought in some fresh South Sea news; for while he, was walking in the street with Banks a man ran from a house and asked had he not been there before? No: but it appeared that a compatriot of his had, the man who had been taken away from Tahiti by those predecessors of Cook, not Spaniards as had been concluded, but the French expedition of the Sieur de Bougainville. Any Spanish iron could easily have been brought by Bougainville's store ship from the River Plate. Carteret's visit to Batavia had been followed by Bougainville's. So here were the French in the Pacific, hard on the heels of the British, the French at King George the Third's Island! Cook ruminated a little on that. He had to wait some time to get a full account of Bougainville's adventure, and when he did he found it extremely interesting. In the meantime there was plenty to do, both for him and the natural historians. Banks was as busy as he had been at Tahiti in the pursuit of miscellaneous experience and information. One little piece of experience he never acquired, and nor did Cook. They were both experimental eaters. Banks, in his later years, boasted of his catholicity to a friend: ‘I believe I have eaten my way into the Animal Kingdom farther than any other man’—a claim that Cook could well have contested. Certainly they had both tried dog in Tahiti, shags in New Zealand, kangaroo in New South Wales. It might be useless in the light of that belief, said the friend, to ask what he had eaten, ‘but allow me to inquire what you have not eaten?’ Banks's answer, after a short pause, skipped the years.
I never have eaten Monkey although when at Batavia Capt Cooke DrSolander and my self had determined to make the experiment, but on the morning of our intended feast I happened to cross the yard of the House in which we resided and observed half a dozen of those poor little Devils with their arms tied upon cross sticks laying on their backs preparatory to their being killed, Now as I love all sorts of Animals I walked up to them and in consequence of their plaintive chattering and piteous looks I could not resist cutting the Strings by which they werebound and they immediately scampered off so that we lost our Monkey dinner. This story is from a sheaf of reminiscences of Banks collected by
Dawson Turner , his projected biographer. TheMswas generously lent to me by the late Kenneth A. Webster. Banks does not ever seem to have eaten penguin or walrus.
This was an episode that did not come into any journal, and it might well disappear under the dark cloud that now descended upon the voyage. Men began to fall sick. When the ship arrived in Batavia, three people were more or less indisposed—Tupaia, who had never got used to ship food; Green, suffering from the effects of his own intemperance; and Hicks. Cook, perhaps, did not know how fatally stricken the last was, because he thought none of them qualified for a sick list; Monkhouse, the surgeon, must have been of the same opinion. By the time the letter went away to Stephens, reporting that remarkable record of health, the tents set up to take the crew while the ship was under repair became hospital as well as lodging—‘owing as I suppose to the extreem hot weather’, said Cook at first, bringing in ‘fever’, and other diseases later. The swooping enemy was malaria. Tupaia and Taiata early went down with it, apart from the sailors; then Banks and his servants, Solander and the surgeon, all severe cases. Monkhouse died on 5 November, succeeded as surgeon by his mate, Journals I, 442.
The ship was in as bad condition as her crew. What Mr Satterley had not been able to see was indeed disastrous. It was true that almost
This story is from a sheaf of reminiscences of Banks collected by The Dutch blamed Cook for not giving a straight answer. Their minutes of their dealings with him will be found in the Algemeen Rijksarchief at the Hague, Kol. Arch. Inv. No. 700, 438–40.Ms was generously lent to me by the late Kenneth A. Webster. Banks does not ever seem to have eaten penguin or walrus.Endeavour could be moved from the yard at Onrust back to Kuyper, where his men were painfully employed for the next three weeks in getting on board stores, provisions and water, rigging the ship, and repairing and bending the sails. Thunderstorms and rain, as the westerly monsoon set in, did not add to comfort; nor was there amusement for sick or convalescent men when at three o'clock one morning the hawsers parted in hard squalls and the ship had to be warped back to the wharf. On 8 December, with all the sick brought back on board, she ran across to Batavia road, to take in more provisions, to scrape and paint, and complete the other details of getting ready for sea. Cook acquired a new pump. He strengthened his crew with nineteen more men, mainly British, that he found at the place: one of these
On 26 December 1770 the restored ibid. ibid., 450. ibid., 452. ‘I shall mention what effect only the imagery approach of this disorder had upon one man. He had long tended upon the Sick and injoy'd a tolerable good state of hilth: one morning coming upon deck he found himself a little griped and immidiatly began to stamp with his feet and exclaim I have got the Gripes, I have got the Gripes, I shall die, I shall die!—in this manner he continued untill he threw himself into a fit and was carried off the deck in a manner dead, however he soon recover'd and did very well.'—ibid., 458. This seems to have been the trouble also with Thomas Rossiter, drummer of the marines, who was punished with twelve lashes on 21 February for getting drunk, grossly assaulting the officer of the watch; ‘and beating some of the sick.’—ibid., 451.Endeavour weighed and came to sail. She was to have eleven days of the same frustrating sort of passage she had had through the Strait of Sunda three months before, in reverse, with unpleasant squally rainy weather for the last part of it. She was like a hospital ship, said Cook, upwards of forty of her company sick, the rest in a weakly condition except for the sail-maker, more or less drunk; yet the Dutch captains congratulated him on his good luck in not seeing half his people die. What Solander saw was the mosquitoes breeding on the surface of the ship's very scuttle-butt. On the eleventh day, by which time the general health had deteriorated badly, he anchored off Prince's Island or Panaitan, at the southern entrance of the strait, to see if he could get wood and water, and fresh food for the sick. He had just had the first salt meat day since Savu, but now there was turtle again. During a week at Prince's Island he did get fresh food, fish, flesh, fowl and fruit, and water, but he soon concluded the water was bad, and put lime into the casks as a purifier. It was 16 January 1771 when he could at last get away from the island, to head in sultry weather with variable light winds and calms towards the Journals I, 448.r John Satterly, Carpenter, a Man much Esteem'd by me and every Gentleman on board',r Simpson a very good Seaman’; in the fifth, on 27 February, three more seamen, of whom one was sick when he entered at Batavia and never recovered, and the others had clearly long been doomed, ‘so that the death of these three men in one day did not in the least alarm us; on the contrary we are in hopes that they will be the last that will fall a Sacrefice to this fatal desorder, for such as are now ill of it are in a fair way to recovering.’
Luckily there was, over those weeks, no heavy weather; not till the last day of February did a south-west squall split the fore topsail all over, forcing the ship to bring to, and consequently, even with her enfeebled crew, she could be kept in fair order. She made a dubious landfall on the evening of 4 March, when Cook was not on deck or informed, and a certain one at daylight next morning, when he found he was about two leagues from the land, steering full towards it in a fresh south-east breeze. It seemed that an increasing
Another Indiaman, from Bengal, the Holton, arrived and departed in the next few days—indeed Dutch and English vessels were coming constantly into Table Bay, one of the great refreshing points of the world for shipping. Cape Town, says Cook, after this visit, ‘may be consider'd as one great Inn fited up for the reception of all comers and goers', and its inhabitants were correspondingly civil and polite. He studied these vessels with interest, as he had those at Batavia, and the Holton sent him into a train of thought which forms an interesting appendix to his reflections within the Barrier Reef, after that swift passage through Providential Channel.
This Ship during her stay in India lost by sickness between 30 and 40 Men and had at this time a good many down with the scurvy, other Ships suffer'd in the same proportion, thus we find that Ships which have been little more than Twelve Months from England have suffer'd as much or more by Sickness than we have done who have been out near three times as long. Yet their sufferings will hardly if at all be mentioned or known in England when on the other hand those of the Endeavour, because the Voyage is uncommon, will very probable be mentioned in every News paper, and what is not unlikely with many additional hardships we never experienced; for such are the disposission of men in general in these Voyages that they are seldom content with the hardships and dangers which will naturaly occur, but they must add others which hardly ever had existence but in their imaginations, by magnifying the most trifling accidents and Circumstances to the greatest hardships, and unsurmountabledangers without the imidiate interposion of Providence, as if the whole Merit of the Voyage consisted in the dangers and hardships they underwent, or that real ones did not happen often enough to give the mind sufficient anxiety; thus posteriety are taught to look upon these Voyages as hazardous to the highest degree.
JournalsI, 460–1.
This is an interesting passage, or—one might call it—piece of rambling—and addressed to whom? To some vague public in his mind, to the Admiralty, to himself? Does it begin as apologetic justification, as he thinks of his dead sailors, a third of his original ship's company? It is not altogether good prophecy, for the newspapers were not to enlarge on the sufferings of the Endeavour's men. It is accurate enough about the natural leaning of men to imagination; in its reference to the immediate interposition of Providence it foreshadows one of the controversies arising from this voyage—or rather supplied with fresh fuel thereby; but does Cook want posterity—he has come a long way from the Holton's sickness—to think that voyages such as his are not particularly hazardous? He is no doubt writing as a professional sailor, a responsible person; but also as
The stay at the Cape was recuperative. Though in appearance the place was barren, the weather was pleasant, except for one storm. Under the care of Perry, all but three of the sick recovered. The well were allowed time off to entertain themselves. Gore climbed Table Mountain. Refreshments were ample, Cape prices low—except for naval stores, the monopoly of the Endeavour's! News came in from Europe—war was daily expected between England and Spain; but Cook, who could not wait for the arrival of an English ship said to be in the offing, entered ten more men, got his sick on board (some of them still badly off) and on 14 April weighed anchor. He anchored again for the night off Robben Island, at the mouth of the bay, and next
In the afternoon of 15 April the calm turned to a south-east breeze, and he put the Cape behind him. That afternoon died Cook to Maskelyne, 9 May 1771; Royal Society Council Minutes, VI, 107–10. I have printed this in Journals I, 466.Portland, Captain Elliot, with the sloop Swallow and a convoy of twelve Indiamen homeward bound. But the convoy did not mean war; the news at the Cape was wrong; the Swallow had brought out reassuring news. Cook stayed only long enough to take in a few stores, repair sails and overhaul rigging, while Banks as usual explored, botanised, conversed. They sailed with the fleet on 4 May. Cook would have liked to have kept with it for the rest of the passage home, but he doubted the Endeavour's sailing capabilities, especially with her sails and rigging in so bad a condition; after a few days, therefore, and as an insurance against accident, he turned over to Elliot another letter for the Admiralty, with a box of log books and officers' journals, that the Lords might have as soon as possible information supplementary to that sent from Batavia. By this means also he told Maskelyne of the discrepancies he had found in Green's papers relating to the Transit, sending copies of the papers themselves for Maskelyne to study before they were submitted to the Journals I (2nd ed., 1968), 692–3.n however did not chuse to anchor unwilling to give the fleet so much start of him.’ There was little to do. Cook observed an eclipse of the sun ‘meerly for the sake of Observing’. He took lunars for longitude, remarked the variation of the compass, all with ample time. Hicks was clearly sinking, and an
Portland used instead, a sort of large canvas umbrella against which a hundred and fifty men could haul; Cook would have made one at once if his forge had been in working order. On the 23rd the fleet, outsailing him disappeared into haze—notwithstanding which Elliot reached home only three days before he did. On the 25th died Journals I, 471.
The passage continued without much incident. Two or three times a sail was sighted or a vessel spoken. On 19 June, in the middle of the North Atlantic, west of the Azores, Cook sent a boat on board a schooner out from Rhode Island on the whale fishery, heard that all was peace in Europe, disputes between Britain and her American colonies made up; there were other whaling vessels; on the 21st and 22nd he seemed to have caught up with the East India fleet. But his sails were splitting; in the morning of the 22nd the carpenter reported the main topmast sprung in the cap, ‘which we supposed happen'd in the PM when both the weather backstays broke, our Rigging and Sails are now so bad that some thing or another is giving way every day.' ibid., 475.Endeavour, wagers had been laid that she was lost; which seemed strange to Cook, because the Dutch fleet with his packet had sailed from the Cape five months before. There had certainly been news manufactured at home, when the newspapers recollected the ship, in the context of threatened war with Spain. For example:
It is surmised, that one ground of the present preparations for war, is some secret intelligence received by the Ministry, that the Endeavour man ofwar, which was sent into the South Sea with the astronomers, to make observations, and afterwards to go into a new track to make discoveries, has been sunk, with all her people, by order of a jealous Court, who has committed other hostilities against us in the Southern hemisphere. Mr. Banks, and the famous Dr. Solander, were on board the above vessel, and are feared to have shared the common fate with the rest of the ship's company.
So S.S. (Sarah) Banks to Thomas Pennant, 6 October 1770; Adm 3/78.Bingley's Journal for Friday, 28 September 1770, which at least confirms our feeling that Cook's secret instructions for his behaviour after he should leave Tahiti were not altogether secret. The Banks family had its correspondents, and in October Miss Sarah Banks was informing the naturalist and traveller over England, Thomas Pennant, that there was not the least foundation for such alarming reports, though ‘we begin to fear we shall not see them till spring, upon account of their having missed the Trade Wind….’Atl, Ms Papers 155:20.General Evening Post, 8 January 1771, and other papers of same date.London Evening Post, 9 May, 16 May 1771. For these notices see Journals I, 642–3.Endeavour, was that they had inaugurated a new dispensation.
Our minds, however, are with Cook, not with the newspapers nor even with the Admiralty. On 10 July at 6 a.m. he sounded, and judged from his depth and bottom—was this not his old naval cruising
Eagle?—that he was the length of the Scilly islands. At noon that day Young Nick at the mast head sighted land, ‘which we judged to be about the Lands end.’ The wind was fresh, the weather clear, the ship ran briskly (which was remarkable, considering the state of her bottom) up Channel; at noon on 12 July she passed Dover, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon anchored in the Downs. Cook had been writing busily. Soon after the anchor went down he landed at Deal: there was still one of his instructions to carry out … ‘upon your Arrival in England you are immediately to repair to this Office in order to lay before us a full account of your Proceedings in the whole Course of your Voyage …’. The Office was the Admiralty Office, and he carried a letter to Mr Stephens, dated from the Downs on that day.
Sir, It is with pleasure I have to request that you will be pleased to acquaint my Lords Commiss
rsof the Admiralty with the Arrival of His Majesty's Bark under my Command at this place, where I shall leave, her to wait until' further Orders. And In Obedience to their Lordships orders immediately, & with this Letter, repair to their Office, in order to lay before them a full accotof the proceedings of the whole Voyage… .
He made no doubt that his communications from Batavia and by way of the Portland had been received, since when nothing material had happened beyond the death of Hicks and the promotion of Clerke,
a Young Man well worthy of it, & as such must beg leave to recommend him to their Lordships, this as well as all other appointments made in the Bark Vacant by the Death of former Officers, agreeable to the inclosed List, will, I hope meet their approbation.
You will herewith receive my Journals containing an Account of the Proceedings of the whole voyage, together with all the Charts, Plans & drawings, I have made of the respective places we have touched at, which you will be pleased to lay before their Lordships. I flatter my self that the Latter will be found sufficient to convey a Tolerable knowledge of the places they are intended to illustrate, & that the discoveries we have made, tho' not great, will Apologize for the length of the Voyage.
JournalsI, 504–5.
Stephens, whose acquaintance with naval officers was not small, might well have been pardoned if he had thought this man's obedience to orders almost painfully literal; and, as he took a preliminary glance through the Charts, Plans and drawings, this unwillingness
Banks, I, 54–6; to that documentation may be added the letter from ibid., 56–61; Banks Was a happy man. When he stepped into London he stepped into glory. The newspapers were all Mr Banks, and Mr Banks's voyage, Mr, Banks and Dr Solander, once, or twice Dr Solander and Mr Banks; they had touched at near forty undiscovered islands, they had brought back over a thousand different species of plants, unknown in Europe before, they had brought back seventeen thousand plants, never before seen in this kingdom; Mr Banks was presented to the King by Lord Beauchamp at St James's Palace; Dr Solander and Mr Banks, accompanied by Banksia, botanists should raise a statue to the ‘immortal Banks’ more enduring than the Pyramids. It was intoxicating. It was not entire happiness, even in that wonderful August. There was r Banks, I have heard, undertakes already a new Expedition to Africa: the Marriage with Miss Harriet Blosset is not to take place. & she is to have 5000£: this Dr Bosworth told me.’Journals I, ccliii-cclv.
Meanwhile Cook, who remained attached to Mrs Cook, was not still in his twenties, had not a place in society or a house in New Burlington Street frequented by the nobility, nor plants to present to the Dowager Princess of Wales, pursued a more sober course. Certainly he must have sped to Mile End, to his Elizabeth—and probably with some anxious thoughts about his family; for it was not a time when children could be confidently expected to survive any given three years. James and Nathaniel, those able-bodied seamen, were flourishing, the first rising eight years old, the second between six and seven; but the little Elizabeth had died three months before her father's return, at the age of four, and the baby Joseph must be ever a shade. This home-coming we can only imagine. The official side is plainer. Cook had made further reports to the Admiralty, on the ship, on Dr Knight's azimuth compasses, on the health of the ship's company, their diet and the precautions taken against scurvy; had tendered a special report to the Victualling Board, in terms of high praise, on ‘Sour Krautt’. He was anxious to get promotion for some of his men. There were the ‘Curiosity's’ he had collected on the voyage to sort and pack and send to the Admiralty, accounts to pass, no doubt Philosophical Transactions for 1771—much more than a simple account of the Transit. He would write to Maskelyne in the following year about the South Sea tides, and that communication would be printed too.Phil. Trans. LXI (1771), 397–432; LXII (1172) 357–8.
He bade goodbye to his ship, which before the end of July, her
Stephens to Cook, 2 August 1771, Adm 2/731. Kippis, 182: ‘Mr. Cook, on this occasion, from a certain consciousness of his own merit, wished to have been appointed a Post Captain.’ This would ‘have been inconsistent with the order of the naval service. The difference was in point of rank only, and not of advantage. A Commander has the same pay as a Post Captain, and his authority is the same when he is in actual employment.’—Kippis notes that he writes ‘From the information of the Right Honourable the Earl of Sandwich’.
Your very obliging letter was the first Messenger that conveyed to me Lord Sandwich's intentions. Promotion unsolicited to a man of my station in life must convey a satisfaction to the mind that is better conceived than described—I had this morning the honour to wait upon his Lordship who renewed his promises to me, and in so obliging and polite a manner as convinced me that he approved of the Voyage. The reputation I may have acquired on this account by which I shall receive promotion calls to my mind the very great assistance I received therein from you, which will ever be remembered with most gratefull Acknowledgments….Cook to Banks, 11 August (?) 1771, British Museum (Natural History), Dawson Turner Transcripts of Banks Correspondence (D.T.C.), I, 32; printed in
JournalsI, 637–8.
Why Lord Sandwich could not himself convey his intentions to Cook, that Sunday morning, we do not know: perhaps he had deputed the pleasing office to Banks as one of friendship. We do not know either what the promises were that he renewed so obligingly: perhaps they included promotion, perhaps they included something to which Cook had given a great deal more thought, another voyage. He did something which Banks certainly could not do when on 14 August he introduced Cook in his turn to the King at St James's, so that the monarch could have the voyage and the charts explained to him at first hand; and George in his turn handed Cook his commission as a commander. At the end of the month this was particularised; he was to command the The Scorpion sloop, a converted fire-ship, which was to take part in a large campaign for correcting the charts of the English coast.Scorpion carried a complement of 120 men, 14 carriage guns and 14 swivels. See Journals II, 898–9 (Calendar of Documents).Scorpion went Pickersgill, promoted lieutenant, Perry the surgeon, young Isaac Smith, Nowell the carpenter and Forwood the gunner.
John Walker of Whitby wrote to Cook, and Cook wrote two letters to him, a short and a long one, which gave him a conspectus of the voyage. The first, of 17 August, is interesting because it shows Cook, somewhat in the presence of his old master and a familiar friend, divesting himself of a little of the modesty he more habitually wore.
Your very obliging letter came safe to hand for which and your kind enquiry after my health I return you my most sincere thanks—I should have wrote much sooner but have been in expectation for several days past of an Order to make my Voyage Publick after which I could have wrote with freedom; as this point is not yet determined upon I lay under some restraint I may however venter to inform you that the Voyage has fully Answered the expectation of my Superiors I had the Honour of a hours Conference with the King the other day who was pleased to express his Approbation of my Conduct in Terms that were extremely pleasing to me—I however have made no very great Discoveries yet I have exploar'd more of the Great South Sea than all that have gone before me so much that little remains now to be done to have a thorough knowledge of that part of the Globe I sayled from England as well provided for such a voyage as possible and a better ship for such a Service I never would wish for.
A few lines take him round the Horn ‘without ever being once brought under our close reefed Topsails, however we had no want of Wind’; at Tahiti he had ‘an Extraordinary good Observation of the Transit of Venus’; up to his visit to the neighbouring islands the voyage was ‘very agreeable and pleasent, the remainder was What I must refer to some other oppertunity to enter upon. Should I come into the North I shall certainly call upon you and am with great respect’ Mr Walker's most obliged humble servant. Cook to Walker, 17 August 1771, Mitchell Library, Ms A 1713–2; Journals I, 505–6.
The other opportunity he made on 13 September, skimming from his journal the cream of his descriptions of the islands—‘Was I to give a full discription of those Islands the Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants &ca it would far exceed the bounds of a letter, I must therefore quit these Terrestrial Paridises in order to follow the Course of our Voyage’—New Zealand and New South Wales, including the perils of the reef and the aboriginal Eden-dwellers, ‘far more happier than we Europeans’; and then Batavia, ‘all in good hilth and high spirits’, and the dreadful reversal. The interest of the Whitby circle, to which this circumnavigator had so intimately belonged, must have been highly aroused. Then some things further for discussion:
If any intresting circumstance's should occur to me that I have omited, will here after acquaint you with it, I however expect that my Lords commissioners of the Admiralty will very soon publish the whole Voyage, Charts &ca. Another Voyage is thought of, with two Ships which if it takes place I beleive the command will be confer'd upon me.Cook to Walker, 13 September 1771, Dixson Library,
MsQ, 140;JournalsI, 506–9.
There can be no doubt that Cook hoped there would be another voyage, and that he would command it. Indeed, he had sketched out its scope even before he handed over his journal to the Admiralty. There can be no doubt that the continental possibility had been a good deal discussed in the great cabin of the Banks's discussion is in his ‘ Cook's discussion is in Endeavour, both Banks and Cook discuss it in their journals. Banks, after scouting most of the arguments advanced for its existence, found himself still attracted by the idea of ice as an exclusively fresh water phenomenon, which must therefore have a land origin, taken, too, by the ‘signs of land’—seaweed, and a seal—that had been encountered in August and September 1769; he confesses that his reasons are weak, ‘yet I have a prepossession’, and concludes, ‘That a Southern Continent exists, I firmly beleive …’ But it must be situated in very high latitudes.Endeavour’ Journal, II, 38–40.Journals I, 288–90.
That last point is interesting: it shows Cook with a plan for discovery in which an essential part was played by a base, Tahiti—or at least by places of call which would fill the functions of a base. By the time he came to write the postscript to his journal, perhaps drafted at the Cape, he had had further thought, and his projected discoveries by no means envisage any possible confinement to a segment of ocean north of latitude 40° S and east of longitude 145° W. Like Banks, he has discussed the French interest in Tahiti, and the importance of fixing by publication the British prior right. He continues and concludes with an important paragraph:
Now I am upon the subject of discoveries I hope it will not be taken a Miss if I give it as my opinion that the most feasable Method of makingfurther discoveries in the South Sea is to enter it by the way of New Zeland, first touching and refreshing at the Cape of Good Hope , from thence proceed to the Southward of New Holland for Queen Charlottes Sound where again refresh Wood and Water, takeing care to be ready to leave that place by the latter end of September or beginning of October at farthest, when you would have the whole summer before you and after geting through the Straight might, with the prevailing Westerly winds, run to the Eastward in as high a Latitude as you please and, if you met with no lands, would have time enough to get round Cape Horne before the summer was too far spent, but if after meeting with no Continent & you had other Objects in View, than haul to the northward and after visiting some of the Islands already discover'd, after which proceed with the trade wind back to the Westward in search of those before Mintioned thus the discoveries in the South Sea would be compleat.
JournalsI, 479.
This clearly was an advance, towards both a larger scope in the amount of ocean to be covered, and economy of effort in taking advantage of the winds that were how known to prevail. If anything like the traditional continent did exist, this would hit it in the middle, and naturally there would be some enforced modification or elaboration of the plan. If it did not, then the plan need not be modified, but could be elaborated by as many other ‘Objects in View’ as came into the mind of the discoverer. One of these might be Tahiti, though Cook does not now specifically name it; others might be the islands ‘before Mintioned’ by Tupaia. The base whence the spring into the Pacific is now to be taken is New Zealand, more pointedly Queen Charlotte's Sound. To this plan Banks, who gives a version of it something, though not quite, the same, adds a little appendix of his own. Such a voyage, he thinks, ‘as a Voyage of Mere Curiosity, should be promoted by the Banks, II, 41. AnDM/A/2647.
Cook was henceforth a busy man. He might have been even busier if he had had to defend himself in an action brought against him by Matthew Cox, one of the men he had punished at the Bay of Islands in New Zealand for robbing native gardens. Cox—hardly old enough to be complete sea-lawyer, perhaps the victim of some London land lawyer—evidently still resented his irons and lashes. The Admiralty solicitor took the matter in hand, and it drops from the records. Stephens to Cook, 20 September 1771; P.R.O. Adm 2/731; Journals I, 640.
Cook's immediate business therefore was with shipping; for the He adds, in B.M. Add. Dixson Library, Navy Board to Admiralty, 15 November 1771, Admiralty Minutes, 27 November, 29 November 1771, Adm 3/79.Endeavour again, but she was otherwise intended. Something as much like the Endeavour as possible, therefore, must be obtained, for the same reasons which urged the selection of the Endeavour; and as he went over the Pool of London he had a clear picture in his mind. He knew the arguments for larger ships, or faster-sailing ships, East Indiamen, three-decked West Indiamen, frigates, and he knew that they were all wrong. The great danger in voyages of discovery was running aground on an unknown coast: the great desideratum was to keep the sea for long periods of time. The ship must therefore be of burden and capacity enough to carry a large quantity of provisions and stores, without drawing a great amount of water; she must be strongly enough constructed to take the ground, and not too large to be laid on shore for repair. Ships of this sort were those built in the north country for the coal trade: there were no others. It was unfit ships, not unfit men, that before the Endeavour stood in the way of progress in discovery. ‘It was upon these considerations’, says Cook, that the Endeavour was chosen for her enterprise.Ms 27889, ‘being the first ship of the kind so imploy'd'.Ms F 1, draft introduction to printed account of the second voyage.Marquis of Granby and the Marquis of Rockingham.Adm/B/185. The tonnage of the ships is in this letter given as 450 and 336 tons.Endeavour by almost 100 tons), the second 340 tons; the lower deck length of the first was 111 feet, her beam 35 feet; those measurements for the second 97 feet and 28 feet; in both the hold had a depth of 13 feet.Journals II, xxv, gives more precise measurements.Endeavour; the first was fourteen months old, the second eighteen, and they were, in Cook's opinion, as well adapted for their intended purpose as if they had been built for it. They were bought from Captain William Hammond of Hull, who may have been known to Cook already; certainly the men were on friendly terms later. On 27 November the Admiralty decided that they should be registered as sloops under the names Drake and Raleigh, sheathed and filled as the Endeavour had been, the Drake to carry twelve guns and 120 men, the Raleigh ten guns and 80 men and, indicating that thought had been proceeding for some time already, simultaneously the principal officers and warrant officers were named. Cook went to the Drake, with Robert Palliser Cooper and Charles Clerke, first and second lieutenants; Raleigh, with Joseph Shank, first lieutenant. These commissions and warrants were signed on 28 November; next day another was made out for Pickersgill to be third lieutenant Drake.
The commander Admiralty to Cook, 30 November 1771, Drake was instructed in the usual formula. His ship was in dry dock at Deptford; he was ‘hereby required and directed to use the utmost dispatch in getting her ready for the Sea accordingly, and then falling down to Gallions Reach take in her Guns and Gunners Stores at that place and then proceed to the Nore’ for further orders.Clb.Eagle and the Newfoundland command. Professionally he knew Cook as well as anyone did; officially, as general manager of naval ships, their equipment and supply, he was the key to the commander's happiness at this moment; and he was on excellent terms with Sandwich. We may add among friends, as Cook added, Sir John Williams, the Surveyor of the Navy; we may give Cook's own summary of the process now begun; ‘the Victualling Board was also very attentive in procuring the very best of every kind of Provisions in short every department seem'd to vie with each other in equiping these two Sloops: every standing Rule and order in the Navy was dispenced with, every alteration, every necessary and usefull article was granted as soon as ask'd for.'Journals II, 3.
To illustrate this, one need only glance over the correspondence of the next month or so. Cook perfects his technique of calling at offices, explaining what he wanted, writing his letter on the spot, and getting an immediate answer. The day the For all this I refer the reader to the Calendar of Documents in r Gregorys Azimuth Compass's of an improved construction’), ‘warping machines’ such as Cook had seen in use by the Portland: all and more were furnished—even the warping machines which the Journals II, 899 ff.
In the midst of all this there were social obligations. We may wish we knew more about them. One sort is witnessed by a stray letter, proof of amiability, that has somehow survived from Cook to Mr Joseph Cockfield, not a man, evidently, interested in voyages to remote parts. ‘Sir,’ it runs,
MrColier at Deptford Victualling Office acquented me some time ago with your desire of seeing some of MrBanks's rare Plants &ca—If you will please to let me know on what morngyou can go to MrBanks's and I will engage that gentleman or DrSolander to be at home and will at the same time attend you my self I can meet you any where between Mile end and Newburlington Street… . P.S. Next Monday or Tuesday I believe will suit MrBanks.
This letter gives a more detailed address for Cook than he usually supplies—‘Next Door to Curtis's Wine Vaults Mile end 10th Dec Mitchell Library Cook to Stephens, 14 December 1771, Adm 1/1609, from the Admiralty Office. It is formally answered on 17 December, Adm 2/731. The precise date was 18 February 1765. The story is given by Young, but the detail about the meeting at the Cross, authentic or not, appears in H. P. Kendall, r 1771’.Ms, Safe (1/80), Autograph Papers of Captain James Cook (Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society, 1951), 10.
Young, 121.
I am sorry to acquaint you that it is now out of my power to meet you at Whitby nor will it be convenient to return by way of Hull as I had resolved upon but three days ago MrsCook being but a bad traveler I was prevailed upon to lay that rout aside on account of the reported badness of the roads and therefore took horse on Tuesday Morngand road over to Whitby and returned yesterday. Your friends at that place expect to see you every day. I have only my self to blame for not having the pleasure of meeting you there. I am inform'd by letter from LieuttCooper that the Admiralty have altered the names of the Ships from Drake to Resolution and Raleigh to Adventurer which, in my opinion are much properer than the former. I set out for London to morrow morning, shall only stop a day or two at York.Cook to Hammond, 3 January 1772; endorsed ‘from my friend Capt Cook the great Navigator’; Whitby Museum.
Within a few days more he was back supervising his ship, and could learn the reason for the change of names.
It was a matter of the international amenities, and a little caution. Lord Rochford, one of the secretaries of state, considered that the names Rochford to Sandwich, 20 December 1771; Sandwich Papers, Hinchingbrooke. Sandwich to Rochford, from the Admiralty, 25 December 1771; P.R.O., S.P. 42/48, No. 51.Drake and Raleigh would give great offence to the Spaniards, irritated enough already by the idea of British ships in the Pacific, with whom the quarrel over British settlement on the Falkland Islands had been patched up for less than a year; for they were names detested in Spain. Rochford had consulted the king, and at his wish wrote privately a ‘hint’ to Sandwich. ‘What do you think of the Aurora and the Hisperus which two names are just come into my head?’
The Cook to Sandwich, 6 February 1772, Mitchell Library Resolution—how inevitable it now sounds!—was being fitted out at Deptford, the Adventure at Woolwich, and on 6 February the former came out of dry dock. Cook, brooding still over his ‘present intended voyage’, and how he intended it—and perhaps thinking that, in spite of delays now only too apparent, he might within a few weeks be at sea; thinking anyhow of the drawing up of his instructions, on that day addressed himself to Sandwich. ‘My Lord/I beg leave to lay before your Lordship a Map of the Southern Hemisphere Shewing the Discoveries that have been made up to 1770, to which is subjoined my opinion respecting the rout to be pursued by the Resolution and Adventure All which are humbly submited to Your Lordships Consideration… .’Ms, Safe 1/82. The map is reproduced in Charts and Views, Chart XXV.Historical Collection, which became a continual point of reference for him; but those were Pacific documents. He had also in mind the French Lozier Bouvet, a man he admired, who, looking for some coast which might provide a way-station for French voyages to the East Indies, had found it south-east of the Paramour Pink in 1700. Cook, composing his map for Sandwich, marked on it Cape Circumcision, and also, less trustingly, ‘Gulf of St Sebastian Very Doub[t]full’. They signified work to be done. So, in the memorandum he composed to go with it, the arguments of his Postscript are not merely repeated but enlarged: the possible break north before passing the Horn becomes compulsory, another base for recruitment is added in Tahiti, and the port at which discovery finishes is to be the Cape. He writes:
Upon due consideration of the discoveries that have been made in the Southern Ocean, and the tracks of the Ships which have made these discoveries; it appears that no Southern lands of great extent can extend to the Northward of 40° of Latitude, except about the Meridian of 140° West, every other part of the Southern Ocean have at different times been explored to the northward of the above parallel. Therefore to make new discoveries the Navigator must Traverse or Circumnavigate the Globe in a higher parallel than has hitherto been done, and this will be best accomplished by an Easterly Course on account of the prevailing westerly winds in all high Latitudes. The principle thing to be attended to is the proper Seasons of Year, for Winter is by no means favourable for discoveries in these Latitudes; for which reason it is humbly proposed that the Ships may not leave the
Cape of Good Hope before the latter end of September or beginning of October, when having the whole summer before them may safely Steer to the Southward and make their way to New Zealand, between the parallels of 45° and 60° or in as high a Latitude as the weather and other circumstances will admit. If no land is discoveried in this rout the Ships will be obliged to touch at New Zealand to recrute their water.From New Zealand the same rout must be continued to Cape Horn, but before this can be accomplished they will be overtaken by Winter, and must seek Shelter in the more Hospitable Latitudes, for which purpose Otahieta will probably be found to be the most convenient, at, and in its Neighbourhood the Winter Months may be spent, after which they must steer to the Southward and continue their rout for Cape Horn in the Neighbourhood of which they may again recrute their water, and afterwards proceed for the
Cape of Good Hope .
On the map the tracks laid down were those of Tasman, Wallis, Bougainville and the Endeavour, with the routes of the East Indiamen on their regular voyages; added to them was a broad yellow ribbon round the Pole, weaving in and out of the sixtieth parallel.
The yellow line on the Map shews the track I would propose the Ships to make, Supposeing no land to intervene, for if land is discovered the track will be altered according to the directing of the land, but the general rout must be pursued otherwise some part of the Southern Ocean will remain unexplored.Cook to Sandwich, 6 February 1772, Mitchell Library
Ms, Safe 1/82. The map is reproduced inCharts and Views, Chart XXV.
Sandwich was too intelligent a man to need all this, but he may have asked for it, and it may have been useful with colleagues.
This grand strategy, this main theme, was to be adopted. Set in it there was to be another, which had not hitherto interested Cook—the proving of the chronometer, as a mode of determining longitude. His devotion to the lunar method, by the end of his first voyage, is clear. He did not see why the generality of sea officers should not master this. He paid them too high a compliment; a more direct method was still needed. It was presented by the fourth chronometer He got the rest in 1773, after the king had taken a personal interest in the matter. For a detailed, expert, and fascinating history of these instruments see Derek Howse and Beresford Hutchinson, The Clocks and Watches of Captain James Cook 1769–1969 (reprinted from
The relevant Board of Longitude minutes are printed in Journals II, 719 ff., Appendix III.
There must have been more social life for Cook in London than we know of, as well as some disagreeables. He seems to have been on good terms with the gentlemen of the The author may have been J. M. Magra, the midshipman, but the charge cannot be confidently made. See 10 October 1771; Dawson Turner Transcripts, I, 27. John Albert Bentinck (1737-75) was captain of the guardship Hawkesworth to Sandwich, 19 November 1771; Sandwich Papers, Hinchingbrooke; Banks, I, 47 n. Hawkesworth to Garrick, n.d. ‘Wed. Evening’. B.M. Add. Early Diary, I, 138–9.Voyage autour du Monde which was lying on a table. Burney wanted to know how Cook's track round the world compared with the other; and ‘Captain Cooke instantly took a pencil from his pocket-book, and said he would trace the route; which he did in so clear and scientific a manner, that I would not take fifty pounds for the book. The pencil marks having been fixed by skin milk, will always be visible.’Memoirs of Doctor Burney (1832), I, 270–1. Burney's story, often quoted, runs, ‘Observing upon a table Bougainville's Voyage autour du Monde, he turned it over, and made some curious remarks on the illiberal conduct of that circum-navigator towards himself, when they met, and crossed each other; which made me desirous to know, in examining the chart of M. de Bougainville, the several tracks of the two navigators; and exactly where they had crossed or approached each other.’ But Cook and Bougainville never met: Burney must have been thinking of the occasion when Bougainville, in the Boudeuse, caught up Carteret, in the Swallow in the Atlantic, 20 February 1769. The two captains did not meet then, either; Carteret thought Bougainville's conduct was ‘neither liberal nor just’, according to Hawkesworth, I, 668; which Burney would later read. See also Helen Wallis, Carteret's Voyage Round the World (Cambridge, 1965), I, 94–7, 266–73. Burney's copy of Bougainville, with Cook's pencilled track on Map 1, is now in the British Museum Library.Memoirs: ‘This truly great man appeared to be full of sense and thought; well-mannered, and perfectly unpretending; but studiously wrapped up in his own purposes and pursuits; and apparently under a pressure of mental fatigue when called upon to speak, or stimulated to deliberate, upon any other.’Memoirs, I, 271.Journal of a Voyage
round the World … containing All the various Occurrences of the Voyage, which appeared before the end of this same September.Journals I, cclvi-cclix.Centaur, 74, then at Spithead.r Strahan offered me six thousand, & to furnish me with all the Copies that I had engaged to give away, which, being five & twenty, amounted to seventy five pounds….’Ms 28104., ff. 45–6. There is in the Osborn collection, Yale University Library, a copy of a letter from Hawkesworth to ‘My dear Madam’, undated (? August, 1773) which gives a circumstantial account of the whole affair. I am indebted for a copy of this copy to Professor John L. Abbott, of the University of Connecticut.Endeavour was first prepared, two
They were not all disagreeable. It was indeed a pleasant consequence that Banks should meet Dr Johnson and extract from him the famous distich for the collar of the famous goat, now browsing at Mile End in honourable retirement from naval service:
Perpetui, ambitâ bis terrâ, praemia lactis Haec habet, altrici Capra secunda Jovis.
‘The globe twice circled, this the Goat, the second to the nurse of Jove, is thus rewarded for her never-failing milk.’ Johnson to Banks, 27 February 1772; D.T.C., I, 30, printed by Boswell and in Chapman's edition (1052) of Johnson's They are all bound up in the volume of Banks papers in the Mitchell Library, Safe 1/11, lettered ‘Voluntiers, Instructions, Provision for 2d. Voyage.’Letters. She had, alas, few days to live, and died on 28 March 1772, at Mile End.—General Evening Post, 3 April. Robert Chambers, Book of Days, for 28 April (I, 559–60), giving that as the anniversary, says the Admiralty had just before signed a warrant admitting her to the privileges of an inpensioner of Greenwich Hospital. One hopes that this information at least was true. The collar was of silver.Endeavour) write to him rather than adopt a less dramatic mode of volunteering. They acknowledged his fame; they prophesied his immortality. Banks kept their letters.
He knew it was to be a southern voyage. ‘O how Glorious would it be to set my heel upon the Pole! and turn myself round 360 degrees in a second’, he wrote to his French friend the Comte de Lauraguais. From what we can gather from his papers that was the extent of his geographical interest, though no doubt he would have been pleased to come upon the continent. But he was getting ready for most other things in the scientific line, and collecting what might be called a staff. He collected fifteen people in all, starting with the scientific Priestley wrote a rather cutting reply to Banks, 1 December 1771, ‘Voluntiers’, 597–8, and Banks, I, 72, n. 1. Solander to Lind, n.d.; Dixson Library, Royal Society Council Minutes, VI, 131, 8 February 1772; Ms Q 161. The whole letter is printed in Journals II, 901–3.Journals II, 913.Journals II, 4.Resolution, in which almost all these persons were to sail.
The ship, we remember, was selected by Cook: ‘she was the ship of my choice and as I thought the fitest for the Service she was going upon of any I had ever seen.’ B.M. Add. Ms 27888, f. 5; Journals II, xxvii.Endeavour, he feared she was not large enough for him and his entourage, and he must already have begun to picture an entourage larger than his earlier one. ‘Mr Banks's voyage’, he could not forget, was a social and international sensation: he pictured a second Mr Banks's voyage which would be more sensational still, as well as even more scientifically valuable. Nor, it is to be feared, could he cease to take for granted his position as an English landed gentleman of very considerable estate; nor forget that the First Lord was his friend. While he remained scientifically disinterested, he had, a little prematurely, ‘given pledges to all Europe’, and he meant to astound all Europe. As the voyage was to be ‘his’ voyage, so—though it is improbable that he began by making too large claims—he was to be its real commander, Cook his executive officer, the ship's master rather than its captain. Mr Banks, we must conclude, had come by an unusually swelled head.
He was even prepared to dogmatise on nautical concerns; and he must have the vessel altered. Some adaptation was called for, as a matter of course. On some things it was indispensable to consult Banks. He thought he should be consulted on everything. From the start there was one firm obstacle in his way—Palliser. The Comptroller of the Navy was a good judge of ships, and he agreed entirely with Cook about the type of ship needed on this occasion; and beyond necessary details he did not want the ship altered at all. Banks removed that obstacle by going to Sandwich. The Navy Board—Palliser was not alone in his objection—was overruled. Cook's sentiments at the large reconstruction that followed can be established with a good deal of certainty. He disapproved, he was anxious to oblige Banks, he hoped for the best; he forced himself,
B.M. Add. Resolution the sight of the river: she was visited not merely by those whose business it was, but, as Cook remarked, by ‘many of all ranks … Ladies as well as gentlemen, for scarce a day past on which she was not crowded with Strangers who came on board for no other purpose but to see the Ship in which Mr Banks was to sail round the world.’Ms 27888, f. 4–4v.
There would certainly be no March departure. By the end of April Cook was feeling alarm; at Long Reach the ship's draught, with guns and ordnance stores on board, was seventeen feet, but overbuilt as she was, she still looked as if she would prove crank; nevertheless he restrained himself till she had a full trial, and even had twenty tons of ballast taken out. Sandwich had been down to look at the work several times, ‘a laudable tho rare thing in a first Lord of the Admiralty’, Cooper to Cook, 13 May 1772, encl. in Admiralty Secretary to Navy Board, 14 May, ‘Memoirs of the early life, of John Elliott…’, B. M. Add. Journals II, 6.Adm/A/2655. Clerke to Banks, 15 May, Mitchell Library, Banks Papers, 2, f. 1. Both letters are printed in Journals II, 929–31.Resolution was to go back to Sheerness, the round-house and new upper deck to be removed, the guns reduced in weight; within a week it was resolved to shorten the masts as well. The passengers would have to fit the ship, not the ship the passengers. The effect on Banks, when he saw what was in train, was staggering. To quote the memoirs of the then young midshipman John Elliott, ‘Mr Banks came to Sheerness and when he saw the ship, and the Alterations that were made, He swore and stamp’d upon the Warfe, like a Mad Man; and instantly order'd his servants, and all his things out of the Ship.'Ms 42714, ff. 10–11. Cf. Journals II, xxx, n. 1. We have to allow for the fact that Elliott wrote later in life, and as a youth had not taken to Banks.
Rumours and counter-rumours flew, about the ship's behaviour in the merchant service. While the remedial work was going forward, Cook wrote from Sheerness to Hammond, whom he thought was in London, on 28 May, in terms of urgent intimacy: ‘Dear Sir
As you cannot be Ignornant [sic] of what is said in Town for and againest the Resolution, I beg you will sit down and give me a full detail thereof, and if you suspect her to be, or ever thought her a tender ship let me find so much friendship from you as to trust me with the secret, as I can now Load and trim her accordingly; for my own part I am in no doubt of her Answering now she is striped of her Superfluous top hamper—Believe me to be DrSir Your most Affectionate friend & Humble Servt….Cook to Hammond, 28 May 1772, Dixson Library,
MsQ 140. Hammond must have been in London, as Cook first addressed him at Batsons Coffee House / RoylExchange / London, and then substituted Hull.
He could have got only a reassuring reply. Banks himself was busy in composition before he quite gave up hope. He wrote a long letter of passionate self-justification to Sandwich. 30 May 1772, Sandwich Papers, Hinchingbrooke, endorsed ‘No. 93’. I have printed it, with a note on other copies and printings, in The Navy Board memorandum, ‘Observations upon MJournals II, 704–7; and, from Banks' draft, in Banks, II, 335–8. In the latter volume I have printed also the draft of another letter to Sandwich, not sent, probably a trial run for that of 30 May.r Banks's Letter to the Earl of Sandwich’, and Sandwich's letter are both in the Sandwich Papers, Hinchingbrooke, endorsed ‘No. 93’; similarly Palliser's ‘Thoughts upon the Kind of Ships proper to be employed on Discoveries in distant parts of the Globe’, endorsed ‘No. 98’, and Sandwich's draft of his rejoinder to Banks, endorsed ‘No. 94’, I have printed all three in Journals II, 707 ff., where I have noticed other printings, and, with some other relevant papers, in Banks, II, 342 ff.
To many it will no doubt appear strange that M
rBanks should attempt to over rule the opinions of the two great Boards who have the sole management of the whole Navy of Great Britain and likewise the opinions of the principal sea officers concern'd in the expedition; for a Gentleman of MrBanks's Fortune and Abilities to engage in these kind of Voyages is as uncommon as it is meritorious and the great additions he made last Voyage to the Systems of Botany and Natural History gain'd him great reputation which was increased by his imbarking in this. This, together with a desire in every one to make things as convenient to him as possible, made him to be consulted on every occasion and his influence was so great that his opinion was generally followed, was it ever so inconsistent, in preference to those who from their long experience in Sea affairs might be supposed better judges, till at length the Sloop was rendered unfit for any service whatever….M
rBanks unfortunate for himself set out upon too large a Plan a Plan that was incompatible with a Scheme of discovery at the Antipodes; had he confined himself to the same plan as he set out upon last Voyage, attended only to his own persutes and not interfered with the choice, equipmint and even Direction of the Ships things that he was not a competent judge of, he would have found every one concerned in the expedition ever ready to oblige him, for my self I can declare it: instead of finding fault with the Ship he ought to have considered that the Endeavour Bark was just such another, whose good quallities … gave him an oppertunity to acquire that reputation the Publick has so liberally and with great justice bestowed upon him.B.M. Add.
Ms27888, ff. 5–5v;JournalsII, 718.
There had been no need, and no attempt, to alter the Adventure, and about her no controversy ever centred. She shared the virtues of her build; she was to serve her purpose admirably. She was not
Resolution, that honest product of Messrs Fishburn's yard, thus returned into her original condition, she was to prove one of the great, one of the superb, ships of history; of all the ships of the past, could she by enchantment be recreated and made immortal, one would gaze on her with something like reverence.
The complement of the 58 deserted from the The letters are all to Banks, and are in the Banks Papers, 2, Mitchell Library. They are printed in Clerke to Banks, 31 May 1772; Banks Papers, 2, f. 2; Elliott, Resolution, officers and men, was 112, of the Adventure 81. The prospect of a long voyage to the southern hemisphere was not greatly attractive to many seamen, and by the time the crews were finally assembled there had been a large total of desertions, as well as a smaller number discharged in favour of better men.Resolution, 37 from the Adventure; 29 and 11 were discharged respectively. Cf. Clerke to Banks, 31 May: ‘they're going to stow the major part of the Cables in the Hold, to make room for the People even now: I ask'd Gilbert, if such was the present case, what the divil shou'd we have done, if we had all gone: Oh by God that was impossible; was his answer—'.—Mitchell Library, Banks Papers, 2, f. 2; Journals II, 937.Resolution carried 92 seamen and eighteen marines with their lieutenant and sergeant; the Adventure 69 seamen and ten marines with a second lieutenant and sergeant. Even without the aid of French horns, music was provided for, with marines who could play the bagpipes and a drummer who could play the violin. The men, most of them, were very much like those of the first voyage, the majority in their twenties, uneducated, uncivilised, insensitive, blasphemous, drunk when possible, competent, conservative, capable of great endurance. James and Nathaniel Cook again joined them, a year out from home. Eleven seamen and one marine in the Resolution had been in the Endeavour; the marine, curiously enough, was Gibson, who had tried to desert at Tahiti, had become Cook's devoted admirer, and was now promoted corporal. Of some of their superiors in rank there is more to be said, of others not much. We miss Gore, who had been round the world three times already, and for whatever reason was on half-pay. He occupied a few months of his time as Banks's guest on a less arduous voyage to Iceland. The Resolution's first lieutenant was Robert Palliser Cooper, a kinsman of the Comptroller who had served on the Newfoundland station: not original or lively, but steady, sober, certainly competent enough to have Cook speak well of his conduct of the ship, a post-captain to be. Charles Clerke, second lieutenant, we have met slightly on the first voyage: he is now a three-dimensional, a positive personality of the liveliest description to anyone who reads his journal and his happily-extant
Journals II, Calendar of Documents.Journals II, 936–7.e Grog’,Memoirs.Guernsey. He is a sound officer, in principal charge, underneath Cook, of the surveying work of the voyage. Cook says the right things about him, in due form, but even more indicative is the reason given for certain action, that ‘Mr Gilbert the Master, on whose judgement I had a good opinion’, was of a particular opinion himself. Gilbert was a good draughtsman, too: when it came to a ‘view’, a much better one than Cook, who had no large pretensions in that line.
We know more about the midshipmen, that rather vague class, than usual, largely through the reminiscences of John Elliott, himself one of the ‘young gentlemen’; and we know how Cook trained them. They were not all a band of brothers. Some of them no doubt got their positions on their known merit, like the three who had been
Endeavour, Manley, Harvey and Isaac Smith; some, like Elliott, through ‘interest’; some perhaps through accident. It was thought, says Elliott, ‘it would be quite a great feather, in a young man's Cap, to go with Captn Cook, and it requir'd much Intrest to get out with him; My Uncle therefore determin'd to send me out with him in the Resolution'—and took the boy to Palliser, who passed him on to Cooper, who introduced him to Cook, ‘who promis'd to take care of me', and did. Elliott wrote brief characterisations of all the officers and civilians in his ship. Of most of them he thought highly. They were in general ‘steady’, some of them steady and clever as well. Resolution we never learn. Then there was the small ‘wild & drinking’ set; in which was poor Charles Loggie, with the trepanned head, drinking ‘from misfortune’, who was a great trial to the captain. There were two whom our memoirist disliked—the ‘Hypocritical canting fellow’ Maxwell, who got Loggie into trouble; and the ‘Jesuitical’ Whitehouse, ‘sensible but an insinuating litigious mischief making fellow’; with whom we may contrast one who was to rise to fame himself as an explorer, ‘Mr Vancouver’, aged ‘about 13 1/2’ (in fact nearer 15), ‘a Quiet inoffensive young man’. Inoffensive or offensive, steady or unsteady, they all had to knock down together, and Cook made the best of them he could. To quote Elliott again (and to anticipate), ‘In the Early part of the Voyage, Captn Cook made all us young gentlemen, do the duty aloft the same as the Sailors, learning to hand, and reef the sails, and Steer the Ship, E[x]ercise Small Arms &c thereby making us good Sailors, as well as good Officers’; later on they were put to observing, surveying, and drawing. The training the young gentlemen got was to be highly regarded in important circles; it is difficult, indeed, to imagine a better education for a young seaman than three years in the Resolution. Lastly, not among the young gentlemen, but not very old, we must notice the surgeon and his mates, all three ‘steady clever’ men. James Patten, there can be no doubt, was good professionally: so far as any surgeon could, he was to save Cook's life.
Those in the His biography has been written: Adventure, with not many exceptions, are more shadowy. Tobias Furneaux, by Rupert Furneaux, London, 1960. His portrait was painted by Northcote. He did not have a long life; after his voyage with Cook he had a period on the North American station as a frigate captain, then three years on half-pay, and died in 1781.
We must consider the astronomers. Resolution, was a Yorkshireman in his late thirties, the brother-in-law of Green. He had observed the Transit of Venus for the Royal Society at Hudson Bay and helped Maskelyne with the Nautical Almanac. Resolution by the Admiralty influenced by Lord Palmerston, while the ships lay at Plymouth at the end of June. He was a quite different thing in painters from Zoffany—or Sydney Parkinson: a pupil of Richard Wilson, his interest was landscape, and, more and more as he developed his own individuality in foreign climates, light. On the voyage he was
But who is going to envy The best account so far of Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, VII (1878); but much light is thrown on his character by his letters, even the English ones in the Banks Papers and the Sandwich Papers. The brief note here given is enlarged upon a little in Journals II, xliii-xlviii.Resolution because Banks and his friends walked off. Let us admit at once the virtues of Forster, his learning, the width of his interests, his acuteness in some things; let us admit the lumbering geniality that was said to exist deep below the surface. Let us admit that the surface itself must have been, at first sight, sometimes impressive—or how else could he have taken in, temporarily, so many excellent persons? Let us concede, as a mitigating factor, that for ocean voyaging no man was ever by physical or mental constitution less fitted. Yet there is nothing that can make him other than one of the Admiralty's vast mistakes. One does not wish to draw a caricature; but how is one to deny that he was dogmatic, humourless, suspicious, censorious, pretentious, contentious, demanding? To deal with such a man is a problem anywhere, a desperate problem at sea. Cook is forced to conclude one interview by turning him out of the cabin, Clerke threatens to put him under arrest; the master's mate, whom he has called a liar, knocks him down; the seas break over him, men grow tired of listening to him; he says too often that he will complain to the king, the crew mimic him. He is exasperating, but not to be ignored.
Forster was one of those unsettled men who so often, in the eighteenth century, came to England in search of prosperity. Born in 1729 in Polish Prussia of a family originally Scottish, he grew up with a large amount of learning, not scientific, and became a solidly old-fashioned orthodox minister near Danzig. In 1754 his son George was born. Recent German writers and editors insist on giving his name as Georg. It was natural enough to make him George in England. George, however, is the form as given by Dove, and seems likely to have been his baptismal name—in full,
It was three weeks through June before work on the ‘Captain Cooke never explain'd his scheme of Stowage to any of us. We were all very desirous of knowing, for it must have been upon a new plan intirely: know he kept whatever scheme he had quite a secret: for Cooper ask'd my opinion, and repeatedly declar'd he cou'd form no idea how it was possible to bring it about.'—Clerke to Banks, 31 May 1772, Mitchell Library, Banks Papers, 2, f. 2; Sandwich to North, 8 June 1772; Sandwich Papers, Hinchingbrooke. Cook to Navy Board, 15 June 1772; Adm 106/1208. Cook to Stephens, 3 July 1772; Adm 1/1610, Resolution, and her subsequent stowage,Journals II, 936.Augusta, bearing Sandwich and Palliser on their return from a dockyard inspection. The two came on board for a final report on the Resolution—which, says Cook, ‘I was now well able to give them and so much in her favour that I had not one fault to alledge againest her…. It is owing to the perseverance of these two persons that the expedition is in so much forwardness, had they given way to the general Clamour and not steadily adhered to their own better judgement the Voyage in all probabillity would have been laid aside.’Journals II, 9.Clb. Cook to Navy Board, 4 July; B.M. Add. Ms 37425, f. 134; Journals II, 943–4. He tells the
The According to Midsshipman Harvey, the Admiralty generosity had to be stimulated by a petition to Sandwich from the Adventure had been waiting at Plymouth since the middle of May. There the ships' companies, as the result of unprecedented generosity on the Admiralty's part, received most of their arrears of pay and two months' advance; to provide themselves with what they deemed necessities for the voyage (they can have had few dependants to provide for);Resolution's crew,—Journals II, 10, n. 3.Journals II, 10. The Instructions are entered in Adm 2/1332 and Clb, and printed in Journals II, clxvii-clxx.Resolution would take the Kendall instrument and one of Arnold's; the Adventure the other two of Arnold's. At 6 a.m. on 13 July 1772 he sailed from Plymouth, the Adventure in company, and stood south-west. ‘Farewell Old England’, wrote Lieutenant Pickersgill in his journal, very large, and scribbled a not very ornamental border round the words.
The first spot of large importance in Cook's plan was the Cape. It was to be more than three months before he arrived there, after a passage generally agreeable; and that passage, a sort of prologue to the great story that was about to unfold, itself contains not merely minor incident, but indications sufficient of the administrative control and scientific detail of the voyage. Cook's journal at once fills with observation. Sighting the Spanish coast on 20 July, he picked up the north-east trade wind unusually early off Cape Finisterre. Two days later the ships were stopped by a Spanish squadron, a scene which Forster found ‘humiliating to the masters of the sea’, though to Cook it was quite unimportant, and the Spaniards, having identified them, merely wished them a good voyage. In the interval, in a calm, Wales had been across to the Adventure to compare the chronometers' rates of going. On the 29th they were at Madeira, anchored in Funchal Road. Here they were well received: Cook got his wine, water, fresh beef and fruit, and a thousand bunches of onions to distribute among his people for a sea store—‘a Custom I observed last Voyage and had reason to think that they received great benifit therefrom.’Journals II, 21.
…the Resolution answers in every respect as well, nay even better than we could expect, she steers, works, sails well and is remarkably stiff and seems to promise to be a dry and very easy ship in the Sea; In our passage from Plymouth we were once under our Courses but it was not wind that obliged the Resolution to take in her Topsails tho' it blow'd hard, but because the Adventure could not carry hers, in point of sailing the two Sloops are well match'd what difference there is is in favour of the Resolution.1 March 1772; the person addressed is not apparent, but was possibly Stephens.—ibid., 685.
In the same letter he reported on a person who had been waiting three months at the island for Mr Banks's arrival, and left three
ibid., and xxix, n. 4.Resolution, had provided also for the companionship of a lady. Cook was amused; there is amusement still in the vision of Banks trying to persuade the captain to accept this new addition to the scientific staff.
With the new month Cook steered for Porto Praya, in San Tiago, one of the Cape Verde islands, to take in more water; for he did not want his people to be on an allowance. We find in the logs and journals—not Cook's only—evidence of the regimen he applied—the bilge pumped out regularly with fresh sea-water, the ship cleaned, aired, and dried with charcoal fires; the brewing of Pelham's ‘experimental beer’; the men compelled to air their bedding, to wash and dry their clothes properly and frequently. This in the Forster, I, 41, was censorious. Cf. Wales, Resolution: there is no sign that Furneaux imposed such rules in his ship. The two vessels were tried against each other deliberately in sailing qualities: this first time the Resolution was the better, but more trials and experience made it hard to award a preference. At Porto Praya, 12–14 August, the water was tolerable, though not good, bullocks were unobtainable, hogs, goats, fowls, fruit were in plenty, the Forsters did some useful botanical collecting, Cook and Wales made a useful survey of the bay, the sailors bought monkeys. These poor animals dirtied the ship, and before long Cook had to have them thrown overboard.Remarks on Mr. Forster's Account of Captain Cook's last Voyage (1778), 20: ‘the captain paid more attention to the health of his people, than to the lives of a few monkies.’
Five days after the departure from Porto Praya a carpenter's mate, Henry Smock, who was working over the side fitting a scuttle, fell into the sea and sank almost before he was seen. His loss might be regarded as a normal accident in the sailor's life, and Cook was not startled; but when a week later he learnt from Furneaux that one of the Adventure's midshipmen was dead he might well have felt some alarm—and even more, less than three weeks after that, when another died. They both, said Furneaux, died of a fever ‘caught at St Iago by bathing and making too free with the water in the heat of the day’. Neither Dr James's Powders nor Dr Norris's Drops availed to save.Journals II, 33, n. 3; 37, n. 4.Resolution had no sick, even from drenching in tropical rain. On 8 September the ships crossed the equator, with appropriate horseplay in the Resolution, none in the Adventure—for Furneaux thought it dangerous. Cook continued to experiment in one way or another, hoisting out a boat to try the current, trying the temperature of the sea with his submersible thermometer seventy fathoms below—Furneaux refused to allow Bayly a boat for the same purpose; trying the effect of his patent still in converting salt water to fresh, and getting a much better result, with no expenditure of fuel, from collecting rain-water; trying the effect of his experimental beer on his sailors, conservative men some of whom declared they would rather drink water. On 30 October the ships were anchored in Table Bay. The first thing noted, not only by Cook but by his officers, was the absence of sickness in the Resolution: to quote Clerke, ‘Our people all in perfect Health and spirits, owing I believe in a great measure to the strict attention of Captain Cook to their cleanliness and every other article that respects their Welfare.’Journals II, 46, n. 1.Adventure too was doing well at this time, her only invalid being Lieutenant Shank, who for some weeks had been suffering badly from gout. This was in marked contrast to two outward bound Dutch Indiamen arriving a few days later, where the ravages of scurvy had been frightful; between them they had lost almost two hundred men.
Cook liked the Cape as a port of call, except for its inevitable delays. The acting-governor, the Baron van Plettenburg, and one of the leading merchants, Mr Brand, made themselves very agreeable and helpful. There was delay over the baking of bread and the making up of the quantity of spirits deemed necessary: it did not matter, however, very much, as the men got every day all the fresh bread, meat and greens they could eat, and shore leave in batches for air and exercise. Wales and Bayly took their instruments on, shore, for ordinary astronomical observations and to check the chronometers. Of these, the Kendall one in the ibid, 35 (2 September).Resolution had been behaving remarkably well, the Arnold one not at all well. The latter suffered when Wales was bringing it off from the shore; jarred to a stop as the long-boat struck the ship's side, it was started again, but continued to go badly for the rest of its life. The first Arnold instrument in the Adventure—that which had been tested at Greenwich—was ‘not to be complained on’, though it lost at an increasing rate; the second, having gone most imperfectly on the passage to the Cape, there stopped entirely. Cook had not yet begun to regard his Kendall
r Kendalls Watch tought us to expect.’
There were a few changes in the ships' companies. In the Forster, I, 68.Adventure the unfortunate Shank felt obliged to relinquish the voyage; his second, Arthur Kempe, was promoted in his place, and Resolution to be second lieutenant. When Forster was on shore he met a young Swedish doctor,
I am in your debt for the Pickled and dryed Salmon which you left on board, which a little time ago was most excellant, but the eight Casks of Pickled salted fish I kept for my self proved so bad that even the Hoggs would not eat it; these hints may be of use to you in providg for your intinded expeditation, in which I wish you all the Success you can wish your self… .Cook to Banks, 18 November 1772;
JournalsII, 688.
In this there may have been some deliberate generosity—he certainly did not refer to Mr, or Mrs, or Miss Burnett; in the letter to Walker there is certainly real warmth and regard for the Quaker mind.
Having nothing new to communicate I should hardly have troubled you with a letter was it not customary for Men to take leave of their friends before they go out of the World, for I can hardly think my self in it so long as I am deprived from having any Connections with the civilized part of it, and this will soon be my case for two years at least. When I think of the Inhospitable parts I am going to, I think the Voyage dangerous, I however enter upon it with great cheerfullness, providence has been very kind to me on many occasions, and I trust in the continuation of the divine protection; I have two good Ships well provided and well Man'd. You must have heard of the Clamour raised against the Resolution before I left England, I can assure you I never set foot in a finer Ship. Please to make my best respects to all Friends at Whitby….
Thus one ‘Most affectionate Friend’ to another. Cook to Walker, 20 November 1772; General Assembly Library, Wellington, ibid., 689. The phrase is Forster's, I, 88.
He was three weeks late, in terms of his instructions. It did not matter: it was even probably an advantage, because it gave the packice a chance to break up, and though this might provide dangers of a particular sort, it also provided an opportunity to penetrate farther south than would otherwise have been given. Cook could not take full enough advantage of this; for knowledge of the antarctic ice had to be built up over a long period, and he was the pioneer—a pioneer, furthermore, with no previous experience of ice-navigation. Certainly
Cape Circumcision was said in the English documents to lie approximately in latitude 540 south and longitude 11°20' east of Greenwich. Cook had his chart of the Southern Ocean published by Dalrymple in 1769, which showed Bouvet's track. There was a brief account, translated from De Brosses, in Callander's Bouvet Island, lat. 54°26' S, long. 3°24' E. ‘It is possible to draw, round Bouvet island, a circle with a radius of 1000 miles … which contains no other land at all. It is the only spot on the earth's surface possessing this peculiarity.’—R. T. Gould, Terra Australis Cognita (1768), III, 641–4. Dalrymple's production was his ‘Chart of the Ocean between South America and Africa. With the Tracks of Dr Edmund Halley in 1700 and Monsr Lozier Bouvet in 1738.’ There was an accompanying Memoir, also published in 1769.Captain Cook (1935), 111. In 1808 it was found again by the Enderby whalers Swan and Otter; no landing was possible. Sealers visited it in 1822 and in 1825; in the latter year they managed to land. Its position was finally settled by the German Deep Sea Exploration Expedition in the Valdivia in 1898, which did not succeed in landing.
Cook plunged straight south, a course he maintained, inclining a little east, for the next three weeks. On the second day out he issued to each man a jacket and trousers of the thick warm material called fearnought; later on he had the skimped sleeves of these lengthened and red baize caps provided in addition. Without this extra clothing it is difficult to fancy the ships' companies surviving at all as they went farther south, as the cold pinched, sleet and snow fell, ice stuck to the sails and rigging. November went out; December came in with hard westerly gales, rain and hail, the ships hove to, Wales put Dr Lind's wind-gauge to trial: ‘the Adventure’, noted Clerke, ‘we find to be the most weatherly Ship in a Gale tho’ this is as good a Sea Boat as can possibly swim.' ibid., 57, n. 3. ibid., 59.Journals, II, 53, n. 2.e Eastwd of Cape Circumcision, expect to find land hourerly, tho’ sailing here is render'd very Dangerous … such is the dispossion of ye Crew that every Man seems to try who shall be foremost in ye readest performance of his duty which calls for ye loudest acknowledgemts under such rigorous circumstances.'Swbs we thought we saw high land, but can by no means assert it.’
On 14 December the ships turned a point of the ice-field and hauled 18 December; ibid., 63. ibid. ibid., 66. This is from the Admiralty Ssw, as there appeared to be clear water in that direction. Soon embayed, however, they were forced away to the north and east to clear the ice. Fog was so thick next morning that it was impossible to see the length of the ship; the jolly boat, out with the master, Wales and Forster to try the current and the temperature of the sea, was for two hours uncomfortably lost. They recorded a surface temperature of 30° F. The ship could do nothing but tack briefly one way and the other, because of the fog and snow; the rigging and sails, hung with icicles, grew difficult to handle; whales played about the ship. On the 17th Cook, once more steering south, was once more stopped by heavy pack ice. The pack had begun to break up, and the process would be fast. Many bergs and much loose ice were found to seaward of the main body—very hampering obstacles to navigation they were; but the main body of ice to the south was still impenetrable, and how could Cook foretell its behaviour? If he had had the experience that no one had, he could have expected this main body to break effectively by the end of December, giving him three months of clear water. He considered the two evils, bergs and ‘field ice’; he preferred the bergs. ‘Dangerous as it is
Ms of the journal, P.R.O., Adm 55/108.
The ships were passing through fields of loose ice, rotten, honey-combed
Pickersgill more at length: ‘Saw on the Island a Number of those live things which we found to be Penguins, they set errect on their Leggs ranged in regular lines, which with their Breast's forms a very Whimsical appearance we fire two 4 Pounders at them but Mist them after which they wheeld off three deep and March down to ye water in a rank… .’—ibid., 69, n. 1.
In short, I am of opinion that what M. Bouvet took for Land and named Cape Circumcision was nothing but Mountains of Ice surrounded by field Ice. We our selves were undoubtedly deceived by the Ice Hills the Day we first fell in with the field Ice and many were of opinion that the Ice we run along join'd to land to the Southward, indeed this was a very probable supposission, the probabillity is however now very much lessened if not intirely set a side for the Distance betwixt the Northern edge of that Ice and our Track to the West, South of it, hath no where exceeded 100 Leagues and in some places not Sixty, from this it is plain that if there is land it can have no great extent North and South, but I am so fully of opinion that there is none that I shall not go in search of it, being nowdetermined to make the best of my way to the East in the Latitude of 60° or upwards, and am only sorry that in searching after those imaginary Lands, I have spent so much time, which will become the more valuable as the season advanceth. It is a general recieved opinion that Ice is formed near land, if so than there must be land in the Neighbourhood of this Ice, that is either to the Southward or Westward. I think it most probable that it lies to the West and the Ice is brought from it by the prevailing Westerly Winds and Sea. I however have no inclination to go any farther West in search of it, having a greater desire to proceed to the East in Search of the land said to have been lately discovered by the French in the Latitude of 48 1/2° South and in about the Longitude of 57° or 58° East.
JournalsII, 71–2, 3 January 1773.
This is a passage of interest, because it shows us the reasoning Cook. He had been attentive to the ice, its appearance and movement, since he first encountered it. He was still prepared to admit—wrongly, though in accord with the philosophers—that sea ice invariably implied land. He was right in thinking that the pack moves in an easterly direction, though it comes with the current rather than with the wind. (It is true that the current—the west wind drift—is itself engendered by the wind.) The course he had sailed quite certainly disposed of the cape as a projection of any large extent of land. The effect of the great bergs upon his mind, and of the pack, is evident from his conclusion that Bouvet, with the best will in the world, had been deceived by the ice. What is curious is that he does not weigh the possibility of an island, not of ice but of earth and rock—unless it is weighing a possibility to say that ‘if there is land it can have no great extent North and South, but I am so fully of opinion that there is none that I shall not go in search of it.’ It is all the more curious in that his instructions raise the possibility, and he had virtually written the instructions. The only person who talks in terms of an island is Lieutenant Kempe of the Kempe, 5 January 1773; ibid, 72, n. 1. Cf. Alan Villiers: ‘looking for such a place down there was like groping for a pinhead on a fogged-in airport.’—Adventure: ‘Standing now to the Eastward having given up our Searches after Cape Circumcision concluding if any such place, a small spot extending it self near East and West may be supposed from the Track we run down.’Captain Cook (1967), 167.
On 4 January 1773 the ships were running to the east, some eighteen miles north of the position where there had been an impenetrable field of ice four days earlier. Cook infers correctly that such a large body of ice could not have melted in four days, that it must have drifted northward; once more, not for the last time, his journal-page receives his reflections on the current, as he makes east and somewhat south. It was the 9th that saw an important and triumphant experiment, the taking in of loose ice from round a berg for water—arduous and freezing, as well as picturesque, work (Hodges's drawing struck every fancy); but, with the coppers melting down the stuff and the boats on deck stacked high with it, the ships after another day's effort had more, and sweeter, water than when they left Cape Town. A few days later, while trying the current, Cook sank a thermometer to 100 fathoms, finding the temperature there 32°. That stimulated further cogitations, wherein the accepted physical and geographical principles are questioned. ‘Some curious and interesting experiments are wanting to know what effect cold has on Sea Water in some of the following instances: does it freeze or does it not, if it does, what degree of cold is necessary and what becomes of the Salt brine? for all the Ice we meet with yeilds Water perfectly sweet and fresh.’Journals, II, 77. In Cook's later version of his journal, B.M., Add. Ms 27888, he writes, ‘if it does freeze (of which I make no doubt)1; but we do not know precisely when he made this addition—probably after his other ice observations. Observations, 76–102.
He stood north-east for the rest of the month, spreading the sloops four miles apart on favourable occasions to widen the field of vision. Only on one day were no icebergs seen—the only day since they were first met with, and Cook amused himself calculating how many square miles of ocean would be occupied altogether by the islands of ice. A great deal of the weather was disagreeable. At the beginning of February the ships were in the reported latitude of the land they were searching for, prevented by the wind from being as far west as Cook had planned to be. Furneaux reported seeing rock weed and diving petrels, ‘a great sign of the vicinity of land’: was it to the west or the east? If to the west that was bad luck, because with the wind where it was the only direction to go was east. He was, in reality, about ten degrees west of the land, though east of the meridian of Mauritius, on which it was supposed to lie. He tried east for a day or two; then the wind changed and he tried west. On 6 February the wind went round again. ‘Indeed’, says Cook, ‘I had no sort of incouragement to proceed farther to the West as we have had continualy a long heavy Swell from that quarter which made it very improbable that any large land lay to the West.’ The previous day, ‘Having fair and clear weather’, Cook ‘had all the peoples Bedding &cJournals II, 89.a upon deck to air a thing that was absolutely necessary.’—ibid., 90.
It was in the morning, in a thick fog, in latitude 49°53' S, longitude 63°39' E. Penguins and diving petrels made men think that land might not be far away, and in the fog Cook made short tacks rather than carry blindly on his course; this, he later concluded, must have led to the separation, because the Adventure did
Some said we should find it to East others to the North, but it was remarkable that not one gave it as his opinion that any was to be found to the South which served to convince me that they had no inclination to proceed any farther that way. I however was resolved to get as far to the South as I conveniently could without looseing too much easting altho I must confess I had little hopes of meeting with land, for the high swell or Sea which we have had for some time from the West came now gradually round toSseso that it was not probable any land was near between these two points and it is less probable that land of any extent can lie to the North….ibid., 93.
Why not? Because to the north lay Tasman's track of 1642, and Tasman had met with no land till he altered course even more to the north and discovered Van Diemen's land. The intervening space, Cook rightly guessed, would be traversed by Furneaux, who was more of a free agent than his own officers, with their eyes fixed in the wrong direction. But these officers were somewhat justified. Only about forty miles to the north-east, on that 13 February, lay Heard Island, a great breeding-ground of penguins—not very great in extent, true, but still land; and the ship must have passed closer than Cook would have chosen, if he had had the choice, to the two small rocky islets lying off Heard Island to the west, the McDonald islands. The captain had another, allied, meditation: ‘it is now impossible for us to look upon Penguins to be certain signs of the vicinity of land or in short any other Aquatick birds which frequent high latitudes.’ This is true of penguins, though not of all ‘Aquatick birds’. Still, another dogma had gone.
Two days after Cook's determination to go on further south, we come on another characteristic episode. There had been in the ibid., 102, n. 4. On 14 March, Mitchel recorded, ‘Mustered the People and found them very clean.’—ibid., 105, n.Resolution an outbreak of petty pilfering. Justice demanded, and was granted, some flogging—after which (we learn from the
Journals II, 94, n. 3.
Under these circumstances and surrounded on every side with huge pieces of Ice equally as dangerous as so many rocks, it was natural for us to wish for day-light which when it came was so far from lessening the danger thatit served to increase our apprehensions thereof by exhibiting to our view those mountains of ice which in the night would have passed unseen. These obstacles together with dark nights and the advanced season of the year, discouraged me from carrying into execution a resolution I had taken of crossing the Antarctick Circle once more, according at 4 oClock in the Amwe Tacked and Stood to the North under our two Courses and double reefed Topsails, stormy Weather still continuing which together with a great Sea from the East, made great destruction among the Islands of Ice. This was so far from being of any advantage to us that it served only to increase the number of pieces we had to avoide, for the pieces which break from the large Islands are more dangerous then the Islands themselves, the latter are generally seen at a sufficient distance to give time to steer clear of them, whereas the others cannot be seen in the night or thick weather till they are under the Bows: great as these dangers are, they are now become so very familiar to us that the apprehensions they cause are never of long duration and are in some measure compencated by the very curious and romantick Views many of these Islands exhibit and which are greatly heightned by the foaming and dashing of the waves against them and into the several holes and caverns which are formed in the most of them, in short the whole exhibits a View which can only be discribed by the pencle of an able painter and at once fills the mind with admiration and horror, the first is occasioned by the beautifullniss of the Picture and the latter by the danger attending it, for was a ship to fall aboard one of these large pieces of ice she would be dashed to pieces in a moment.ibid., 98–9.
The pencil of Hodges was able enough, and there is hardly a journal of the voyage that does not attempt somehow to render the romantic fantasy. It may be added that if Cook had managed to cross the Antarctic Circle once more he would probably have found himself ashore, perhaps some miles inland on that part of the continent that is now the Australian Antarctic Territory; for in his longitude of 95°15', and for about fifty degrees to the east, the circle runs either a very short distance from the coast or within it.
Although he stood to the north, he did so very half-heartedly. On 6 March he was still in latitude 60°4' S, and it was not till the next day that he got to 59°59'. He sailed east in 58° or 59° another ten days, for the most part in gales, on one day covering 155 miles, on another 163, though generally only half or a third of those distances. The ibid., 103,9 march. ibid., 106. There was variation, in fact, of 0° 31' E, but he writes, ‘I was not a little pleased with being able to determine with so much precision this point of the line in which the Compass hath no variation.’ He adds, in Add. Resolution shipped no water to speak of, he observed: ‘Upon the whole she goes as dry over the Sea as any ship I ever met with.’Journals II, 105, 14 March.Ms 27888, ‘for I look upon half a degree [as] next to nothing’.
If the reader of this Journal desires to know my reasons for taking the resolution just mentioned I desire he will only consider that after crusing four months in these high Latitudes it must be natural for me to wish to injoy some short repose in a harbour where I can procure some refreshments for my people of which they begin to stand in need of, to this point too great attention could not be paid as the Voyage is but in its infancy.
JournalsII, 106.
The reader is more likely to be baffled by the conscience that thinks explanation necessary.
The wind was between north and west, and he put New Holland aside. Penguins and rock weed, those ministers of deceit, were passed: he did not know that Macquarie Island lay not far to his east. The air grew agreeably warmer. There were seals, Port Egmont hens or skuas, terns, weed which did say something, floating wood. At 10 in the morning of 25 March the masthead lookout sighted the coast of New Zealand. Cook intended to put into the d to return and therefore pushed on not doubting but what we should find anchorage, for in this Bay we were all strangers….’
Dusky Sound is one of the most remote and wildly magnificent spots in New Zealand. The great sheet of water, screened within its entrance from the ocean by an irregular line of islands, and extending into a number of long arms and a vast number of smaller indentations, lies over a bottom anciently gouged in the land by stupendous glaciers, so that its shores tend to stand up immediately from the sea. The water is almost uniformly deep; only at the head of subordinate stretches have shoals been built up by the quick detritus-laden streams. There is little flat land; the eye is ever carried to immense heights, whether close around or in far misty recession. Except where a prodigious cliff-face falls vertically to the depths, the steep slopes are covered from high water mark up to the limit of growth by forest dense, unbroken, sombre. The scale is so deceptive, as well as so vast, that a full-grown tree, taken as the measure of some less regarded height, becomes insignificant and lost; a tremendous white cataract seems to descend only a few yards, not hundreds of feet, before it plunges hidden under the dark green covering and changes its direction. Low islets are tree-clothed; a rock perhaps will jut out quite bare of earth. Rain falls heavily for days, thick cloud makes invisible the whole landscape; then the sun of an occasional clear day will render the scene sharp as well as heroic. Into this large frame entered the Resolution, no larger than she would have seemed amid the waste of the southern ocean. But now nature, however wild, was friendly. There was more than the immensities, there was a superabundance of refreshment, as Cook was soon to find.
He ran about two leagues up the bay and inside the island he called Anchor Island let go his anchor for the first time in four months. Cook writes ( Cf. Clerke, 28 March (ibid., 111, n. 1), ‘We've now arriv'd at a Port with a Ships Crew in the best Order that I believe ever was heard of after such a long Passage at Sea—particularly if we come to consult Climates; this happy state of Health was certainly owing to the Extraordinary indulgencies of Govern See the sketch map of the clearing on Astronomers Point with the stumps located, in Journals II, 110), ‘after having been 117 Days at Sea in which time we have Sailed Leagues without once having sight of land’. In the Admiralty and Mss he gives the distance as 3660 leagues. His calculation of days seem to be wrong: as a point of pedantry, I make it 122 days.t of Crowt, Wheat, Malt &c &c together with the strickt attention paid by Capt Cook to the Peoples Clenliness.'Dusky Bay (Christchurch, 1966), 135; and pl. 4 in that volume.
Fresh provision was not confined to the daily catch of fish—‘all large, firm, and exceedingly well tasted’, says Clerke, with love enumerating them—‘likewise great abundance of very large and very good Crawfish’. Seals found at Seal island or rock, not far within the entrance to the sound, were killed for food and lamp oil, ‘whose Haslets are exceeding good, and some part of the Body properly manag'd make steaks very little inferior (some of our Gentry sware, far superior) to Beefsteak'. Cook is as rapturous as anyone over the wild fowl—‘To day we had an excellent dinner on fish, seal, and wild fowl’—ducks of various sorts, wood hens or weka, oystercatchers. There were sporting expeditions; the survey which was faithfully carried on (Pickersgill produced an admirable chart) might well finish for the day with a burst of firing. Some of the names inscribed upon the chart registered pleasant occasions of sport or its aftermath—Duck Cove, Luncheon Cove, Supper Cove. Goose Cove, however, was named not for slaughter, but because here Cook chose to leave the last of his Journals II, 126.
Were there people? If so, Cook was anxious to make their acquaintance. The morning after the ship was settled in harbour some of the officers took a boat on a shooting party into the next arm of the bay, the arm that Cook was soon to call Cascade Cove. Seeing inhabitants, they returned to inform the captain, thinking it unsafe to go on when the rain would make their fire-arms useless in case of need. The interested natives just appeared within sight of the ship, then retired behind a point of land in the heavy rain. When the rain lifted one canoe came again, closer, and those in it stared for half an hour before they retreated, untouched by demonstrations of friendship. After dinner Cook went to the cove in search of them; he found two poor huts, a canoe, fishing nets and a few fish, but no people; leaving a few medals, therefore, looking-glasses, beads and a hatchet, he himself retired in patience. Three days later these articles were still undisturbed. It was not until the evening of 6 April that Cook, on his way back with Hodges and the Forsters from exploring the north side of the bay, met on a rock at the north-east point of a small island with an ‘Indian’ and two women who did not retreat when the boat drew near. Cook's approach is described by Forster, I, 137–8.Journals II, 116, n. 5.
they retired but waited when I advanced alone and beckoned with their hands for the others to keep back as they had seen me do. At length one of them laid down his spear, pulled up a grass plant and came to me with it in his hand giving me hold of one end while he held the other, standing in this manner he made a speach not one word of which I understood, in it were some long pauses waiting as I thought for me to make answer, for when I spoke he proceeded; as soon as this ceremony was over, which was but short we saluted each other, he then took his hahou or coat from off his back and put it upon mine after which peace seemed firmly established….ibid., 124–5. This may be the occasion referred to by Midshipman Elliott in his
Memoirs, ff. 16v-17: ‘certainly no man could be better calculated to gain the confidence of Savages than CaptnCook. He was Brave, uncommonly Cool, Humane and Patient. He would land alone unarm'd—or lay aside his Arms, and sit down, when they threaten'd with theirs, throwing them Beads, Knives, and other little presents, then by degrees advancing nearer, till by Patience, and forbearance, he gain'd their friendship, and an intercourse with them; which to people in our situation, was of the utmost consequence.'—Quoted ibid., 124, n. 3.
It is typical; and one would give much to have heard the voices and the words of those two men in that place. Cook could not stay to visit the habitations in the bush, up a tidal river. He arrived at the ship, with a good deal added to his chart, after two nights out, to find that his other friends had disappeared. The glimpses of these few men and women he gives us, the defeated and scattered remnant of the Mamoe people, driven from easier lands farther north, are the only glimpses we have; for even here their enemies pursued them and slew. Cook was at a loss to know why they lived apart.
Returning from this expedition he lacked the time to explore an arm of the sound that ran north. April was moving on, by the 25th there had been a week without rain, in which the ship had been put in a condition for sea, and he now determined to investigate this unexplored inlet. It was more than an inlet, it proved to supply a northern passage to the outer sea. Cook resolved to use it. He got everything on board and only waited for a wind to leave, spending a last few hours in digging a garden and sowing seeds, not with much hope of a successful outcome. On 29 April he weighed and stood up the sound with a light south-west breeze. It was 11 May before he was clear of the northern entrance and out at sea again. At first calms, then bad weather, then a baffling mixture of both delayed his progress; at times the boats towed, but this was slow work, and most of these days were spent at anchor, while the winter gales began to blow in from the Tasman Sea, and morning after a storm showed the heights covered with snow. It was still possible to manage shooting and exploring trips. Wales, the conscientious astronomer, went on one—‘This is the first Days Amusement I have been able to take since I came to this Place.—I might with great Truth have said since I left England’; and added, ‘About 9 0 Clock we returned on board the Ship with not a dry thread about us. I am right served for repining in the Morning.’ 2-3 May; ibid., 783. ‘… our hearts sunk with apprehension lest the ship might be destroyed by the tempest or its concomitant aetherial fires, and ourselves left to perish in an unfrequented part of the world.—Forster, I, 185. It was this sort of thing that made Dr Johnson impatient of Forster, I, 181.
Nevertheless, no sooner did he have Pickersgill back on board than he was out himself, exploring another arm that ran eastwards, nearer the entrance, and was out for twelve hours, returning wet through, though with plenty of wild fowl. Meanwhile Gilbert the master had examined the passage to the sea. Next day Cook and all the officers were shooting again, ‘for a Sea Stock’; then it was another strong westerly gale with heavy rain which kept the ship at anchor; as soon as this moderated he went to the rocks which lay off the entrance to gather in a supply of seals. At last, on the morning of 11 May, a breeze came from the south-east, and the Resolution got to sea in a ‘prodigious’ south-west swell. She left her name behind her attached to the lofty-peaked and much-indented island that forms a large part of the north shore of
He gives an appreciative account of the place, both for the ‘curious reader’ and for future navigators, ‘for we can by no means till what use future ages may make of the discoveries made in the present’; and no port in New Zealand that he had been in, far remote as it was from the trading parts of the world, afforded such plenty of refreshments; a port of safe and easy access, with anchorages for fleets, with timber to mast them. As Mr Hodges has drawn the country very accurately, Cook will describe it only in general terms.
Journals II, 755–6; and ‘The Happy taughtness of my Jacket excites in me a gratitude to do some justice to this good Ms 8951, 11 May 1773.The Seasons, adding a line or two of his own to adapt the bard to the New Zealand ambience.Journals II, 782–3.
There was a mixture of weather as he made up the west coast, but nothing remarkable until 17 May. That morning the ship had
Adventure in Ship Cove, by evening they were anchored, and next day moved further in and moored with a hawser to the shore.
Furneaux, by beginning to identify from too far west the features Tasman had named—he thought, or was persuaded by Cook that his South West Cape was Tasman's South Cape—got them all wrong. He thought that the wide entrance to D'Entrecasteaux Channel was Tasman's Storm Bay. This latter however, was his own Adventure Bay. Furneaux's Narrative, B.M. Add. Furneaux came on board. His report interested Cook. When the ships parted cómpany on 8 February he had done his best to carry out his instructions, but he could not regain position, and after waiting around three full days decided to bear away for the rendezvous in New Zealand. Although, as we can see from his log, he was anxious to make a landfall as soon as possible, he pursued the sensible course Cook thought he would. He knew that Cook had the Van Diemen's Land problem in his mind, he knew what course Tasman had sailed across the southern Sse and looking likely to haul round to the Eastward, which would have blown right on the land, I therefore thought it more prudent to leave the Coast and steer for New Zealand.’ And the geographical query?—‘it is my opinion that there is no Streights between New Holland and Van Dieman's Land, but a very deep bay.’Ms 27890, printed in Journals II, 736.Journals II, 153, n. 4: ‘Every one being of Hopes to meet with our Concort, and Spending a Few Months in Ease & Quietness, After Beatg the Seas For 4 Months without Intermission.’—Midshipman Wilby.Adventure was moored in Ship Cove, and Furneaux celebrated by serving out an extra half-allowance of brandy.
Cook studied Furneaux's journal, possibly cross-examined him on it, and made his own analysis. Furneaux's consistent westerly winds were in contrast with the prevalent easterlies south of 58° or 60°: the southern oceanic wind system was obviously different from the simple pattern he had had in his mind at the outset of the voyage. He does not seem to have seen the journals of any of Furneaux's officers, or he might have hesitated longer over accepting Furneaux's verdict on the main point. A ‘deep bay’ and a ‘very deep bay’? Curiously enough, those officers did not argue for a strait in the position of Bass Strait proper—the ‘very deep bay’—or even raise its possibility. The ‘deep bay’ they took for a strait, however, was indeed a strait, Banks Strait, which communicates with Bass Strait between Tasmania and the Furneaux islands; and Bass Strait opens widely to the north of the Furneaux islands. Furneaux ‘supposes’ (perhaps under cross-examination) ‘that there is a Strait or Passage behind’ these islands; but neither he nor Cook supposes the possibility
ibid., 165.a all serve to increase the probability.’Zeehanes bocht, another deep bay, into Cook's Strait, was persuading himself hard to agree with Furneaux, and that the man who had clung on through storm to the northern end of New Zealand and negotiated the shoals of New Holland would not have retired from Van Diemen's Land without proof one way or the other. We may remember also that Cook's own journal was a report to the Admiralty, and that all his journals indicate that he disliked acquainting his masters with a defect he might perceive in his subordinates.
He now formulated his plan for the immediate future. This entailed some disturbance of the expectation entertained by his second in command. Furneaux, like any orthodox naval captain, regarded the winter months as a time for winter quarters, for ‘ease and quietness’, and had stripped his ship and settled down accordingly. The first two or three weeks he divided between Ship Cove, in the usual work about the vessel, and the island Motuara, where he put up tents, moved his sick (he had some bad cases of scurvy), and planted vegetable gardens. On the rocky islet at its end Bayly had his observatory. The New Zealanders came daily both to ship and shore, trading freely their fish, and almost anything they had, for nails and old bottles and whatever else they could get: they would certainly not part with the freshly severed head they had in one of their canoes. They enquired about Tupaia. With some notable exceptions they were, thought Burney, ‘Thieves and cursed lousy’. Towards the end of April Furneaux transferred the tents to Ship Cove, close to the watering place, and moored the ship closer in shore. Here it was that two severe shocks of an earthquake were felt, followed a week later by the possibly worse shock of Cook's arrival—though for the moment, after a separation of fourteen weeks, and a little despair of ever seeing the Resolution again, there was on both sides ‘an uncommon joy’. Cook immediately had his men out, and went himself, to look for wild celery and scurvy grass; and, if his orders were obeyed, there was a radical revision of the Adventure's diet. It is not clear that they were obeyed with a literal adherence
Resolution's company that proved unequal to the land. These were a ram and a ewe, last of the sheep that Cook had brought from the Cape. At Dusky Sound they had tottered off the ship almost dead of scurvy; now, with herbage abundant, they survived a bare three days—the reason being ‘some poisonous plant’, thought Cook; ‘thus all my fine hopes of stocking this Country with a breed of Sheep were blasted in a moment.’Journals II, 167. The poisonous plant theory is quite likely to have been correct. The sheep could very easily have come on the attractive, but deadly, Tutu ( Coriaria sarmentosa)—the New Zealand farmers' ‘Tute’—a bane of wandering stock.
The shock of Cook's arrival arose from his announcement that there was to be no more ease and quietness, that winter quarters were over. Since Furneaux had ‘in a great degree’ cleared up the Van Diemen's Land question he would not go there himself; but he would not—to use his own uncompromising language—idle away the whole winter in port, he would explore the unknown parts of the sea to the east and north. This he ‘proposed’ to Furneaux; to this proposition Furneaux ‘readily agreed’; really there was nothing else he could do, in the face of this overwhelming commander, and accordingly began to get his sloop ready for sea again, as he was ‘disired’, as quickly as possible. In the meantime Cook wasted few moments. He inspected the vegetable gardens, and encouraged the native people to look after them, cleared more ground on Motuara and planted wheat and peas, carrots, parsnips and strawberries; released a pair of goats, hoping, as Furneaux had already put a boar and sow on shore, that in time goats and hogs, even if not sheep would populate the country (he trusted too much in the fear that he thought the people had of these animals); he added to his observations of the New Zealanders' habits, their divisions, their unsettled nature, and noted that the visits of his own ships had done nothing to improve their morals. Alas, for wives and daughters; alas, for the ‘happy tranquillity’ enjoyed by this people and their forefathers before the arrival of civilised Christians—which he had so signally failed to notice himself when he first arrived three years before. There is a naïve oddity about these bursts of sentimental nonsense from Cook. Had the captain this time been too much exposed to the oratory of Wales's own longitude for Journals II, 174; and 579–80.Journals II, 138) compared with the correct 166°33′56″E.
By the beginning of June both ships were ready for sea. Cook summarised his programme anew and gave it to Furneaux in writing. He would sail east between the latitudes of 41° and 46° S until he came to longitude 140° or 135° W; then, if he had discovered no land, make for Tahiti to refresh: from Tahiti he would return ‘by the Shortest rout’ to his New Zealand base, whence he would plunge south for the completion of his instructions. That is, he would cross, first, a part of the ocean untouched on his previous voyage, when he had come down from Tahiti to latitude 40° and turned west to New Zealand; and second, another part where theoretically a
It may be thought by some an extraordinary step in me to proceed on discoveries as far south as 46° in the very depth of Winter for it must be own'd that this is a Season by no means favourable for discoveries. It nevertheless appear'd to me necessary that something must be done in it, in order to lessen the work I am upon least I should not be ablel to finish the discovery of the Southern part of the South Pacifick Ocean the insuing Summer, besides if I should discover any land in my rout to the East I shall be ready to begin with the Summer to explore it; seting aside all these considerations I have little to fear, having two good Ships well provided and healthy crews.
JournalsII, 173.
A dangerous expedition, thought Forster; a ‘party of Pleasure’, fancied others, their minds no doubt a little bemused with the notion of Tahiti. For two days a contrary wind kept the ships in harbour; on 7 June they were able to put to sea and next morning were clear of the strait. It was on this day, the 8th, that the Arnold chronometer on board the Resolution would not wind, and had to be let finally run down; the surviving Adventure one was still keeping reasonably good time. The Harrison-Kendall watch ticked steadily on.
The winter weather was unpleasant, though not intolerably so. There was no ice to coat the rigging and jam the blocks. There was some fog, a great deal of haze and rain, dark gloomy weather, a succession of southerly gales, fresh gales, strong gales, hard gales, squalls, high seas; when the wind went round to the north it generally blew a gale; topsails split; there was continual reefing and double reefing and striking of yards. There were a few calm, even pleasant, intervals, some gentle breezes. Once Cook was able to set his studding. sails. The great swell continually came in from the south or southwest, with very few changes to the north. A little rockweed was seen, pretty clearly drifted from New Zealand. The Resolution's wheel, bucking, carried two steersmen in succession right over it in opposite directions, one of them twice. A goat fell overboard, was rescued and died of the immersion. In the Adventure, said Bayly, there was very
There was a flurry, not quite the last, of strong gales and squalls; after which the weather turned to gentle breezes and fair pleasant days, and sighs were heard for the trade wind. The temperature rose; lighter clothes were necessary. Then the The guess that it was a junior officer—a midshipman?—who delivered himself of this judgment may be wrong. We get it from Burney, Ferguson Adventure's men began to go down with scurvy. Her cook, a dirty indolent man, a natural prey, died of it on 23 July, though Cook learnt nothing of sickness for five days more. He was able to send a boat on board the day after that and was told of twenty men sick with scurvy and flux. He immediately despatched a new cook, and urged every method he could think of on Furneaux to stay the disease. A few of his own crew were showing slight symptoms but were already being specially dieted; a single man, a marine, was seriously ill, of dropsy—he had been ailing since the ship left England. Furneaux, it seems, was doing his best, too late: he could not, Cook thought, have insisted on a proper use of greens at Queen Charlotte Sound. Tropic birds appeared in the sky, the winds were uncertain, tending to go round to the north, the passage became tedious to many persons. Where was the trade wind? Furneaux on 6 August reported great improvement in his men, the flux gone; from that night the trade wind blew. But the improvement was temporary only: by the 10th more than a third of them were scurvy cases. His lieutenant Burney hit on one of the reasons, the ship's ‘being greatly Lumber'd, the people have scarce room to stir below,' and they were depressed at the length of
Ms: ‘One of the Resolution's gentlemen says Nothing hurts him more than this Cruize being mentioned as a patty of Pleasure, if, says he, they had put it down to the account of hard services, I had been content & thought myself well off, but to have it set down under the Article of Refreshment is d-d hard.’—Journals II, 191, n. 4.
In the evening of 11 August, as the ships sailed almost west, an atoll was sighted to the southward—perhaps one of those discovered by Bougainville, vaguely placed by him? It was not, it was the islet Tauere; ‘this Sea abounds in these little paltry Islands’, says Clerke, islands producing nothing but coconuts and surrounded with dangerous coral reefs. In the evening there was another, Tekokota; and the following daybreak still another, right ahead not more than two miles distant, a large shoal or reef twenty leagues round, dotted with islets on its north side, a dreadful surf on the south—Marutea, one of the most dangerous atolls in the Tuamotus.Journals II, 194, 196. Tauere was not discovered by Bougainville, but by Don Domingo de Boenechca, in the Aguila, in 1772. The printed Voyage calls it Resolution Island. Cook was the first discoverer of Tekokota—the printed Voyage calls it Doubtful Island—and also of Marutea, called Furneaux in the printed Voyage. The atoll discovered on the 13th was Motu Tu'a. Cook tried various names, Stephens Isle, Sandwich Isle, Harveys Isle, and finally in the printed Voyage came down on Adventure Island. Wales called it The Devil's Girdle.Adventure was so sickly that Furneaux had to borrow men from the Resolution to work the ship.
Cook estimated the shore to be about eight leagues off—some thirty miles. He sailed on till midnight, then brought to till 4 a.m., then stood in for the land. When he retired to bed he left directions for the steering of the ship; when he rose at dawn he found that ‘by some mistake’—a dozing officer of the watch?—she was on a wrong course and not more than half a league from the reef. He immediately gave orders—no doubt delivered with some force—to haul off to the north. Had the breeze continued all would have been well: it flattened to a calm, and the set of the sea carried the ships closer and closer in. The boats were towing; for a short time it looked as if they might get them round the point of the island into the bay. Even then natives were on board' and round them in canoes, busily trading fruit and fish for nails and beads. About two in the afternoon they were before an opening in the reef. The situation outside was becoming more and more dangerous. It was too deep to anchor. Perhaps they could get through that opening into safety? No, it was too shallow: worse, it caused such an indraught that both ships were carried towards the reef at an alarming rate. Cook held in readiness one of the warping-machines he had extorted from the Admiralty: now was the time to use it, and it was quite useless. He dropped a bower anchor; by the time the Sparrman's account is in his Resolution was brought up she was in less than three fathoms; the sea was breaking violently close under her stern, and at every fall of a wave her bottom struck. To add to this danger there was the other danger of collision; the Adventure was driving down on her, even with her own anchors let go. When Furneaux's anchors held, the ships were so close that a plank would have gone gunwale to gunwale. Cook sent out his kedge and coasting anchors; heaving on these, with the bower anchor cut away, sheer power of human muscle, saved the Resolution; when the current slackened all the boats towed, the anchors were hove up, and at that moment, as the day began to close in, a very light air came from the land. It was sufficient to help her to an offing of two miles by 7 o'clock, when all her boats were sent to the assistance of the
Adventure; but before they could reach her she was safely under sail, leaving behind her three anchors, a cable and two hawsers. It had been an uncomfortable twelve hours, of long strain for sailors and civilians both. At least the sailors had something to do. Mr Sparrman, even in his anxiety, watched his fellow-men, and was pleased to observe the celerity and orderliness with which all commands were carried out. He was a little wounded by the stream of ‘Goddams’ which poured from the officers, ‘and particularly the Captain, who, while the danger lasted, stamped about the deck and grew hoarse with shouting’; and he distributed speaking-trumpets, he modestly adds, to those officers who appeared to him the most efficient in handling the vessel; for which they were grateful. He may be largely correct in what he says about Cook: ‘As soon as the ship was once more afloat, I went down to the Ward Room with Captain Cook who, although he had from beginning to end of the incident appeared perfectly alert and able, was suffering so greatly from his stomach that he was in a great sweat and could scarcely stand. It was, indeed, hardly remarkable that, after so great a responsibility and so prodigious a strain on both his mental and physical capacities, he should be completely exhausted.’ Sparrman prescribed ‘an old Swedish remedy’, a good dose of brandy. ‘His aches vanished immediately, his fatigue a few minutes later and, after a good meal, we soon regained our accustomed energy.’Voyage Round the World (London, 1953), 51–2.
The purpose in coming first to this bay, in the Tautira district of Tahiti, was to get the Adventure's sick men on shore, and fed with fresh food, as soon as possible. Cook's own sick man, the marine Isaac Taylor, died a short time after the ships arrived, from a complication of disorders in which scurvy had no part. He was taken out to sea for burial, like Buchan on the first voyage. The others, sent on shore in the morning and brought back at night, under the care of a surgeon's mate, rapidly recovered. There was a sufficient supply of fruit and roots, but hardly a hog for sale; those that were seen, it was explained, all belonged to the great chief Vehiatua, and Vehiatua was himself for some days nowhere to be seen. In the meantime Cook twice had boats out to look for the anchors left behind. They found the Resolution's; the Adventure's were lost beyond
ari'i knocked down a thief and returned a stolen musket Cook was heartily glad; for as he said, he himself could not have got it back by gentle means, while other means would have cost him more than ten times the value of the musket, in interrupted trade and bad relations. He could think back to the experience of his first voyage; and the longer the experience he had, the deeper the embarrassment was borne in on him. This particular occasion was a minor one. His relations with the people were on the whole amicable, he did in the end manage to meet Vehiatua and get a few hogs. It was not Vehiatua the thin old man with a white beard that he had met on his island tour in 1769; it was the old man's son and recent successor, a pleasant youth with whom he now spent most of a day, sharing his ari'i's stool, walking arm in arm with him, giving him news of Banks and others he remembered, giving him presents, explaining that he could not stay for some months. Pickersgill, left behind with a boat's crew to trade when the ships left, managed to obtain more hogs; managed to obtain also, after Cook's departure, a night's entertainment from the chief Reti, the friend of Bougainville, and some of his young ladies. ‘The Hymeneal Songs being allready perform'd we retired to rest: untell the Blushing Morn told us it was time to depart'—how distinctly the lieutenant stands before his readers!
Cook sailed from Tautira on 24 August, after only a week's stay, in the hope that supplies would be greater at Matavai. He had in the week learnt more about island politics than the change in one great chieftainship, and was consequently prepared for further changes at Matavai and Pare, though he could not understand the innermost nature of chiefly rivalries. Just as the interval between Wallis's arrival and his own earlier one had humbled the proud Purea, so had the period since then cast down others of the mighty. It was a coalition between the great Tuteha and the great Vehiatua that had broken Purea: the success of the coalition had been its solvent, Tuteha had set out to crush his ally. He tried by sea, and the battle was drawn; he tried by land, and, overwhelmingly defeated by the old man, was himself killed together with that other notable whom Cook had known, Tepau-i-Ahurai Tamaiti. This was in March
The difficulty of communication, with other difficulties, is illustrated by Wales's longer account, 22 August: ‘Several of our People being on shore to Day, told us on their return that they had seen an European who ran directly from them into the Woods, and that by his appearance they judged him to be a Frenchman: some Gentlemen who were then on shore endeavoured to enquire of the Natives concerning him and understood that a French Ship had been late here whose Capari'i rahi Tu, or Tu-nui-ea-i-te-Atua, of Pare, personally unimpressive in spite of his name, ‘Great Tu wondrous next to God’—of character even mean, but with advantageous family connections, ambitious, persistent. He was the young man sedulously kept out of sight by his dominant great-uncle Tuteha, during Cook's first visit; he was the person, his family was the family, to profit by the partiality for Matavai Bay as a port of call shown by Cook and Cook's English successors. If Cook had shown a preference for Vaitepiha Bay, for the Tautira district, it is possible that the later abode of power in Tahiti might have been different, because the presence of British ships meant prestige, alien goods, the musket. Those Europeans who came to the eastern part of the island made less impression because they traded less and broke off their visits too soon. Cook in 1769 had heard of Bougainville and took him to be Spanish; he now heard of a visit from Spaniards and took them to be French. Some of his men even said they had seen a Frenchman on shore.t had told them he would return in 5 Months and that the Person who had been seen was left behind untill his return.’ 23 August: ‘To day a more strict enquiry has been made into the Affair of the Frenchman by some who pretend to understand the language best…. The ship is now spanish; and the Capt, whilst here, hanged three or four of his People, and this escaped from him…. On the whole that there may have been a French or spanish Ship here since the Endeavour is very probable; but, in my opinion, all the rest of the story is a mere Fiction.’—Journals II, 792–3. Wales made a very accurate judgment. Cook paid very little attention to the story.Aguila from Lima, sent on reconnaissance by the viceroy of Peru, Don Manuel de Amat, who was greatly alarmed by the news of English discovery of a large and fertile island in an ocean which he continued to regard as a preserve of Spain. His commander, indeed, called the place the Isla de Amat. The Aguila had remained for a month, in November and December 1772; the four
e pohe no Pepe (the name was one the islanders must have heard much), was perhaps some sort of gastric influenza, fatal to those without natural defence. The Spaniards came again more than once, always in intervals between Cook's visits; he was to keep on hearing about them, sometimes as being almost round the next corner; it must have seemed sometimes almost a game of hide and seek; he was never to meet them. It was they, however, who first met Tu, whom Cook thought ‘now the Reigning Prince’.
Reigning prince he might be: what struck the visitors, for the week of their stay, apart from his fine stature (he was three inches over six feet) was that he was ‘timorous’. He made no bones about it. He did not like the noise of guns, he disliked swords; his people did not hesitate to report, when he missed an appointment, that the ari'i was matau, or frightened. He liked presents, he liked the bagpipes, he did not like others to get too much attention—not even the aged and sorrowing mother of Tuteha, whose tears on meeting Toote, her son's friend, almost reduced Cook to tears himself. Tu played his part reasonably well with reciprocal gifts of food and cloth, and the entertainment of a ‘Dramatick Heava or Play’ in which his own sister danced; yet here, as at Tautira, supplies were not plentiful. Pickersgill, sent along the coast, could get very little—all hogs belonged to the ari'i, he was told—and Purea, whom he encountered, seemed herself reduced to poverty. For a captain who wanted to lay in stocks, the island had not turned out well: twenty-five hogs, not large, and one fowl in a fortnight, was not much; and it was not the breadfruit season. Neither captain was backward in trying to please; some seamen and marines who had quarrelled riotously one night with the people on shore were duly punished. The shortage was, probably, due to the destruction of war; perhaps also to a rahui, a solemn embargo laid by an ari'i rahi on consumption, to build up resources, which only he could remove: thus it could be said that in one place all hogs belonged to Vehiatua, in the other to Tu. On the other hand, the sick had recovered, fresh water had been obtained, all necessary repairs completed, so that the stay could be considered valuable; while Wales had been able to take an observatory on shore and make observations on the very spot from which the Transit of Venus had been observed, astonished by the tractability of the four or five hundred Tahitians who always surrounded him, kept off only by a rope and four sentinels.
Journals II, 211, n. 5. The cheerful Clerke had a very sentimental side.
There were to be calls at the leeward islands Huahine and Raiatea. It was not a long passage to Fare harbour, on the west side of Huahine, where the According to Wales, the ibid., 217. Ori, according to Wales (ibid., 802), was ‘a thin elderly man, very grave & seems to be much reverenced by his Subjects.’ Wales, ibid., 801. '…during our short stay we procured not less than 300 Hogs to both Sloops, besides Fowls & Fruit…'—ibid., 221; and in Cook's log, ‘we have got by purchase & presents in both sloops about 400 Hogs & half as many Cocks.’—ibid., n. 5. The men bought cocks for cock-fighting; Forster, Adventure missed stays and went on the reef; but Cook was ready for this, with his launch in the water, and she was soon off again.Adventure went on the reef twice. The launch carried out an anchor for her, by which her men hove her off; ‘but as they were going to carry out another, the first came home, and she fell again on the Reef where she lay untill we got to an Anchor, when the Master was sent with Hands to assist them farther, and by Noon they were clear of the Reef, & soon after safe at an Anchor.’—Journals II, 801.Voyage, I, 458–9.
The passage to Raiatea was again a short one, round its southern end, where Cook corrected his chart, and up the west coast to Haamanino harbour by night—a dark night, wherein the lights of fishermen on the reef were sufficient signals of danger. Next morning, the 8th, with the wind blowing right out of the harbour, Cook proved his seamanship by ‘borrowing’ close to the reef on the south side of the channel, then shooting through it with all sails set to where a boat marked his chosen anchoring place. He warped further in and moored; the Bayly has a brief account of the matter, ibid., 226, n. 3. See also Wales, Adventure followed suit. It was the end of the day by the time both ships were settled, and long before then, crowded round with canoes offering the plantain plants of welcome, they were embarrassed at the quantity of hogs and piglets and fruit thrust on them, with nothing but beads and nails expected in return. To describe all that happened in the next week would be but to trace the details of a pattern. The hospitality was vast. The chief, Orio, though not so close to Cook's heart as Ori, put aside all ceremony, insisted on exchanging names with him, exchanged visits and dinners, brought along his young son for inspection and presents, had his beautiful daughter Poetua dance and act, arranged a ‘Comedy or Dramatick Heava’ every day when there was not a performance for the islanders as of course. The ‘young Princess’, slender and graceful, made an impression on more than one heart. It was remarked that a not infrequent theme of the drama in these islands was successful theft; and the people were as enthusiastic in stealing as they were in trade or in making presents. It would not
Journals II, 772.Remarks, 97–8, and Reply to Mr. Wales's Remarks, 36–8.
After eight days Cook was resolved to leave. There was no more to be done; his decks were so heaped with supplies it was almost impossible to move. The young Tahitian Porio had decided to
ibid., 237–8.Resolution was taken by another youth called Hitihiti—or, as he was known to his shipmates; Odiddy. Furneaux still had his Mae, the young person who was to figure on the stage of the world and for ages to come, as Omai. When would Cook return? asked Orio; let him bring his sons with him. The aging Ori had thought that he and Cook might not meet again; perhaps, in another four years, they would both be dead; but ‘Let your sons come, they will be well received.’ On 17 September in the morning the ships sailed. Cook had a good deal to commit to his journal as a result of this last month, in addition to the record of events. He had to modify or expand some of his earlier impressions; wherever he had gone he had tried to have the marine Gibson, the attempted deserter of the first voyage, with him, as the man best acquainted with the language; he had some pages of criticism of Bougainville's account of Tahiti, but with Gibson's help had verified Bougainville's assertion of human sacrifice there (only of taata ino, evil folk, he was told); at Raiatea he had tasted kava for the first time; he meditated once more—not improbably with the help of Wales, to judge from Wales's own journal—on the nature of island morals. ‘One ought not to be too severe upon these people when they do commit a thieft sence we can hardly charge them with any other Vice, Incont[in]ency in the unmarried people can hardly be call'd a Vice sence neither the state or Individuals are the least injured by it.' Past criticism had undoubtedly gone too far. Were English women to be judged from visitors to the ships of a naval port, or the commerce of Covent Garden or Drury Lane?Journals II, 236, 238–9. Cook must undoubtedly have read Wales's journal, at an early stage; compare Cook, 238–9, and notes 1 and 2 on 239, with Wales, 796–7.
He had modified his plan again. He had intended, when he left New Zealand, to return to it from Tahiti ‘by the Shortest rout’. Now, leaving Raiatea, he steered a western course inclining to the south, not as the shortest route, but ‘as well to avoid the tracks of former Navigators as to get into the Latitude of Amsterdam Island discovered by Tasman in 1643, my intention being to run as far west
ibid., 239. Quiros's La Dezena or La Decena was most probably the Tuamotuan atoll of Tauere, lat. 17°23' S, long. 141°30' W, already seen by Cook, and a considerable distance from the Hervey Islands.—Historical Collection of Voyages carried in the ship, and gives precision, and even reality, as it were, to island groups that were almost shadows from the past. So he pursued his chosen course through the rest of September, in generally good weather—generally shortening sail and bringing to at night. A week after his departure, the island plantains and bananas were exhausted; the people were on to ‘Sea Bisket’ again, but pork was still plentiful enough to give every man his fill. A day out peaked Maupiti, one of the most westerly of the Of Islands and Men (Melbourne, 1968), 70.
The Tongan islands are like a narrow net flung irregularly over the ocean, 175 miles from north to south, falling more thickly in some places than in others, in places torn, so that we get a number of clusters or sub-groups—Tongatapu—-‘Eua in the south, Nomuka and Kotu as one moves north, then Ha'apai, then Vava'u; while beyond these limits, both north and south, are detached fragments that by settlement or nearest contiguity must be reckoned parts of the same system. The greater number of the more than hundred islands and islets, ranging from quite considerable pieces of land to specks almost awash, are coralline—Tongatapu itself is a raised atoll—and lie on the eastern side of the group; the waters that flow between them have a frightening floor of shoal and reef. To the west
liku, which mark the raised island—low ledges, except the great cliffs of ‘Eua, looking down on the thick leafy covering of a narrow strip of flat land, and beyond that to the vast surface of the sea, the plunging miles of the Tonga Deep. The defect of the islands for explorers, as Tasman found before Cook, is the scarcity of fresh water. Rain seeps away through the coral formation and the sea seeps in; ponds and wells are few and brackish, it is a brackish fluid that comes with digging. There is a little stream among the hills of ‘Eua, which makes that island enviable; there is no other. For the islanders this mattered less; they drank from the coconut. In one respect, therefore, these islands were not profitable places of call—though it must be remembered that to seafarers sweetness of water could be a relative thing: in other respects they were highly profitable, because they were well cultivated, fresh food abounded, and the people were friendly Tasman had roughly indicated on his chart the main groups from south to centre; Schouten and Le Maire, a hundred and fifty years after them Wallis, had touched on or noted one or two of the most northerly outliers, without suspecting any larger archipelago beyond. Cook now began his exercise in connection and accuracy.
This first visit was confined to ‘Eua and Tongatapu, the native names of which he was not long in finding out. Sailing up the western coast of ‘Eua, inside an off-lying islet called Kalau, he anchored before a small opening in the rocks which led to the shore—the only anchorage the island provided on this side, as it turned out—in a place which he called English Road. Here the land rose immediately from the beach in a gentle grassy slope. The ships were surrounded by canoes; islanders, quite unarmed, eagerly clambered aboard, with tapa cloth to exchange for nails. A chief appeared, ‘Tioonee', who took the two captains ashore with a party of others, through a crowd so thick they could hardly land, up the slope to his house. The situation was delightful, the people amiable, a performance on the ships' bagpipes was returned by a song from the young women;
fa'itoka, or chiefly burial mount, was something quite new to him, he was glad to lay there his own offering of medals and nails, and to listen to what seemed to be the invocation of priests; was glad to meet and mark great men and to perambulate the ‘delightfull Walks’ of Tongatapu: ‘I thought I was transported into one of the most fertile plains of Europe… . Nature, assisted by a little art, no where appears in a more florishing state than at this isle.’Journals II, 252.
Cook stayed here four days, till the afternoon of 7 October. It could not be all paradise, the people could not all be irreproachably civil and cheerful. The chief to whom the greatest reverence was paid—he must certainly be the king, Cook thought wrongly—seemed a very dull stupid person indeed, though he did reciprocate gifts with generosity. His name was Latunipulu; he was a male tamaha, or ‘sacred child’. The Tongan chiefly system was very complicated. The titular ruler was the Tu'i Tonga (Tu'i, a king or governor). His eldest daughter by his principal wife was the Tu'i Tonga fefine, the female Tu'i Tonga. She was so sacred that no Tongan could marry her, and her traditional mate was the Fijian chief the Tu'i Lakeba. Their first born was the tamaha, sacred child. Dullness did not make him any less sacred or reverenced.Resolution with an armful of navigational books, as well as the master's sword and other sundries; at the landing place, said Wales, they ‘several times attempted to take the Cloaths of our Back.’ There was a little rough treatment in return, a few discharges of small shot—which, surprisingly enough, alarmed no one. Outside the ships, such things happened only at the landing place; in the country everyone, even if alone and unarmed, was perfectly safe. It was perhaps as well not to risk outwearing a welcome. The possibility did not, however, arise; Cook had his programme of work to keep up with.
The dozen or so pages of his journal which he devotes to the description of these two islands, after a stay of less than a week, summarise excellently what could be learnt by an assiduous observer in that time, and they seem to be founded almost entirely on his own observation. He is precise in latitude—between 21°29' and 21°3' S—and longitude, between 174°40' and 175°15' W, ‘deduced from Observations of the Sun and Moon made on the spot. M The partial amputation of the little finger was not a sign of mourning but a propitiatory sacrifice to some god to secure the recovery from sickness of a relative superior in rank to the person concerned. The wounding of the cheeks was however done as mourning: they could be burnt, but might be beaten continually (hence the name for the mourning ceremony, r Kendals Watch places them 34’ more westerly.' Others speak in admiration of visible aspects, the Forsters can in some ways be more professional as well
tuki, a blow) or rubbed with coconut husk or some other harsh substance.Journals II, 268. According to Bayly, women could not be kept off the ship at ‘Eua but the rest of the prohibition was put into effect.ava, and their legs are sometimes unsteady as a result. Only Cook among the visitors would drink it, the others being put off by the preliminary chewing and spitting out of the root before its mixture with water. They have no towns or villages, living dispersed in their plantations. They have nose-flutes more elaborate than those of Tahiti, drums of hollowed logs of wood.
Collection. Cook was back with a question he had asked himself when he had first met the Tahitians and New Zealanders. He could add other men's experience to his own, to reach the same answer as before: ‘By carefully perusing the Voyages of former Navigators, I find such an affinity in the Language, Manners, and Customs of the different Islanders that I am led to believe they have all had one Origin.’Journals II, 275.
With these things in his mind he made sail from Van Diemen's Road late on 8 October, bound for New Zealand. He lost an anchor in unmooring when the cable parted, and another cable was much damaged by the coral bottom. Just before he began to move, a canoe came alongside with a Tongan drum, for which he gave a piece of cloth and a nail, sending back also some wheat and vegetable seeds to Ataongo, additional to what he had already given him. Next day he had in sight the high island of ‘Ata, Tasman's Pylstaert or Arrowtail; Cook referred to the island as ‘Pilstart’. Tasman called it ‘hooge pijlsteerten eijlandt’ —High Arrow-tail Tropic-bird Island. Pÿlstaart means ‘arrow-tail’, a sort of duck; he applied the name to the tropic-birds he saw flying about it, because of the two long feathers in this bird's tail.Adventure too far astern, and Cook had to shorten sail for her. On the
Not long after the canoes returned to shore the gale started: the afternoon of 22 October. It was one of those long wearing gales, mainly from the north and west, sometimes with a deceptive lull, sometimes with the wind switching round briefly to the opposite direction and then remorselessly back again, which can make so exacerbating the New Zealand spring, particularly in the region of Resolution's fore topgallant mast. Sails were split and torn; topsails were reefed and close-reefed, the gale abated, reefs were shaken out, the gale burst anew with heavy squalls, the men flew to the yards. To get into the strait was impossible. On the 25th, an hour before noon, says Cook, the storm ‘came on in such fury as to oblige us to take in all our sails with the utmost expedition and to lay-to under our bare poles with our heads to the Sw… . The Sea rose in proportion with the Wind so that we not only had a furious gale but a mountainous Sea also to incounter’; at least the sky stayed clear overhead, and they were not apprehensive of a lee shore. At this time they were eight or nine leagues Sse of Cape Palliser. The Adventure was carried to leeward but found again. Day after day the ships beat up and down or lay to; in the dark early morning of 30 October they parted company a second time, and finally. On the 31st the Resolution was off the Kaikoura mountains, in the South Island; in the morning the wind blew with great fury, in the evening ‘with greater fury than ever, in so much that we were obleged to lie to under the Mizen Staysail.’ At midnight it abated, a calm was succeeded by a wind from
Adventure with him, he would have investigated further. He was certain she must be already waiting in Queen Charlotte Sound, and that he should rejoin her as soon as possible; so, the wind shifting to the north-east, he weighed anchor again. It went round to the south, a fresh and increasing gale, in which he bore away for the Sound, leaving behind him unexplored the inlet, the superb harbour about which the capital city of Wellington now stands. As he tacked outside the Sound at dark the gale split most of his sails, and he anchored. In the morning there was a calm, then a breeze at north-west. He ran up to Ship Cove, moored, and unbent all his sails for repair. It was 3 November. There was no Adventure.
No Time was lost in getting to work on the ship, cleaning her inside and out, repairing sails and ironwork, overhauling the spars and rigging, caulking, replenishing wood and water and fishing, examining the bread or ship's biscuit. A vast amount of this commodity, unappetising at the best of times, was rotten and had to be destroyed; another large quantity, not so far gone, was rebaked. Cook put the misfortune down to unseasoned timber in the casks, later to dampness in the hold caused by the storage of ice, followed by the heat of the island latitudes, which seems more likely. All the remaining coals were shifted and new ballast taken on board. The native people supplied plenty of fish, but here their utility ended: they stole anything they could lay hands on, one old chief while he was furiously berating his people for their sins even calmly picking Cook's pocket of his handkerchief, which the captain as calmly reclaimed. Clothes were stolen from the tents, but as Cook got most of these back he was not sorry, thinking his men needed the lesson in taking care of their belongings. There was some coming and going: at one time about a hundred and fifty canoes were about the place, though little trouble was suffered other than that caused by light fingers The great trade, apart from fish, was now in greenstone or pounamu. Cook thought little of it. His men would give almost anything for a piece. We should like to see what they got. From what he could learn about the fate of the animals that had been left behind on the last visit, he was beginning to despair of any good result: goats and fowls had been killed and eaten; one sow was seen, lame, the other and the boar had been separated and taken to different parts of the country; the vegetable gardens, untended, had nevertheless done better. He did not quite give up hope, leaving another boar with three sows, and some cocks and hens, in a secluded part of the sound. If he could not, in the end, be effectively generous, he would show the example at least of justice: when the natives themselves complained about the stolen property and pointed to the man they
It has ever been a maxim with me to punish the least crimes any of my people have commited against these uncivilized Nations, their robing us with impunity is by no means a sufficient reason why we should treat them in the same manner, a conduct we see they themselves cannot justify, they found themselves injured and sought for redress in a legal way. The best method in my opinion to preserve a good understanding with such people is first to shew them the use of fire arms and to convince them of the Superiority they give you over them and to be always upon your guard; when once they are sencible of these things, a regard for their own safety will deter them from disturbing you or being unanimous in forming any plan to attack you, and Strict honisty and gentle treatment on your part will make it their intrest not to do it.
JournalsII, 292.
Is this simply repetition of the advice given him by Lord Morton five years before, at the outset of his exploring career? Not quite; for the good Lord Morton's rather abstract statement of benevolence has put on the flesh of experience, and the first two or three lines of Cook's paragraph have something more intensive about them—sealed as they are with action—than the general exhortation ‘to check the petulance of the Sailors’.
These ‘uncivilised Nations’: but what was civilisation? Cook was to be brought up against the question, without entirely solving it, before he left Queen Charlotte Sound. There had been rumours of a war expedition to Admiralty Bay, lately picked human bones had been found, when on 23 November, with Cook anxious to get to sea but prevented by the wind, some of the officers went on shore to amuse themselves and were confronted by the remainders of a cannibal feast. The broken head and the bowels of the victim were lying on the ground, his heart was stuck on a forked stick fixed to the head of a canoe. Pickersgill gave two nails for the head and took it on board, to the interest of a number of New Zealanders on board who had not participated in the banquet. Would one of them like a piece? asked Clerke, ‘to which he very chearfully gave his assent’; Clerke cut a slice and broiled it in the galley, and the man devoured it ravenously. At that moment Cook, who had been absent, came on board with Wales, Forster and the young islander Odiddy, to find the quarter-deck crowded and excitement general. Revolted as he was, the spirit of science triumphed, he must be able to bear
…few considers what a savage man is in his original state and even after he is in some degree civilized; the New Zealanders are certainly in a state of civilization, their behavour to us has been Manly and Mild, shewing allways a readiness to oblige us; they have some arts a mong them which they execute with great judgement and unweared patience; they are far less addicted to thieving than the other Islanders and are I believe strictly honist among them-selves. This custom of eating their enimies slain in battle (for I firmly believe they eat the flesh of no others) has undoubtedly been handed down to them from the earliest times and we know that it is not an easy matter to break a nation of its ancient customs let them be ever so inhuman and savage, especially if that nation is void of all religious principles as I believe the new zealanders in general are and like them without any settled form of goverment; as they become more united they will of concequence have fewer Enemies and become more civilized and then and not till then this custom may be forgot, at present they seem to have but little idea of treating other men as they themselves would wish to be treated, but treat them as they think they should be treated under the same circumstances.ibid., 294.
They had argued the point immovably with Tupaia, whom they respected; they merely laughed at the stripling Odiddy. It may be suggested that Cook, like Wales, wrote with inadequate knowledge of those he contemplated; but there is perceptiveness in this, of an unusual kind. Is not the tone, quite clearly, the tone of a new fashion of thought about man?
Meanwhile there was another, quite different, thing to think about—the The text of this message, which is called a memorandum, is from Furneaux's journal, Adm 55/1; printed Adventure. Cook tried every way of accounting for her
Look Underneath. It was his intention, said the message, to spend a few days at the entrance of the Strait looking for his consort, after which he would proceed to the south and eastward. ‘As Captain Cook has not the least hopes of meeting with Captain Furneaux he will not take upon him to name any place for a Rendezvous; he however thinks of retiring to Easter Island in Latd 27°6' S Longitude 108°0' West a Greenwich in about the latter end of next march, it is even probable that he may go to Otaheite or one of the society Isles but this will depend so much upon circumstances that nothing with any degree of certainty can be depended upon.'Journals II, 297, n. 2.Resolution, herself and her crew thoroughly fit for sea again, was under sail and outside the Sound.
She hauled over for Cape Terawhiti and ran along the North Island shore from point to point towards Cape Palliser, looking into the bays and firing half-hour guns. She brought to for the night halfway across Palliser Bay; rounded the cape in the morning still firing guns, and a few leagues to the north-east got a breeze from that quarter, which determined Cook to bear away for Cape Campbell, on the other side of the strait; a smoke inland then kept him plying till the end of the day, though it improbably had to do with the Adventure; and then, all his officers being unanimous that she could neither be stranded on the New Zealand coast nor spending time in a New Zealand port, resolved to make directly southward. Not a man was dejected, thought the captain, at the prospect of exploring that part of the now rest perfectly satisfied that they have no Antipodes besides Penguins and Peteralls, unless Seals can be admitted as such; for Fishes are absolutely out of the question.’Journals II, 302, n. 1.
As the latitude increased so did the gales. The early morning of 12 December brought the first iceberg, in latitude 62°10', which was 111/2° farther south than the first ice seen after leaving the ibid., 303.Se with the Wind at Sw and as the wind backed to the West we hauled more and more to the South, keeping the wind allways upon the beam till 9 am, when the wind veered to the North and being thick weather we hauled the wind to the Eastward under double reef'd Top-sails and Courses. By sailing with the Wind on the Beam we had it in our power to return back over that space of Sea we had in some measure made our selves acquainted with, in case we had met with any danger.'Miraculous escape from being every soul lost, that ever men had’.Journals II, 304, n. 5.
In such weather and conditions, sometimes worse, with rare clear intervals, he made his southing and slipped by the icebergs once more. On 20 December in the evening he crossed the Antarctic Circle for the second time—longitude about 148° W—and on the 22nd was in latitude 67°27'. He was now in a region of northerly winds, well south of the region where the westerlies prevailed, but made good easting for those days. On 23 December, his position being about latitude 67°19', longitude 138°15' W, he was again on the edge of the pack, a large field of thick close floes stretching from south to east over the whole sea; seizing the chance to take up some large pieces for water, he tried a westerly course a short while. At the same time he was taking careful note of new petrels seen about the ice. The conditions were as bad as they could be: ropes like wires, sails like boards or metal plates, sheaves frozen fast in the blocks ‘so that it required our utmost effort to get a Top-sail down and up; the cold so intense as hardly to be endured, the whole Sea in a manner covered with ice, a hard gale and a thick fog …’. He must make north—well north, not merely because of the unwisdom of pushing farther east, but because of the unexplored space of twenty four degrees of latitude between his present position and his course eastwards from
The last day of the year provided some clear pleasant weather in which Cook aired his spare sails and ‘cleaned and smoked’ between decks. Then once more the snow and piercing cold: the northerlies had ceased to blow except very briefly. There could be no land in the north-west, Cook gave his opinion, 2 January 1774, because a swell still came from that quarter, even in the absence of a corresponding wind. He was then in latitude 57°58', some 560 miles north of his position on 24 December, his farthest point south and about two degrees of longitude farther east. It was on 2 January that Cook at last lost patience in a matter of discipline and—a most unusual step—flogged a midshipman. This was one of the wild set, the unstable exasperating Loggie, who had already been sent before the mast and now, apparently in a drunken riot, had drawn his knife and cut two of the other young gentlemen. Cook excluded the story from his journal, as he excluded from that public document most other matters of a disciplinary sort. He does not exhibit the fury he had felt, once, over Mr Orton's ears; but we can go behind Cook. ibid., 313, n. 1. Clerke and Elliott give us the fullest accounts. ibid., 315. ibid.Journals II, 313–14.r Kendalls watch.’Se with a fresh gale at Swbw.’
There was, we learn from Elliott, for a moment a ‘buz’ in the ship, and ‘a very severe mortification’; for the simple sailors had taken it into their heads that they were sailing east for Cape Horn on their way home, and all their hopes were blasted in a minute. They should by that time have known their captain better. They thought he was a close and secret man, but they should not have thought the secret was so easily expounded. Nor had they the faintest idea what the message was for Furneaux in the bottle. Mr Forster, who was rather astonished that the captain had not consulted him more, was now dejected—and even more so when in a few days strong gales became ‘excessive hard gales’ (even Cook said that), the north-west sea ran ‘prodigeous high’, and he in his cabin was deluged with water. In addition, diet was no longer fresh. The men were back on salt beef and the decaying biscuit re-baked at Ship Cove, and only on a two-thirds allowance of that, so anxious was Cook to conserve. On the pleading of their spokesman, the master's mate, he at least restored the whole ration. He continued to plunge south, except for a few days of easting in southerly winds, with some dark weather, snow and sleet, though as the month advanced into its last week the weather was unusually mild, and there was a remarkable paucity of ice. There were few birds, a few whales. On 26 January he crossed the Antarctic Circle for the third time, in longitude 109°31′ W, soon after which land appeared and transformed itself, as usual, into clouds or a fog-bank. Fog came down thicker. On the 28th loose ice was encountered, and some was taken up for water; the fog turned
Sse course was resumed. Then, on 30 January, the sea closed. Cook himself must here speak.
A little after 4Amwe precieved the Clowds to the South near the horizon to be of an unusual Snow white brightness which denounced our approach to field ice, soon after it was seen from the Mast-head and at 8 o'Clock we were close to the edge of it which extended East and West in a straight line far beyond our sight; as appear'd by the brightness of the horizon; in the Situation we were now in just the Southern half of the horizon was enlightned by the Reflected rays of the Ice to a considerable height. The Clowds near the horizon were of a perfect Snow whiteness and were difficult to be distinguished from the Ice hills whose lofty summits reached the Clowds. The outer or Northern edge of this immence Ice field was composed of loose or broken ice so close packed together that nothing could enter it; about a Mile in began the firm ice, in one compact solid boddy and seemed to increase in height as you traced it to the South; In this field we counted Ninety Seven Ice Hills or Mountains, many of them vastly large… . I will not say it was impossible anywhere to get in among this Ice, but I will assert that the bare attempting of it would be a very dangerous enterprise and what I believe no man in my situation would have thought of. I whose ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go, was not sorry at meeting with this interruption, as it in some measure relieved us from the dangers and hardships, inseparable with the Navigation of the Southern Polar regions. Sence therefore we could not proceed one Inch farther South, no other reason need be assigned for our Tacking and stretching back to the North, being at that time in the Latitude of 71°10' South, Longitude 106°54' W.ibid., 321–2. There were two claimants later on for the distinction of having been farther south than anyone else. Vancouver was one. ‘Captain Vancouver used to say, that he had been nearer the South Pole than any other Man for when the immortal Cook in latitude 72, was stopped in his progress by impenetrable mountains of ice, and was prepared to tack about, he went to the very end of the bowsprit, and waving his hat, exclaimed
Ne Plus Ultra!—The Naval Chronicle, I (1799), 125. The other was Sparrman: ‘In order to avoid the bustle and crowd on the deck, usual in such operations, I went below to my cabin to watch more quietly through the scuttle the boundless expanses of Polar ice. Thus it happened, as my companions observed, that I went a trifle farther south than any of the others in the ship, because a ship, when going about, always has a little stern way before she can make way on the fresh tack when the sails fill.’—Voyage round the World, 112.
Soon after he had tacked, standing north by east, a heavy fog descended, snow fell, the air was piercing cold; before long the rigging was coated with ice almost an inch thick.
When Cook revised his journal he added a little to the passage he had thus written. It was his opinion, it was the general opinion, ‘that this Ice extended quite to the Pole or perhaps joins to some land, to which it had been fixed from the creation;’ and that it was in this enormous southern area that all the ice ‘scatered up and down to the North’ was formed, to be broken off and floated on the northbound currents; if land was near, penguins, whose sad croaking Cook heard where none was seen, could have no better retreat there than they had on the ice—indeed, land must be covered with ice. In all this was a great deal of sense: he was at the margin of a permanent ice-belt. He had still something to learn about the origin of sea ice and of ‘ice islands’, and we might now prefer to talk in terms of vague millions of years rather than of the creation. If the ice did indeed join to some land, it was impossible to say, or even to guess, where the join took place. He had sailed much farther south than was needed to discover the Antarctic continent, if only he had been forty or fifty degrees of longitude farther east: when Edward Brans-field and William Smith first set eyes on the northern extremity of the Graham Land peninsula in 1819, it was in latitude 64° and longitude 60° W. As for ambition—‘farther than any other man has been before me … as far as I think it possible for man to go’—he had realised it: no ship in or near that longitude would ever sail so far south again. Almost fifty years later James Weddell was to sail farther south, to 75°, in the sea named after him, a sea where the ice edge strangely retreated or advanced; almost twenty years after that The nearest later approach to Cook's furthest south was by the 96-ton tender Erebus and Terror were to force their way through the pack to 78°9′30″, in the sea called after Ross; but the one was far to the east, the other far to the west of Cook's position. That position was off the Walgreen Coast of the Amundsen Sea; the nearest land behind the ice was Cape Flying Fish of the Thurston Peninsula, perhaps 140 or 150 miles distant.Flying Fish of the Wilkes expedition, on 23 March 1839, when her position was 70° S and 100°16' W.—Wilkes, Narrative, I, 154. Almost a hundred years later, the R.R.S. Discovery II, a full-powered steamship, specially built for navigation in ice, on 6 January 1931, reached latitude 69°49 1/2′ S in longitude 101°25 1/2′ W, but was then forced to return. Possibly, as this was between three and four weeks earlier in the year than Cook's 30 January, the ice was farther north than he had it.
One is of course struck by Cook's words about his ambition,
For three weeks the ship made a course north by east, with only a few modifications. Except for a small number of bergs, and floating pieces of ice enough to replenish her water, the sea was clear. The fog vanished, though there was snow and sleet for some days. She crossed the Antarctic Circle again on 3 February, and on the 6th Cook did not think it too soon to formulate a plan of operations for the remainder of the year. In the note he had put into the bottle at Ship Cove he had said he might go to Easter Island, even to Tahiti or the Journals II, 299.
These were not altogether new thoughts with Cook, as we have seen; he had more than once, he tells us, communicated them to Furneaux—perhaps at Queen Charlotte Sound, perhaps at Tahiti—and Furneaux had not been very receptive; whatever the state of the ships or men, he wanted to get to the Cape and, obviously, go home as soon as possible, though ‘afterwards he seem'd to come into my opinion'. Cook could not have been highly confident that his second-in-command would remain so placed; now he could be ignored, except for the faint possibility of finding him at Tahiti. The ibid., 326, 328. Also, ‘I should not do my officers Justice if I did not take some oppertunity to declare that they allways shewed the utmost readiness to carry into execution in the most effectual manner every measure I thought proper to take.’—328.Resolution could now embark on this vast parenthesis in the voyage as it was originally planned, without further need of argument or persuasion; it is even possible that Cook, the ‘Main Object’ of the voyage attained, as he concluded, and Dalrymple's Historical Collection open before him, had in his mind an unspoken reason, in addition to those he articulated, for wasting no time dangerously about the ice-edge. So he would now make north in search of the land said to have been discovered by Adventure; then, perhaps, if there was time, keep west farther still, to Quiros's Austrialia del Espiritu Santo, which Bougainville had called the Great Cyclades and been very vague about; and then get to the south and steer east to the Horn between the latitudes of 50° and 60°, arriving there in November, so that the best part of the summer could be spent in exploring the South Atlantic Ocean. ‘This I must own is a great undertaking; says the planner, ‘and perhaps more than I shall be able to perform as various impediments may …’—he breaks off writing, we do not know for what nautical emergency (the weather was deteriorating), and when he resumes it is to redraft. ‘Great as this design appeared to be, I however thought it was possible to be done and when I came to communicate it to the officers (who till now thought we were bound directly to the
The weather over the greater part of those first three weeks of February was not pleasant, but at least when latitude 55° was left behind snow and sleet were exchanged for mist and rain. Generally there was the old south-west swell. One near-calm day allowed some of the officers to take a boat and attack the albatrosses and shearwaters, which provided a little feast after the awful monotony of salt beef and pork. From the 19th the days became fair, while the thermometer, 32 1/2° at the ice-edge, continued to rise steadily. On that day the ship was in latitude 42°5′, longitude 95°20′ W, nearly on the track of the Dolphin under Wallis; two days earlier Cook had crossed his own outward track in the Endeavour in 1769. A succession of westerlies had driven him farther to the east than he had wished to go; but on 22 February, latitude 36°10′, longitude 94°56′ W, a convenient change of wind allowed him to alter course to west-south-west for three days, to investigate the large land attributed to
Alarm and grief were general. Cook, who passes over the matter in a short paragraph, defines his ailment as ‘the Billious colick and so Violent as to confine me to my bed’. It is not very likely that he had reckoned a failure in his health as a possible impediment to the carrying out of his great design, but it seems certain that a little more violence would have provided a very effective impediment indeed. Strong as the captain was, he had not been in unbroken good health throughout the voyage, though we must go elsewhere than his own journal to find this out: and careful as he was of his men's physical welfare, he does not seem to have given equal care to his own. The three quotations are from george Forster This is the usual account, and seems to be that sanctified by Cook himself, voyage,I,181,538,543.Journals II, 333–4: ‘Thus I received nourishment and strength from food which would have made most people in Europe sick, so true is it that necessity is govern'd by no law.' But according to Voyage, II, 3. It is not likely that Forster made his sacrifice twice over, and Cook's need was greater the first time than the second.
There was no island dog for anyone else. At the end of another week the light contrary winds went round to the east, remaining light; the ship ran north-west in pleasant weather. The thermometer was now in the mid-seventies, and well-dieted explorers would have been happy. Signs of scurvy, however, were manifest, against which sauerkraut was the only real specific; some men even grew weak from unwillingness to eat the ship's food. The breeze was sometimes too light. Wales heaved a sigh. ‘Omnium rerum Vicissitudo, say my brother Star-gazers; and though they have worn the expression thread-bare, I am fully convinced by experience it is not a jot the less true, for it's scarcely 3 weeks ago we were miserable on acc° of y The islands called Los Desventurados—San Felix and San Ambrosio—500 miles west of Copiapo, on the coast of Chile, latitude (as given by Wafer) 27°20′ S. Wafer and Dampier gave the longitude as about 500 e cold: we are now wretched with ye heat: the latter is I think less supportable of ye two, as being attended with a sickly Appetite, but Salt Beef & pork, without vegetables for 14 weeks running, would probably cure a Glutton, even in England.’Journals II, 335, n. 1.Collection. Yet Davis's (David's, as the French and Spanish insisted on calling it) land was at least two islands, a small, low, sandy island, backed in the west by a range of high land; and though Roggeveen's Easter Island was certainly not large—thirteen miles in a straight line at its longest—it was equally certainly not low or sandy, it was high and rocky, and it was single. Carteret and Bougainville had both, independenty, made what was probably the true identification;leagues from Copiapo—Wafer indeed, as 500 leagues east, which is a patent slip. Easter Island is about 600 leagues west. ‘Leagues’ could be a slip for ‘miles’, or ‘500’ could be a typographical error for ‘200’; but in either case it would be odd that Wafer and Dampier should both have the same errors. Roggeveen was clear enough that his Easter Island was not Davis's land and indeed, denounced Davis, Dampier and Wafer as all liars—Journal, ed. A. Sharp, (Oxford, 1970), 92–3, 102–4, 108. See also Helen Wallis (ed.), Carteret's Voyage Round the World (Cambridge, 1965), 50–3, 144–7; B. G. Corney, The Voyage of Captain Don Felipe Gonzalez … to Easter Island (Cambridge, 1908), 9, 20–2. Roggeveen's own journal was not printed till 1838, and Corney's translation of the Easter Island portion was the first in English.
The ship was not in with the land, at its eastern end, until late on 12 March, when telescopes picked out both people ‘and those Moniments or Idols mentioned by the Authors of Roggeweins Voyage which left us no room to doubt but it was Easter Island.’Journals II, 338.ahu, but many already toppled, prone and disregarded; some rising straight out of a grassy hillside slope. Wales measured one fallen giant, 27 feet long, eight across the shoulders; in the early afternoon shade of another stood the whole party of visitors, thirty strong. If anything was more astonishing than the carved figures themselves, it was the large red cylinders of a different stone which crowned their heads. Many of them had names, which were collected; but how to answer the other questions that arose? What did they signify? Were they solid stone or made of some ingenious composition? Who set them up and how? Cook could but register the astonishment and the interrogatory.
His account of Easter Island, considering the brevity of his stay, is remarkably full. He used his own eyes to good purpose about the beach, he had good eyes to rely on in the exploring party. Once again we find him working systematically through the demands his instructions imposed, as he commented on the nature of the people, their natural resources, their manufactures, their language, their polity and religion—even when he has to note sheer ignorance. As to the people, they were certainly of the same race as the New Zealanders and the other islanders, ‘the affinity of the Language, Colour and some of thier customs all tend to prove it’; of moderate stature, slender, nimble, active, pleasant-featured, hospitable, thievish. Their number he could only estimate, and considerably underestimated, as perhaps six or seven hundred. Few women appeared,
ibid., 354–5.Journals II, 353.a never the less a carefull observer will soon see the Affinity each has to the other.’
On 16 March, a light breeze springing up, he got under sail and plyed to and fro while the boats made last visits to the shore to pick up what provisions they could; in the evening he made sail to the north-west. If he had found fresh water he would have spent some time seeking the low sandy isle: as he had not, was in want of refreshments—though the small quantity he had got at the island made an amazing difference to his men's health—and delay might have bad consequences, he left that problem unresolved. No nation would ever contend for the honour of discovering Easter Island, he reflected, so little would it profit shipping; and settled down for a long run in
They are among the most wildly romantic of islands, with high, jagged tops; black cliffs fall abruptly to the sea, precipitous ridges lead to deep valleys, valleys to new steeps and ridges. They are well-watered and fertile, lush even, where the windward heights and hollows take the rain; on the leeward side comparatively barren, as Cook thought Mendaña's Santa Christina was. They have no surrounding reefs, and the swell breaks formidably on the cliffs and beaches. They were not islands that a passing sailor could explore—though, had it not been for untoward circumstances, Cook might have stayed among them a little longer, and obtained there more refreshment, than he did. They are islands where the sailor needs to know his business; for, in the trade-wind season, down from the ridges tear violent squalls of wind which may put a ship in sudden desperate peril. Cook had early experience of this. The chart he carried showed Mendaña's four islands of San Pedro, La Dominica, Santa Christina, and, to the south-east, La Magdalena—as we should say, Motane, Hiva Oa, Tahuata and Fatu Hiva. It was the port that Mendaña had called Madre de Dios that he wanted, the bay of Vaitahu on the western side of Tahuata; and passing through the channel between Hiva Oa and Tahuata he ran along the shore of the latter south-westward. Canoes with lateen sails came out
Canoes ventured cautiously off to the ship again, presents were given them, trade re-established. Cook went ashore, in spite of the surf, and got a load of water. On the appearance of a watering party with a guard in the afternoon, however, the people once more retreated in dread; next morning he himself went, but those that crowded round him were with difficulty kept from running from the guard. At last a chief arrived from the hills with many more people, presents this time were mutual, and trade for fruit and the very small pigs here found seemed to be stably set on foot. Cook was able to visit a different part of the bay where he was anxious to do some kindness to the son of the man who had been killed, to make plain that this had not been done ‘from any bad design we had against the Nation’. Unfortunately, when he arrived the boy had fled. Next day, 10 April, trade still went on briskly. The following morning it stopped dead. The ‘young gentlemen’ had been foolish. They had
Journals II, 369.
Before turning finally from these islands, Cook stood over to ‘S ibid., 376.t Dominica’ or Hiva Oa to look at its western coast, after which, on the morning of 12 April, he steered away southwards. He had in fact done what he principally came to do: he had verified Mendaña's discovery, though he saw Mendaña's fourth island, La Magdalena—Fatu Hiva—only from a distance as he sailed away; he had added a fifth, had corrected Mendaña's position, and fixed longitudes which were very accurate. He was not to know that there were further islands in the group out of sight to the northwest. Mendaña's port he named anew, Resolution Bay. As for supplies, in spite of the untoward he had not done badly. True, pigs were small and coconuts scarce; on the other hand he carried away a vast quantity of fine large breadfruit and plantains; the water was excellent. But what impressed him most, perhaps, and those others who kept journals, was the beauty of the islanders, not merely the most beautiful people in the South Seas, but the finest race ever beheld, all tall and well-proportioned, with good features, none with the extremes of fat or meagreness to be seen in Tahiti: Cook and Wales, Clerke and the Forsters, are united in admiration. It was an admiration, on the whole, of male beauty; for few women were seen. The men were tattooed in bold designs from
tapa skirts and cloaks. There was also ornamental wear, such as the plaited fillets round many heads, fronted with shell, stuck with the long feathers of cocks and tropic birds, or a sort of wooden ruff decorated with red seeds. The favourite weapons appeared to be slings and clubs. The people who cooked and ate within the captain's observation were dirty in both employments: ‘I know not if all are so, the actions of a few individuals are not sufficient to fix a Custom to a whole Nation.’Journals II, 375.
It was a course which would take him through the more northerly Tuamotus, where some of the isles touched on by Schouten and Le Maire, Roggeveen, Byron undoubtedly lay. For four days of fine weather he sailed, shortening sail at night, and on the fifth sighted the first atoll, another soon after. It rose from unfathomable depths, like most of the other low isles in this sea (to use Cook's words), a narrow string of islets lying in an oval connected together by a coral reef, the whole enclosing a lagoon or lake of salt water of eight or ten leagues round. Cook sent Gilbert the master to examine a small opening in the reef, followed, as the natives seemed not unfriendly, by two boats to make a landing and give Forster a chance to collect some plants. Neither he nor Cook had, it is to be remembered, looked at an atoll closely before. The islet beach was their limit: the people were not, after all, very friendly, though they exchanged a few dogs and coconuts for value received. Two or three
They were Apataki, Toau, Kaukura, and Arutua. They lie between latitudes approximately 15°20′ and 16°02′ S. and longitudes 145°56′ and 146°40′ W.Palliser's Isles in honour of my worthy friend’;
Again, ‘To say any thing of the properties of this good Isle after the publication of the Endeavours Voyage wou'd be tautology…'. It Was with no thought of refreshment that Cook had come to Tahiti again, but merely to allow Wales to set up his instruments at a precisely known point and check the chronometer; he accordingly told his astronomer that there would be no more than two or three days for the purpose. ‘As to Sick we had none.’ In the end the stay lengthened to three weeks, with three weeks more spent at the neighbouring islands before the cruise was resumed. After his Tahitian experience of the previous August he expected little in the way of supplies, but now he was astonished at the recovery of the island, and the plenty and prosperity evident at both Matavai and Pare. Tu, with a large train of followers, at once brought a present of hogs. When—following on Marquesan experience—red feathers were produced as possible currency, excitement rapidly spread over the whole island. Vehiatua sent emissaries for them from Tautira. Polynesian trade might be an exchange of ceremonial gifts, or a less elevated sort of exchange, in the one case it was made plain that the mark of taio, or friendship, was ura, or red feathers; in the other ura simply commanded the greater return. As Cook's stock of trade goods was greatly depleted this was a boon. Tahiti produced few red feathers of its own; red was a royal and sacred colour; red feathers were potent aids to prayer and other exercises of religion; they conferred wealth and great distinction on their owners, ensured envy among chiefs as well as the favour of the gods. All things considered, Cook thought he would be as well off here as at any other island, and getting tents, casks, sails ashore, set on foot all the processes of overhaul and repair. The social Clerke surveyed everything with satisfaction: ‘Tho’ we ever found ourselves at Home among these good People, their reception this visit was if possible more social than ever… . Nothing in Nature cou'd exceed the unbounded civillity and friendship with which they now treated us… .' The only inconvenience in such abounding provision was
Journals II, 385, n. 3.
One of these—though rather a thing that baffled the mind and could cause difficult relations—was the rivalry among chiefs, and the tender susceptibilities of chiefs. Steering a way through these without mishap was like steering a way through a cluster of atolls; without real knowledge of the language it was impossible, indeed, to make proper enquiry. Cook kept on thinking of Tu as a ‘king’, of other great chiefs as his ‘subjects’—if they seemed to have influence with him, perhaps as his ‘counsellors’; the renewed prosperity of the island he tended to put down to the ‘policy’ of Tu—who must be a wiser man than he had before thought him—or to measures advocated by these councillors. Again, he thought of an obviously great man, ‘Towha’ or To‘ofa, Cook sometimes spells the name of this great chief T'Towha. He was Te To‘ofa or Teto‘ofa: see Ancient Tahiti (Honolulu, 1928), 78; John Davies, History of the Tahitian Mission (ed. matau, and would suddenly disappear; then Cook would know, before ever his own people had reported it, that something had been stolen, and that all Matavai had fled from his anticipated vengeance.
Not invariably was it so: once at least Cook was the first to move. A Tahitian who tried to steal a cask at night from the watering place was caught, sent on board the ship and put in irons. The captain decided to make a grand example. Early next morning Tu, To‘ofa,
Journals II, 398. The sentence gives us a little foreshadowing of February 1779, in a different island.
To balance such irritations were some things of new interest or deeper enquiry: most interesting of all for a sailor the great war fleet of over three hundred double canoes, large and small, with all their crews and equipment, which Cook unexpectedly found at Pare when he paid his first formal visit to Tu four days after his arrival—the Tahitian fleet, as he erroneously supposed, drawn up for inspection by its royal master. It was on this occasion that he was almost torn in two between To'ofa and his followers and those of Tu competing for his attention; bitterly did he regret his seeming neglect of To'ofa when he was told that Tu ‘was gone into the Country Mataou’ (because his people had stolen some of Cook's clothes in the wash). The canoes were magnificent, with flags and streamers, chiefs and principal officers splendid in their breast plates, helmets and plumes—‘the whole made a grand and Noble appearence such as was never seen before in this Sea’. Cook, wanting much to go aboard, had lost his chance when he lost sight of To'ofa, and shortly after he started on his return to Matavai the whole fleet moved off to the west. Nor did he see that noble armament again, though he did see later a group of ten canoes, and later still one of forty rehearsing their manœuvre of landing on a beach, their crews engaging in mock battle. He gave To'ofa a pendant for his own canoe; Tu not merely a grapnel and rope which the chief begged of him, but a jack and pendant for a new double canoe almost ready to launch, the largest Cook had seen, 108 feet long—that is, almost as long as the Resolution—and Tu agreed to call it Britannee or Britannia. The purpose of the fleet, which was only a part of the total force in preparation, was, so it was gathered, to impose obedience on Aimeo, whose chief had revolted against Tu his lawful sovereign—or, alternatively, ‘had thrown off the yoke of Otahiete and assumed an independency’. Neither interpretation was correct, however obscure the precise nature of the trouble. Certainly there was a struggle in progress on Aimeo, in which one of the chief contestants was related to Tu: but the last thing Tu wanted was to be engaged in warfare on his behalf. Some of the Aimeo chiefs may have been tributary to Tahitian chiefs: the one island was certainly not tributary to the other. To‘ofa and that other important ari'i, Potatau, certainly eager for war, at this time were bringing pressure on Tu
The sight of the fleet and computation of its strength in warriors and paddlers stimulated Cook to calculate also the population of the island. His statistical technique one cannot admire, his estimate must have been considerably too large.Journals II, 409. His estimate was 204,000. Cf. Volume I of the Journals, clxxiv-clxxvii.Resolution was under sail and under way, when the lieutenant of marines, idly looking out of a port, noticed a man swimming from the ship towards a canoe obviously in wait to pick him up. The cutter was launched and picked him up instead, he dived overboard and began swimming again, was taken up a
I kept the Man in confinement till we were clear of the isles then dismiss'd him without any other punishment,' wrote the captain, ‘for when I considered the situation of the Man in life I did not think him so culpable as it may at first appear, he was an Irishman by birth, a good Seaman and had Saild both in the English and Dutch Service. I pick'd him up at Batavi in my return home from my last Voyage and he had remained with me ever sence. I never learnt that he had either friends or connection to confine him to any particular part of the world, all Nations were alike to him, where than can Such a Man spend his days better than at one of these isles where he can injoy all the necessaries and some of the luxuries of life in ease and Plenty.
JournalsII, 403–4.
He added, ‘I know not if he might not have obtained my consent if he had applied for it in proper time.’ This is an unusual mood for a person commanding one of the vessels of the royal navy.
The following day the ship was in Fare harbour at Huahine. The chief Ori was as welcoming as ever. His people were less so. The second day saw Forester's servant, Ernst Scholient, ‘a feeble man’, set on during a botanical excursion by a group of bravos who would have stripped him had he not been rescued by a companion, an assault all too reminiscent of that on Sparrman at the same place in the previous year; while two men in a canoe tried to cut away the anchor buoy. These two were chased off by a musket shot and the canoe destroyed by way of example. The other matter was not so easily dealt with. A council of chiefs, protesting their own innocence, which Cook had not doubted, advised him to kill the assailants: that was all very well, he answered, but who was going to produce them?—and the subject was dropped. In spite of this advice one party of officers had their trade goods stolen; another, themselves acting in some obscure way with reckless imprudence, were deprived of all their belongings, including their guns, by a mob from whom they had to be rescued by the interposition of the chiefs. The property was restored, but Cook complained to Ori
It took the whole of 23 May, with a light wind, to get from Huahine round the south end of Raiatea to its western side; another day and a half, when the eastern trade wind blew, to get the ship through the reef, where the sea broke with frightful violence, into the placid Haamanino harbour. While she was warping in, Orio, the chief, came off with his hospitable gift, and when Cook went on shore to return this visit he had an experience he had not had before. It was very Polynesian, and it denoted the reunion of friends. He wasmet by four or five lamentably weeping old women, cutting their heads with sharks' teeth, so that the blood poured down over their faces to their shoulders; they bloodily embraced him and Forster, after which they washed themselves (we learn nothing about the gentlemen) and were as cheerful as anybody. Orio came to dinner. The ship was surrounded with vast numbers of canoes and people, who remained two or three days in the neighbourhood feasting; for it appears that there was an additional excitement to the arrival of the ibid., 842. There are many other tributes to the charms of this young woman, whose portrait now hangs in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.Resolution—that of a party of the arioi society; which might account for an unusual succession of dramatic performances, though Cook had a different theory. There were two
Journals II, 421.Poydoa’ performed that evening: ‘as these were my favorite amusements, I made scarce more than a hop skip & Jump to the Play-house where I found she could twist & distort a set of very delicate features with as much dexterity as ever.’
Provisions were plentiful at Raiatea; trade was brisk. There is little theft recorded. There was one expedition along the shore to reclaim property, and the iron tiller of the pinnace went irreclaimably, but as among the number of articles returned were some that Cook did not even know he had lost, he thought he had done well, and the alarmed chief was restored to tranquillity. A visit to what Odiddy said was his estate found his brother solidly in possession; Cook got nothing here beyond a hog or two, together with a detailed recipe, from his own observation, for the killing and cooking of the animal. Odiddy got drunk. Cook made every enquiry he could into the politics of the island and its neighbouring Borabora, where he would have gone had he not now all the supplies he needed, and been anxious to proceed with his voyage. He met the chiefs of Tahaa, almost a northern extension of Raiatea within the same reef. His departure was delayed for a day by an astonishing story brought him that two ships had arrived at Huahine, one commanded by Banks, the other by Furneaux; the appearance of these commanders was described to the life, the informant adding with verisimilitude that on one of the ships he had been made drunk. Cook almost sent a boat over at once with orders to Furneaux, and did send Clerke to the farther part of Raiatea to make enquiry. By the end of another day there was universal assertion that the man was a liar, while he himself had disappeared. It was the first time—it was not the last—that Cook encountered this singular species of island practical joke; he was fortunate that it caused him no more inconvenience than it did. He could address himself to taking a final leave of ‘these happy isles’. He had set off fireworks. There is indeed
Marai’—a word to which the English gave the too exclusive significance of burial place. A strange question to ask a seaman, thought Cook; ‘however I hesitated not one moment to tell him Stepney the Parish in which I lived when in London. I was made to repeat it several times over till they could well pronounce it, then Stepney Marai no Tootee was echoed through a hundred mouths at once.’ They asked Forster the same question. ‘What greater proof could we have of these people Esteeming and loving us as friends whom they wished to remember, they had been repeatedly told we should see them no more, they then wanted to know the name of the place were our bodies were to return to dust.’Journals II, 425–6. Cook adds, ‘I afterwards found that the same question was put to Mr F. by a Person a Shore but he gave a different and indeed more proper Answer by saying that no man who used the Sea could tell where he would be buried.’
This day of grief and celebration was 4 June, a day also of gentle breezes and fine weather, which did not persist. John Marra, that devotee of freedom, was released from confinement. Cook directed his course a little south of west, as he resumed his purpose to visit Quiros's discoveries, the theme that remained so strongly in his mind from his cogitations when turning north from the ice. The course he steered indicates that he thought he would need further refreshment before he reached his goal, because it was not islets he was interested in, and the southerly inclination would bring him to Tonga. From there he would have to turn north. He followed his practice of bringing to for the night. On the 5th he recognised the
It was small shot that was fired, we gather from Sparrman, 129: ‘The Captain, however, perhaps with justification, was displeased at this shooting, for he believed that, with more patience, some reconciliation could have been reached.’ It is not very easy to see on the spot precisely where Cook landed: probably the first time at a place called Tuapa, close to the principal village of the island, Uhomotu; and the second time at Alofi, about the middle of the west coast. See the sketch map, Journals II, 434.a, not a bit of soil was to be seen, the rocks alone supplied the trees with humidity.’ The loose rocks were coral; so were the cliffs of the coast. There was a consequent question. ‘If these Coral rocks were first formed in the Sea by animals, how came they thrown up, to such a height? has this Island been raised by an Earth quake or has the Sea receeded from it? Some Philosophers have attempted to account for the formation of low isles such as are in this Sea, but I do not know if any thing has been said of high Islands or such as I have been speaking of.’ He left the question open for the philosophers.
The winds were still easterly; the course was WSW. At daylight on 25 June islands were again seen in the west, with a reef of rocks lying full ahead, as far too on either hand as the eye could reach. Cook bore up to the south to look for an opening; then, as the wind fell and an easterly swell continued, stood off to the south-east. When the day came again he saw the opening he wanted. Even before sighting land he had rightly judged himself not far from Rotterdam or ‘Annamocka’, Nomuka. He was now coming in to the Tongan archipelago about a degree of latitude farther north than he had done the previous year. The islands thickened ahead, but his passage was clear, just south of the ‘Otu Tolu sub-division of the Nomuka group, with breakers further south. Canoes brought coconuts, shaddocks and the names of islands; by the end of the day on the 26th the ship was anchored off the north shore of Nomuka, where Tasman had been, and one of the people had already asked for Cook by name. Early in the morning the captain and the master went on shore to look for water. Courteously received, they were taken to a pond brackish but usable. Courtesy went further: Cook had no sooner returned to the beach than a man and an elderly dame presented to him an extremely personable young woman, who—he understood—was to be at his service. ‘Miss, who probably had received her instructions, I found wanted by way of Handsel, a Shirt or a Nail, neither the one nor the other I had to give without giving her the Shirt on my back which I was not in a humour to do.’ That did not settle the matter: we see for once the captain driven off a field of battle in utter rout.
I soon made them sencible of my Poverty and thought by that means to have come of with flying Colours but I was misstaken, for I was made to understand I might retire with her on credit, this not suteing me nietherthe old Lady began first to argue with me and when that fail'd she abused me, I understood very little of what she said, but her actions were expressive enough and shew'd that her words were to this effect, Sneering in my face and saying, what sort of a man are you thus to refuse the embraces of so fine a young Woman, for the girl certainly did not [want] beauty which I could however withstand, but the abuse of the old Woman I could not and therefore hastned into the Boat, they then would needs have me take the girl on board with me, but this could not be done as I had come to a Resolution not to suffer a Woman to come on board the Ship on any pretence what ever and had given strict orders to the officers to that purpose….
JournalsII, 444. Cf. Elliott's Memoirs quoted on that page, n. 2: ‘It has always been suppos'd that Cook himself, never had any connection with any of our fair friends: I have often seen them jeer and laugh at him, calling him Old, and good for nothing.'
In the meanwhile the boat had been loaded with yams and shaddocks, which were plentiful as well as more welcome to Cook. Although the island had few pigs or fowls, a brisk trade went on till noon, both on shore and at the ship. The islanders helped to roll the casks to and from the pond, nails and beads changed hands amid mutual pleasure. Botanising and shooting parties (ducks were not lacking) were at large; it seemed a morning generally profitable. At noon all had returned to the beach except the surgeon; Cook could not wait for him, as the tide was ebbing fast. After dinner officers who landed again found the unhappy Patten bereft of his gun; Cook heard the news and hastened ashore ‘for fear our people should take such steps to recover the gun as I might not approve’. They had taken no steps, and Cook refrained from taking any, because, he says, he was displeased with the occasion of its being lost—in other words, officers who were careless should suffer for it. He soon changed his mind: ‘in this I was wrong and only added one fault to a nother; my Lenity in this affair and the easy manner they had obtained this gun which they thought secure in their possession incourag'd them to commit acts of greater Violence….'Journals II, 442.Journals II, 847. No inconvenience could possibly arise from the accident, wrote Wales; ‘however as I had now kept it going two years I had begun to flatter my self with the hopes of carrying it home without anything of the sort happening’.
The ship being now plentifully supplied with provisions Cook resolved to sail as soon as he got a wind. When he went ashore again he found the people so very obliging that he was sure he could stay longer without further trouble—in spite of what Clerke called ‘their great abilities and strict perseverance’ as pilferers. He contented himself with collecting all the information he could about the islands to the northward, with observing all he could immediately about him, and with giving (almost now his standard present) a young dog and a bitch, animals of which the island had none, to a man who had done his best to moderate the people's behaviour in the morning. The island was roughly triangular, not large, by no means fully populated or cultivated; its people seemed poorer than those of the islands farther to the south; Cook could distinguish no particular chief or authority among them. They suffered from some sort of ‘leprous’ complaint—probably it was yaws. He was fairly certain that his visit had not added any venereal disease to their ills. He noted the reefs, rocks, and anchorages, and many names of islands and islets. He had not thought of giving a name to the group as a whole, it seems, when he made sail at daylight on 29 June, with the intention of inspecting two high islands to the north-west—a flat-topped one above which a continual column of
ibid., 449. ibid.r Dalrymple has placed them above 8° too far to the west in his Chart.’
Cook put his friendly islands behind him at the close of June. For
Quiros, coming from the north, saw islands that Cook did not see, and was convinced that he was on the fringe of a continent: to men who are already half-persuaded, the high ridges do rise up one behind another with a continental aspect. Bougainville, coming from the east, saw six islands and sailed right through the group. Cook, coming in a few miles to the south of Bougainville's track, missed that discoverer's northernmost islet, the volcanic Pic de l'Etoile or Mera Lava—an inconsiderable loss—but had a larger intention before him than merely verifying the existence of land. In the first place, he wanted to coast south from his landfall, to see how far the group extended in that direction. The south-east gale stopped him from doing this, and after tacking off Aurora, or Maewo, for twenty-four hours, he changed his mind, hauling round the northern end of the island into smoother water. His daily proceedings, his notes, for two-thirds of the next six weeks are so complicated, geographically speaking, that one must, as a preliminary, stand off
Between Maewo and Omba (Bougainville's ‘Isle of Lepers’) the wind was still stormy, though the sea was smooth, and it was not till
Morning brought out many of these people again, some in canoes, some swimming. They came with nothing except their bows and arrows and curiosity, but Cook's welcome seemed to be leading on a friendly intercourse; they filled the deck and the rigging when suddenly all was changed. A man in a canoe, refused admittance into one of the ship's boats, drew an arrow on the boat-keeper, flung off a friend who tried to stop him, and aimed the arrow again; before he could loose it, Cook, running on deck, let go a charge of small shot. The canoes on that side of the ship paddled off fast; on the other side arrows began to fall. A musket discharged in the air and a four-pounder fired over the canoes sent everybody overboard from decks and rigging; some, in their anxiety to get ashore, even left their canoes behind, and drums began to beat. Perhaps this was
Next morning Cook sailed from this harbour where his reception had been so curious, and now the people seemed willing to trade with anything they had, even their bows. Certainly they were a different species from any he had hitherto met in the great ocean. They were small of stature, very dark; he thought them ugly and ill-proportioned; their lips were thick, their noses flat, their hair and beards crisp and curled, though not woolly. The men were naked, with a belt round the middle so tight it almost gave them two bellies, attached to this a penis case made of cloth or a leaf; they wore bracelets of shell-studded cord and hogs' tusks, curved cylindrical pieces of shell stuck through the nose, ear-rings of tortoise shell. The few women who
The poisonous fish may have been the Red Bass, Lutjanus coatesi, or the Chinaman Fish, Paradicithys veneratus. On ‘Poisoned arrows’ see, briefly, ibid., 465, n. 5; or more at length, The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891), 306–13.
Off the southern point of Malekula was a group of small islands which Cook failed to name; Wales therefore named them after the Astronomer Royal, for he felt almost sentimentally indebted to Maskelyne's help in his career. In the night, having run south again, they fetched in close with the west side of Epi; by noon of the 24th ‘we were not Able to distinguish the number of isles around us’. Nevertheless Cook distinguished and charted them. He was in some danger at this stage when a calm fell and he was at the mercy of the currents, all too close to island shores, with no soundings at the end of a 180 fathom line. Luckily a breeze sprang up, with which he was able to pass inside these islands and stretch to the east for a short time, into a clear sea. He gave to the ones he had escaped, off the south-east end of Epi, the name of another astronomer, Dr Antony Shepherd of Cambridge. Great columns of smoke could still be seen rising from the mountain in the middle of Ambrim. Now outside the islands, except for the remarkable peaked rock he called the Monument,
It was wood and water that he wanted. He looked for a landing place. The shore was rocky. Some men appeared who, in return for pieces of cloth and medals, were ready to haul the boats over the rocks, a procedure not fancied by Cook: as he rowed they ran, joined by many others, finally directing him to a sandy beach where he landed dry-shod, with nothing in his hands but a green branch he had somehow got from them. He was faced by a great multitude armed with clubs, darts, stones, and bows and arrows, but was received, he thought, ‘very courteously’. They pressed near his boat; he motioned them back, and a chief made them form a sort of semi-circle round its bow. He distributed trinkets and made signs that he wanted water, hoping that he might see where they got
Journals II, 479.
We are fortunate to have not only his side of the story, but the other. It convinces us that when he gave to the high bluff at the entrance to the bay the name Traitors' Head he was not, in fact, quite just. Yet how could he be just? Both here and at Malekula he had encountered some of the deepest feelings, or beliefs, of mankind, and they were beliefs of which he knew nothing. He thought he had learnt something when at his next port of call he picked up the name of the place, ‘Erromango’ or Eromanga, which he applied to the whole island, Tranitors' Head is one of the entrance points to Polenia Bay, where Cook had been anchored; his little island is now called Goat islet or island.tapu could be awful as well as inconvenient, the gods angry as well as generous; but Polynesian existence seems sunny while Melanesian does not, though the same sun shone on both. No European, however romantic, ever stepped on to a Melanesian island with the thought that he was stepping into the golden age. The Melanesian peoples nourished the immemorial and pardonable conviction that strangers were enemies; and there were other strangers, other enemies, besides ordinary men. They lived, like so many other savage peoples, on the narrow and terrible border of the unseen. They were very close to their dead; they feared the spirits of the dead, the menacing and maleficent ancestors who would not rest. The border could be burst, the invisible irruption become a visible one—in the forest, by night on a village path: why not from the sea? It was the part of wisdom to avoid or propitiate ghosts; but if the worst came to the worst they could be attacked with human weapons and driven away. Cook had broken through the border, but he had not disguised himself. Spirits, ghosts, were not the colour of human beings, they were white. Cook and his men were white. When he was at Port Sandwich, and the people, yet uncertain, crowded his rigging, Forster heard the word constantly repeated, ‘Tomarr’. It may have been the Malekulan damar, peace; it was more probably temar, ancestors; possibly it was both. The single pig, the few coconuts, the small quantity of water offered the captain, the principal ghost, were propitiatory and symbolic; you did not offer ghosts great quantities of food. The people were anxious that he should depart. At Eromanga the boats were first seen rowing off from the small island, Goat Island, where Cook had gone for wood. This island, everybody knew, was the habitation of ghosts: no one else had ever landed there, or come from there. Again there was the symbolic offering of a little water, the yam, the coconuts; then the attack, the product of fear not bellicosity. Only the chief, Narom, was killed. So at least the tale handed down from generation to generation on Eromanga, and it is not an unlikely tale. Cook did not discover it.
By evening he had run right down the coast of Eromanga on his west, and had to the south in full view the island he had just glimpsed four days earlier. Shaping his course for its eastern end, ind part
While the ship was warping in, large numbers of the people collected and gazed; many came off in canoes and some swam, not too near, while those in the canoes had their arms ready; growing bolder they came under the stern, exchanging coconuts for pieces of cloth; growing too bold, in the usual fashion tried to carry away the buoys, were frightened off with a few muskets and the noise of a gun; recovered themselves and came back for the buoys, finally retired when swivel-guns were fired over them. Only one pacific old man in a small canoe travelled backwards and forwards, bringing two or three coconuts or a yam each time: whatever feeling animated this elder in the first place, as long as the ship stayed his friendship was to be undeviating and useful. In the afternoon Cook landed with a strong party. He found the people assembled in two large groups, to his right and his left, all armed with their darts, clubs, slings, bows
Journals II, 484
Cook decided to land; and this was the critical moment. If here again he was a ghost, there seems not to have been unanimity how to treat him. He took three boats with the marines and armed seamen. As he neared the shore he saw laid out in a clear space between the two large bodies of men a few bunches of plantains, a yam, and two roots of taro; leading to them from the water were four small reeds stuck in the sand. The old man with two other elders stood by and invited him on shore. The roots and the fruit, we perceive, were once again the propitiatory offering; the reeds were the usual means of indicating the tapu nature of an object. Cook was baffled, and suspected a trap; he did not want another Eromanga incident. He signed to the crowds, every moment growing larger, to move farther back; the three old men added their persuasions, without success.
In short every thing conspired to make us believe they intended to attack us as soon as we were on shore. The consequence of such a step was easilyseen, many of them must have been kill'd and wounded and we should hardly have escaped unhurt. Sence therefore they would not give us the room we required I thought it was best to frighten them away rather than oblige them by the deadly effect of our fire Arms and accordingly order a Musquet to be fired over the heads of the party on our right for this was by far the Strongest body, the alarm it gave them was only momentary, in an instant they recovered themselves and began to display their weapons, one fellow shewed us his back side in such a manner that it was not necessary to have an interpreter to explain his meaning; after this I ordered three or four more to be fired, this was the Signal for the Ship to fire a few four pound Shott over them which presently dispersed them and then we landed and marked out the limits on the right and [left] by a line.
JournalsII, 485
Only one person stood his ground, the old man, Paowang. Reasons for his self-possession in face of the supernatural can be conjectured, if not confirmed; if he was a natural sceptic, he made no instantaneous conquest of his fellows' minds. The space Cook wanted for a passage to the fresh water was roped off and guarded by the marines. No one had been hurt. The natives began to drift back in a friendly way, threw down coconuts without expecting a return, and seemed to have no notion of trade. Many, noted Cook—and the observation is not without significance—‘were afraid to touch any thing which belonged to us’. There were marked differences, obviously, between these people and those in the islands of the more eastern groups. In the afternoon it was possible to work very peaceably, and haul the seine profitably; the following morning 'many of the younger sort were very daring and insolent and obliged us to stand with our Arms in hand', and Lieutenant Edgcumbe found it necessary to fire a slug at one; thereafter active opposition died down. There was toleration, even some amiability. The ancestor-spirits, one must suppose, when fully discussed were deemed not so maleficent after all. The only fury that arose was from the volcano.
Indeed, in a day or two more Cook ceased to protect with particularity his passage to the water, though he kept a guard on shore. He was scrupulous in cutting wood only after permission, and in making some return for any service rendered him. There was little food to be got, from plantations none the less flourishing; when fruit or roots were presented, in small quantities, or a single pig or a cock, it was usually done with a good deal of ceremony. Fishing was not good. The people seemed to form two clans, one on the eastern side of the harbour, one on the west—of whom the former seemed rather more open-hearted to wanderers. The naturalists managed to make
He was accumulating a good many useful observations of the people and the country, to which both Forster and Wales contributed. Forster reported that the island was called 'Tanna', which it has remained. This was an error: like other islands in the group, it had no name in the minds of its inhabitants; names were given from outside, and 'Yesterday MTana merely meant the ground on which they stood.r Forster obtained from these people the Name of the Island (Tanna) and to day I got from them the names of those in the nieghbourhood.'—ibid., 489. Cf. the quotation in n. 4 of that page from C. B. Humphreys, The Southern New Hebrides (Cambridge, 1926).puaka, for pig, served equally well for the novel dog, goat and cat. To island vegetable productions he could now add wild figs, nutmegs and a sort of inedible orange. The great natural wonders, of course, were the hot springs and the steaming 'pipeclay' on the slope above them, on the way up to the volcano. Now the position of this volcano led to thought, it controverted the opinion of the philosophers that all volcanoes must be at the summits of the highest hills: there were hills in this island higher by far, and he could see that the smoke on Ambrim came from a 'valley' between the hills rather than from the peaks: 'to these remarks must be added another which is that during wet or moist weather the Volcano was most vehement. Here seems to be a feild open for some Philosophical reasoning on these extraordinary Phenomenon's of nature, but as I have no tallant that way I must content my self with stateing facts as I found and leave the causes to men of more abilities.'Journals II, 498.
He had further reflections, consistent with his intentions as a humane discoverer, not always consistent with facts. 'I cannot say what might be the true cause of these people shewing such a dislike to our makeing little excursions into their Country'—a naturally jealous disposition, hostile visits from their neighbours, quarrels amongst themselves? They seldom or never travelled unarmed. 'It is possible all this might be on our account, but I can hardly think it, we never gave them the least molestation, nor did we touch any part of their property, not even Wood and Water without first having obtained their consent.' ibid 501. ibid., 499. I have a long note on the matter beginning on that page, which there would be no point in now repeating. Young Elliott, who was not an eye-witness, thought that though Cook 'was a Most Brave, Just, Humane, and good Man', here 'He lost sight, of both justice, and Humanity'.—Memoirs, 32v. The sentry, William Wedgeborough, was not a man in whom Cook could place confidence.
thus we found these people Civil and good Natured when not prompted by jealousy to a contrary conduct, a conduct one cannot blame them for when one considers the light in which they must look upon us in, its impossible for them to know our real design, we enter their Ports without their daring to make opposition, we attempt to land in a peaceable manner, if this succeeds its well, if not we land nevertheless and mentain the footing we thus got by the Superiority of our fire arms, in what other light can they than at first look upon us but as invaders of their Country; time and some acquaintance with us can only convince them of their mistake.Journals II, 493.
Only time and acquaintance: the captain had an inadequate view of the future. He did not conceive that invasion might follow after him. Meanwhile, the morning of 20 August having brought a favourable wind, he weighed anchor and put to sea, hoisted in his boats, and stretched to the east to take a nearer view of Futuna.
For the next eleven days he was viewing islands from the sea, close enough in to get a good idea of their characteristics, fixing the positions of their leading points with considerable accuracy. A remarkably clear morning on the 21st showed him no land to the east of the high flat-topped Futuna; he was equally convinced, as he ran back to coast the southern side of Tana, that to the south there was nothing in the group beyond Annatom or Aneityum. Next day he was past the western sides of Tana and Eromanga, steering for the same side of Efate, to finish its survey and that of the islands north-west of it. It was now, knowing that he could get no native name for it, that he called it Sandwich Island, in honour of 'My Noble Patron', and the two islets on its north-east side, Montagu and Hinchinbrook. He was much taken with the appearance of the
He wanted to spend no further time here. If he stayed, he could not expect to find supplies, and he 'had no time to spend in amusements'—however he would define amusements. He steered for the open sea. When night fell the country was alight with fires from the
'We've made but a poor hand of it these 3 days past; these light Airs and Calms detain us most confoundedly, and now begin to grow very tedious.'—Clerke, 30 August; ibid., 518, n. 4. For the quotations foregoing in this paragraph, ibid., 519, 521, and, on 'The word Survey', 509, n. 4. An Admiralty Hydrographer, 120 years later, was to make his comment on this particular piece of work by Cook. 'His chart of the New Hebrides is still, for some of the islands, the only one; and wherever superseded by more recent surveys the general accuracy of his work, both in outline and position, is very remarkable. On several occasions up to the present year (1893) Cook's recorded positions have saved the adoption of so-called amendments reported by passing ships, which would have been anything but amendments in reality.'—Wharton, Tierra Del Espiritu Santo, the only remains of Quiros's Continent'. Let the headland at the eastern entrance to the great bay be Cape Quiros; and let the north-western point—we are about to see more loyalty to the House of Hanover than sense of the fitness of things—be Cape Cumberland in honour of His Royal Highness the Duke. This cape he doubled on the afternoon of 27 August; in four days more, the wind being difficult,Nnw for Sandwich Island, it was 'in order to finish the Survey'. He had later made the note, 'The word Survey, is not to be understood here, in its literal sence. Surveying a place, according to my Idea, is takeing a Geometrical Plan of it, in which every place is to have its true situation, which cannot be done in a work of this kind.'Captain Cook's Journal (London, 1893), xxxviii.
It is necessary to observe, that each set of observations, consists, of between Six and ten observed distances of the Sun and Moon or Moon and Stars, so that the whole number amounts to several hundreds and these have been reduced by means of the Watch to all the islands, so that the Longitude of each is as well assertained as the two Ports above mentioned, as a proof of this I shall only observe that the difference of Longitude between the two Ports pointed out by the Watch, and by the observations did not differ from each other two miles.
JournalsII, 524–5.
The Watch, indeed, had become 'our never failing guide'.
There was no further use for ibid., 520. For Wales, 856; and his Historical Collection. Cook, we may say, could now do with the Remarks on Mr. Forster's Account of Captain Cook's last Voyage (1778), 89. The Forsters were apparently under the impression that Cook had meant to sail from the New Hebrides to Tierra del Fuego without any intermediate call. See George Forster, Voyage, II, 376; and Journals II, xcviii-xcix.
It was a country, or rather a coast—for there was little seen of the country—that was to interest Cook a good deal, and place him in more continuous danger than he had yet been in. He had come to the north-eastern side of the fourth largest island in the Pacific, a comparatively narrow island running about three hundred miles from its south-east to north-west, barred all round by reef that hardly rose above the sea; an island breaking off at its northern end into shoals and a sort of continuation of islands within the same reef, at the south into a mass of low sandy islets, shoals and reefs, partly within the main reef, partly about a larger island standing out more independently. The wind blew from the east, south-east, fortunately not too often from the north-east—so that he would too frequently feel that he was on a lee shore, towards which the swell also tended; and too frequently the wind fell to a calm. A breeze off the land at the end of the day could sometimes be very welcome. Cook was on this coast from the time he sighted it till the end of September. Of those twenty-seven days, he spent eight at anchor inside the reef almost at the northern end of the island, and landed briefly on one of the sandy islets at the other end just before he sailed away. For the rest of the period he was under sail, charting and observing, more than once uncomfortable in mind, once in the most extreme peril; baffled in the end of his desire to circumnavigate the country, but leaving it not without conjecture as to its relation to the greater landmass he had charted in the west. He found his mind turning much to New South Wales.
Cook was a day coming up with the land. At sunrise on 5 September he could see how it ran, and also the reef running parallel with it. Whether he coasted it in one direction or the other, southeast or north-west, seemed of no great importance: he chose the latter. After following the reef for a short distance, he came to an opening and sent in boats to sound, arming them because of the nearness of a dozen sailing canoes; he wanted to get ashore both to look at the land and to observe an approaching eclipse of the sun. The people in the canoes were friendly, the passage through the reef negotiable—there were no dangers but the steep-to reef itself—
Journals II, 531, and n. 5 on that page.
Next day Pickersgill found an excellent watering place nearly abreast of the ship; in the afternoon Wales, Clerke and Cook observed the eclipse, or at least the end of it (the first contact being obscured by clouds) from the sandy islet off which she was anchored. Their times, with telescopes by three different makers, varied by only four seconds. 'M ibid., 533–4.r Wales measured the quantity eclipsed by a Hadlies Quadt a method I believe never before thought of, I am of opinion it answers the purpose of a Micrometer to a great degree of accuracy and that it is a valuable discovery and will be a great addition to the use of that most usefull instrument.'—ibid., 532. This passage casts light both on Wales and on Cook's interest in scientific instruments.
While Cook was still suffering the ill effects of this supper Teabooma came with a small ceremonial present of yams and sugarcanes;
The dog was red and white, the bitch 'all red or the Colour of an English fox'. He later adds the remark, 'I mention this because they may prove the Adam and Eve of their species in this Country.'—ibid., 535, and n. 6 on that page.tea or tia for a chief; he himself was 'Tiacook'.
It was on the afternoon of 12 September that Cook performed his ceremony of annexation; next morning at sunrise he got under sail and, passing through the break in the reef by which he had entered, was soon at sea. The country must be an island, and he intended to circumnavigate it round by the south-east; Gilbert, however, strong in his conviction that he had seen its north-western end, persuaded his captain that the easier way was there. For two and a half days Cook tried this direction, outside the reef. He saw more land, and could not be certain whether this proved Gilbert wrong or was made up of detached islands—which indeed it was—but hesitated to move in for a closer view because he feared the wind might fall and the sea be too deep to anchor. Inside the reef further north were shoals: when he was certain he had passed the end of the land, on the morning of the 15th, the breakers still stretched illimitably northwards. To explore shoals would entail altogether too much risk—a gale of wind or a calm would be equally fatal; he therefore determined to return to the south-east. The shoals gave him thought. They must end somewhere; they could not go farther north than 15° S, because in that latitude Bougainville had had a clear run west from his Grandes Cyclades, for a considerable distance:
but I think it not attall improbable but that they may extend to the west as far as the Coast of New South Wales, the Eastern extent of the isles and shoals off that Coast between the Latitude of 15° & 23° were not known and M. Bougainville meeting with the Shoal of Diana above 60 Leagues from the Coast, together with the signs he had of land to theSeall Bougainville, meeting with the Shoal of Diana off the
Great Barrier Reef , 4–6 June 1768, for this and other reasons decided to change course to the north. On p. 303 of the English translation of his book he has the passage, 'For twenty-four hours past, several pieces of wood, and some fruits which we did not know, came by the ship floating; the sea too was entirely falling, notwithstanding the very fresh S.E. wind that blew, and these circumstances together gave me room to believe that we had land pretty near us to the S.E.'conspire, to increase the Probability. The semilarity of the two Countries might also be advanced as a nother argument. I must confess it is carrying conjectures a little too far to pretend to say what may lay in a space of 200 leagues, it is however in some degree necessary if it was only to put some future Navigator (if any should come into these parts) on his guard.
JournalsII, 548.
It is an interesting example of Cook's geographical thought.
He tacked, with the wind blowing straight on to the reef. He weathered one of its points, and then the breeze began to fail. In the middle of the afternoon it failed altogether. We hear another echo from the first voyage: 'it fell Calm and we were left to the Mercy of a great swell which set directly upon the reef which was hardly one league from us, we Sounded but could find no ground with a line of 200 fathoms. I ordered the Pinnace and Cutter to be hoisted out and sent a head to tow, but they were of little use against so large a swell.' ibid., 549. ibid., 553.Ssw, in his attempt to round the southern end of the land. Off that end stood a system, or semi-chaos, of islets, sand-banks and reefs, which gave him some difficult hours. A fine breeze at east was succeeded by a dead calm; 'our situation was now worse than ever, we were but a little way from the Shoals, which instead of turning to Sw as we expected, they took a Se direction towards the Se land and seem'd wholy to shut up the Passage between the two'.Se land' was the larger island which Cook called the Isle of Pines. He would have to go round it by the south, if he could get away from the shoals—and a faint northerly breeze came in time to rescue him. It changed to south-west and then to fresh south-easterly gales, so that only on the fifth attempt was he able to weather the island and the dangers round about it. By now it was 28 September. Nevertheless this island, and the low islets, had their use. They all displayed a plenitude of the 'elevations' which had caused so much controversy. Everyone was satisfied they were trees, 'except our Philosophers', who still maintained they were stone pillars. Wales, to whom Forster was a constant source of mirth, admitted that 'nothing of the sort ever sure had so singular a form'; and their amazing size made all other vegetation look like so many bunches of reeds.
The night after this day brought the climax of danger. Cook wanted to fall in with the main coast a little to the south-west of Queen Charlotte's Foreland, so that he could continue his circumnavigation, and he steered Nwbw. This brought him, as he began to find before long, into a sort of large triangular bay, the sides of which were formed not by mainland shore but by 'low isles', reefs and shoals. He tried to extricate himself by hauling off south-west: in vain, a continuous reef lay straight ahead. The wind still blew from the east, in what Cook called very fresh gales. At least the surrounding reefs kept the water smooth, except where the shattering breakers fell. He took a careful look at the main coast in the north, as the afternoon wore on, and addressed himself to the crisis. There was, he said later, a good lookout and the ship was managed very briskly. This is rather to file down the sharp edge of statement; but we can see that it is literally true, without quite doing justice to
After a short trip to theNnewe stood again to the south in order to have a nearer and better View of the shoals at Sun-set, we gained nothing by this but the Melancholy prospect of a sea strewed with Shoals: we were now about one mile from the reef to leeward of us and contrary to expectation had soundings … but Anchoring in a strong gale with a Chain of breakers to leeward was the last resource, it was thought safer to spend the night makeing short boards over that space we had in some masure made our selves acquainted with in the day. Proper persons were stationed to look out and each man held the rope in his hand he was to manage, to this we perhaps owe our safety, for as we were standing to the Northward the People on the Fore Castle and lee gang-way saw breakers under the leebow which we escaped by the expeditious manner the ship was tack'd. Thus we spent the night under the terrible apprehensions of every moment falling on some of the many dangers which surrounded us. Day-light shewed that our fears were not ilfounded and that we had spent the night in the most eminent danger havghad shoals and breakers continually under our lee at a very little distance from us.
JournalsII, 556.
It was an exceedingly dark night, Wales tells us; 'I realy think our situation was to be envyed by very few except the Thief who has got the Halter about his Neck.' That night, with its cries of Breakers ahead!, remained fast in Midshipman Elliott's memory: 'every way we stood for an Hour, the Roaring of Breakers was heard … a most anxious, and perilous Night, at last Daylight appear'd.'
Daylight appeared, and Cook found he had gained nothing to windward all night. He might have worked his way south out of that dangerous position as soon as possible. Scientific passion overcame him. He pushed instead into the apex of the near-fatal triangle:
The islet now known as Améré.I was now almost tired of a Coast I could no longer explore but at the risk of loosing the ship and ruining the whole Voyage, but I was determined not to leave it till I was satisfied what sort of trees those were which had been the subject of our speculation. With this view we stood to the north in hopes of finding anchorage under some of the isles on which they grow….
He was stopped by the shoals between the Isle of Pines and Queen Charlotte's Foreland. Yet to leeward were some low isles where the trees grew: and near one of these isles, not locked in by reefs, he anchored and immediately went ashore. He took the botanists. It was indeed a singular tree, 'a kind of spruce pine', thought Cook, 'very proper for Spars which we were in need of'; which was a bad
ibid., 557.Araucaria columnaris or cooki, the pin colonnaire or Cook pine. There were other things here to keep the naturalists busy—trees, shrubs, smaller plants, water-snakes, pigeons and doves; there was the hull of a wrecked canoe and the fire-places of native turtlers. Cook called the little expanse of prolific sand Botany Isle.Ebn.'Journals II, 560. It is not likely that two hundred years later anyone will think he had reason to reproach himself.
He could not get back in that gale even if he wanted to. He concluded that he did not want to. The southern summer, in which he had much to do, was coming on, the ship needed attention, he thought of 'the vast distance we were from any European Port where we could get supplies in case we should be detained by any accident in this Sea another year'. What did he mean by that? What sort of accident? Did he envisage calling at the cape before plunging into
The fresh gales continued for some days, fell calm; revived less harshly from the south-east. Cook altered his course more to the west, and sent off a boat in the calms to shoot sea-birds for the pot—albatrosses 'were geese to us'. A harpooned dolphin was much admired by everyone who could get a slice of her. On 10 October, about half-way to New Zealand, in latitude 29°, a small steep-sided surf-beaten island was sighted and a landing made. It was uninhabited. The country this place reminded Cook of, from its trees and plants—the flax-plant thick near the shore, the 'cabbage-palm'—and birds was New Zealand; although he found growing everywhere, to a vast size, another spruce pine quite different from any tree in New Zealand or that in New Caledonia. The Norfolk Island Pine, Araucaria excelsa.
He landed, and at once went to see if his bottle remained where he had buried it. It was gone; and trees which were standing when he last left the place had been felled with axes and saws. A little later signs were found that an astronomer other than Wales had set up his equipment—no other surely than Bayly. So the Adventure had come into harbour, whatever had happened to her afterwards. That, at least, was reassuring. Next morning, the wind having fallen, the Resolution was warped in and moored. The crew needed refreshment, the ship needed wood and water; she badly needed some refitting. The sails had been much damaged in the gale, the main and fore sails had to be condemned as useless; the fore and main topmasts, urgently in want of attention, were struck; the whole hull was urgently in want of caulking. The forge, the observatory, the tents were set up on shore, orders given for the boiling of greens every day with oatmeal and portable soup for breakfast, with pease and portable soup for dinner. The regimen was unfailing. The vegetable gardens planted on Motuara, ignored by the local people and gone to waste, had some things flourishing. Those people themselves did not appear for a few days: when those who were old friends did there was general joy, they 'embraced us over and over and skiped about like Mad men'.Journals II, 571.
The ship's work went on energetically, in spite of some bad weather. The more she was looked into, the more to be done was found. The longest job was caulking; for Cook had only two skilled men and had run out of proper material. At sea he had tried sealing the deck with varnish covered with sand. Now the seams were payed with a kind of putty made of fat from the galley and chalk from the gunner; pitch and tar had been exhausted for months and 'varnish of pine' too was all gone. He took in shingle ballast and struck down six of his guns into the hold. We are reminded of his preparations at the Bay of Good Success for his first passage of the Horn. He went about the Sound shooting for provender, taking Forster to botanise, and enquiring into the fate of the livestock left on previous visits;
Days were now few. The ship was the important thing; interruption to work on her a nuisance. John Marra again became prominent, for drunkenness and departing from her without leave. Desertion was naturally suspected; according to Elliott the captain declared that if he were not well assured the fellow would be killed and eaten before morning he would have let him go; but the only motive here, according to the fellow himself, was the pursuit of the fair. This time he got twelve lashes. So did John Keplin, 'for leaving the Boat when on duty and declareing he would go with the Indians', Keplin or Kepplin was a young A.B. Gilbert tells us of the incident.—Journals II, 576, n. 6.Adventure. His informants concurred that she had returned and departed again, in safety. Then what was the other tale about a ship stranded on the coast, beaten to pieces on the rocks, her crew killed and eaten, some said on the other side of the strait, some on the other side of the sound?—all of which was also vehemently denied. Or a third story about a ship which had 'lately' been here and then crossed the strait? Cook felt easy, in the end, about the Adventure, but could not dismiss the possibility of disaster to some visitor unknown. The indefatigable Wales on his part had been conducting professional enquiry, and his results for the longitude of Ship Cove agreed with Bayly's. Cook bowed finally to the evidence, he accepted the mortification of having produced an inaccurate chart, and he went on to a wider statement:
it appears that the whole ofTavai-poenammoo, is laid down 40′ too far East in the said Chart, as well as in the Journal of the Voyage; but the error inEahei-no-mauweis not more than half a degree or 30′ because the distance between Queen Charlotte's Sound and Cape Palliser has been found to be greater by 10′ of Longitude than it is laid down in the Chart. I mention these errors not from a supposition that they will much affect either Navigation or Geography, but because I have no doubt of their existance, for from the multitude of observations which Mr Wales took the situation of few parts of the world are better assertained than that of Queen Charlotte's Sound. Indeed I might with equal truth say the same of all the other places where we have made any stay at. For Mr Wales, whose abilities is equal to his assiduity, lost no one observation that could possibly be obtained. Even the situation of such islands as we past without touching at are by means of Mr Kendalls Watch determined with almost equal accuracy.ibid., 579–80.
He is away from his own failing to a happier subject. Between his leaving Queen Charlotte Sound in November 1773 and returning to it in October 1774, 'which was near a year', the accumulated error of the watch was just over 19 minutes 31 seconds. 'This error can not be thought great if we consider the length of time and that we had gone over a space equal to upwards of three quarters of the Equatorial Circumference of the Earth and through all the Climates and Latitudes from 9° to 71°.' ibid., 580.
It was at daylight on 10 November that Cook weighed anchor and stood out of the Sound and through the strait. In the afternoon he passed Cape Campbell and steered south-east.
The Extraordinary voyage proceeded. Cook had completed his parenthesis, which would have made a brilliant reputation for any other explorer; he could revert to the tracing of his main theme, as he had laid it down in early February, in latitude 64° S, longitude 99° W. Having steered south from Austrialia del Espiritu Santo as far as New Zealand, he must now steer still farther south to a latitude somewhere between 50° and 60°, and then east. He could not be the length of Cape Horn in November, because it was November already, and he could not cross the whole width of the Pacific in three weeks; but except for the most untoward happening he could still be at the Horn in time to explore, that summer, the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean. There was no untoward happening of great importance. Sails split and ropes gave way in gales that were generally favourable, there were few light airs or calms to slow the ship. It seemed to the captain an uninteresting passage; he strained himself, he thought, to record anything beyond the variation of the compass. Perhaps the period was one of those in which he rewrote—as he kept on rewriting and revising—his journal, until his secretary must have sighed at the prospect of yet another version to copy. Wales fixed a device to measure the roll of the ship. The Resolution sailed well: on 27 November Clerke registered the note, 'We've had a fine steady Gale and following Sea these 24 Hours, and run the greatest distance we've ever reach'd in this ship'—the distance being 183 miles. In the first twelve days Cook had steered south-east to latitude 55° 48', where he altered course to the east. On the day of the great run, convinced that he could abandon hope of finding more land in the Journals II, 583.
Fortunate with the weather, he kept about two leagues off, concluding that it was by no means so dangerous as it had been pictured. His chart shows a much broken line, for his survey was swift: and indeed the line of coast is a very much broken one, with inlets, islands, islets, and rocks innumerable. Inland rose a mass of steeps and mountains, rocky and barren so far as he could see, except for dark scattered tufts of wood below the snow-patches. It could not be called inviting: Cook called it barren and savage. Known names were few, the result of accident rather than exploration. He began to add to them: Cape Desolation, 'because near it commenced the most desolate and barren Country I ever saw'; Gilbert Island after his master; a little later, on 19 December, the 'Wild rock' he called York Minster because of its two high towers, eight hundred feet almost perpendicular from the sea, the southernmost point of an island. Waterman Island.
On 28 December Cook stood out to sea to resume his eastward course. At the end of the day he was within sight of False Cape Horn, which may be regarded as the southern point of Tierra del Fuego, apart from the group of islands of which Cape Horn itself is the southernmost point; he shortened sail for the night, lest he should miss any of the coast, and next morning 'At half past 7 we passed this famous Cape and entered the 'In some Charts Cape Horn is laid down as belonging to a small island, this was neither verified nor contridicted by us…'.— 'It is wonderfull to see how the defferent Animals which inhabited this little spot are reconciled to each other, they seem to have entered into a league not to disturb each others tranquillity. The Sea lions occupy most of the Sea Coast, the Sea bears take up thier aboad in the isle; the Shags take post on the highest clifts, the Penguins fix their quarters where there is the most easiest communication to and from the sea and the other birds chuse more retired places. We have seen all these animals mix together like domesticated Cattle and Poultry in a farm yard, without the one attempting to disturb or molest the other…'.—Southern Atlantick Ocean'. Widespread haze prevented his verifying the charts that set down the cape as part of a small island, a matter which his imperfect view on
Journals II, 602. It is the southern point of Horn Island, itself the most southern of the Hermite group of islands.Adventure in the Bay of Good Success, firing guns and sending Pickersgill ashore, while the ship stood off and on among the whales at play. Pickersgill found nothing; the only human beings he met were some of the native Aush. Cook thereupon determined to take a closer view of the coast of Staten Island. Haze and fog all over the strait urged caution; he hauled off to the north till he could get round a small off-lying island into smooth water. It was Observatory Island; on it could be seen a population of seals and birds—fresh provisions; Cook anchored in a favourable spot, the weather cleared, the campaign was on. The geese of Christmas Sound were nothing to this. Seals, sea lions, penguins, shags—they covered the interior as well as the shore.Journals II, 614–15.Journals II, 615.
His general purpose, as he now put to sea, was plain enough. We know it. Within it, however, there were two or three matters of particular interest, joined, inevitably, to the leaping imagination of I have discussed these discoveries more at length in ibid., 621–2.Léon, in 1756; the first was perhaps one of the Falklands, the second certainly a sighting of South Georgia.Journals II, 615, n. 1; 617, n, 2.Léon, and as he continued east he lessened his latitude a degree or two. By the 12th, having sailed over the northern end of Dalrymple's land, he had no doubt at all that it was another fiction. The air turned colder, penguins appeared and petrels, then an island of ice which in a few hours transformed itself into an island of land; then, through an atmosphere of snow and sleet, stood up more land, mountainous, rocky, almost wholly covered in snow, a land broken by bays and inlets, with great masses of snow or ice inside them. The first sighting was on the 14th, the latitude about 54°. Cook worked his way cautiously round to the north and began to range the coast. On the 17th he investigated one of the bays on this northern coast: it had some sandy beaches, but at its head, and in other places, he could see vast perpendicular cliffs of ice, exactly like the face of an ice island, from which pieces were continually falling off. One great mass came away with the noise of a cannon. He was looking at glaciers, for which he had no word, and the birth of an iceberg. As for what he could see otherwise, 'The inner parts of the Country was not less savage and horrible: the Wild rocks raised their lofty
At the eastern end of the land, he turned south-west. Beyond a projection he called Cape Disappointment he could see it stretching north-west, indubitably to join the main coast where he had first sighted it six days before. Disappointment: a coast line no more than seventy leagues in circuit, 'proved to a demonstration', says Cook; and Clerke, 'I did flatter myself … we had got hold of the Southern Continent, but alas these pleasing dreams are reduc'd to a small Isle…'. Well, his commander went on to reflect, if the continent were anything like this it would not be worth discovering. Frigid and gloomy as he found the place, he did not hesitate to confer royal and naval names—or, for the off-lying islets and rocks, those of his officers; and, upon the island in the mass, that of Georgia. It might not give lustre to George, considered the elder Forster (who made the suggestion) but George would give lustre to it. Cook put it behind him, and steered to the south-east. As he quitted it, his mind was both puzzled and enlightened. Puzzled: because how to explain, in a latitude no higher than 54° (the northern latitude of York) an island covered in the very height of summer with snow and ice? Enlightened: because if snow-covered land could exist thus in 54° in this longitude, then it could exist in the same latitude fifty degrees of longitude further east; so Cape Circumcision was not, as he had concluded, a vanished ice island but veritable land, and—Cook himself for once parts company with reality—he 'did not doubt but that I should find more land than I should have time to explore'. ibid., 626.
The two weeks that followed his departure, on 20 January, were weeks of prevailing fog or haze or thick mist, with some variety of drizzle or sleet, but also, fortunately, enough clear weather to make the period tolerable, and to reveal most of what there was to see. Cook began with circumnavigating, at some distance and owing to the conditions, over some days, a group of rocks, Clerke's Rocks, a short distance south and east of Georgia, to make sure that they were rocks only; after which he struck south to 60°, expecting to meet ice at any moment. Further south he would not go, unless he had quite certain signs of land. Cape Circumcision seemed now as likely as anything that might lie in that direction. The Gulf of St Sebastian had gone; he doubted whether la Roche or the Léon had ever seen the Isle of Georgia, but if they had, the charts placed it badly out of position; nevertheless, they had helped him to his own discovery, because except for these charts he would probably have sailed south of it. He would stand to the east. He cannot help making a significant admission: 'besides I was now tired of these high Southern Latitudes where nothing was to be found but ice and thick fogs'.Journals II, 629.
On 27 January he met his first ice island of the season; next day the sea was thick with flat-topped bergs and loose ice—loose ice improbably fallen from these bergs, as Cook surmised it had done, more probably the edge of the pack, moving north-eastwards with the bergs from the Weddell Sea. For a short time he had to stand back to the west; on the 30th he was in the same longitude he had been in two days before, about 29°24′ W, now thirty miles further north. He made north-east through an ice-strewn sea and foggy air. The fog cleared enough next morning to show ahead three islets, the highest of which, a towering shaft of rock, went up 900 feet—Freezland Peak, so called after the man who first sighted it. Behind it appeared an elevated coast, marked by a point Cook named Cape Bristol; to the south another high coast, the most southern discovered, the limit, Southern Thule; between them, it seemed likely, the deep opening of Forster's Bay. He could not weather Thule; he stood to the north, when once again the wind dropped and left him to the mercy of the swell, falling as he thought 'upon the most horrible Coast in the World'; but the weather cleared, Cape Bristol was an island and he was beyond it, it belonged to no greater coast on which he could be driven. For three days more he was sporadically in sight
ibid., 633.
'A point of the Continent,' says Cook, 'for I firmly beleive that there is a tract of land near the Pole, which is the Source of most of the ice which is spread over this vast Southern Ocean:' and he goes on to the first of a series of extended considerations on this continent and on ice. In this first one he is more concerned with his own position as an explorer. There is an echo.
It is however true that the greatest part of this Southern Continent (supposeing there is one) must lay within the Polar Circile where the Sea is so pestered with ice, that the land is thereby inacessible. The risk one runs in exploreing a coast in these unknown and Icy Seas, is so very great, that I can be bold to say, that no man will ever venture farther than I have done and that the lands which may lie to the South will never be explored. Thick fogs, Snow storms, Intense Cold and every other thing that can render Navigation dangerous one has to encounter and these difficulties are greatly heightned by the enexpressable horrid aspect of the Country, a Country doomed by Nature never once to feel the warmth of the Suns rays, but to lie for ever buried under everlasting snow and ice. The Ports which may be on the Coast are in a manner wholy filled up with frozen Snow of a vast thickness, but if any should so far be open as to admit a ship in, it is even dangerous to go in, for she runs a risk of being fixed there for ever, or coming out in an ice island. The islands and floats of ice on the Coast, the great falls from the ice clifts in the Port, or a heavy snow storm attended with a sharp frost, would prove equally fatal. Aftersuch an explanation as this the reader must not expect to find me much farther to the South. It is however not for want of inclination but other reasons. It would have been rashness in me to have risked all which had been done in the Voyage, in finding out and exploaring a Coast which when done would have answerd no end whatever, or been of the least use either to Navigation or Geography or indeed any other Science; Bouvets Discovery was yet before us, the existence of which was to be cleared up and lastly we were now not in a condition to undertake great things, nor indeed was there time had we been ever so well provided.
JournalsII, 637–8.
So he would resume his course to the east, in a northerly gale and a heavy fall of snow, so heavy that he was obliged every now and then to throw the ship up into the wind to shake it out of the sails, and rid both them and her of an insupportable weight. His latitude this day, 6 February, was 58°15′ S, his longitude 21°34′ W.
He kept much in that latitude for another eight days, of very variable weather and great cold. Icebergs were many but caused no danger. He crossed the meridian of Greenwich on the 14th, and next day turned north-east to get into the latitude of Cape Circumcision. On the 17th, in latitude 54°23′, longitude 6°33′ E, he steered east again. If he had only, against all logic, steered west! There was a 'prodigious high sea' from the south, so there could be no land near in that direction. The Cape—the evasive Cape!—could be only an island, of that he was certain in another twenty-four hours, but in that latitude he must see it if he only kept on sailing, and brought to at night. The only thing he saw like land was a fog bank. By the 21st he was in longitude 16°13′, which was five degrees to the east of the position he had been given. He tried another day: longitude 19°18′. He could not know that when he altered course for his final eastern run on the 17th, almost in the precise latitude of Bouvet Island, he was already three degrees eastward of it, and now for five days had been sailing away from it. He gave up hope. The rights and wrongs of geography! The Isle of Georgia, land that looked like ice, after all his scepticism, had convinced him that Bouvet was right. Now he was equally convinced that Bouvet, faced by an isle of ice that looked like land, was wrong. He was, however, now close to the position he had himself been in, in mid-December 1772, when for some hours there was a general persuasion of the presence of land: he ran over that position, the sky cleared, there was nothing, not an inch of ice, not a penguin. The sky thickened; storm, snow and sleet fell upon him. He turned north. It crossed his mind that he might look for that other French discovery of which he had heard at the Cape,
On this passage to the Cape Cook had leisure to formulate some of the general conclusions to which he had been led—which he had begun to put into words, indeed, as he left the problematic coast of Sandwich Land. At first he seems to be commenting on the memorandum and the chart with which he had explained his purpose to the First Lord three years—or an age?—before, and on the various restatements and modifications of that plan he had made in the intervening time. There is accomplishment to record.
I had now made the circuit of the Southern Ocean in a high Latitude and traversed it in such a manner as to leave not the least room for the Possibility of there being a continent, unless near the Pole and out of the reach of Navigation; by twice visiting the Pacific Tropical Sea, I had not only settled the situation of some old discoveries but made there many new ones and left, I conceive, very little more to be done even in that part. Thus I flater my self that the intention of the Voyage has in every respect been fully Answered, the Southern Hemisphere sufficiently explored and a final end put to the searching after a Southern Continent, which has at times ingrossed the attention of some of the Maritime Powers for near two Centuries past and the Geographers of all ages.ibid., 643.
This is the voice of authority and maturity; the change of tone from the letters with which he introduced his first journal to the notice of the Admiralty is marked and remarkable. Yet, beyond that initial statement, he must still deal in the probable and not the certain. His mind went again to Sandwich Land.
That there may be a Continent or large tract of land near the Pole, I will not deny, on the contrary I am of opinion there is, and it is probable that we have seen a part of it. The excessive cold, the many islands and vast floats of ice all tend to prove that there must be land to the South… .ibid.
It must, he argued, be irregular land, extending farthest to the north from opposite the southern Atlantic and Indian oceans—which is perfectly true: for in those parts he had encountered a greater quantity of ice farther north than elsewhere, and greater cold, and the greater part of those immense quantities of ice must originate with land. If there was no great extent of land, if ice did not need land for its formation, then there should be a belt of ice, and a belt of cold, right round the earth, at a more or less uniform distance from the Pole, say at the parallel of 60° or 70°. This was not so, and his conclusion followed. His argument was not unreasonable within the context of his own observation. But he knew too little of the oceanography of those regions; the movement of the great cold-water current, its effect on the movement of the ice, were notions as sealed from him as was the Pole. He was not, of course, dead to the drift of currents, and he had measured them.
There was more to say about ice, whether 'islands' or 'vast floats of low ice'—as we should say, bergs or the pack. The traditional theory, that as sea water did not freeze, all this ice must come from frozen rivers, would not do. Cook had never seen any earth or the products of earth, detritus, incorporated in it; he doubted the existence of rivers in a land too cold for water. No water ran on the coast of Georgia, no stream from any ice island. Vast ice cliffs he had seen at the edge of the sea (and he thought they might project a good way into the sea), valleys deep in snow; in Possession Bay he had seen the masses of ice breaking away. He arrived at his own theory, which, apart from the movement of glaciers, clearly accounted for the tabular, or flat-topped, bergs, with their sheer sides.
'It is here'—at the ice-cliffs—'where the Ice islands are formed, not from streames of Water, but from consolidated snow which is allmost continually falling or drifting down from the Mountains, especially in Winter when the frost must be intence. During that Season, these ice clifts must so accumulate as to fill up all the Bays be they ever so large, this is a fact which cannot be doubted as we have seen it so in summer; also during that season the Snow may fix and consolidate to ice to most of the other coasts and there also form Ice clifts. These clifts accumulate by continual falls of snow and what drifts from the Mountains till they are no longer able to support their own weight and then large pieces break off which we call Ice islands.'
JournalsII, 644.
He was not so happy in accounting for the inequalities and extraordinary appearance of many of his ice islands. Although he knew well enough that bergs decay and disintegrate, he was not fully
must be formed on or under the side of a Coast, composed of spired Rocks and precepices, or some such uneven surface, for we cannot suppose that snow alone, as it falls, can form on a plain surface, such as the Sea, such a variety of high spired peaks and hills as we have seen on many of the Ice isles. It is certainly more reasonable to suppose that they are formed on a Coast whose surface is something similar to theirs.ibid., 645.
He appears to think of them, that is, as breaking away directly from the land, moulded to the land, carrying the land's impression with them. Yet they all, if of any extent, had a perpendicular side or sides of clear ice. 'This to me was a convincing proof that these, as well as the flat isles, must have broke off from a substance like themselves, that is from some large tract of ice'; so that subdivision went on all the while.
As for the pack or field ice, Cook has also his theory, built on his own observation. He has still to struggle with the dogma that sea water does not freeze, and fortunately he was never in water shallow enough to be able to watch it freezing around him. His observations are correct, though his initial doubt 'if ever the Wind is violent in the very high Latitudes', so violent, that is, as to keep the water in motion sufficient to stop freezing, is itself violently wrong-headed. He proceeds,
that the Sea will freeze over, or the snow which falls upon it, which amounts to the same thing, we have instances in the Northern Hemisphere; the Baltick sea, the Gulf of StLaurence, the Straits of Bell-isle and many other equally large Seas are frequently frozen over in Winter; nor is this attall extraordinary, for we have found the degree of cold at the surface of the sea, even in summer, to be two degrees below the freezing point, consequently nothing kept it from freezing but the Salts it contained and the agitation of its surface; when ever this last ceaseth in Winter, when the frost is set in and there comes a fall of Snow, it will freeze on the Surface as it falls and in a few days or perhaps in one night form such a sheet of ice as will not be easy broke up; thus a foundation will be laid for it to accumulate to any thickness by falls of snow, without it being attall necessary for the Sea Water to freeze. It may be by this means that these vast floats of low ice we find in the Spring of the Year are formed and after they break up are carried by the Currents to the North; for from all the observations I have been able to make, the Currents every where in the high Latitudes set to the North or to theNeorNwbut we have very seldom found them considerable.ibid., 645–6.
This is, as he says, an imperfect account. The winter winds in the high latitudes are, in fact, violent; in the very low air temperatures of autumn the sea does itself freeze. But there are quiet periods; and, beginning with the freezing of the sea, the build-up of the winter pack-ice of Antarctica does proceed much as Cook here defines it. Once this build-up is well under way the blizzards of winter can do little to stop it, since the weight of frozen snow on the water inhibits the formation of waves. We may say, as we have said, that Cook knew too little of the oceanography of these regions. He was founding it.
He has a final word for the inexpressible, the 'horribleness' of the lands he had discovered, where these floating islands of ice were formed. What could be expected more to the south ?—'for we may reasonably suppose that we have seen the best as lying most to the North, whoever has resolution and perseverance to clear up this point by proceding farther than I have done, I shall not envy him the honour of the discovery but I will be bold to say that the world will not be benefited by it'.Journals II, 646.
Storms did not cease as the ship stood north, and contrary winds; sails and rigging continued to give way; but as February passed and March drew on the temperature rose, and sea-birds gave a little variety to the stale and tedious diet. Cook thought hard about winds and currents. Possibly it was at this time that the Muse overcame the otherwise able-bodied seaman, Thomas Perry, with the ballad beginning
a conspectus of the voyage on which the captain was said to set a high value. These verses are in an album in the Dixson Library, Nevertheless they appear solidified on This short passage appears to have been what Cook first wrote. For the second sentence, when revising his text he substituted, 'I must however observe in favour of the New Zealanders that I have allways found them of a Brave, Noble, Open and benevolent disposition, but they are a people that will never put up with an insult if they have an oppertunity to resent it.'—Ms F I, called 'Captain James Cook Relics and Mss'. A note appended to them by Miss Louisa Jane Mackrell, greatniece of Isaac Smith, reads, 'This song composed by Thomas Perry one of the Sea Men that went round the world with Captain Cook and was very much valued by the Captain. Mrs Cook kept it with the Gold Medal till her death.' I have printed the whole thing in Journals II, 870–1.A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean … (1784), to the south of Africa, about latitude 41° S, longitude 21° E.Adventure had arrived at the Cape twelve months earlier. Furneaux had lost a boat's crew, killed and eaten by the New Zealanders. So the confused story gathered on that last visit to Queen Charlotte Sound, on which the people of the place had fallen so obstinately silent, was in substance true. It is obvious that Cook was shocked. He admired the New Zealanders. He stumbled for a comment. 'I shall make no reflections on this Melancholy affair untill I hear more about it. I shall only observe, in favour of these people, that I have found them no wickeder than other Men.'Journals II, 653 and n. 1 on that page.True Briton, homeward bound from China without touching at the Cape. Her captain confirmed the story of the Adventure, sent fresh provisions and old newspapers, and took a note for the Admiralty. The Resolution, Cook briefly informed the secretary, was within two days' sail of the Cape, had met with no accident, her crew, 'thus far' had enjoyed a good state of health. Thomas Perry continued with his commentary,
The Resolution came through a final hard gale, and on 22 March anchored in Table Bay. But it was not Wednesday the 22nd, it was
Here he remained five weeks. The Dutch were welcoming, Cook reaffirmed his friendship with the merchant Christoffel Brand. There was much to do to the ship: her masts, spars and standing rigging had come through their trials extremely well, but running rigging and sails were in a desperate state, caulking was long overdue, the rudder had to be unshipped for repair. There was ample leave, ample refreshment for all officers and men, it is plain that the Brave Boys saw no reason to wait till old England to tip off a Bottle. Cook discharged from his company, 'by request', James and Nathaniel Cook; Forster parted with Mr Sparrman, who resumed his researches at the Cape. Wales took his instruments on shore. Some ten days after their arrival, another Indiaman, the P.R.O. Adm 1/1610. The letter is dated 22 March 1775. It is printed in full in Cf. p. 437, n. 2.Ceres, was leaving for England. Cook sent by her to the Admiralty copies of his journal and charts, a sheaf of Hodges's drawings, and a long letter summarising the voyage since he had parted with Furneaux. He praised his men. 'Mr Kendals Watch has exceeded the expectations of its most Zealous advocate.' How far his mission had been successful he submitted to their Lordships' better judgment.Journals II, 691–3.
Besides a letter to read, he found people to meet. One of these was to him of the very highest interest. He was Julien Marie Crozet, a
The Solomon Islands. See John Dunmore, French Explorers in the Pacific, I (Oxford, 1965), 135–45; Colin Jack-Hinton, The Search for the Islands of Solomon (Oxford, 1969), 261–6.Journals II, 656.
Something else Cook met with at the Cape. This was a copy of Hawkesworth's Elliott, Voyages—the volumes in which Dutton. 'Depending on the goodness of Mr Kendals Watch', he resolved to fetch St Helena, if he could, by a direct course. The watch did not deceive him, and he was there on 15 May—not without nervousness on the part of the Dutton, the day before, that they might miss it altogether. Cook had recovered his humour and, Elliott tells us, 'laugh'd at them, and told them that he would run their jibboom on the Island if they choose';Memoirs, f. 41 v.
Both ships put to sea on the evening of the 21st, keeping company till the 24th, when the Cook to the Admiralty secretary, 'Resolution at Sea / May 24 Foxon is a rather shadowy figure: even his Christian name appears to be unknown. His log was a self-recording device. Phipps also tried it, on his arctic voyage of 1773, but found it unsatisfactory, though he thought it would be useful in smooth water and fair weather.—E.G.R. Taylor, Dutton, under orders to avoid the island of Ascension and its smuggling trade with the Americans, parted. Cook sent another letter by her, and more journals and charts, 'very accurate… executed by a Young man who has been bred to the Sea under my care and who has been a very great assistant to me in this way, both in this and my former Voyage.'th 1775 / Lat. 13° S / Long. 10° Wt'; P.R.O. Adm 1/1610; Journals II, 694.Dutton a specimen of Foxon's new hydrometer or patent log, with which he experimented: it did not behave well, and we have him reporting adversely on at least one contemporary appliance which might make life easier for seamen.Mathematical Practitioners of Hanoverian England (Cambridge, 1966), 54, 55, 287.Journals II, 669.
Mitchell Library, Mitchell Library, Solander was at the Admiralty on 31 July. 'Two oClock Monday', he wrote to Banks in high excitement, 'this moment Capt Cook is arrived. I have not yet had an oportunity of conversing with him, as he is still in the board-room—giving an account of himself & Co. He looks as well as ever. By and by, I shall be able to say a little more.'Ms As 24; Journals II, 957.Ms 78–1; Journals II, 953.
Meanwhile there was plenty for Cook to do. His earlier communications from the Cape had come to the Admiralty in late June—'Glorious Voyage', Solander had written to Banks—and the Canberra Letter Book; Dutton had preceded the Resolution at Portsmouth by ten or twelve days. He arrived with a final despatch in his hand—'The behaviour of my Officers & Crew during ye whole Course of ye Voyage merits from me the highest recommendations and I Shall be happy if my Conduct meets with their Lordships approbation'Journals II, 694–5.d Mr Maskelyne.'Journals II, cxi, from Wales's journal.A Collection of Voyages, chiefly in the Southern Atlantick Ocean. London, 1775.Léon in 1756, where food might be grown for East Indian ships and West Indian slaves, whale and seal fisheries exploited, and a base set up for the exploration of the continent attached to Cape Circumcision and for the enlargement of British commerce. Lord North's aim, successfully accomplished, was to drop the subject. Cook's investigation of South Georgia showed that the prime ministerial inertia was well advised. No one could argue that Dalrymple had not rushed on fate; and fate had been swift. French dreams, as well as his, had gone. But the ocean of islands, of measurable distances, had taken on form. Wales, in his coach, carried down to Greenwich a proved revolution.
The Resolution was ordered up to Gallions Reach, whence it was intended she should go to Deptford to be paid off and laid up. Cook, home at Mile End, was on 9 August presented at St James's Palace, promoted post-captain and appointed to the Kent, a 74-gun ship built in 1762. The very next day this appointment was cancelled. The ship was to be laid up at Plymouth: the new post-captain was to go not to her, but to Greenwich Hospital, as Fourth Captain on that naval establishment: that is, he was to be very honourably pensioned, at £230 per annum, with free quarters, fire and light, and is 2d per diem table money. He did not think he was ripe for pensioning. We must suppose some discussions on the matter, and some arrangement about the exchange of letters between himself and the Admiralty secretary. There was to be a condition. Cook wrote, on 12 August,
The Death of Captain Clements one of the Captains in the Royal Hospital at Greenwich, making a Vacancy there, I humbly offer my self to my Lords Commissrsof the Admiralty as a Candidate for it, presuming if I am fortunate enough to merit their Lordships approbation, they will allow me to quit it when either the call of my Country for more active Service, or that my endeavours in any shape can be essential to the publick; as I would on no account be understood to withdraw from that line of service which their Lordships goodness has raised me to, knowing myself Capable of ingaging in any duty which they may be pleased to commit to my charge.P.R.O. Adm 1/1610 and 12/4806;
JournalsII, 958.
Stephens's reply was one of immediate agreement. Cook would be employed whenever he asked to be. The decision was already made, obviously, to employ his ship again, immediately after the formal order to have her laid up. Solander acquainted the absent Banks with that in another letter, describing an expedition to see the Solander to Banks, 14 August 1775; Mitchell Library, Banks Papers, Resolution at Gallions Reach, headed by Sandwich and Miss Ray. A glorious day: the First Lord had distributed happiness by announcing promotions; Clerke was promised command of the ship, to carry home the islander Omai; there were drawings of birds for Banks, and Forster had live birds for the Queen; Anderson the surgeon's mate had made a good botanical collection; with few exceptions, Solander believed, the whole ship's company would go out again; the marines made a fine appearance; Pickersgill had made the ladies sick by showing them, preserved in spirits, the New Zealand head where from broiled slices had been eaten on board the ship; Sandwich had asked the officers to dinner; all enquired after Banks.Ms As 24; Journals II, 958–9.
As I have not now time to draw up an account of such occurrences of the Voyage as I wish to communicate to you, I can only thank you for your obliging letter and kind enquiryes after me during my absence; I must however tell you that the Resolution was found to answer, on all occasions even beyond my expectation and is so little injured by the Voyage that she will soon be sent out again, but I shall not command her, my fate drives me from one extream to a nother a few Months ago the whole Southern hemisphere was hardly big enough for me and now I am going to be confined within the limits of Greenwich Hospital, which are far too small for an active mind like mine, I must however confess it is a fine retreat and a pretty income, but whether I can bring my self to like ease and retirement, time will shew. MrsCook joins with me in best respects to you and all your family….Cook to Walker, 19 August 1775; Phillips coll. Salem, Mass.;
JournalsII, 960.
He was Walker's most affectionate friend as well as humble servant, and a month later a long letter followed describing the voyage—'an imperfect outline', which he hoped Walker would excuse, 'as the multiplicity of business I have now on my hand will not admit of my being more particular or accurate. … I did expect and was in hopes that I had put an end to all Voyages of this kind to the Cook to Walker, 14 September 1775; Dixson Library, Ms Q 141; Journals II, 699. I print the whole letter, pp. 696–9.r Ellerton', who had been master of the collier Friendship when Cook was her mate in 1753, 'if he is yet living'.
Another voyage for sending home Omiah: this was just what Cook could not imagine the possibility of when he was in the islands, strictly refusing to take away anyone himself, and not looking with much favour on Furneaux's willingness to carry off the young man properly called Mae—more commonly known in England, then and since, as Omai. He was part of Furneaux's history, so far, not Cook's; but he was to join Cook's, and there was a good deal to hear about him. Cook had things to hear about Furneaux, no doubt, beyond the information conveyed in that commander's letter at the Cape; his journal must be read. Furneaux had arrived home on 14 July 1774. After a year's leisure, he was about to be sent to the North American station, as captain of the The name comes on a chart of 'Cooks Straits' drawn by Fannin, in a volume of his Syren frigate. His journal was of more painful interest to Cook than this news; for it contained the history of the
Resolution and Adventure parted company off the New Zealand coast at the end of October 1773, Furneaux's crank and leaking ship had a bad time, blown to leeward and almost unmanageable; she got near enough to Cape Palliser one day to buy crayfish from the natives, was blown off again and had to bring to, until, the wind switching to south-west, she bore away to take refuge on 9 November in Tolaga Bay. By then Cook had already been in Queen Charlotte Sound for six days. Three days later, with a supply of wood, water and fish, she left only to be driven back by the weather, so that it was the 16th before Furneaux was again at sea. He might still have made the rendezvous in time had not those fatal gales kept him beating backwards and forwards off the mouth of the strait, out to sea and out of sight when Cook sailed on the 25th. Not till 30 November did he come to an anchor in Ship Cove, when, seeing no Resolution, he in his turn began to fear for his consort's safety. Cook's bottle was found, and Furneaux immediately set to work on necessary repairs and preparations; these, he found, included the rebaking of a good deal of his bread, and thus delayed, he was not ready for sea till 17 December. The people of the place had been rather troublesome with their attempts on property, though in no way hostile. What happened now was totally unexpected. On the 17th Furneaux sent out the cutter for a final load of greenstuff, commanded by a master's mate, John Rowe, with a midshipman and eight other men in her. She was to go to a bay across the sound which bore the native name Whareunga—Grass Cove, as Cook called it. She did not return, and next morning Lieutenant Burney was sent in the launch to search for her, it being thought—no worse thought seemed possible—that somehow she had been stove on the rocks. What Burney found at a small beach next to Grass Cove in the afternoon was startling evidence of slaughter and cannibalism: baskets of cooked human flesh, scattered shoes, a piece or two of clothing, two hands (one of them Rowe's), and the head of the captain's negro servant. At Grass Cove itself—or Bloody Bay, to use the alternative name given by Peter Fannin the masterMs charts and views now in the Navy Library, Vz 11/55, No. 1.Journals II, 751. I print the whole of the relevant portion of Burney's journal, 18 December 1773, pp. 749–52. There are Ms copies of this, testifying to considerable interest.
Indiscriminate revenge had no appeal to Furneaux. He was out of Ship Cove the following day, ran into his habitual bad luck with the wind and could not clear the strait till 23 December. He stood to the south-east, a month behind Cook. A more imaginative man might have given more serious consideration to the possibility, having plunged a great way to the south, of following Cook to the islands. Since Cook, however, had communicated only 'thoughts' and not orders, Furneaux, when he was in latitude 61° S, abreast of the Horn, after a month in the lonely ocean with a straining ship and a cold and wet crew, westerlies still blowing and provisions damaged, thought it most prudent to steer for the
Omai was, as it were, the British answer to Bougainville's Ahutoru, who had had marked success in Parisian society. He came from a different island, and his status there was a good deal lower. This did not interfere with his own social success in England. Beginning in the newspapers as 'the wild Indian, that was taken on an island in the South Seas, by Capt. Fonnereau of the Endeavour', he was soon advanced by Solander to the role of 'a private Gentleman of a small fortune' who had retired to Huahine after family misadventures in war and apprenticeship to a Tahitian priest.Daily Advertiser, 19 July 1774; Solander to a Scottish correspondent (Lind or Burnet?), 19 August 1774, Atl, Holograph Letters and Documents, 24. Journals II, 949–51. It was also said that Furneaux had introduced Omai at Cape Town as a 'priest of the Sun'.Early Diary (London, 1913), I, 334.umu, or earth-oven; and, given a sporting gun, destroyed game-birds and barnyard fowl with equal enthusiasm. Hodges produced a picture of him.
All this was ridiculous, said the moralists, of whom Dr Forster was one; Omai should have been set to learn a trade, something that would have conduced to the advancement of his nation when he returned home; he should have been presented with tools, not trinkets. There is difficulty in thinking of any trade that would have adorned the life of the Edward Lascelles, Granville Sharp (London, 1928), 108–11, tells the story as well as anyone.Resolution, a person much to be preferred. In England he seems to have modified his condemnation somewhat, and he was probably far too busy to cast a cold eye on another's social amusements; after all, Omai's friendliness was undoubted, his gratitude for kindness unfeigned. On the other hand, by the time we are finished with him we may judge, with Cook, that he was at bottom a foolish inattentive fellow.
Cook's own social life shone with less refulgence. He seems to have been indifferent to duchesses' handkerchiefs. He had, after all, a wife and family, and the few pieces of evidence that exist indicate that he was not indifferent to them. Only two of his five children were alive in 1775, the boys—the premature able seamen—James and Nathaniel, the first of them twelve years old, the second eleven. James had been entered the year before in the Naval Academy at Portsmouth, the master of which was George Witchell, who had worked on Cook's observations of the eclipse in 1766. It was a somewhat dubious and undisciplined institution, but the only one that provided any
Domestic life, however, was not all. In August 1775 Wray to Hardwicke, 10 August 1775; John Nichols, Royal Society Library. Royal Society Certificates 1767–78.Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, I (London, 1817), 150.Philosophical Transactions of the Society, in the form of a letter to its president,
There were resorts of conviviality of less distinction than the Royal Society Club, though equal fame, where Cook was known; there was the club at Young Slaughter's Coffee House, in St Martin's Lane, an establishment favoured by art and science, and hence by Banks; and another at Jack's Coffee House. R. L. and M. Edgeworth,Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (London, 1820), I, 188–9.Private Papers of James Boswell, ed. Geoffrey Scott and F. A. Pottle, XI, 217–18.
A fortnight or more later there was another pleasant dinner, this time at the Mitre, with Pringle and some members of the Cook.”' After this inevitable, this intolerable sally they drank coffee at Brown's Coffee House, and went on to the Private Papers of James Boswell, XI, 256–7.
ibid., 262.
It was a copy of the 3rd edition, 1769; now in the Mitchell Library.
About then, too, it must have been that Banks determined on another memorial of admiration, in the portrait of Cook that he
24 May 1776; Mitchell Library, Safe 1/68, Brabourne Banks Papers; 'It may not be amiss to observe, that the plate engraved by Sherwin, after a painting by Dance, is a most excellent likeness of Captain Cook; and more to be valued, as it is the only one I have seen that bears any resemblance to him.'—Samwell, r Dance, and will call upon him for that purpose about 11 or 12 oClock.'Journals III, 1498.Narrative of the Death of Captain James Cook (London, 1786), 23. The painting now hangs in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
The artist, no doubt, was trying for the face of a man considering deeply, and Cook was given diverse matters, official and unofficial, to consider, as we can see from the few bits of his unofficial correspondence that we have left to us. Not long after his return home he received a letter of congratulatory admiration from a young French naval officer called Latouche-Tréville, who was ardent to explore the Pacific. Cook was a little slow to reply, as he had first to get a friend to translate the letter; for 'je ne suis pas absolutement maître de la langue françoise'. The reply was graceful, as he thanked the young man and gave him what encouragement he could: he had not been working for his own people alone, but for all Europe: if he had French admiration he would not worry about the others. Latouche had defined his ambitions in an expansive way, and Cook, remarking on French achievement in the South Sea, at once provided some kindly flattery—the doing of great things there required men like his correspondent—and unlocked his own principle: a man would never accomplish much in discovery who only stuck to his orders. 'Car je soutiens que celui qui ne fait qu'exécuter des ordres ne fera jamais grandes figures dans les découvertes.'—Cook to Latouche-Tréville, 6 September 1775; Bib. Nat., Paris, Nouv. Acq. Fr. 9439; Cook to Latouche-Tréville, 10 February 1776; Bib. Nat., Paris, Nouv. Acq. Fr. 9439; Journals II, 695–6.Journals II, 700–3.
There was a return to his earlier professional interest in the letter he wrote, possibly by request, to the chart-publisher Robert Sayer of Fleet Street, whose firm had taken over the plates of his Newfoundland charts after Jefferys' death in 1771. The letter was to recommend that famous volume The North American Pilot—so fundamental a part of which was formed by his own work and that of his mate and successor Michael Lane. He did not waste words.
Mile End, Feb. 26, 1776. Sir, I am greatly obliged to you for the Perusal of the North American Pilot, for Newfoundland, Labradore &c. I am much pleased to see a Work, in which I have had some Hand, so likely to prove useful to Navigation.—From the Knowledge I have of these Parts (which is not a little,) I shall not hesitate to declare, that as much Faith may be put in the Charts, together with the Sailing Directions, as ought to be put in any Work of the Kind.
R. A. Skelton and R. V. Tooley,
The Marine Surveys of(London, 1967), 11, say that Cook was presented with a copy of the volume, first published in 1775, by the publishers, Sayer and Bennett; copies issued after the date of his letter had it printed on the verso of the introductory leaf bearing the dedication to Palliser.James Cook in North America
This letter Sayer printed in the volume. If it was a puff, it was by no means a reckless one. Another letter, of a quite unprofessional nature, again reflects Cook's standing as a probably influential person; and reflects, too, both his own caution in an unfamiliar situation and his unwillingness to be used. His sister Margaret had married a fisherman
o Harrison Esqr Attorney at Law' of Guisbrough.
Mile End, London 24th Feb. 1776 Sir, I have had some conversation with M
rParks, on the subject of the letter which you favoured me with. He seems to think, that my Brother in Law, James Flick, cannot know neither the time nor place he Run the good[s] for which he stands charged; as the officers of the Customs are very carefull to conceal these particulars. If so, he cannot know himself to be innocent, unless he never was concerned in such work; and this I suppose is not the Case. Consequently he will in my opinion run no little risk in standing a Trial. But this is a subject I have little knowledge of, Nor have I time nor inclination to make my self acquainted with it. I am told that the easiest way to get clear of such like affairs, is, after the Writ is served, to Petition the Commissioners of the Customs or Excise, to which it may belong; and to endeavour to make up the matter with the officers concerned. If this method is persued, I shall be ready to give any assistance in my power, which cannot be much, as I know not a single Commissioners [sic] at either the one Board or the other. This Method of proceeding, supposes him Guilty the contrary of which he has not only asserted to you but to me also in a letter which I have just recieved. The only thing he seems to dread is the expence of a Trial, but in this I wish he does not deceive himself, as well as you. If I should gain any further information you shall be acquainted therewith….National Library of Australia, Canberra,
Ms7. TheMsis endorsed, 'The very celebrated navigator,Capt. James Cook '.
One can see Mr Fleck's point quite clearly, once he had got into trouble. What was the use of having a brother-in-law a post-captain in the royal navy, if you could not make some profit out of the link. Old John Walker, too, writing from Whitby with restrained affection, wanted his 'Esteemed Friend' to interview an attorney, in a benevolent cause. 'I dare say thou must remember Alice Gill who was my Servant at the Time thou was likewise one francis Sutton who belong'd to the old friendship, and I think the Time of thy being Mate, who Marry'd hir'; Francis had been pressed into the navy, and gone down with the Walker to Cook, 2 April 1776; Dixson Library Ramillies, and their son Frank, an apprentice, had also been lost with his ship; could Cook interview Mr Thomas Cotton of Hackney and arrange for the payment to Alice of a legacy designed for her son? No doubt Cook remembered Alice Gill and Francis Sutton—he had a warm feeling for his associates of the Whitby days
Ms Q 140. This Ms is a draft on the back of Cook's letter to Walker of the preceding 14 February, and plunges straight into the amenities: 'I receiv'd thine of the 14 of february last which shou'd Acknowledgd before now, but waited for a favourable Opportunity to Send the Ale & a Ham which hope to meet with in a little Time…'.
By February 1776 he was deep in another task, for which he had had no more formal training than for the law; which did not come to his hand so naturally as the offices of friendship. This was the composition of the history of his voyage. There were other candidates for this task, some of whom had minimal qualifications; certainly the ambition to strike a bargain with the booksellers, in spite of the official confiscation of all logs and journals, stirred a little in a number of seamen's brains. It generally came to nothing: there were not many literate seamen, and even with Grub Street padding it was not so easy to produce a cohesive story of three years' adventure without a reasonably complete journal stowed away somewhere. But booksellers were avid; there was a public, it seems, for the most unsatisfactory account; anonymity could be preserved fairly well; and though the Admiralty was determined (with needless fears) that nothing would supplant an official account, something was bound to slip on to the market. Writing being a remarkable exercise among the crew, its practitioners and their secrets were known, like Cook's report to the Admiralty secretary on the matter, 18 September 1775, together with an enclosure addressed to himself by Anderson the Resolution's gunner, who did the essential detective work (a very vivid piece of writing), is in P.R.O. Adm 1/1610; I have printed it in Journals II, 961–2. Marra's book has a long title, Journal of the Resolution's Voyage … by which the Non-Existence of an undiscovered Continent, between the Equator and the 50th Degree of Southern Latitude, is demonstratively proved, etc. The other publication referred to was 'A Second Voyage round the World…. Drawn up from Authentic Papers…', was said to be 'Printed for the Editor', was obviously fake, and got a bad press.
Meanwhile the preparation of the official account proceeded, not without difficulties.
The decision had been apparently quite early taken by the Admiralty, or Lord Sandwich, that there should be no more Hawkesworths. Hawkesworth's glory, so firmly founded, as it must have seemed to him, on £6000, had turned, if not to dust and ashes, at least to a good deal of unpleasantness. We have seen that Cook, when he read the volumes devoted to his own voyage, was 'mortified'; mortified also the commanders whose journals had been adapted in the first volume. Burney and Garrick, in nominating Hawkesworth to 'write the voyages', had not really made a good choice, though they had obliged a friend. Hawkesworth was not interested in geography, he knew nothing about nautical affairs; one rope, it could almost be said, or one compass-bearing, was as good as another to him. He wished to entertain. His use of the first person throughout, as he told the stories, may have brought the commanders and the reader closer together and made the stories more vivid; but it also made the commanders guilty of some strange statements. Writing for the polite world, he had laid down a condition that he should be free to intersperse his own sentiments when he thought fit, in addition to converting the seamen's language into his own, and Cook may well have been taken aback by some of the elevated speculations attributed to him, or to discover the close resemblance he had found between Diana and her nymphs and a party of Maori women feeling with their toes for shellfish beneath the water at Tolaga Bay. There was more of this in the two Cook volumes than in the first; for by the time Hawkesworth came to compile the first volume he was running out of sentiments. Yet all might have been tolerable if the arrangement had been adhered to by which each commander was to read the text relating to himself. Hawkesworth, though reckless, thought it had been adhered to, and that he had done his duty; and he seems to have worked hard. 'My Lord', he writes to Sandwich on 19 November 1771 (with rather more feeling for Banks than for Cook),
I cannot help stealing a few minutes from the Work in which your Lordship is pleased to take an Interest so flattering to myself, and so favourable to the Undertaking, to acknowledge the Receipt of the first Volume of MrBanks's Journal, and to assure your Lordship that as it is my highest Interest, it is also my earnest Desire to get my M.S. ready time enough to have the Sanction of MrBanks and CaptCook to what I shall relate after them. I am happy in your Lordship's powerfull Influence with MrBanksfor the use of his Journall; I flatter myself that I shall be able to prevent ill humour, and satisfy the utmost Delicacy of a Gentleman to whom I shall be so much obliged. I promise your Lordship that not an hour shall be bestowed upon any other Object, till the Account is finished, either of Business or Pleasure, your Lordship will judge that my Relaxations, however necessary must be short, from the time which was taken up by the mere reading of only part of my materials…. Sandwich Papers.
There is enough in these rather stilted lines to show us why Hawkesworth would never produce another Anson's Voyage; enough also to show that he was really anxious to have his text scrutinised, by Cook as well as by Banks. In his preface he said it had been. Cook, it can hardly be doubted, did see some of it. We have his conversation as reported by Boswell. 'He said it was not true that Mr. Banks and he had revised all the Book, and in what was revised Hawkesworth would make no alteration (I think he said this too.)'Private Papers of James Boswell, XI, 218.
Rival advertisements reached a high tone. By the time Hawkesworth had sold out, Newbery had on the market the first numbers of a compilation in 48 weekly parts on all the English circumnavigations, up to Cook, taking in Sydney Parkinson and adding Bougainville for good measure.—General Evening Post, 2 August 1773. Strahan and Cadell, put on their metal, still in August did not fail to insist on the controverted point, 'That no doubt might remain of the fidelity with which the author has related the events recorded in his materials, the manuscript account of each voyage was read to the several Commanders, and to Mr Banks and Dr Solander, and afterwards lodged in their hands for a considerable time.'—General Evening Post, 21 August. On Hawkesworth in relation to the other voyagers see Robert E. Gallagher, Byron's Journal of his Circumnavigation (Cambridge, 1964), lxxvi ff., and Helen Wallis, Carteret's Voyage Round the World (Cambridge, 1965), 464 ff. and 499 ff. Dr Wallis has some useful remarks on the general problem.
Cook, through Boswell, tells us a little more about his interpreter. 'He said Hawkesworth made in his Book a general conclusion from a particular fact, and would take as a fact what they had only heard…. He said that a disregard of chastity in unmarried women was by no means general at Otaheite, and he said that Hawkesworth's story of an initiation he had no reason to beleive. “Why, Sir,” said I, “Hawkesworth has used your narrative as a London Tavern-keeper does wine. He has brewed it.”'Private Papers of James Boswell, XI, 218.
London Evening Post, 18 August 1773.
All this was directly to affect Cook. None of it, however, was his concern, as in those months he stood south-east from Cape Palliser, and then up through the islands and back to Queen Charlotte Sound. He was engaged in writing a new journal, of a different sort from that of his first voyage. He was not a born writer, with a natural gift of style. If we may regard the first voyage as his apprenticeship to discovery, we may regard the journal of that voyage as his apprenticeship to journal-keeping. Apart from the fact that he had a great deal to say, it followed the pattern of the journals he had kept before: that is, it abstracted the technical detail of a log under a few headings
Endeavour. The commander of the Resolution encountered an extraordinary number of remarkable occurrences, and he found himself embarked on a constant need to theorise about them. One cannot say that Cook is becoming a reflective man, because there is evidence enough of reflectiveness in what he has written before; but the voyage kept his mind, as well as his technical ability as a sailor, continually on the stretch. It may have been, partly, because of this, that he wrote so much; another reason, probably, was that he had so much time to write in—as we have seen, for example, on the passage from New Zealand to Tierra del Fuego. For whatever reason, the voyage is marked by a vast amount of drafting and re-drafting of the journal—a journal different from that of the first voyage, in that the summary of the log, though faithfully adhered to for most of the time, is finally abandoned for more general statements; and these are the statements of a version, the last of four (if we accept the indications of copies made by the captain's clerk) which has also converted the dating, and hence the organisation, of the whole into civil time. He has also re-organised some of the information he has had from his subordinates, makes increasing use of the excellent Wales; now and again, as he improves, rubs off the fine point of a first vivid word or phrase. He is not writing, any more, simply a report to the Admiralty: the dating proves that. One is driven to guess, not exactly that Cook writes deliberately for publication
Endeavour journal, although he did not know, until he met the printed product at the Cape, that his own emendations had been ignored. He himself may quite well have resolved that when another editor came to operate upon his pages the resulting statement would be Cook, not editorial. He had no illusion that he was a fine writer, or a master of spelling and punctuation; but he knew what he wanted to say about his voyage, and what needed to be said.
So, when the matter was first discussed in 1775, the situation was not quite the same as it was in 1771. What happened in the succeeding months can be disentangled reasonably well, and although it is part of the biography of
‘MrForster overwhelms me with civilities upon your account. He is of all men I know either the most open or the greatest fool. He certainly has made some clever remarks during the Voyage; but he talks rather too much of them. You cannot imagine how much the Man is mended since he came home: the Officers say they hardly know the Man. He came home thinking himself very great—now he, like Bruce is reduced even in his own opinion.'Solander to Banks, 5 September 1775; B. M. Natural History, Banks Correspondence, D.T.C., I, 98–9.
James Bruce was the African traveller.
Lord Sandwich, the letter goes on, in its news of the voyagers, had asked him for a specimen of his writing, an account of the proceedings at
The specimen did not meet with approval. Obviously there was correspondence that has since disappeared. Much has survived, among Sandwich's papers, and poor Sandwich to Sandwich to r Forster I begin to fear that there is no possibility of doing any thing with Mr Forster; and I am almost convinced that he is, what he has been represented to me to be, an utterly impracticable man.' As a proof that he was not a correct writer of English, his letter was enclosed; nevertheless Sandwich was prepared to keep him employed—‘I am willing that his share of the emolument of that publication shou’d be considerable; & unless his vanity leads him to think he is entitled to more than his proportion, he will have no reason to complain'.
It was thought, succeeding this experiment, that a joint work might be possible, Cook dealing with the navigation and Forster with the science. In the nature of things, this scheme could succeed no better. However it was couched, we have Cook, as the autumn of 1775 moved on, furiously busy over one of his own copies of the journal—operating on this creature of his mind with quite merciless determination: deleting, adding, interlining, incorporating footnotes in the text, filling up his margins, drafting sentences or paragraphs
B.M. Egerton All Cook's extant letters to Douglas on this matter, probably all there were, are preserved together in the British Museum, Egerton Dear Sir/I have received your obliging favour, and am very sorry it is not in my power to except of your kind invitation to Windsor. For some time past, I have been looking out for a Ship to accompany the Resolution on her intended Voyage; I expect one will be purchased tomorrow, but then I shall have to attend to the alterations which will be necessary to be made in her. These things have retarded the copying my Journal; five Books are done which I shall send you by the machine tomorrow, and if you please you may return those you have gone through by the same Conveyance. I leave it intirely to you to make such alterations as you see necessary and even to strike out any part, or passage which you may think superfluous. By such time as you come to Town I hope to have the whole ready to put into your hands. I am with great esteem DMs 2181 f. 42 v; Journals II, cxliv.Ms 2180, except the first, f. 1–2, which is exhibited, Sal. A. 82. This reference may therefore serve all of them.
He did inspect three ships the following day. Within a few days more
th of Janry 1776.r Sr/your obliged Humble Servt/Jams Cook
The texture of his life was indeed thickening, and at this period we may suppose some inner tension too. Ever since the excited party to the Resolution, when promotions were announced, and Cook's appointment to Greenwich Hospital, and the ladies were sick, it was general knowledge that the ship would go out again; and Cook was to have employment whenever he should ask for it—or, at least, to use his own phrase, whenever his endeavours in any shape could 'be essential to the publick'. And, as he had written to Walker, whether he could bring himself to like ease and retirement, time would show. Association with
Mile End Jan ry10th1776I have recieved your letter of the 7
thand also the Box with its contents. I have not had time to look over the corrections which you have made, but have not the least doubt but they were necessary, and that I shall be perfectly satisfied with them.The remarks you have made on Bits of loose paper, I find are very just. With respect to the Amours of my People at Otaheite & other places; I think it will not be necessary to mention them attall, unless it be by way of throwing a light on the Characters, or Customs of the People we are then among; and even than I would have it done in such a manner as might be unexeptionable to the nicest readers. In short my desire is that nothing indecent may appear in the whole book, and you cannot oblige me more than by pointing out whatever may appear to you as such.
By the date of the following one all had been settled: he was captain of the Resolution once more. The amenities, however, come uppermost.
I beg your exceptance of 3 Doz
nPints of Constantia Wine, White & Red, and 1/2 a Doznof a different sort, which is pale coloured. I will not answerfor them being packed in such a manner as to go safe to Windsor, tho' I think they will. You will herewith receive five Books more of my Manuscript, having kept the remaining three, as they want some alteration. Mile End Friday Morn
g8thMarch.
The 'Books' here referred to seen to be the separate blue papercovered volumes in which Cook wrote out his copy, and to have no connection with the divisions of the narrative. In his note of the next day he is puzzled by a technical matter, that of the tense in which he should write.
As I intend to look over my whole Manuscript I shall have an oppertunity to make such alterations, as may appear necessary to bring it, either to the present, or past times. If you will be so obligeing as to give me your opinion on this matter. It was first written in the present time, but on find[ing] D
rHawkesworth had mostly used the past, I set about altering it, but I find many places has escaped me.Mile End 9
thMarch 1776
Cook continued to wrestle. Meanwhile Forster also was busy. By April it seemed that the publication of the work, still conceived as in some sort a joint work, should be regulated, and on the 13th a meeting was held at the Admiralty of Sandwich, Cook, Forster, and Stephens the secretary. It was agreed, apparently without any consideration of the length at which the two authors were writing, that two volumes should be published, the first being Cook's journal, the second 'Doctor Forster's Observations upon Natural History, and upon the Manners, Customs, Genius, and Language of the natives of the several Islands, with his philosophical remarks in the course of the voyage, and a general introduction to his own work'. The authors were to bear equally the cost of paper and printing, and share equally the profit. The Admiralty would pay all the cost of engraving the plates, under the supervision of Cook, Forster and Hodges; the distribution of the plates between volumes was to be settled by the Admiralty, and they would afterwards become the property of the two authors. Forster was to get proofs of Cook's volume, as soon as convenient, so that he could translate the whole work into French and German, and likewise proofs of the plates, so that he could have others made from them for his translations.Letter to the Earl of Sandwich (London, 1778), Appendix.
Mile End Ap l26th1776I have just drawn off a Hhd of Madeira which was round in the Resolution. I expected it to have been of the very best, but I think it does not prove so. Perhaps you are a better judge than I am, therefore must [beg] your permission to send you a few bottle[s] to taste. I wish to know whether you would have it sent to Windsor, or to your Town house if to the former, by what conveyance.
I have had a little Conversation with M
rStrahan about my Journal, he has promised to give it all the assistance in his Power. C. Campbell will look over the Nautical part & SrHugh Palliser has also promised to give his assistance.I have divided it into Books and Chap. takeing the former Voyages and Lord Ansons for my guidance, but submit the whole to your better judgement, with full hopes that you will make such alterations, as you may see necessary.
Douglas, we find, was come to town, and invites Cook to call upon him.
[28 April] Last night I was favoured with your agreeable letter, and have sent my servant for the Books as you disired. I am sorry Captain Furneaux's Journal has given you so much trouble, I am in some measure in fault for not looking over the Copy before it was put into your hands. If it is equally convenient to you I should be glad to put of waiting upon you till next Saturday, when I will bring the whole Manuscript with me, to let you see how I have divided it into Books & Chapters. By that time, I may have the Introduction ready for you to look over; I may also, know my Lord Sandwich's opinion on M
rForsters work, a part of which I am told, by my friend DrShepherd,is in his Lordships hands. These and some other reasons makes me wish to put of our meeting till that day. On your return to Windsor you will find a letter from me, requesting your permission to allow me to send you a little Madeira Wine, and to know whether you would have it sent to Windsor, or half moon Street. Without waiting for your answer, shall take the liberty to send it to the latter place tomorrow, if the Man who has it in charge is but in the way. Your acceptance of it will add to the many obligations confer'd on Dear Sir Your very obliged and Most Humble Servant Jam The Rev. Dr Antony Shepherd (1721-96), F.R.S., Plumian professor of astronomy, Cambridge, from 1760. Cook named a group of small islands in the New Hebrides after him.
sCookMile-End Sunday Morn g
P.S. This Wine is part of [a] Cask that was round in the Resolution, it do's not turn out so good as I had a right to expect, but the Cooper tillsme it will mend in the Bottle. I have not tasted it, sence it was fined and bottled.
From this happy scene one must turn to a less happy one, that of Forster—with the preliminary remark that most of Forster's unhappiness was self-induced. His letters, and those of The Sandwich Papers contain six letters from Barrington to Sandwich on the business, 25 January to 12 June 1776, and one from Forster to Barrington, which the latter enclosed in his own to Sandwich of 10 June. There are fifteen from Forster to Sandwich—two of August 1776, three of February 1777, one of June 1778, six of February 1779, two of November 1779 (both dated the 30th), and one of December 1779. There is one from Sandwich to Forster, 28 October 1775, and one to Barrington, 28 October 1775. Barrington to Sandwich, 12 June 1776; Sandwich Papers.
Mile-End June 11 th1776Yesterday M
rStrahan & I went to the Admiralty in order to meet MrForster to settle about the Publication, but instead of finding him there, I found a letter from him to me couched in the following terms. That Lord Sandwich had thought proper to interpret the Agreemint between us, in such a manner, as he thought did not agree with its purport; and as his Lordship on that pretence had excluded him from all particip[a]tion of the Admiralty's assistance, our meeting was thereby rendered unnecessary. I afterwards saw MrBarrington, who inform'd me the [sic] MrForster had absolutely refused to make the least alteration in his M.S. What steps my Lord Sandwich will now take I cannot say, but I apprehend I shall have to Publish alone. I do not expect to see his Lordship till Thursday Morning, and perhaps the next day I may leave Town, unless I was sure of seeing you on Saturday or Sunday in that case I would certainly wait a day or two at all events. What MrForster intends to do I have not heard, but suppose he will publish as soon as possible, and if so he will get the start of me. He has quite deceived me, I never though[t] he would have separated him self from the Admiralty, but it cannot hurt me & I am only sorry my Lord Sandwich has taken so much trouble to serve an undeserving man.
Sandwich, however, still seems to have nourished a little hope of accommodation when it had gone from Barrington and Cook—to judge from Cook's next letter.
Mile End 14 thJune 1776Last night I received your favor, and as matters stand at present, your meeting me in Town can be of no use, nor did I wish it. Only if business had called you up, I meant to have waited upon you.
I was with my Lord Sandwich yester Morning, & found that he had not quite given up D
rForster, but I believe he will be obliged to do it at last. I had some conversation with the Drlast night, and used all the arguments I was master of to persuade him to submit to his Lordship, but to no manner of purpose. The Charts are all finished, but the other Plates I am told, will not be done before Christmas. But if I am to have the whole, the Admiralty I know will forward them as much as possible. I have leave to remain in Town till this matter is settled, and at the desire of Lord Sandwich, shall join MrStuart with MrStrahan to manage the Publication &caof my Book. It is now with SrHugh Palliser & Capt. Campbell for them to look over the Nautical part. As soon as they have done with it, it shall be put into MrStrahans hands. My Lord Sandwich gave me a paper concerning Omai, which I have tack'd in its proper place in the 6thbook. His Lordship desired that you might see it, & also the Introduction, this shall be sent you to morrow by the Stage, and as to the other, you can at any time look it over at MrStrahans. I shall take care to get a Compleat list of all the Plates to leave with the Manuscript, &have already made notes where the most of them are to be placed. I thank you for your kind wishes & hope that neither you nor my other worthy friends will be disappointed in their expectations of D rSir Your very obliged & most humble ServtJamsCookP.S. I do not expect to leave Town till about the Middle of next week, so that you may expect to hear from me again.
Ten days after writing this letter Cook left London. Within that period Sandwich made up his mind, irrevocably. Cook wrote once more, and for the last time, to Douglas the day before he left.
Mile-End June 23 rd1776It is now Settled that I am to Publish without M
rForster, and I have taken my measures accordingly. When Captain Campbell has looked over the M.S. it will be put into the hands of MrStrahan & Mr Sturat [sic] to be printed, and I shall hope for the Continuation of your assistance in correcting the press. I know not how to recompence you for the trouble you have had, and will have in this Work. I can only beg you will except of as many Copies, after it is published, as will serve your self and friends, and I have given directions for you to be furnished with them. When you have done with the Introduction please to send it to MrStrahan or bring it with you when you Come to Town, for there needs be no hurry about it. Tomorrow Morning I set out to join my ship at the Nore, & with her proceed to Plymouth, where my stay will be but short. Permit me to assure you that I shall always have a due sence of the favors you have done, and that I am with great esteem and regard, Dear Sir, Your Most Obliged and very Humble ServtJamsCook.
On that note these two so dissimilar persons parted.
What the parting with Forster had been like we do not know. Forster certainly had convinced himself that he was the victim of injustice. Cook was willing that that part of the April agreement should stand which allowed Forster the use of his proof sheets for translation and proofs of the plates for copying, and Sandwich raised no objection. Cook, however, had come to distrust somewhat Forster's intentions, and left a note with Strahan that proofs should be handed over no earlier than ten days before publication; and Forster's protest to Cook, in his last moments at Plymouth before sailing, brought no reply. Nor would the printers deliver impressions of the plates without (according to Forster) being directly empowered by Sandwich to do so; Forster to Sandwich, 2 August 1776; Sandwich Papers. Sandwich Papers, Memorandum by James Stuart, n.d., but beginning 'July 9. D Forster to Sandwich, 2 August 1776; Sandwich Papers. George's book was r Forster wrote to Captain Cook as follows…', and going on to quote the letter referred to by Cook in his to Douglas of 11 June printed above. The second paragraph begins, 'After Captn Cook had left London Dr Forster applied to me…'. As Cook left London on 24 June, the internal evidence is that 9 July is the date of the memorandum—the date in fact, when, according to Forster (letter to Sandwich, 2 August 1776) he called on Stuart and Strahan; so Stuart lost no time in recording his impression.t Cooks mistakes (for I will not yet call them by a harsher but more just name)'.Observations did not appear until the following year.A Voyage round the World, in his Britannic Majesty's Sloop, Resolution, commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years 1772, 3, 4 and 5. By George Forster, F.R.S., Member of the Royal Academy of Madrid, and of the Society for promoting Natural Knowledge at Berlin. His father's
Cook's two volumes were given to the public by the booksellers
A Voyage towards the South Pole, and Round the World. Performed in His Majesty's Ships the Resolution and Adventure, In the Years 1772, 1773, 1774 and 1775. Written by James Cook, Commander of the Resolution…. Exclusive of appendices, they contained somewhat over seven hundred pages, and, as they had all the engravings, sixty-three plates, of which twelve were charts. The author explains to his readers the appearance he makes, in the last paragraph of his introduction, which may here be given not as Douglas laid on it a final polish, but as it came from his pen:
I shall conclude this preliminary discourse by publickly acknowlidging the Kind Assistance of some worthy friends, in whose hands I left the Manuscript, when I embarked on a third expedition, who were so obliging as to superintend the printing and make such corrections as they found necessary, without altering the stile. For it was judged that it would be more exceptable to the Public, in the Authors words, than in any other persons, and that the Candid and faithfull manner in which it is written would counterbalance the want of stile and dullness of the subject. It is a work for information and not for amusement, written by a man, who has not the advantage of Education, acquired, nor Natural abilities for writing; but by one who has been constantly at sea from his youth, and who, with the Assistance of a few good friends gone through all the Stations belonging to a Seaman, from a prentice boy in the Coal Trade to a Commander in the Navy. After such a Candid confession he hopes the Public will not consider him as an author, but a man Zealously employed in the Service of his Country and obliged to give the best account he is able of his proceedings.Dixson Library,
MsF. 1.
The publication of this book was, itself, one of the great events in the history of Pacific exploration.
For the official exchange of letters see One Way and another, the captain had had his hands full; and it is now necessary to turn from literary composition to the matter in which he felt himself more professionally engaged, we must look at the antecedents of this new voyage which had formed the background to his correspondence with Dr Douglas. We have seen that the Resolution had hardly arrived home before it was announced that she was to go out to the Pacific again, under the command—Solander reported—of Clerke; she had been put into dock to refit for that service; and, the Adventure having already been discarded, Cook was asked for his advice on a new consort. He had been looking about for some time, he had told Douglas on 4 January, and the next day he hit on the brig Diligence, 298 tons, a fourth Whitby built ship, eighteen months old. She was purchased at once; the Journals III, 1485.
There seems no reason to doubt that the party took place—though Kippis assigns no date for it—or that it consisted of four men: Sandwich the host, Palliser, Stephens and Cook. Its professed object was to consult with Cook on the command of the voyage in prospect. It was to be a voyage of large scope and possibly immense consequences, beyond comparison more important than merely returning Omai to his island. Indispensably necessary in its commander were great ability, skill and experience. 'That Captain Cook was of all men the best qualified for carrying it into execution,' continues Kippis, with a little heightening of his style, 'was a matter that could not be called in question. But however ardently it might be wished that he would take upon himself the command of the service, no one (not even his friend and patron, Lord Sandwich himself) presumed to solicit him upon the subject. The benefits he had already conferred on science and navigation, and the labours and dangers he had gone through, were so many and great, that it was not deemed reasonable to ask him to engage in fresh perils.' But to consult him constantly about it was natural; 'and his advice was particularly requested with regard to the properest person for conducting the voyage'. The dinner was held; the gentlemen held forth—upon the grandeur and dignity of the design, its consequences to navigation and science, the completion it would give to the whole system of discoveries. The charm worked. 'Captain Cook was so fired with the contemplation and representation of the object, that he started up, and declared that he himself would undertake the direction of the enterprise. It is easy to suppose, with what pleasure the noble lord and the other gentlemen received a proposal which was so agreeable to their secret wishes….' Kippis, 324–5.
It would be extremely innocent to believe that Cook was merely carried off his feet by a burst of eloquence from Lord Sandwich,
Having understood that their Lordships have ordered two Ships to be fitted out for the purpose of making further discoveries in thePacific Ocean ; I take the liberty, as their Lordships when they were pleased to appoint me a Captain in Greenwich Hospital were at the same time pleased also to say, it should not be in prejudice to any future offer which I might make of my Service, to submit my self to their directions, if they think fit to appoint me to the Command on the said intended Voyage; relying, if they condesend to except this offer, they will on my return, either restore me to my appointment in the Hospital, or procure for me such other mark of the Royal Favour as their Lordships upon the review of my past Services shall think me deserving of.P.R.O., Adm 1/1611: printed
JournalsIII, 1486. The muster-book notes his joining the ship the same day, along with twenty-eight others, including Gore; Robert Anderson, Harvey, William Collett of both previous voyages; Ewin, Whelan, Cave, Henry Roberts of theResolution, second voyage; and Dewar, Lanyon, Hergest of theAdventure, second voyage.
The Secretary's reply left nothing to be desired. Obviously Cook was not unmindful of the future: perhaps
I should have Answered your last favour sooner, but waited to know whether I should go to Greenwich Hospital, or the South Sea. The latter is now fixed upon; I expect to be ready to sail about the latter end of Ap with my old ship the Resolution and the Discovery, the ship lately purchased of Mr Herbert. I know not what your opinion may be on this step I have taken. It is certain I have quited an easy retirement, for an Active, and perhaps Dangerous Voyage. My present disposition is more favourable to the latter than the former, and I imbark on as fair a prospect as I can wish. If I am fortunate enough to get safe home, theres no doubt but it will be greatly to my advantage.
And there were best wishes to all the family, and the promise of a hearty welcome if any of them came to Mile End. Dixson Library, Ms Q 140, pp. 79–82; printed Journals III, 1488.
What then was this voyage-to-be, this fair prospect, this enterprise of such grandeur and dignity, its design so pregnant of consequence both to human knowledge and tour Cook? After that very agreeable dinner at Boswell, Private Papers, XI, 218–19.
Cook had destroyed one great illusion of the human mind, that of a habitable southern continent. He had destroyed it not so much as a sworn enemy to illusion—though he preferred facts—as a student solving a problem. He came now to a second cardinal problem of eighteenth-century geography, and to an illusion just as sedulously nurtured as that of Terra australis. The problem was more intractable than the first, because there was in fact a North-west Passage: the illusion did not lie there. It lay in the assumption that a passage had only to be discovered to be navigable; and it was allied with another illusion, the product of much pseudo-scientific thought and argument in the later eighteenth century, that of an ice-free arctic sea. Sea-water, it was argued, does not freeze because it cannot (the argument was carried on without the benefit of Cook's second voyage); ice is a product of fresh water and of the winter season; the ice of arctic rivers, floating at sea, will in the summer disperse, straits like rivers will be freed; a sea-passage from the Atlantic coast of North America to its Pacific coast there must be, for it is inconceivable that continuous land should exist to the Pole and beyond it; that passage must in the right season be navigable, and provide access to the rich trade of Asia incomparably more profitable than the tedious journey round the
The voyage which Cook found so fair a prospect would not be, of course, the first attempt to find that passage, even from the Pacific coast of America. It would be the latest in a series of something like fifty; and no part of their story is irrelevant to his story. The early shining names were those of Frobisher, Davis and Baffin, the tragic one that of Hudson, who it was hoped might sail to Cathay over the Pole. It was all discouraging: 'Wherefore I cannot but much admire the worke of the Almightie,' wrote Baffin in 1616, 'when I consider how vaine the best and chiefest hopes of men are in thinges uncertaine; and to speake of no other then of the hopeful passage to the North-West.' Quoted in The Voyages of William Baffin (London, 1881), 150.
Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes (Glasgow, 1906), XIV, 416–17. See also Glyndwr Williams, The British Search for the Northwest Passage in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1962), 273–6.
He came to dislike the Company extremely. It would do little, and misrepresented what it did do. After much persuasion, however, he roused Admiralty interest: in 1740 (significantly enough, the Anson year) royal consent was given to a naval expedition, and a naval commission in 1741 to Captain Christopher Middleton, its commander, an able person of scientific leanings who had been in the Company's service. Dobbs had a hand in his instructions. Once in the Bay, he would be led to the passage by the famous flood tide; having penetrated it, he was to explore the western American coast, form alliance with the inhabitants, take possession of the country, winter on the coast or on some suitable island or return through the passage, as he thought best, perhaps meet Anson off California—we can see a sort of logical fantasy in it all granting only that the passage was there and that Middleton was Cook. Middleton did what man could do, found the flood tides all from the east and whales unreliable, and returned convinced that Dobbs was wrong. Dobbs threw off Middleton with contumely; was energetic and ingenious enough to organise a petition which brought an act of parliament
Hearne, A Journey … to the Northern Ocean (London, 1795), 303.
Romantic geography was left; international commercial competition was left; the politics of trade and a not ignoble, a simple curiosity about the world were left. The triumphant end of the Seven Years' War had removed from the British mind the fear that the French, through brilliant exploration of a linked lake and river system, would be first over the North American continent to the Pacific and its trade. Although the continental hypothesis was dealt with effectively first, that priority was partly a personal accident—for no one could have planned the appearance of Cook; and the other hypothesis, of access to the northern Pacific by water through the American continent, was never entirely lost sight of. This was not necessarily the same as the Dobbs-Hudson Bay theory: the Juan de Fuca story, so pleasing to Dobbs, had nothing on its surface to do with Hudson Bay. There was a sort of English ancestry for the plan of discovery of the western entrance of a waterway in the sixteenth century Strait of Anian projects of Dampier's Voyages (ed. Masefield, London 1906), I, 287.
Curiously enough, perhaps, the next piece of fantasy on the subject, appearing not long after Dampier, purported to be an account of a Spanish voyage. This was a 'Letter from Admiral Bartholomew de Fonte, then Admiral of New Spain and Peru, and now Prince of Chili', printed in 1708 in an English periodical called The Monthly Miscellany or Memoirs for the Curious. In that year the squib was sufficiently damp, and the periodical was short-lived. The Spanish admiral lived longer, the squib took fire. According to the letter, which did not lack circumstantial detail, in 1639 the Court of Spain, disturbed by advice that Hudson Bay-Strait of
The thing was disinterred from defunct pages by Dobbs, equally eager as he had been over de Fuca, to have its great success after the publication in 1744 of his Account of the Countries adjoining to Hudson's Bay. Dobbs made no doubt of the genuineness of the story, though insisting on his own passage as well, which ran south of the de Fonte discoveries. The extraordinary part of the affair is the power it exerted over some of the leaders of French scientific geography and cartography—and in cartography the French were then the leaders of Europe—most notably over Joseph Nicholas Delisle and A Natural and Civil History of California, the destructive pages were omitted; and the editor even argued that it showed the discovery of a passage to be 'a very probable thing'. Unfortunately the other translations made were from this English version, not from the original. It became obvious that the only way to settle the argument was to go and look.
Commodore Byron was the man the Admiralty in England selected to go and look, in 1764, against the contemporary background of commercial rivalry, British arrogance, French suspicion and Spanish nervousness. There were other objects—rather too many—for Byron to pursue, as we have already seen: the Falkland Islands were of more importance than a North-west passage. Nevertheless the planners had studied the current geographical controversies; for the preamble to his instructions referred to the 'mariners of great Experience who have thought it probable that a passage might be found between the latitudes of 38° and 54° from Coast into Hudson's Bay'; and the instructions themselves directed him, after his Atlantic business, to go to Drake's harbour in New Albion, about latitude 38° or 38°30′. From this latitude he was 'to search the said Coast with great care and diligence' as far to the northward as he should find it practicable; 'And in case you shall find any probability of exploring a Passage from the said Coast of New Albion to the Eastern side of North America through Hudson's Bay, you are most diligently to pursue it and return to England that way, touching at such place or places in North America, for the Refreshment of your men, and for supplying the Ship and Frigate with Provisions, Wood and Water, as you shall judge proper.' P.R.O., Adm 2/1332, 99 ff.; printed Robert E. Gallagher, Gallagher, 159.Byron's Journal of his Circumnavigation (Cambridge, 1964), 3 ff.
For the time being only, and in England: we must remember the very lively European scientific scene, from England itself to St Petersburg. Mathematics and astronomy, chemistry, physics, half a dozen departments of natural history, medicine, all were being investigated with ardour, sometimes with fundamental thought; and of course geography. Even when perceptiveness was lacking—even when a woeful lack of scepticism prevailed—enterprise and ingenuity sometimes had practical effect. There was, among scientific men, a good deal of mutual stimulus in ideas. There was a good deal of scope for the ardent amateur. It was a time, too, when organised academies of science were eager to exert what influence they could over governments. We have seen the Racehorse and Carcass, under the command of another naval person in the Banks-Sandwich circle,
Interest was not limited, however, to the North-west Passage and the Pole. There was also the North-east Passage to Asia, sought by the English and the Dutch in the sixteenth century, abandoned by them after the discovery of Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemlya and the Kara Sea, and the foundation of a profitable trade with Russia. Since then Russia had been expanding its power to the east, through Siberia; Russian statesmanship and the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St Petersburg began now to assume a large importance for geographers. Business men also in England, some with Russian connections, were not immune to excitement; Engel was not unknown among them and more than one of them gave advice to ministers on a north-east, or a north-west, passage, or a single expedition to search for both. The plan which Barrington matured, however, and put to the Council of the Royal Society in February 1774, was most convincing. This plan, with a consequential letter to the Admiralty, was approved by (among others) Royal Society Council Minutes, VI, 216–17, 17 February 1774; printed R.S. Council Minutes, VI, 220–1, 7 March 1774; printed ibid., 1484. Sandwich to Barrington, 12 March 1774, Sandwich Papers; Barrington to Horsley, 30 March 1774, R.S. Council Minutes, VI, 232; printed ibid., 1484.Journals III, 1483–4.t Cook in 1775; when a similar expedition will be fitted out, which will in general follow the outline proposed by the Council of the Royal Society to the Board of Admiralty'.
It diminished because of a new Russian geographical theory that became public in 1774, just as its force had rested on earlier Russian work. One must turn to Russia in the north Pacific, just because what her explorers did, or the scientific foreigners who manned her
He survived criticism, and took part in the planning, under the empresses Anne and Elizabeth, of a great campaign of geographic, scientific, and economic exploration of Siberia. The plans, indeed, stretched beyond Siberia, to include the Kurile islands and the northern islands of Japan, and the coast of America. Neither the islands nor the continent could be far from Kamchatka: both might provide profitable trade. Bering and Chirikov were to manage the American voyage. There were extraordinary delays. It was not until June 1741 that Bering, an ageing, badgered, and depressed man, and Chirikov, could sail from Petropavlovsk, with two ships, the St Peter and St Paul, late in the season and short of stores. They parted company after a fortnight, in bad weather, and did not meet again. On 16 July Bering sighted land between 58° and 59° north, a chain of snow-covered mountains, the highest of which he was to call after St Elias. He beat some distance up the coast north-west, anchoring once, but landing nowhere on the mainland, and on 21 July, disturbed over the chances of reaching home safely, left it. Contrary
St Peter's timbers. Chirikov also met misfortune. He sighted America the day before Bering, about three degrees south of Bering's landfall. He anchored in a bay where he lost his boats and their crews in some unaccountable manner; unable to land and in want of water there was nothing he could do but return. He did not have so bad a passage as Bering's, though bad enough, and reached home a month before Bering was wrecked. Thus ended that effort. Curiously enough, nine years earlier, and four years after Bering's northern expedition, another Russian had sighted America, without knowing what he had done. This was the surveyor Gvozdev, who, incited by northern Kamchatkan reports of islands close to Bering Strait, and in particular of one they called 'the large country' (the Russian bolshaya zemlya), set off to investigate. He landed on one of the Diomede islands, in the middle of the strait, and gazing eastwards, quite surely saw bolshaya zemlya. His sailors refused to go further; he also, like Bering and Chirikov, never set foot on the continent.
How did all this story become public, and how does it fit into our principal story? Cook, or anyone else interested, could pick up an account of Bering's first voyage in Campbell's edition of Harris. For his second voyage and what he had to say of the American coast, there was no published journal and no adequate history. The best account was in the third volume of the Russian History of Gerhard Friedrich Muller, official historiographer of the Empire, a volume which appeared in 1758. Part of it was translated into English under the title of
There were earlier maps that took in the Bering voyages—Le Rouge 1746, Delisle-Buache 1750/52, John Green 1753—but none of these has the relevance to Cook's voyage that Muller has. They are discussed in Early Cartography of the Pacific (New York, 1944), 136–40, and Glyndwr Williams, 142–53.
On this assumption fell very heavily in 1774 a new book—a very small book—and a new map. Bering's men had brought back reports not merely of islands but of sea-otters, seals and foxes. A trading company, organised under imperial patronage, began a murderous onslaught upon the inhabitants of the Aleutian islands, both human and animal, which was to carry the Russians along the whole length of the islands to the Alaskan peninsula and at length to the main American continent, setting up storehouses and armed posts as they went. Traders and hunters were perforce discoverers. It is sometimes difficult, amid a confusion of names, to tell what they discovered, and there were naval officers who were abler explorers. The one of these, perhaps not the most meritorious, who nevertheless got the most
Stählin, An Account of the New Northern Archipelago, Lately Discovered by the Russians in the Seas of Kamtschatka and Anadir, by a rather extravagant author, Jacob von Stählin, who was secretary of the Academy of Sciences. Published in its original German at Stuttgart, in 1774, it was brought before the Royal Society in June by Dr Maty, the secretary, and a translation into English at once put in hand, so that it was out in London before the end of the year. Obviously it caused some excitement among the geographically learned, and obviously it affected the Admiralty. The critical thing was the map, so very different from Müller's: what Stählin called 'the very accurate little Map of the new discovered Northern Archipelago here annexed, which is drawn up from the original accounts'. To name every one of the islands composing this new archipelago, said the author, was needless, as they were set down in the map with their situation and size; though he adds—with a moderate access of caution—'As to the absolute accuracy of the two first articles, namely, the true situation, as to geographical latitude and longitude, and their exact dimensions, I would not be answerable for them, till they can be ascertained by astronomical observations'.Account, 15–17.
Stählin's 'very accurate little Map' looks as if some large fist has come down on the fragile surface of Müller's north-west American peninsula, shattered it into displaced fragments and sent some of it into thin air. The largest of the fragments is an island called Alaschka between what we may for convenience call East Cape or Cape Dezhnev and a bulge on the American shore—an island twice as far from America as it is from Asia. The bulge is labelled North America Great Continent, and 'Stachtan Nitada', which last form of words seems to be quite meaningless. Due south of Alaschka are a few small islands and a larger one, of uncompleted outline, called Unalaschka. From there a semi-circular fringe, a good deal of it named Aleutskia Isles, runs round towards Asia, straddling the 60th parallel and screening off the Sea of Anadir from the vast ocean. There is some truth of conception here, no sense of direction: a chain of Aleutskian or Aleutian islands, one of the larger of which is Unalaska, does actually extend from an Alaskan peninsula—though it was wise of Stählin, in this unwise piece of cartography, not to make himself answerable for the 'absolute accuracy' of his rendering. His unjustifiable rashness lay in the large passage he left between his Alaschka
Barrington, Summary Observations and Facts … to show the Practicability and good Prospect of Success in Enterprises to discover a Northern Passage (London, 1776), 24; Coxe, An Account of the Russian Discoveries between Asia and America (London, 1780), 283–4, 300–2.
Whatever might be thought of Canton, we can now see emerging the grand strategy of an actual voyage. Hearne, the Barrington-Engel ice theory, the Stählin island theory, are all there. During 1775 we must regard the mixture as settling down in the Admiralty mind: presumably in the
At some moment, then, probably in the six months between 10 February 1776, when Cook formally volunteered for the service, and 6 July, when his instructions were signed, all these thoughts, from Royal Society to Cook, became co-ordinated, and the plan was given its final shape. The Instructions, printed Journals III, ccxx-ccxxiv.
We do not know when the Admiralty was visited by a further thought on the improvement of geography and navigation; for its grand strategy was suddenly made even grander by an Atlantic addendum. Why not, some person seems to have asked, look for the passage at both ends?—and in this query Hudson Bay was excluded. Baffin Bay, however, had not been tried since Baffin himself came back defeated in 1616, 'having coasted all, or neere all the circumference thereof', and found it 'to be no other then a great bay'—not been tried, that is, in the sense of closely examined for a passage leading out of it. The whalers who realised the profit that Baffin had foreseen in their trade knew, something about the more southern part. The time seemed ripe for re-examination. This should occupy two seasons. In 1776 a naval vessel would be going out to the Bay for the protection of British whalers against American ships of war: the American revolt had begun in 1775, one must remember, and if Barrington had not made his plea as early as he did, it is at least doubtful whether there would have been a third Cook voyage, or supplementary voyages, at all. When the safety of the whalers had been guaranteed, this vessel should make a preliminary examination of the coasts of the Bay, returning with nautical information, surveys and charts; on the basis of which another voyage should be made in the following year, specifically to explore its western shores. In the summer of 1777 Cook was expected to be at the other end of the passage—assuming there was one. Who could know what would happen after that? The documents expressed no wild hope; but was
Should one, after this discussion, enquire why Cook volunteered for the voyage? The enquiry may be needless. It may be enough to say that he preferred activity to quiescence, and that the activity of the mind was not enough for him. For a sailor in his forty-seventh year, with his mind at full stretch, the land was too stable. But could his mind be at full stretch, if his ship—and he in it—was not off some questionable coast? For him that was the fair prospect. There is more than one significant remark in the letter he wrote to Walker announcing his decision. There is the remark, 'If I am fortunate enough to get safe home, theres no doubt but it will be greatly to my advantage.' What promise had he? True enough, if he got home with a discovered North-west Passage, the commander's share of £20,000 would be advantageous. But if he merely got home from another difficult and arduous voyage, laden with charts, what then? The fourth captaincy in Greenwich Hospital would be no great reward. Some other 'mark of the Royal Favour'? Flag-rank? But a rear-admiral in Greenwich Hospital would be no more active than a post-captain. A red ribbon and star? We do not know what he thought of such things. Was there a revival, a transference, of his old ambition, to go 'as far as I think it possible for man to go'—a transference from the south to the north? But that might have nothing to do with the North-west Passage, if he found it. Possibly, to an extent unrealised by himself, he had given his heart away to the Pacific; or, if that is too fancifully romantic, possibly he merely saw, in professional terms, a highly complex problem, and could not resist it. In all his eagerness for activity, his lifting of spirit at the fair prospect, he does not appear to have guessed that, possibly, he was a tired man.
He expected to be ready to sail about the latter end of April, he had told Walker. He should have known better, even though men were joining and stores loading in February. There was time for a good many desertions from both ships, and men were still being taken in through June, some even later. Supply was no short process: butter and pickle, inspissated juice of malt, dried yeast, pressed hops, experimentally packed bread and meal, were still being supplied as June wore on, let alone a 'Draughtsman and Landskip Painter'. Cook, as we have seen, was busy over his book, and thrust into the running fight with Forster; at the end of May there was the
Resolution herself.
No vessel, certainly, could have been more perfectly shaped to Cook's purpose than the Resolution on his second voyage. No vessel could have withstood harder usage from the elements for a longer time. Whitby never made a sounder ship, and at the end of that voyage she was still sound. She was of course in need of overhaul and refitting; but if there was to be another exploring voyage it is difficult to think of a sailor who would not automatically have taken her to make it in. The Admiralty had no doubt; Cook had no doubt. She was in the naval yard at Deptford in mid-September 1775; she was ready to receive men, the Resolution was still good enough, with constant and tedious labour upon her, to see out a voyage of four years, which were to include some extremely arduous months; and as she had had no structural alteration, to outward appearance she was the ship that had sailed from England in 1772.
Her new consort, the Deptford Yard Officers to Navy Board, 5 January 1776; P.R.O. Adm 106/3318. She was of 298 Discovery, was the smallest of all Cook's vessels. She was built by the firm of G. and N. Langborn for Mr William Herbert, from whom she was bought: another collier, 'single bottom, full-built, is very roomly, and… appears a fit ship for the service'.Resolution were classed in formal documents as sloops. She was 'sheathed and filled', in the regular manner, for protection against the teredo. Neither ship received extra protection against ice: the Resolution had not had it in the south, and if Barrington and Engel were right, there would be no great danger thence in the north. We have to reconcile this with the preparations for Phipps's voyage in 1773. His Racehorse and Carcass were 'bombs', heavilybuilt ships originally, and they were specially and very considerably strengthened, with double bottoms and reinforced bows. No whaler would have sailed for Baffin Bay in a ship like Cook's. On the other hand, whalers' voyages were then relatively short, and it is difficult to think that the Admiralty really envisaged a long voyage for Phipps. Extra weight would have much slowed down the Resolution and Discovery, not built for speed to begin with, and they had an enormous distance to cover. Their chief defence must be seamanship, as it had been the chief defence in the Antarctic. We know of no discussion on the point: if there was any, that reasoning may have been advanced. There may have been some blind fancy that ice on the western side of North America would be less dangerous than ice on the eastern side. As there was no knowledge, there may have been no thought.
The Discovery received a proper armament—eight four-pounders, eight swivel guns and eight musquetoons, against the twelve of each carried by the Resolution. In spite of the fact that on the previous
Resolution or Discovery. They might no doubt have been useful in case of wreck, presuming their survival; but for boat work in general the ships were well enough equipped. The Discovery was perhaps a little over-masted—though that criticism was by no means a general one. In sailing qualities the two ships were pretty well matched. Almost a year later, heading north from the Discovery, for whatever reason, proved faster than the Resolution; she could also claw off a lee shore better, Cook was to say. We hear no murmurs from either ship over the behaviour of the other. They were, it is plain, excellent company-keepers.
The captain, the plan, the ships—and the men. The For Samwell's criticism of Clerke, see Resolution's complement was, as before, 112; the Discovery's 70. The two lieutenants of the last voyage had both been promoted commander. Cooper may have thought he had done his stint at exploration, and disappears from our story, though his fortunes did not suffer. Clerke was not to take Omai home in the Resolution; he was to command the Discovery instead, and it must have given him peculiar pleasure to sail as Cook's second, the one officer who was on all the three voyages. He was still only 33; but his natural high spirits, his capacity for general amusement, his leaning towards the facetious, had undergone some modification. On the first voyage he had improved his technical equipment; on the second shown himself a perceptive observer, with a marked gift for brief description; on the third he is a hard-working and devoted officer, a serious man, whatever the habitual humour of his phrase, with a sense of duty as deep as Cook's own; in administration Cook's disciple; with all Cook's knowledge of the sailor's mind; without any of Cook's ability—and certainly no training—as a surveyor. We have no chart from his hand, no coastal profile; but he was an excellent seaman. 'Social'—to use his own favourite word—convivial and genial he was always; generous but not weak in judgment or in act, the warmth of his feelings is illustrated by his letters to Banks, their depth by the last letter of all. Was he too generous in guaranteeing the debts of his brother Sir John Clerke? He had small resources of his own, and his action brought disaster on him. The affair is obscure in its details: he must have made himself security for these debts some time after his return from the second voyage, and then Sir John, a captain in the royal navy, sailed off to the East Indies. It may have been the
Journals III, 1271–2; and for discussion of these criticisms, ibid., lxxiv-lxxv.
From Clerke we pass to his old shipmate Gore, thrice also a circumnavigator, senior in years (the oldest officer on the voyage, indeed, next to Cook), in earlier time senior in rank, outdistanced in promotion—perhaps because of that absence from service on Banks's venture to Iceland, followed by half-pay—now first lieutenant in the Gore to Banks, 12 July 1776; Resolution. One would like to know what else had happened to Gore between voyages. Was it then that he met his 'Favourite Female Acquaintance' called Nancy, whoever she was? The phrase does not argue a wife, to be celebrated by the naming of a geographical feature; and who was the 'Young one' to whom Banks 'was so kind as to promise an attention' in case of Gore's death?Atl, Miscellaneous material relating to Cook's Voyages; printed Journals III, 1512. The reference to his 'Favourite Female Acquaintance' is in his log, ibid., 363 n.
Certainly a highly useful man, in every other way a contrast, was James King the second lieutenant. Among the seamen, he was the intellectual of the voyage. In 1776 in his mid-twenties, the son of a Lancashire village parson, he had both naval and political connections. He had brothers intimate with the Burkes—Walker King was Edmund Burke's close associate in journalism and later Bishop
Trevenen to his Mother, 9 September 1780; C. F. Penrose, Journals III, 1516. King was the only one remarked on as having an interest in politics, on which account Samwell admired him highly.—ibid., lxxvi, n. 3.Memoirs of James Trevenen,
When John Williamson the third lieutenant came on board, however, there came what we should call a psychological problem. His shipmates had a simpler attitude, and merely disliked or detested him—or perhaps tolerated: we come on no word of love. He seems to have been an Irishman, and presumably he was much of an age with the other lieutenants, but he had none of the warm feelings of youth. He could, it is true, fly into unpleasant rage and violence. A strange mixture of self-righteousness and acerbity, intelligence and intolerance, he was the wrong sort of person to have been appointed to a voyage of discovery; he could not have been a happy man, and
Resolution at the age of 21, after only six years' service, is as much a mystery as how he had acquired his high competence as a surveyor and draughtsman. He will be mentioned a good deal in Cook's journal, never with dispraise; any journal he kept himself has disappeared. He must, one can see from the records, have conducted himself expertly. He was kind to his juniors like Trevenen. One gathers, however, from his later comments on the printed account of the voyage, that there were men to whom he did not wish to be kind, and dogmatic judgments which he felt himself entitled to make; he saw fools about him too easily, and the thin-skinned vanity that was his curse through life was already with him. King, whom he should have taken as his natural ally in his technical business, he regarded as a pretentious poseur. Bligh learnt a good deal from Cook: he never learnt that you do not make friends of men by insulting them. On this voyage his propensities must have been kept in check. There were three master's mates of some experience, all older than Bligh—Resolution, a man with a charming talent for illustrating a journal with wash-drawings; William Harvey, the midshipman of both the Resolution and the Endeavour; and William Lanyon, who had been midshipman and master's mate in the Adventure.
Clerke's first lieutenant was ibid., I, 321.Adventure's return he had gone to the American station in the frigate Cerberus; and it was while he was there, in April 1775, that Fanny had written in a letter, 'There is much talk of an intended South Sea expedition: now you must [know] that there is nothing that Jem so earnestly desires as to be of the party; and my father has made great interest at the Admiralty to procure him that pleasure; and as it is not to be undertaken till Capt. Cooke's return, it is just possible that Jem may be returned in time from America. This intended expedition is to be the last.…'Early Diary (London, 1913), II, 38.Discovery's armourer,
Among the midshipmen, or young gentlemen in training for midshipmen, were three destined to high distinction: Trevenen to his Mother, 7 September 1780; Penrose, ' … the high-minded associate of Cook, the veteran Colonel, with his lusty heart still sending cartels of defiance to old Time.'—Lamb's 'Letter to Southey'. This is a rather romantic view of Phillips. He married Resolution, Discovery. All midshipmen worked hard in Cook's ships; all came under his wrath and, no doubt, having leapt at the chance of sailing with him, looked at their calloused hands and with Trevenen called him despot; but it was Trevenen who elevated the captain above even King, in a class of his own, and referred to 'the sublime and soaring genius of a Cook';Memoirs, App. 119–20. The midshipman did not think much of Gore by comparison.Resolution, we pass to a different order. Just come of age, of an Irish family, he
The surgeons and their mates numbered six—an unusual provision. Three of these are of importance in the history for talents outside their medicine. The most important was 'His great Qualities I admired beyond any thing I can express—I gloried in him—and my Heart bleeds to this Day whenever I think of his Fate.'—Samwell to Miss Anna Seward, 26 February 1781, Samwell to Matthew Gregson, 20 November 1781; Liverpool Public Library, Gregson Correspondence, XVII.Resolution, now promoted to surgeon in the same ship. He was clearly one of the best minds of all the three voyages—professionally competent, but with an interest in all the departments of natural history as they were known at that time, acute as well as wide-ranging, and with a linguistic talent both eager and careful. He took scientific equipment of his own. A pleasant and generous person, he thought independently and was capable of criticising even a course pursued by Cook; as a day-to-day chronicler he seemed to have an instinct, as he had the range of knowledge, for supplementing Cook; in scientific observation Cook could draw on him unhesitatingly. Everybody thought highly of him; Cook had an affection for him. Like Clerke, he carried within him a fatal germ. By his side, but darting away continually in observations of a very different nature, is his first mate the highly Welsh David Samwell. There is no question of his professional competence or seriousness: on the other hand, where Anderson's non-professional interests are scientific, Samwell's are social and literary, and as with many another parson's son, unholy. He was irreverent. He had a consuming interest in 'the Dear Girls'. He was a bard. He did his best to get Polynesian poetry down on paper. The journal he would write would convey, as did no other word, the more frivolous side of a voyage that had its frivolities as well as its moments of tragedy. Like Trevenen his friend, his admiration for Cook stopped only this side idolatry: Samwell 'gloried in him'.Atl Miscellaneous material. He was a great admirer of Miss Seward's Elegy on Cook, and ventured to present her with a few South Sea curios as an expression of this.Discovery, a Cambridge man with a
There were also the supernumeraries: in the Resolution were Omai, lamenting at departure, excited at return, and Webber. Omai had a cargo of his own—port wine and gunpowder, the things he fancied most; some muskets to put the gunpowder in with some bullets, the suit of armour, a hand-organ, some tin soldiers, a globe of the world, crockery and kitchenware and a variety of fancy goods. Cook did not think it advantageous to conjoin Omai and fire-arms, but Cook's view did not prevail. He made his own prophecy that once Omai had thoroughly seen home again, his heart would turn to England. Cook was determined that by then no ships would be there to take him.Private Papers of James Boswell, XI, 220–1.
It brings up an interesting point. What interested the Admiralty was exploration and navigation. It was prepared to give hospitality
Lind to Maskelyne, 30 January 1775; Banks Correspondence, D.T.C., I, 82–3, British Museum (Natural History), Botany Library. The story comes into the preface by Forster to the German translation (Berlin, 1781) of the anonymous English account of the voyage published by Newbery in the same year, Resolution, relates Forster, he called on Cook to pay his respects, and expressed his regret that no scientific person was going the voyage, as before. He came away rather shocked and had to be comforted next day by Forster, who explained that Cook's character was not so bad as it appeared, but his head had been turned by Lord Sandwich. That was the reason for his remark, 'Verflucht sind alle Gelehrten und alle Gelehrsamkeit oben drein'. This leaves us rather in doubt as to Cook's exact words. 'Curse all the scientists and all science into the bargain!' would be a modern equivalent. 'Scientists' was a noun, however, still uninvented. He may have used the words 'philosophers' and 'philosophy'; for nothing is more likely than that Forster's story is in substance true.The Journal of Captain Cook's last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, the absurd production of (or founded on) Lieutenant John Rickman.
Finally, after these discernible—though not quite all discernible—
Resolution, half a dozen in the Discovery; and half a dozen of the total had been on both voyages. We may sympathise with the fifty or sixty deserters, while the ships' companies were building up: men who knew Cook by tavern-talk, and did not fancy long voyages, might well desert at prospect of a three years' sentence. It was one way of assuring a steady crew. Then, having before he sailed a slight overplus, he retained them until the last possible moment, so that he could discharge the least suitable. Those who remained could reflect that, while they would undergo discomfort, as long as they were with Cook their lives would be reasonably safe. They were, the majority of them, English, with a scattering of Irish, Welsh, Scots, American, and even Germans. Like their officers, they were nearly all young. We know something of character in the mass. We can see them ignorant, illiterate, irresponsible, blockishly conservative, prone to complaint when faced by novelty; drunken when opportunity offered, lecherous; capable of tears; capable of cruelty. Occasionally a head rises above the wave of oblivion; someone falls overboard, is rescued, or is not; another is punished for 'insolence and contempt', or drunkenness, or theft, or neglect of duty, or striking a native chief, or—faint hope—attempted desertion; and that unlucky or dishonourable head sinks again. They had the wit, some of them, to study their captain: they would play up to him at some anchorage by bringing a bunch of greens on board, prominently displayed, and one thinks one sees the surreptitious smirk. Some appear in a light more positively creditable, like Benjamin Lyon, the ex-watch-maker; or Heinrich Zimmermann, the jack-of-all-trades from the Palatine who liked to wander and wrote a little book about the voyage and the great captain; and Gibson, the marine who tried to desert at Tahiti on the first voyage but remained with Cook thereafter and became a sergeant, was liked by the Polynesians and (it seems) laid claim to having saved Cook's life; and Cleveley, the carpenter, with something of a talent for drawing. And there was the other wanderer, whose life was to enter into the American legend, Corporal Ledyard,
One name we miss, which we should have been glad to find. It is that of Pickersgill, who had been with Cook on both his previous voyages, and before Cook with Wallis: Pickersgill the romantic and a little the sea-lawyer. Fate and the Admiralty were unkind to Pickersgill: they might have made him third lieutenant in the Resolution instead of the deplorable Williamson. He could then have begun another elaborate and ill-fated journal, hearkened once more, as the dusk deepened under benign island trees, to Hymeneal Songs ascending in the mild, the bland and blissful air; he could have been a valuable man. They did make him a lieutenant, and sent him in independent command to Baffin Bay.
There were formal occasions. Some time or other the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Fletcher Norton, entertained Cook and the officers to dinner. We know about the occasion through a letter from Molesworth Phillips, 27 April 1832, a few months before he died, to a younger Dr Burney, James's nephew (Mitchell Library, Doc. 1303). After the lapse of between fifty and sixty years Phillips could not remember which inn it was (the letter is annotated, 'The Inn alluded to, was the Gun.'), and was rather vague on the date ('about July 1776'). But from 30 June to the time of their departure the ships were at Plymouth. It was a very good dinner indeed, as we know in detail from the page in the Day Book of Messrs Birch, Birch and Co, of 15 Cornhill, who supplied it. It included besides the comestibles mentioned in the text a turbout, trout, lobsters, shrimps, chickens, 'raggove mellie', stewed mushrooms, peas, beans, 'Spinage Toasts', cauliflowers, 'Petit patties', venison, a tart, sweetbreads, biscuits, currant jelly, sauces, '24 French Roles'. It cost Cook, or the Endeavour. Early in June the ships were ordered round to Plymouth, but there were still delays. It was while the Resolution was lying at Long Reach, on 8 June, that Sandwich, Palliser and some of their fellows of the Admiralty visited the ship to see that all was well. Cook was nobly hospitable—they and 'several other Noblemen and gentlemen' dining with him on Westmoreland ham and pigeon pie and strawberries;Resolution, £12 2s.Discovery to Plymouth, to the immense pride of the Burney family. The time grew near for
Mile End, June 22nd 1776 I am at last upon the very point of setting out to join the Resolution at the Nore, and proceed on my voyage, the destination of which you have pretty well conjectured. If I am not so fortunate as to make my passage home by the North Pole, I hope at least to determine, whether it is practicable, or not. From what we yet know, the attempt must be hazardous, and must be made with great caution. I am sorry I cannot furnish you with some New Zealand Flax seed, having not one grain of it left. Indeed, I brought hardly one home with me, but left the most of what I had at the Cape, to try to cultivate it there; for of all that was brought home in my former voyage, I have not heard of a single grain vegetating. It is much to be feared, that this fine plant will never be raised in England.
The Journal of my late Voyage, will be published in the course of next winter, and I am to have the sole advantage of the sale. It will want those flourishes which Dr Hawkesworth gave the other, but it will be illustrated and ornamented with about sixty copper plates, which, I am of opinion, will exceed every thing that has been done in a work of this kind; as they are all of them from Drawings made on the spot, by a very able artist. As to the Journal, it must speak for itself. I can only say, that it is my own narrative, and as it was written during the voyage. If you or any of your friends, should want any, care shall be taken that you have of the first impressions.—Mrs Cook joins her best respects to you, Mrs Wilson and family….
I have not seen the original of this letter, which I take from Young's life of Cook, 304–5.
Early in the morning of 24 June he picked up Omai and left London.
He Sailed from the Nore on 25 June, and down Channel without haste to Plymouth, where he joined the Discovery on the 30th. At Plymouth he received his instructions and the crew received their pay—the Admiralty again departing from custom—to enable them to buy 'necessaries' for the voyage. The marines came on board. There were last English letters to write. The one to Banks, of 10 July, adverted to the book, and to a matter that was to be noticed more at length in the book, though not by Cook.
As you was so obliging as to say you would give a description of the New Zealand Spruce tree, or any other plant, the drawing of which might accompany my Journal, I desired Mr Strahan and Mr Stuart, who have the Charge of the Publication, to give you extracts out of the Manuscript of such descriptions as I had given (if any) for you to correct or describe your self, as may be most agreeable. I know not what Plates Mr Forster may have got engraved of Natural History, that will come into my Book, nor do I know of any that will be of use to it, but the Spruce Tree Tea plant and Scurvey Grass and I know not if this last is engraved. The Flax plant is engraved but whether the publishing of this in my Journ[al] will be of any use to seamen, I shall not determine. In short whatever plates of this kind falls to my share, I shall hope for your kind assistance in giving some short account of them. On my arrival here I gave Omai three guineas which sent him on shore in high spirits, indeed he could hardly be otherwise for he is very much carressed here by every person of note, and upon the whole, I think, he rejoices at the prospect of going home.
I now only wait for a Wind to put to sea unless
C. Clerke makes good haste down he will have to follow me. Sr Jn0Pringle writes me that the Council of the Royal Society have decreed me the Prize Medal of this year. I am obliged to you and my other good friends for this unmerited Honor.Omai Joins his best respects to you and Dr Solander….
Mitchell Library, Banks Papers; Safe 1/68; printed
JournalsIII, 1511.
The 'Prize Medal' was Sir Godfrey Copley's gold medal, awarded to the author of the best paper contributed to the Transactions of the
The others, both of 11 July, had a more domestic theme. That to Sandwich indicates some, at least, heart-searching on Cook's part before he made his great decision. 'My Lord', he writes,
I cannot leave England without taken some method to thank your Lordship for the many favors confered upon me, and in particular for the Very liberal allowance made to Mrs Cook during my absence. This, by enabling my family to live at ease and removing from them every fear of indigency, has set my heart at rest and filled it with gratitude to my Noble benefactor. If a faithfull discharge of that duty which your Lordship has intrusted to my care, be any return, it shall be my first and principal object.
I was to have spoke to your Lordship in behalf of Mrs Mahone, Widow of the late Cook of the Adventure, who is minuted down for a Nurse to Greenwich Hospital, a place she seems very suitable for, if your Lor[d]ship should have an oppertunity to appoint her it will add to the many favors already confered on / My Lord / Your Lordships Most faithfull and Most Obedient Humble Servant / Jams Cook
Sandwich Papers; printed ibid., 1512.
Mrs Mahone, or Mahony, was duly appointed to the Hospital, though certainly not as a tribute to the late dirty and indolent Mortimer Mahony, deceased during the voyage. The third letter was to the Rev. Dr Richard Kaye, F.R.S., another Yorkshireman and chaplain to the King, whom Cook may have encountered both at the
I cannot leave England without answering your very obliging favor of the 12
thof last Month, and thanking you for the kind tender of your service to Mrs Cook in my absence. I shall most certainly make an acknowledgment in the way you wish, if it please God to spare me till I reach the place for Discoveries, for I shall be happy in having it known that you are amongst the friends of Dear Sir, Your Most Obed Humble Servant Jams CookP.S. I expect to sail to day July 11
th1776.Dixson Library
Mss,Ms92; printed ibid.
It was not, however, until next day in the evening that he sailed, leaving the Charles E. Chapman, Discovery behind him. The ship was even more tightly
Resolution met the Channel waves, the captain, who had read a newspaper report of Spanish reconnoitring north of California, might have been amused had he known of the nervous alarm his departure was causing to the Court of Madrid. If the Spaniards could have read his instructions, they would perhaps not have ordered the viceroy of New Mexico, as they did, to seize and imprison him if possible when he arrived on that coast; for he himself was ordered 'not to touch upon any part of the Spanish dominions on the Western continent of America', unless unavoidably driven there, and then to stay no longer than absolutely necessary, and to be very careful not to give offence. But Spanish susceptibilities about the Pacific remained, as the British government well knew, extremely tender; and Cook had already helped to ruffle them. He might have been still more amused at the persuasion of a French agent in London that the real object of his voyage was to join the Russians of Kamchatka in subjugating Japan.The Founding of Spanish California, (New York, 1916), 376–80; J. E. Martin-Allanic, Bougainville navigateur, II, 1448–51.
All ignorant of sinister intention, while the ship began to leak and her company to curse, he made this time for Tenerife and not Madeira as his port of call on the passage to the Cape, thinking he would there get better hay and corn for the stock. That may have been so, and there was no fault to find with the water or the fresh provisions—except the lean oxen; but he was to lament the quality of the Tenerife wine, cheap as it was. Interesting here was his friendly contact with the French captain Borda, of the Bligh to John Bond, 23 October 1776 (Boussole, and the Spanish Varela, both notable scientific workers as well as naval officers, who, in the process of testing the chronometers of Ferdinand Berthoud (the English were not the only inventors) were also fixing the longitude of Tenerife and making some accurate charts. After a
Nla; printed Royal Australian Historical Society Journal and Proceedings, 45 (1949), 'Some Correspondence of Journals III, 743. Clerke in the Discovery provided a double allowance of grog instead, says Bayly; ibid., 15, n. 1.
This was his fourth visit to Cape Town, and he was among friends and admirers, whether they were officials or the merchants who supplied his many needs. He dined in state with the governor. Samwell, who also admired, was delighted: '3 royal Salutes of 21 Guns each were given with the Toasts at Dinner. The Governor & all at the Cape pay Captn Cook extraordinary Respect, he is as famous here & more noted perhaps than in England.' Clerke to Banks, 1 August 1776; Webster coll., printed ibid., 1513–14. For Cook on the Atlantic currents see ibid., 20–3.Journals III, 1515.Discovery. Clerke had survived his battles with the Israelites and the law, perhaps freed from the Fleet by one of the acts for the enlargement of debtors, had dashed down to Plymouth, paused but a day to make adjustments to his crew consequent on sickness, dashed off letters to the Admiralty and Banks—‘Cook sail'd tomorrow it will be 3 Weeks a damn'd long stretch but we must see it out—I shall get hold of him I fear not… Huzza my Boys heave away … adieu my best friend… .'
By the end of November both ships were again ready for sea, caulking done, the last animals on board, the last letters written. We may think Cook extravagant, almost reckless, in his sense of duty to island posterity, when we count up the bulls, heifers, horses, mares, sheep, goats, rabbits and poultry he added to his stock; and they were certainly to give him later troubled thought. His London troubles are, we gather from an earlier letter to Strahan his publisher, melted away: 'I suppose by this time you have got my Voyage in hand, but I am so well satisfied with the hands it is in that I do not give my self a thought about it, I would however give some thing to know what Dr Forster is about.' Cook to Strahan, 5 November 1776; Phillips coll., Salem, Mass., printed ibid., 1516. Cook to Hodges, 5 November 1776; Princeton University Library, printed ibid., 1517.
Your very obliging favour I received by Captain Clerke who arrived here on the 18th Inst. something more than three weeks after me and nearly the same time as I sailed from Plymouth before him, for I left that place on the 13th of July. We are now ready to proceed on our Voyage, and nothing is wanting but a few females of our own species to make the Resolution a compleate ark for I have added considerably to the Number of Animals I took onboard in England. Omai consented with raptures to give up his Cabbin to make room for four Horses—He continues to enjoy a good state of health and great flow of spirits, and has never once given me the l[e]ast reason to find fault with any part of his conduct. He desires his best respects to you, Dr Solander, Lord Seaford and to a great many more, Ladies as well as Gentlemen, whose names I cannot insert because they would fill up this sheet of paper, I can only say that he does not forget any who have shewed him the least kindness.
I am greatly obliged to you for your readiness to describe the Plants which are to be published in my Journal and I hope Mr Strahan will give you the parts in time. I have no other way of makeing a return for this and many other favours than by using my best endeavours to add to your Collection of Plants & Animals: this you may be assured of, and that the Man you have sent out with Captain Clerke to collect seeds & plants shall have every assistance in my power to give him… .
Cook to Banks, 26 November 1776; Phillips coll., Salem, Mass., printed ibid., 1521.
He proceeds to describe the onslaught on his sheep by 'the honest Dutchmen of this place', and sends his best respects to Solander. To Sandwich also he speaks highly of Omai: 'the people here are surprised at his genteel behaviour and deportment'. Omai, it appears, was at his peak. A different note—deeper or merely formal? —follows: 'Permit me to assure your Lordship that my endeavours shall not be wanting to accomplish the great object of the Voyage… .' Cook to Sandwich, 26 November 1776; Sandwich Papers, printed ibid., 1520.
The last of these friendly letters in date is that from Gore to Banks. He too strikes a different note; in part answers the question put by
… we shall sail hence in a Day or two with Both Ships the manner of our Acquipment you will in all probability Learn from another Quarter, this I have To say we are of Both Ships in Good health and on Board the Resolution have hitherto agreed verry Will and there is a fair Prospect ofits Continuing To the End of our Voyage, There has been a Misunderstanding between Charles And Burney,—Sometimes Young Officers Forget there Place, all is well now and is likely To Continue. If I return in the Resolution the next Trip I may Safely Venture in a Ship Built of Ginger Bread. Gore to Banks, 27 November 1776;
Atl,Miscellaneous Material relating to Cook's Voyages, printed ibid., 1522.
Cook gave Clerke a copy of his instructions and a rendezvous at Queen Charlotte Sound, and on the last day of November they weighed anchor. In the night it fell calm, and they could not put to sea till early next morning. This was already a month behind the schedule laid down in the instructions. It was still, however, early in the southern summer. Whether they could reach Tahiti in time to leave again, refreshed, by the beginning of February, 'or sooner', if Cook should judge it necessary, may have been a question he had already dropped.
His first objective was a harking back to the conversation he had had at the Cape with the French captain Crozet on his way home in 1775, and to the chart that Crozet had given him. He wanted to verify the islands discovered by Marion du Fresne between the latitudes of 46° and 47°, and so followed a south-east course to pick up the westerlies without delay. It was but two days after finally clearing the land that he lost his mizen topmast in a squall—a loss that gave him no worry, as it was sprung already and he had another to replace it. There was, however, some cause to worry as he got into the roaring forties: the ships pitched and rolled in the cold gale and high following sea, and the miserable shivering sheep and goats began thus early to die. On 12 December he sighted and sailed between the first two of Marion's islands, small, rocky and precipitous, unnamed on his chart, and called them after the young Prince Edward. Having done this, he was prepared to let go Marion's other small group of four, twelve degrees to the east—though he named them after Marion and Crozet The island now called Marion is the more southerly of Cook's Prince Edward islands, lat. 46°53′ S, long. 37°45′ E; its companion, Prince Edward, is twelve miles to the '… indeed it is impossible to do anything in our way of trade till the Weather in some degree favours us.'— ibid. llNne. The other, rather more scattered, group is collectively the Crozet islands, about 46°27′ S, 52° E.Resolution leaked again, in spite of the Cape caulking. Three weeks through December, when the ships were close to Kerguelen's reported position, fog came down, and they kept in touch only by the sound of their guns. 'This is a most importunate Fog', says Clerke; the confounded foggy atmosphere rendered
Journals III, 26, n. 4.e Plan of ye Voyage, nevertheless indulge Conjectures, & conceive that ye smallest delay would hazard ye Loss of a Season, & even wish the Search for this Land which has already, & may still Longer detain us, had not been a Part of ye Plan.'
Kerguelen island, the largest of the scattered spots of land in the Southern Indian Ocean, sprawls untidily over the sea between latitudes (roughly) 48°30′ and 49°45′ S, and longitudes 68°40′ and 70°30′ E: a mass of rocky hills, bog and running water, split on its northern and eastern sides into dozens of sounds and inlets and minor bays, fringed with rocks and giant seaweed swaying deceptively round them, the whole frequently enough lost in fog; with limited vegetation, treeless, its animal life confined to sea-birds, penguins, and seals—few of the last left now, for Cook's observations announced their fate. Kerguelen's own two brief visits, in 1772 and 1773–4, can hardly be classed above sketchy and ignoble reconnaissance
The land first seen was an islet, Kerguelen's Isle de Croy, off the north-west point of the main island, one of a small group so lying. Cook hauled off round this group, just weathering the high rock he called Bligh's Cap (now Ilot du Rendez-vous). In the afternoon, with a clearer air, the main shore was in view, an extremely indented one; within its northern promontory lay a promising harbour, which Bligh reported on favourably; and next day the ships worked up inside almost to the sandy beach at the head. He called the place Christmas Harbour. It was Kerguelen's Baie de l'Oiseau, and retains this name; but Cook, with the sketchy chart that he had, and altogether ignorant of Kerguelen's second voyage, may be excused for making some wrong identifications, and even for being surprised at finding himself preceded here. There was plenty of water—the whole country was running with it—but not a tree or a shrub or a piece of driftwood; plenty of penguins, innumerable other sea-birds, and seals whose lack of sophistication made it easy to club them for their oil; a little grass for the cattle, few fish; so really the habour's promise was a little illusory, except for shelter. The men, however, were given a day off for a Christmas celebration, and one of them brought back a bottle he had found attached to a rock on the north
Naves Resolution & Discovery de Rege Magna Britannia Decembris 1776—and returned it to the bottle with a silver twopenny piece, built a pile of stones on a little rise and put the bottle inside; displayed the British flag and gave the place the name he chose. Whether that signified the 'ridiculous' act of taking possession, as the philosophic Anderson feared it did, we are left to guess.
On the afternoon of that day, 28 December, he went on to the high cape that guarded the harbour in the north, to get a view of the coast. Fog hid all, except the higher land within, quite naked and desolate, and some snow-covered hills to the south. Next morning he left the harbour, and fortunately the fog cleared, the sea was still. There followed two days of such intense coastal observation that at the end of his close-packed pages one realises with difficulty that this is the harvest of two days indeed, and not a week. On the whole this observation of a tortuous shore was accurate, and the greater number of the names Cook gave have survived; and glad are we to find not merely those of royalty and naval personages, not merely the inevitable Sandwich, laid upon the ocean from one end to the other, but ‘Point Pringle after my good friend Sr John Pringle Precedent of the Royal Society'. At the end of a day of clearing forelands, islets, rocks, shoals, and even threading the channels between the great beds of kelp, with the lead going all the while, with fog threatening again, the ships put into a small harbour which gave snug enough shelter for the night—Port Palliser. Cook climbed a hill as usual for the view—daylight was long—Gore looked at the land, the masters sounded. Barrenness and desolation again, nothing for cattle, only water, seals, and sea birds for men. So to sea again, and the sight of a lower, more level, less indented piece of country, backed by rocky mountains topped by snow, until Cook had in sight what he was persuaded must be the most southerly point of the land; as night came on a south-west swell added to his conviction that there was no more in that direction, and the wind shifting to the same quarter he stood away from the coast eastwards.
Well: he must summarise his impressions, geographically. The first discoverers, 'with some reason', had imagined the country to be the projection of a southern continent; 'the English' had since proved that no such continent existed. The country, then, was an island; if any further proof of its limited extent were needed that
For Cook's description see ibid., 43–7; for Anderson's, 770–5.Pringlea—he too celebrating the President—the few other small plants and mosses; three different penguins, clearly described; shags, ducks, albatrosses, gulls; an uninviting fish; the fur seal.
The winds were generally favourable, though for a week or more there was thick fog, so that, as Cook said, they ran above three hundred leagues in the dark. Fog brought up the thought of possible separation—it had been not far from the Island of Desolation that he had parted from the Adventure in those seas—and that, with the needs of his stock, impelled him on 7 January to give Clerke an intermediate rendezvous, short of New Zealand, at Furneaux's Adventure Bay in Van Diemen's Land. Twelve days later there was a piece of serious trouble. A sudden squall at 4 o'clock in the morning carried away the Resolution's fore topmast and with it the main topgallant mast. The mess of rigging saved them from going overboard, and there was a spare topmast, but the whole day was occupied in clearing the wreck and getting the mast up. The main topgallant mast could not be replaced. Perhaps the necessity of making up time had led to carrying too much sail, meditated King. The Tasmanian coast was sighted on the 24th; as Cook sailed on the westerlies turn to variable light airs and calms, and in two days more to a breeze from the south-east. Cook, examining the land with interest, was not sorry, whatever the pressure of time: it was now in
As smoke was seen up in the woods the shore parties next day were guarded by marines—some of whom stole the available liquor and made themselves dead drunk; there was a good haul of fish in the seine and then everyone was ordered on board to be ready to sail as soon as the wind served. It did not serve on the next day, and the day after that was a calm, so there was more wooding and foraging on shore, the carpenter was sent to cut spars, and Roberts, the master's mate, to survey the bay. In the afternoon of the first of these days the wooders and waterers were visited by a number of the aborigines, amiable uncovetous people, slender, black and naked, with agreeable features, their skin scarred, their hair and beards smeared with red ochre; they were frightened away by a couple of musket shots, not fired at them. Cook left a boar and a sow inside the woods, where he thought they had a fair chance of escaping immediate slaughter, a fate which sheep, goats, or cattle would certainly suffer in the open. When next morning the men were again at work the aborigines returned, in greater numbers, still quite peaceable, and this time brought women and children with them. Primitive they certainly were, showing no interest in fish-hooks or other iron, but not so naïve as to tolerate advances to their women from some of the gentlemen ashore. The women wore a kangaroo skin round the shoulders for carrying their children, otherwise they were as naked as the men—even more naked, for some of them had their heads shaved. These people were obviously shellfish-eaters, though they rejected all other fish; and they seemed to have no canoes or other means of adventuring upon the water. They had a few bark huts, also extremely primitive. Anderson wrote at length about them and the natural history of the country, so far as he could explore it. He did not like the mosquitoes or the ants. Some good grass had been found. Cook went on board, at the end of his three days, with a good opinion of the place. Beyond correcting Furneaux's chart a little, and recording some accurate observations, he added nothing to the
Journals III, 56.
The light westerly breeze turned for a day to a violent southerly storm, then moderated, went to the north-east and finally came round to the westerly quarter again; the weather was dull, there was nothing to see but a few petrels and albatrosses. Clerke lost another man overboard, a marine. On 10 February New Zealand was sighted at Rocks Point, on the west coast south of Cape Farewell; rounding the Cape and Stephens' Island, on the morning of the 12th Cook was in his old anchorage at Ship Cove. He wanted to refresh his men and his stock, attend to his ships, check his chronometers; he was also strongly interested in finding out the truth about the ibid., 61.Adventure's slaughtered boat's crew. As for refreshment, it was all there, the best of water, greens, vegetables planted on the previous voyage, grass, illimitable fish; and, for the susceptible, refreshment of the spirit in the melodious wild music that had enraptured Discovery's master, 'the Sweet Harmony' which surpassed anything of the kind he had ever met with. There were no scurvy cases in the ships, but Cook enforced his usual regimen, and had hands brewing spruce beer, the substitute for grog, almost as soon as they were on shore. In all the activity there was, however, a difference from earlier days. When he arrived the New Zealanders seemed apprehensive and hesitated to come on board, even those he knew best and best knew him. On his side, though he soon convinced them of his friendship, there was not altogether trust. With his first shore party, clearing the ground for observatories and tents, he sent an armed guard, and he kept it there in charge of King until he left. All the workmen had arms with them. No boat was ever sent any distance unarmed or without reliable officers. Such precautions he could not believe were strictly necessary; but after the affair at Grass Cove and the destruction of Marion and his men at the Bay of Islands in 1772 he was determined there should be no more massacres. Cook's friendliness soon brought
With the characteristics of the people here no one seems to have been as favourably impressed as was Cook—not even Anderson, who had an admirably fair as well as clear mind, and gives us the best single account of Queen Charlotte Sound we have. Cook, possibly, judges together, all the New Zealanders he has seen, and his observations were not confined to the Sound. He does not, on his second and third voyages, set out to give any large deliberate analysis of characteristics. He had done that on his first voyage—perhaps inadequately—and now, apart from one or two almost incidental observations, he is interested in individual incidents and individual persons. It was his habit to deal, so far as was possible, with individual persons, and preferably with persons of influence; so it is he who gives us names and some individual portraiture. We may be able to infer from some incidental phrase how far he agrees with the impressions of greed, suspicion and deceit conveyed by some of his officers, as when he mentions 'a Tribe or Family', whose chief was ibid., 65. ibid., 66, n. 1.‘Tomatongeauooranue, a man about forty five years of age, with a fine cheerful open countenance, two things more or less remarkable throughout the whole tribe.'
Cook carried out no vengeance for the Grass Cove affray; and this was the reason for a sort of contempt which some of his officers thought they detected among the people of the place. Certainly vengeance had been expected by the New Zealanders. Cook, among
I have observed that this Second Visit of ours hath not mended the morals of the Natives of either Sex, the Women of this Country I always looked upon to be more chaste than the generality of Indian Women, whatever favours a few of them might have granted to the crew of the Endeavour it was generally done in a private manner and without the men seeming to intrest themselves in it, but now we find the men are the chief promoters of this Vice, and for a spike nail or any other thing they value will oblige their Wives and Daughters to prostitute themselves whether they will or no and that not with the privicy decency seems to require, such are the concequences of a commerce with Europeans and what is still more to our Shame civilized Christians, we debauch their Morals already too prone to vice and we interduce among them wants and perhaps diseases which they never before knew….
JournalsII, 174–5.
Anderson now in this third voyage remarks on 'very disagreeable commands' laid on the women, in consequence of which the people suffered much 'from a loathsome disease which we have communicated without as yet giving them any real advantage as a recompence.'Journals III, 816.
There was the other aspect of the matter. Men, husbands, fathers, were not always driven by greed, or women complaisant. There was the little incident of the gentlemen's advances at Adventure Bay.
This conduct to Indian Women is highly blameable, as it creates a jealousy in the men that may be attended with fatal consequences, without answering any one purpose whatever, not even that of the lover obtaining the object of his wishes. I believe it has generally been found amongst uncivilized people that where the Women are easy of access, the Men are the first who offer them to strangers, and where this is not the case they are not easily come at, neither large presents nor privacy will induce them toviolate the laws of chastity or custom. This observation I am sure will hold good throughout all parts of the South Sea where I have been why then should men risk their own safety where nothing is to be obtained? ibid., 55–6
The unusual restraint of the sailors ashore at Ship Cove may indicate that though, unlike their captain, they were not gradually working out a philosophy of the subject—and he had still more to learn—they at least had concluded that amatory adventure should be pursued with caution. Cook renews his argument when telling of visitors for trade.
Their articles of commerce were Curiosities, Fish and Women the two first always came to a good market, which the latter did not: the Seamen had taken a kind of dislike to these people and were either unwilling or affraid to associate with them; it had a good effect as I never knew a man quit his station to go to their habitations. A connection with Women I allow because I cannot prevent it, but never encourage tho many Men are of opinion it is one of the greatest securities amongst Indians, and it may hold good when you intend to settle amongst them; but with travelers and strangers, it is generally otherwise and more men are betrayed than saved by having connection with their women, and how can it be otherwise sence all their View are selfish without the least mixture of regard or attachment whatever; at least my observations which have been pretty general, have not pointed out to me one instance to the contrary.ibid., 61–2.
It was no trouble over women, however, that caused the Adventure tragedy. This was one of those things, so it appeared in the end, that Cook had always gone to enormous pains to prevent. He did not push his enquiries too soon, but waited until he was out with a large party—five boats, which reflects his caution—cutting grass for hay. They filled the launches, then went over to Grass Cove. Here they found his old friend Pedro of the second voyage, looking rather frightened; from him, when reassured, and two or three others Cook, through Omai, got a fairly coherent story. On the fatal day Rowe and his sailors left the boat with only one man, Furneaux's negro servant, to guard her, and sat down about two hundred yards away to eat their meal. They had only two or three muskets. The account now splits into two, though Cook did not think these were irreconcilable. According to the first, some of the New Zealanders who clustered round the luncheon party snatched at the bread and fish; in the ensuing quarrel two were shot dead, apparently by Rowe, before he and his men were overpowered; and the excited savages immediately knocked all their prisoners on the head. They then despatched the unfortunate negro. According to the second, the
The native people were surprised that Cook did not exact utu, or payment. He did not behave naturally. It was natural for Gore to kill the man who made off with his cloth at Mercury Bay, on the first voyage: that was utu, and not resented. They lived a life of wild passion, warfare, and revenge; had long memories and did not forgive. These people were constantly embroiled with those of Admiralty Bay. Not long before the ships' arrival a chief, one of Cook's old friends in the Sound, had gone there and been slain with about seventy of his followers. There was no large tribe left. One party after another applied to Cook to destroy its enemies; if he had followed the advice of all his pretended friends, he says, he might have extirpated the whole race. One particular man he was urged by many to kill—one who looked a villain, and was by the testimony of all the leader of the murderers at Grass Cove; indeed, he did not deny it, and said outright that he had slaughtered Rowe and most of the others with his own hand. Like his fellows, when he understood there was to be no utu, he did not hesitate to come freely on board the ships, even into Cook's cabin. Why did not Cook shoot him? asked Omai, feverish for his death—were not murderers hanged in England? Cook had made his enquiry. He had never killed anybody in cold blood, and he would not start now. He agreed with Clerke that to do so 'cou'd answer no purpose at all'. Kahura at one stage looked as though he expected to be killed; he recovered so much that seeing a portrait of a fellow countryman hanging on the cabin-wall he asked to be drawn too, and sat with great aplomb while Webber made the drawing. Cook summed up the matter: 'I must confess I admired his courage and was not a little pleased at the confidence he put in me. Perhaps in this he placed his whole safety, for I had always declared to those who solicited his death that I had always been a friend to them all and would continue so unless they gave me cause to act otherwise; as to what was past, I should think no more of it as it was some time sence and done when I was not there, but if ever they made a Second attempt of that kind, they might rest assured of feeling the weight of my resentment.'Journals III, 69.
A useful sojourn this was at Ship Cove, though of only eleven days, on two of which the ships rode out violent northwest storms. A vast quantity of excellent fish, wild celery and scurvy grass was consumed; the young gentlemen stretched their legs and, so we gather from later reminiscences, indulged in a good deal of high-spirited horseplay; I have given a specimen in the Introduction to Journals III, xcviii—xcix, taken from George Home's Memoirs of an Aristocrat (London, 1838), which contains some of the reminiscences of the author's father Discovery. 'Ah! those were the glorious days', Alexander is quoted as saying; and quite likely he did say so.
While the ships were unmooring and getting under sail two chiefs and a train of others came on board to take leave—or rather, to get what presents they could at the last moment. The chiefs wanted some goats and hogs. Cook had intended to present not only these animals but also sheep and a bull and heifers, had he found a chief powerful enough to protect them or a place safe enough for their natural protection. There was neither, and he determined to leave no stock at all. But the chiefs asked, he made them promise to keep his gifts alive, and as he had animals to spare bestowed on one a
Cook was to lose his passage. We can see now, our knowledge of the Pacific winds being greater than his, that this was inevitable. The bitter fact had nothing to do with time spent at the Cape or Kerguelen Island or Van Diemen's Land; indeed, he could have spent enough time at the last place to sail all round it, and thus dispose of Furneaux's too hasty verdict, without affecting the large outlines of his voyage. He had lost his passage already when he left England in July 1776. The time-table of his instructions was in fact totally unreal. If he could have sailed (Clerke with him) when he told Walker he expected to be ready to sail, 'about the latter end of April', then we can perhaps—with a flight into the hypothetical—see him leaving the Cape early in September, and Queen Charlotte Sound early in December, and arriving in Tahiti, with some luck—the winds being what they are—in mid-February. He would already be behind his illusory schedule. According to that schedule, he was to be in latitude 65° north on the American coast in the following June. If we now looked ahead on the actual voyage, we shall find him leaving the
His shortest passage from New Zealand to Tahiti, if it had been possible, would have been one directly north-east. On his previous experience of the winds in the ocean east of New Zealand, in June and July 1773, he had been able to make fifty degrees of easting before he turned north, in latitude 40°, to reach latitude 20°, and then turn west in August over eighteen degrees of longitude to Tahiti, all in ten weeks, though the passage had been tedious and the
We learn about them from King, 15 March, 23 March; ibid., 76, n. 3, 77, n. 1.Journals III, 77.Resolution the two young New Zealanders for some days gave way to grief and seasickness, which even a red cloak ordered for each by Cook—a princely gift on land—could not assuage, and they sang dolefully and continually a dirge or chant preserved for us by Samwell; after a week or so they recovered and became well-liked, particularly the younger boy, a droll jackanapes. It may have been boredom that led to a small outbreak of theft from certain men of victuals, of which King gives the story: as the crew would not discover the thieves Cook cut the meat allowance of all for a day to two-thirds, which all refused, on the plea that honest men should not be penalised; on which Cook denounced them for 'a very mutinous proceeding' and promised to continue the cut; an episode which we may regard as entirely trivial, but still indicative that Cook himself was not unaffected by the strain on his hopes. He may have felt some additional irritation when he reflected that only a week before, to avoid too great a demand on food for the stock, he had had his own sheep killed, and those belonging to 'the gun-room
He was, however, making some progress north, and towards the end of March coming up with a group of islands hitherto undiscovered, the group now called after him, the Lower Cooks. The southernmost, Mangaia, was sighted on 29 March, when he was still some five degrees short of the latitude of Tahiti, and ten degrees short in longitude. From the sea it looked well-wooded and attractive, though defended by a formidable reef and a furious surf; and the following day, when the ships bore up for the lee side, it became clear that a large number of inhabitants, much like New Zealanders in appearance, were anxious to defend it too. The Mangaians did not favour visitors. The boats sent to reconnoitre found no place to land; reef, surf, depth of water and sharp coral bottom made it dangerous to anchor. The people, though inhospitable, had enough curiosity to swim off to the boats and prove embarrassing visitors themselves, snatching everything they could lay hands on; but only one had the courage to come on board the ship. Webber drew his portrait, with a knife that was given him stuck through a hole in his ear; other presents, as we know from later enquiries, were long retained by their owners as articles of remarkable value, and Cook was remembered in the island tradition. It was an unprofitable island to him, and he now needed food for his cattle. On the 31st, a little more northerly, another island was sighted, 'Wautieu' or Atiu, where contact with the islanders was on a larger scale. The wind was so slight that the ships could not work up to it till 2 April. Gore was sent off with armed boats to look for anchorage and a landing place; while they were away several canoes came out with small presents for the chiefs, Cook and Clerke—plantains, a pig each, and some coconuts, in return for which they were most anxious for a dog. One of them, who bedded down for the night in Clerke's cabin, proved that he was willing to take anything else—'a most incorrigible, damn'd rogue indeed', summed up the outraged Clerke. Gore returned without success, but with the suggestion that as the natives seemed very friendly they might through Omai be persuaded to bring off to the boats, lying outside the surf, the supplies most wanted. 'Having little or no Wind', thought Cook, 'the delay of a day or two was of no moment', and he determined to try the experiment next morning. It did not reward him much, even after the bestowal of a dog. Gore, Omai, Anderson and Burney all went on the mission, and were landed from canoes on the reef, whence they could walk
Atiu being unprofitable, the following morning Cook steered for an islet ten miles to the north-west, 'Wennuaete'—Whenua iti or Takutea. It was uninhabited. Despite the great surf even on the lee side he managed to get a quantity of scurvy grass, coconuts, and pandanus branches, soft spongy juicy stuff: 'the Cattle eat it very will when cut up in small pieces, so that it might be said without any impropriety that we fed our Cattle on Billit-wood'.Journals III, 88.Discovery's cutter lying alongside—'great Thieves and horrid Cheats', reports a midshipman; they wore little and were not tattooed, and said they had seen two great ships before, so that the Resolution and Adventure had not passed by unnoticed in 1773. There was no anchorage. King, who went to look for it, saw signs of hostility among the people. Cook wanted water, as well as
Being thus disapointed at all these islands, and the summer in the northern Hemisphere already too far advanced for me to think of doing any thing there this year, It was therefore absolutely necessary to persue such methods as was most likely to preser[v]e the Cattle we had on board in the first place, and save the Ships stores and Provisions in the second the better to enable us to procecute the Discovery's in the high northern latitudes the ensuing summer. I intended to have stood back to the south till I had met with a westerly wind, provided I had got a supply of water and grass at any of these islands; but the consequence of doing this without, would have been the loss of all the Cattle without gaining any one advantage. I therefore determined to bear away for the Friendly IsldBwhere I was sure of being supplied with every thing I wanted; and as it was necessary to run in the night as well as in the day, I ordered Capt. Clerke to keep about a league ahead of the Resolution, as his Ship could better claw of a lee shore than mine.ibid., 91.
To help with water he kept his still at work for ten hours a day: it provided a moderate quantity of fresh water at a considerable cost of fuel. Two days later he issued careful, though not harsh, orders for the economical use of the water he had. If he had only known! Within this group he passed by, out of sight, its two largest islands rich and fertile, Rarotonga and Aitutaki, either of which could have given him all the supplies he could possibly need.
When he bore away he had a fine easterly breeze. It fell, and he altered course for Palmerston and Niue, as a sort of insurance, though he must have considered the latter, 'Savage Island', purely a last resort. Where now was the easterly trade wind? On the 10th came thunder squalls from the south, which at least brought heavy rain, channelled into the empty puncheons. And then, as if heaven were simply seeing how malign it could be,
At length about Noon the next day it fixed atNw& WNW and blew a fresh breeze with fair weather, thus we were persecuted with a Wind in our teeth which ever way we directed our course, and the farther Mortification to find here those very winds we had reason to expect 8° or 10°farther South. They came now too late for I durst not trust to their continuance and the event proved that I judged right.
JournalsIII, 92.
Indeed they turned variable again, but help was at hand. Daybreak on 13 April showed Palmerston. It was more than twenty-four hours before the ships could creep up with it.
Palmerston was a virgin atoll if ever there were such: six sandy islets and a few low cays strung on the reef round its lagoon, with no sign of human touch save a few bits of wreckage driven over the reef on to a beach. The boats were immediately out to look for a landing place, and by early afternoon the starving stock were eating their way through scurvy grass and the green of coconut trees. For the rest of that day and the following three days the foraging parties were hard at work, gathering young coconut trees and an infinity of the nuts, pandanus, 'palm cabbage'; fish was abundant in the lagoon, and Omai excelled himself as a cook; the sea birds stimulated general wonderment. They stood to be stroked and picked off the trees. 'The immense Quantities of these Fowls', writes Clerke, 'which consisted chiefly of Men of War and Tropic Birds, Boobies, Noddies and Egg Birds, are astonishing, the Trees and Bows in many places seem'd absolutely loaded with them; but we were a most unhappy Interruption to their wonted Security, for unfortunately for them we found them very palatable and well-flavour'd.' ibid., 94, n. 3.
At sunset on the 27th course was set for Nomuka, where Cook proposed first to call. Wind and weather were still quite uncertain, with frequent squalls, thunder, lightning and rain, some high seas and disagreeable heat. While it was impossible to keep the ships dry the rain, on the other hand, provided the ample fresh water of which there was none at Palmerston and which would be only of poor quality in Tonga. Cook laid his still aside. In spite of all the salt food since leaving the Cape there were no sick. After a week of this uncomfortable sailing Savage Island was sighted and passed by, then the sea moderated and fell smooth, tropic birds were again in the sky and
We are at the beginning of another parenthesis in Cook's exploration. We might almost say that his mature style as an explorer is parenthetical: that is, within the wide discretion conferred upon him by his instructions he finds it possible to investigate, and make a number of statements on, the nature of the world, in a manner subordinate to his main investigation, his main statement; and that without interfering with the general movement of his mind. To the great query of his second voyage he gave the definite answer, There is no southern continent; to the great query of his last voyage he was to give an answer almost as definite, There is no north-west passage; but included in the negatives, what wealth of subordinate clauses tending towards 'the improvement of Geography and Navigation'! True, there is a difference between the two voyages: the masterly parenthesis of the second voyage, that took in the Marquesas, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, was deliberate, a calculated extension of the voyage in line with its original plan; this one was forced on Cook. As it was forced, he cannot display the same sureness of touch. We have again a difficulty over timing. On his two previous visits to Tonga, in 1773 at 'Eua and Tongatapu, in 1774 at Nomuka, he had spent altogether eleven days—enough to convince him that those islands could provide him with all the refreshment he needed. When he made his decision to turn to Tonga he gave Clerke a series of rendezvous, the first at 'Rotterdam' or Nomuka; if there was no meeting within fourteen days then at the other two islands, fourteen days more; failing that at Tahiti and a wait of a month, then to Raiatea until the end of October—when, if Cook had still not appeared, he was to pursue the Admiralty's instructions, 'which you are now at liberty to open'. ibid., 1525–6.
Cook provided immediately for trade, with his usual regulations to prevent confusion and quarrelling, and to stop men from acquiring 'curiosities' until the ships were supplied with food, so that in three days he could end all sea diet except grog, and put everybody on fresh pork, fruit and roots. Meanwhile the ships, impeded though they were by canoes, were worked round the shoals and islets to the old anchorage on the northern side of Nomuka. This was 1 May, and here they remained a fortnight, with the people of the island swarming aboard and in general good relations prevailing. The only really untoward incidents, apart from the constant thefts, were the parting of the Discovery's cables on the sharp rocks of the anchorage, which meant some difficult days spent in recovering the anchors. The chiefs, the eiki, were well-inclined and helpful, though not disinclined to profit from the thieving which so constantly went on—even, for a start, to take part in it themselves. Cook was determined to put it down. It must have seemed purposeless, apart from a sense of triumph—why, for example, carry off the bolt from the spunyarn winch?—and could be very inconvenient. A minor chief was caught in that particular act, was flogged, carried on shore to the trading place his hands tied firmly behind his back, and released only after some hours when a large hog was brought as ransom. Such punishment was to Anderson extreme: 'after this we were not troubled with thieves of rank', commented Cook, but on their servants or slaves 'a floging made no more impression than it would have done upon the Main-mast'. The chiefs advised him to kill them. He could not quite do that, but we can see a sort of desperation coming upon him. Clerke, in like situation, was rescued by his waggishness. He had the offenders half-shaved, head, face, and beard, before throwing them overboard to become objects of derision; and that was fairly effective.
One of the chiefs who came to visit, from Tongatapu not Nomuka,
Again the ships were immediately surrounded by multitudinous canoes and thronged with the islanders. Finau, closely and constantly attended by Omai, made himself a sort of master of ceremonies. The
Cook's journal has no entry for the following day, 19 May. Anderson's records a pleasant walk all over the island, which is not much over four miles long, and nowhere wider than a mile and a half. He was much impressed by its large plantations, neat fences and spacious roads, though there were few people to see, the populace all thronging about the ships. The party had a guide and protector generously provided by Finau. How Finau spent the day we may perhaps gather from the story told by William Mariner, the very intelligent young man who thirty years later was the prisoner, friend, and close observer of the Tongans, a story which—Mariner's informants being who they were, chiefs who had been concerned, and
John Martin, An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands… from the extensive communications of Mr William Mariner (3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1827), II, 71–2. Mariner arrived in Tonga through the cutting-out by the Tongans of his own vessel, the Port au Prince, in 1806, while she was lying in Cook's anchorage off Lifuka.th.' They duly, in an undisciplined way, performed their exercise and fired several volleys. The time came for the Tongan entertainment. The victims were in order. Cook's fate hung by a thread.
It was a sight entirely new, he says—an exciting and most complicated paddle dance, performed most perfectly by a hundred and five men, to the sound of two hollow log drums and a song in which everyone joined, ending with a 'harlequin dance' in front of Cook himself: it 'so far exceeded any thing we had done to amuse them that they seemed to pique themselves in the superiority they had over us.' Martin / Mariner, II, 72.Journals III, 109.Journals III, 110, n. 3.po me'e, the night of dancing, was over. Cook had never before seen such an exhibition; he was never to see another quite as exhilarating.
Trade was falling off as supplies dwindled. Only girls remained in endless plenty, generally at an axe or a shirt the night, payable to the man who brought the young lady aboard, though the price was known to go higher. Cook in his turn walked on the island, observed and admired; had vegetable seeds planted, Indian corn, melons, pumpkins, to add to its resources; continued the struggle against pilfering. Careless sentries and sailors were punished as well as the thieves. Had the commanders been of less humanity than Cook and Clerke, thought a junior officer, many of these people must have lost their lives. Chiefs in their canoes came and went. A persuasive liar came with a story of another ship at anchor in the road at Nomuka, and Cook's belief was dissipated only by a newly arrived chief, whom he knew, from that island. To what end such a story?—to get him back to Nomuka? He had already decided to leave, and was indeed on the point of unmooring, when Finau announced that he himself was departing for 'Vaugh Waugh' to get red-feathered caps for the ships' trade at Tahiti. Two days' sail to the north: Cook proposed to add to his knowledge by taking the ships there. Finau was discouraging, with a large lie of his own (perhaps he wished to conserve the resources of Vava'u). There was neither harbour nor anchorage there, he said. Cook acquiesced but would stay where he was little longer. He made his way down the coast to a bay between Lifuka and its next southern neighbour Uoleva; here he anchored till next day, thinking to attempt the passage to Nomuka amongst the islands. Thence he would pass to Tongatapu. The next day brought an unsettled wind and rainy
Discovery had already touched on a shoal, and the masters returned from investigating ahead with a too unfavourable report of islets, shoals and breakers. It was clear he would have to reverse his northward course outside the islands.
During this day still another chief arrived, in a large sailing canoe, and was brought on board: the king, the Tu'i Tonga, said the lesser ones, the supreme person in all those isles. It was Cook's policy to pay his court to all these great men, without enquiring too closely into the legality of their titles; but this time it really did appear, from the authority exerted and the reverence paid, that the claim was justified. Finau was abandoned by all who had exalted him before, except Omai: Omai had a vested interest he could not abandon, his identification with Finau had gone to the exchange of names, contradiction was bitter. If Cook had known, Finau was far too slim to be a king; but this person, sedate, sensible, enquiring, was 'the most corperate plump fellow we had met with', outrivalling the fat hogs he had brought with him. Fatafehi Paulaho had all the marks of majesty; after dining with Cook he was carried ashore in a sort of hand-barrow: flies were fanned away from him; he would keep no present but a glass bowl; people came on purpose to bow their heads to the sole of his foot; nowhere had the captain seen the like decorum. He presented Cook, before the ship sailed next daybreak, 29 May, with one of the beautiful red feather caps or bonnets, which were never brought in trade; and his reprimand to people who had stayed on board all night without his permission brought tears to their eyes.
This passage to Nomuka turned out to be a difficult and dangerous one of a week. The winds became scant or contrary, or blew fresh and in rain squalls at the worst possible time by night. By the 31st Cook had worked round the more northern islets, tacking at night, then stood for a passage between the islet of Kotu and a reef to the westward, could not make it, was forced to stretch south-west until he feared he would lose the islands, with a cabinfull of islanders on board, tacked back towards the other islet of Fotuhaa, and spent a night between it and Kotu tacking in the squalls under reefed topsails and foresail. There was real danger, and the Resolution fired her guns to warn the Discovery astern. Cook provides us with another passage that may be taken as illustrative of his philosophy of exploration, a sigh rather than a groan.
I kept the deck till 12 oclock when I left it to the Master, with such direction as I thought would keep the Ships clear of the dangers that lay round us; but after making a trip to the north and standing back again to the south the Ship, by a small shift of the wind fetched farther to windwardthan was expected; by this means she was very near runing plump upon a low Sandy isle surrounded by breakers. It happened very fortunately that the people had just been turned up to put the Ship about and the most of them at their stations, so that the necessary movements were not only executed with judgement but with alertness and this alone saved the Ship…. Such resks as thise are the unavoidable Companions of the Man who goes on Discoveries.
JournalsIII, 119. The 'low Sandy isle' was Putuputua, about twelve feet high, standing on a reef three miles north-east of Kotu. King: 'the Master whose watch it was (one of the officers being sick) immediately threw all aback & afterwards wore… otherwise we might have ended our discoveries here.' Bligh, who undoubtedly acted with excellent decision, has a rather vain comment of his own.—ibid., n. 1.
As his frightened passengers were anxious to get ashore, with the first light he landed them on Kotu, and found anchorage himself about two miles off; 'for I was as tired with beating about amongst the islands and shoals as they were and determined to get to an anchor some where or another if possible.' He remained at anchor for three days of strong wind, while Bligh sounded between the islands, Paulaho came off to visit, and he himself walked on Kotu to examine it and the shoals and reefs about it. On 5 June he was again at Nomuka, where the people were digging yams for him; and here arrived Finau from Vava'u, with a tale of canoes lost with the supplies they were bringing, and all their crews perished, during the recent weather—a tale which Cook was disinclined to believe, in view of general native equanimity. Here also Paulaho caught him up, and Finau's inferiority became clear; he made his obeisance, he could not sit at table with the greater one.
This was but a way-station. In four days more the ships were steering for Tongatapu, rapidly outdistanced by a fleet of sailing canoes which set out with them. Finau left pilots in the ibid., 122, n. 2.Resolution, knowledgeable men, who followed the course of the canoes; but even then, as on the second day they approached the middle of the island, through what is now called the Lahi passage, with boats sounding ahead, they were 'insensibly' drawn upon a large coral shoal—'a most confounded navigation', to quote Clerke, over 'a continued bed of Coral Rock, very uneven, with here and there a mischievous rascal towering his head above the rest, almost to the water's Edge'.
This seat of royal kings, Tu'i Tonga, lords of Heaven and Earth, was the largest and richest of all the Tongan islands, and Paulaho the king was a truly friendly man. The island is generally speaking a plain on a base of coral, rising to somewhat more than two hundred feet at its south-western quarter, and with a large area occupied by a sort of three-fingered lagoon opening from the sea a little east of Cook's anchorage: a very different spot from Van Diemen's Road outside the narrow western peninsula where he had lain in 1773. Here was a wider prospect—no 'variety of hills and valleys, lawns, rivulets and cascades' for the romantic English soul, no 'grand Landscapes' but the most exuberant fertility, as it was felt by Anderson, great 'Cocoa palms' towering above all. Cook, less expansive on such matters, agreed. Cultivated land or uncultivated showed the same fertility; plantations were large, flowering shrubs were grown about houses for their beauty, fences were neat, roads and lanes well-made. The Tongans, wherever they dwelt, clearly knew well how to tend the land. The larger works of their hands too were impressive: artificial mounds raised as pigeon-snaring areas; The social and political organisation of Tonga was both complex and strictly ordered, and difficult to make clear in a note. But it may be said that there was a sacred 'king', the Tu'i Tonga; at the time of this 1777 visit of Cook's it was Paulaho. Anciently the Tu'i Tonga had been supreme ruler in all secular affairs; in the fifteenth century, for reasons that may be ignored, he made over all these secular affairs to an executive ruler, the Tu'i Ha'a Takalau. In the following century this ruler similarly passed on executive government to the Tu'i Kanokupolu, while retaining great prestige and privilege. Among Cook's chiefs Maealiuaki had been the fourteenth and last Tu'i Ha'a Takalaua (the office then being dropped) and was currently the Tu'i Kanokupolu, effective principal ruler of the group; hence his vast importance. Cook did not understand the full implications of the word esi or 'rest-mounds', where men might simply catch the breeze or enjoy a view; the langi, royal tombs of stepped masonry the technical expertness or which was so difficult to comprehend. There was little information that could be acquired visually that Cook and Anderson, King and Clerke did not pick up between them. Social relations were a rather different matter. The absolute power of chiefs over commonalty was plain enough; it was plain that there was a hierarchy of chiefs; a king had been found, but what was the standing of a king, sacred, certainly lord of Heaven and Earth, who had sometimes almost surreptitiously to protect himself from the obeisances of his subjects, and yet himself do obeisance to a woman—who, apart from accepting that tribute, seemed to have no political or social or religious function whatever? Not without long study would it be possible to disentangle the family relationships of royalty or near-royalty, to be clear about the functions of sacred king and executive king and the one who came between, or the paternal standing of fathers and uncles and elders, the place of first wives and other wives, the particular position of women in conferring distinction of descent.tamai, which meant both father and what the anthropologist calls 'classificatory fathers'—i.e. all paternal male affines; hence some confusion in his journals. In the chiefly class nobility descended through the female line, and daughters were superior in rank, to sons. This was carried a long way: not only was a sister fahu, or superior in rank, to her brother, but so were her children, both male and female, and they were fahu to his children. A particular sacredness attached to the eldest daughter of the Tu'i Tonga by his principal wife, a daughter called the Tu'i Tonga fefine (fefine, female); she was so sacred that no Tongan could marry her, a Fijian chief had to be brought in for the purpose, and her first-born daughter was a tamaha, or 'sacred child'. There was also one male tamaha appointed, the son of Paulaho's aunt, a Tu'i Tonga fefine: this was the chief whom Cook found so stupid, Latunipulu. There were then women to whom Paulaho owed obeisance, as fahu; he did not do obeisance to Latunipulu, but could not eat in his presence. The matter may be left at that, but the reader who wishes for more may be referred to the annotation of the Tongan pages in the journal.
Paulaho, somewhat more than the 'indolent, fat, greasy rogue' that Clerke thought him (for Clerke was much taken with that 'active, stirring fellow' Finau) extended his welcome and beneficence. Cook landed close to the point called Holeva, his 'Observatory Point', not far from the northern entrance to the lagoon, was given a small house and had an area virtually made over to him for his convenience; almost immediately was held the first of many kava ceremonies—though Cook, this time put off by the preliminary chewing of the root, passed his cup to Omai. He nevertheless observed the ritual with care. Next morning he got all the cattle ashore under a guard of marines, set up his tents and astronomical instruments, spread out the sails for repair and had a party cutting plank and firewood; the two gunners managed trade; King became resident superintendent; 'our little post was like afair and the Ships so thronged that we had hardly room to stir on the decks.'Journals III, 125.
Two days and evenings were devoted to great entertainments of dancing and presentation of food. The first was Maealiuaki's, when Finau, dressed in English cloth, took a leading part, and the old chief himself did not disdain to beat a drum; the second was Paulaho's, when the yams were piled thirty feet high, crowned with hogs, inside a rectangular framework of posts, and at night the unwieldy king threw himself into the dance. The dances were much the same as those seen at Lifuka, for men, for women, for both sexes, paddle dance, club dances, dances preluded or accompanied by song; and with the dark, pandanus torches flared. The whole population seemed to be making holiday, though it was hard to estimate the size of the crowds who came to watch both dancing and visitors and lay down to sleep on the spot; eight or ten or twelve thousand were various estimates. But such crowds were not a good index to the population of any particular island, thought Cook, because curiosity brought people from afar. If otherwise unoccupied, they entertained themselves with boxing and wrestling, women sometimes as well as men, and boys and girls; and sailors who contemned the Tongan style in these arts of battle as an ignoble variation on British technique were almost invariably worsted—when they won it was by courtesy of their opponents. Cook thought it wise to protect prestige by prohibiting further contests. In return for the dancing the marines were again put through their rather inadequate exercise; and fireworks excited general astonishment and admiration. There was the daily diversion of watching King or Bayly examine the sky. So jealously, so tenderly were the chronometers guarded that it was thought they must be gods.
The presence of such crowds accentuated the old evil of thieving. It was not always trivial. One of the Discovery's anchors was saved only because it got hooked in a chain-plate and could not be disengaged by hand. Trivial thefts—a pewter basin, a sentry's ramrod—were none the less irritating. Anything left lying loose about the ships or a working party was purloined. Cook's effort to protect prestige came too late. Clerke mourned over stolen cats, his rats rioted
Journals III, 142.
At the end of a fortnight the sails had been repaired, and wooding
fa'itoka or burial mounds, receiving presents, drinking endless kava, participating in a mourning ceremony (the main part of which seemed to be the emptying of a kava bowl holding four or five gallons). He entered up his journal at length; the pages are enchanting for the anthropologist. As the new month began, he got his stock on board, and moved the ship out to a position where he could take early advantage of a wind favourable for departure. The observation of the eclipse was imperfect, spoiled by cloudy weather; no matter, thought Cook—having waited so long for it—the longitude was accurately enough determined by lunar observations. He took aboard everything that remained on shore, including the sheep given to the neglectful Maealiuaki, and was ready to sail. On the morrow neither wind nor tide served. He would have to wait two or three days more. He decided to accept the invitation of Paulaho to a great ceremony that was to take place on the eighth day of the month.
It was held at Mu'a. It was a ceremony called 'inatchee' or It seems clear that the name ' ibid., 151.inasi, and went on to a second day, and Cook's long and close description is quite the best we have. It was complex: what its precise significance was, as a whole or in its separate parts, we do not know. Cook could not find out; his constant enquiries through Omai were met by the answer tapu, and Omai had no gift of enquiry himself. It seemed to be both political and religious; there was certainly no doubt—this much information Paulaho was himself free with—that the central figure was the king's son 'the young Prince' with whom Cook was already acquainted; there were elements in it of a celebration of this youth's maturity, of a solemn oath of allegiance taken to him, of his elevation to an equality with his father—marked by their highly symbolical eating of yam together;inasi' ('inachi' with Mariner) was not confined to one sort of ceremony, and that the usual great harvest festival or offering of first fruits described by him (Martin / Mariner, II, 168–73) was a quite different thing from this. This one, indeed, may possibly have been unique, which makes Cook's witness all the more important. See Journals III, 145, n. 1, 153–4; and for Anderson's account ibid., 913, 916–17.tapu proceedings took place. To be present at all the visitors had to go bare-headed and let their hair fall free, and Cook himself was carefully watched lest he should wander too intimately; but he was able to remedy the fence by making a hole in it. His boat's crew were not allowed to stir from their boat. There were processions larger and smaller, of men and women, chanted sentences and responses, 'Oraisions'—speeches or set prayers?—the presentation of yams real or 'emblematical', the emblems being small sticks of wood tied to poles; the investing of the Prince with cloth. Cook stayed at Mu'a for the night; the king came to supper with him 'and drank pretty freely of Brandy and Water so that he went to bed grogish'; and then slept in the house apportioned to Cook's party. Next morning, after paying a round of visits to the chiefs, Cook made his own present of English cloth and beads to the gratified Prince. The ceremony in the afternoon was even more baffling than that of the previous day. Cook was determined to mark every detail, and boldly walked on to the forbidden ground. There was some demur, but finally he was allowed to stay on condition of stripping to the waist as well as letting his hair flow, and thus he joined in such of the activity as fell to his group. Did his mind go back to that other anthropological student, Banks in Tahiti on the first voyage, stripping and blacking himself to act as a 'chief mourner's' assistant? His officers, outside the fence and peeping through, were surprised to see their captain thus in a procession of the chiefs. 'I do not pretend to dispute the propriety of Captn Cook's conduct, but I cannot help thinking he rather let himself down', noted the insufferable Williamson.Journals III, 151, n. 1.
Paulaho pardoned his lack of discipline, and more: he pressed him to stay still longer, and witness another ceremony, the funeral of Maealiuaki's wife. Cook was tempted, but the tide was now favourable for taking his ships through the narrows of the Piha passage, the
ibid., 157–8. ibid., 158.Se side from which the hills are not far distant, rises with very great inequalities directly from the Sea, so that the plains and Medows, of which here are some of great extent, lay all on the Nw side; and as they are adorned with tufts of trees and here and there plantations, make a very beautiful Landskip from whatever point they are viewed. Whilest I was viewing these delightfull spots, I could not help flatering my self with the idea that some future Navigator may from the very same station behould these Medows stocked with Cattle, the English have planted at these islands.'a in the Cheifs Plantation, and had a dish of Turnips to dinner, being the produce of the seeds I left last Voyage.'
He consented to stay a day or two more to receive the gift of yams and fruit the chief was assembling, and also in the hope that his friends from Tongatapu, who had promised to catch him up, might arrive. There was further entertainment of cudgelling, boxing and wrestling; there was to be night dancing, but Cook would have none of it. His servant William Collett, out on a walk, had been assailed by a mob, his clothes torn from his back, and arrived at the landing place naked except for his shoes. Cook immediately seized two canoes and a hog, demanded instant restitution and the delivery of the
'Thus'—on 17 July—'we took leave of the '… it must be confessed that in all disputes between our People & the Indians, CaptFriendly Islands and their Inhabitants after a stay of between two and three Months, during which time we lived together in the most cordial friendship, some accidental differences its true now and then happened owing to their great propensity to thieving, but too often incouraged by the negligence of our own people. But these differences were never attended with any fatal consequences, to prevent which all my measures were directed.' In the next three weeks he sat down to make his careful general report, premising the difficulty of being accurate about things that did not come directly under his eyes, or non-material matters, like religion or relationships. Even with translation at hand, informants and Omai alike were casual, the ships put the people on holiday, they had no wish to be examined at length. He had felt the difficulty before. No one was likely to tell him of the plot at Lifuka; it was not till he was at Tongatapu that he realised that Finau was a liar, and that Vava'u had an excellent harbour and everything else he was in need of. Undoubtedly he liked the people, in spite of their great propensity, so constant a trial to him, in spite of their leaning to sheer devilment; one judges that the chiefs, through whom he preferred to deal, with whom the Polynesian custom of exchange of presents was carried on, liked him. Samwell—not a Polynesian chief, it is true—stresses his impartial justice, which 'rendered him highly respected and esteemed by all the Indians.'n Cook ever acted with the utmost Impartiality, being as ready to hear the Complaint of an Indian and to see justice done to him when injured, as he was to any of his own Men, which equitable way of proceeding rendered him highly respected & esteemed by all the Indians.'—ibid., 1044.inasi a few months later would include the killing of ten men. Yet he would not himself have thought the reflection a proper one. We may wish that in his struggle he had shown some of the waggish imagination of Clerke. But Cook was not Clerke; nor had Clerke had to bear the strain of the preceding years. Describing this people, their persons, their customs and government, their houses and cookery, their trade, manufactures, their diseases, he forgets his rage. He thinks, as others do, of the wretched, the seemingly inevitable gift he has left behind him, to be an eternal curse, with his cattle, goats, and rabbits—'the Venereal'. Not for the first or the last time has he been deceived by the endemic island yaws.
One matter remains on which we may speculate, in the sphere of Geography and Navigation. The Friendly Islands, he thought, must be a larger group than was comprised by the islands he had himself visited or seen. It must include 'all those that have been discovered nearly under the same Meridian to the north, as well as some others which have never been seen by any European but are under the Dominion of Tongatabu, which is the Capital (tho not the largest) and seat of Government.'Journals III, 161.Hammoah' or Samoa, 'also under the dominion of Tongatabu … the largest of all
Why did Cook make no attempt to visit any of these islands? Can anyone doubt that on his second voyage, if he had heard of the existence of large islands so close to any of his anchorages, he would have been after them, fastened them down securely on his general chart, even at the cost of minor disorganisation of his time-plan? True, for a man whose next objective was Tahiti, they were in the wrong direction; yet he now was not afflicted by a sense of urgency, and the surprise we may feel springs from the absence of mention in his journal of even the rejected possibility of reconnaissance—except for Vava'u. Paulaho, enlightening him about Vava'u, offered to go there with him. He met Fijians on Tongatapu: their home certainly could not be far away, and the store of red feathers he acquired at Tongatapu came from Fiji. Is it then misguided to speculate on his absence of interest in active exploration? We are anticipated by one of his own men, the young George Gilbert, who also has mentioned Fiji: '… it is somewhat surprizing that Capt Cook did not go in search of it accoarding to His usual practice. His reasons for not doing it I can't account for; as we certainly had time while we were lying at Tongataboo.'Journals III, 163, n. 3.
It was a four weeks' passage from Tonga to Tahiti, at first with north-easterly, later with more favouring winds: a passage broken by only one untoward incident and one new discovery. The untoward incident was a sudden heavy squall in the evening of 29 July, which blew two of Cook's staysails to pieces and did worse to the Discovery, carrying away her maintopmast and causing other damage—fortunately without making for much delay. The discovery, on 9 August, was that of the high island Tubuai, one of the Austral group, in latitude 23°25′ S, a fellow of Rurutu, encountered on the first voyage. The usual canoes approached the ships, without coming alongside. Cook saw no advantage in landing, altered his course to the north, and on the 12th made both the sign-post island Mehetia and Tahiti itself. He was not far from Vaitepiha Bay, but a series of baffling airs and squalls kept him from anchoring there until the next morning. Meanwhile he had his first visitors, learnt that two ships, which must have been Spanish, had called at the island twice since his last departure, and that Spaniards had lived there for almost a year; and had the spectacle before his eyes of Omai, the returning hero. This was much as Cook had foreseen. The hero was ignored until it was found he had red feathers with him. Then he became a dupe. He was not the only one who had red feathers: next morning at daybreak, before the ships had even moved into harbour, they were surrounded by a multitude of canoes and people, and 'not more feathers than might be got from a Tom tit would purchase a hog of 40 or 50 pound weight'.Journals III, 187.
He gathered the news. Purea was dead, as was the young Vehiatua whom he had known on the last voyage, succeeded by a boy his brother, not yet to be seen. Tu and his friends of the other end of the
Georgius Tertius Rex Annis 1767, 69, 73, 74 & 77. We can be clearer about this small piece of Spanish history than Cook could. The visits were at once an ineffectual assertion of sovereignty over Pacific islands and a singularly feeble attempt to convert the islanders; for the two Franciscans who formed the mission were but timorous servants of the Lord and scarcely left their house, while the ship's boy who looked after them, though he enjoyed his stay thoroughly, and wrote an excellent account of his experiences, was neither conqueror or apostle. There was nothing to do with the friars but remove them. A successful mission might possibly have complicated the situation for Cook, against whom the Spaniards had warned the people—rather belatedly, to be sure. Without such a thought, and noting the great plenty of coconuts, he went on board after this first expedition and called his crew together. He did what there is no record of his doing before or later, and took them into his confidence. It was another result of the winds and the lost season. He foresaw a shortage of grog in the cold northern climate if the men drank their spirits now. They could on the other hand drink from coconuts now, and save the spirits for future support in the quest for a north-west passage, with a cash reward—perhaps—at the end. They would not be entirely deprived: there would be the usual Saturday night's allowance 'to drink to their feemale friends in England, lest amongst the pretty girls of Otaheite they should be wholy forgoten.'Journals III, 189.Discovery. The men could decide; and without hesitation they plumped for prudence.
It rained for two days. The people nevertheless flocked to the place with hogs and fruit in the hope of red feathers, Cook made the acquaintance of the young chief and exchanged names and presents with him; when the weather cleared set off some fireworks for the general delectation; and visited what his officers had taken for a Roman Catholic chapel, and turned out to be the decorated house where the embalmed corpse of the last Vehiatua was laid in state, a fata tupapau, an extremely tapu spot. He met other chiefs, and one or two oddities—a man who was said by Omai to be the god of Borabora, and did bear the god's name, Oro; another man said to be possessed of the spirit of an atua, or god, who squeaked, and was probably mad; but nothing occurred that could detain him long from what he considered to be the real centre of Tahitian life at Matavai Bay, and to that bay he steered on 23 August. He was to remain there till the end of September, and he could not complain of the quality of his refreshment.
Tu, whom he continued to regard as the 'king', was at Point Venus next morning, ready to receive presents, with a vast crowd of people. The returning hero knelt at his feet, embraced his legs, and handed over 'a large piece' of red feathers and a length of gold cloth—the sacred colours, red and yellow—and was ignored. Cook's gifts included a linen suit, a gold-laced hat and more red feathers, the principal item being one of the Tongan feather bonnets (for which Tu later made the return of ten large hogs). The whole royal family came on board to dinner, attended by a train of canoes loaded with provisions for the ships; then Cook went on shore to Tu's own district of Pare, to deposit Lord Bessborough's peacock and hen, with turkeys, geese and ducks, and saw the Spanish bull, a fine beast. The following day he relieved this animal's celibacy with three cows, but his own remaining bull, horse, mare and sheep he put ashore at Matavai; and 'now found my self lightened of a very heavy burden, the trouble and vexation that attended the bringing these Animals thus far is hardly to be conceived. But the satisfaction I felt in having been so fortunate as to fulfill His Majestys design in sending such useful Animals to two worthy Nations sufficiently recompenced me for the many anxious hours I had on their account.' ibid., 194.Resolution—came to pay his respects he also was found to have gone rather to seed. Cook gave him some clothes the Admiralty had sent out for him, adding the more useful gift of a chest of tools: Omai took his wife to live with.
There were other things to do than to bestow gifts, tasks that kept seamen from gazing enraptured at too many 'libidinous' dances. The Discovery's main mast, which had suffered in the squall in mid-ocean, was taken ashore and repaired, as were sails and water-casks; Cook had one of his vegetable gardens made and planted, though doubtful whether it would be looked after. Shaddock trees, however, seedlings from Tonga, were to flourish, as Nelson the gardener, who put them in, was to find when he revisited Tahiti with Bligh eleven years later. There was the usual wooding and watering and work about the ships. There was the first of several reports of Spanish ships at Vaitepiha, and this first one was so persuasive that Cook sent a boat to investigate, and at the same time put his own ships in a state of defence, not knowing whether England and Spain were then at peace or war. As all these fictions came from Taiarapu men, he concluded that they aimed at getting him away from Matavai—in which conclusion he was no doubt quite right; for other parts of the island might well think that Matavai, and Tu, were getting far more attention and profit from the visitors than were their due. Tu was not generally liked.
Indeed, it is difficult to find anybody who liked Tu. Cook certainly did not warm to him. Yet his position as an ari'i rahi, or high chief, gave him a leading importance, his participation in certain ceremonies
marae at Utuaimahurau on the southern coast of the island. Tu agreed that Cook should accompany him, and they set out immediately in Cook's pinnace with Anderson, Webber and Omai following in a canoe. On the way they called on To'ofa who was to be absent himself, but gave Tu some feathers and 'a lean half-starved dog' for additional sacrifice. When they arrived at the marae, on a small point of land, the seamen were confined to the boat, while Cook, Anderson and Webber had to doff their hats. Before them were many men, some boys, no women; priests, attendants, the great sacrificial drums and those who beat them; the bruised corpse trussed to a pole in a small canoe at the seas edge, some miserable man caught unawares and felled with a stone. The ceremony began at once, a long and complicated affair of prayers and invocations, the production of symbolical articles, the symbolical 'eating' of one of the victim's eyes by Tu, the offering to Oro of red feathers, some of the victim's hairs, the dog's entrails, the sounding of the drums. A kingfisher, the sacred bird, made a noise in the trees: 'It is the atua', the god, Tu told Cook. A hole was dug and the dead man buried in it. A boy called out shrilly to the atua to eat of the sacrificed dog. The day ended. The next morning there were further ceremonies: renewed offerings of red feathers; the sacrifice of a pig; the careful unwrapping of the 'royal' maro of red and yellow feathers fixed to tapa cloth and edged with black; the partial unwrapping of what Cook called the 'ark' of the atua, a
To all these proceedings Cook was very attentive. His description of them stands beside that of the inasi as an unpretentious classic of anthropological observation.Journals III, 199–204; and for Anderson's account, 978–84.atua was much more likely to reward it with defeat than victory. This was not an entirely uncalculated answer; for he had noticed that in relation to these hostilities there were three parties, those in favour, those who strongly supported Mahine, and the third perfectly indifferent; and this being so, there was unlikely to be a satisfactory war effort. When Omai, entering into the spirit of the matter, explained that in England a chief guilty of having a man treated so would be hanged To‘ofa was outraged beyond endurance: ‘Ma ino, ma ino’—‘Vile, vile’! he bawled (we have Cook's authority for the word), and the company broke up. To‘ofa seems to have been frequently an angry man.
The days passed, without great event involving Cook. There was some pilfering, but not beyond control, and Tu was instrumental in having stolen articles returned. He himself and other chiefs were sometimes victims, and applied to have boxes or chests made for them, with locks, on the model of a few which the Spaniards had left, to keep their valuables safe, and Cook was glad enough to oblige them. Presents of food-stuffs continued, and there were large presents of fine cloth, wrapped ornamentally in the native manner round handsome girls, who were then led on board. Some of the dishes drew forth Cook's admiration: in the course of his life he ate so much that could be recommended as food only because it was
ibid., 209.poe, and adds, 'Some of these puddings are excellent, we can make few in England that equals them, I seldom or never dined without one when I could get it, for they were not always to be got.'Journals III, 207.
Argument continued about the war. Cook would have attended a second human sacrifice with Tu if he had heard about it in time; the unenthusiastic Tu refused to provide a victim himself for a third. To‘ofa, in a burst of impatience, with one or two equally belligerent friends, took a fleet over to Moorea, got into difficulties, and bombarded Tu with demands for assistance—which, though the bay was full of his war canoes, he still withheld. At least he was obliging enough to detach two of these canoes, himself and Cook in one of them, and demonstrate for Cook's information the tactics of a sea-fight. Then, just as Cook found all his work on the ships done, had loaded the observatories and instruments and bent the sails—it was the end of the third week of September—and was fixing a day for departure; at the very moment, indeed, when, that settled, he was stepping into his boat to watch a great review at Pare of Tu's fleet, the news arrived that To‘ofa, lacking the help of this fleet, had been forced to make a truce, upon poor terms. The review was cancelled. Controversy and rumour grew excited. It was all Tu's fault. No, argued Tu's father: had not Cook agreed to transport Tu and his whole family to Moorea at the very same time as the fleet went? To‘ofa was to blame. To‘ofa and Vehiatua, it was said, would join in falling upon Tu in vengeance. Cook thought he, Tu's friend, might go so far as to threaten that in that case he would take vengeance himself on all implicated, when he returned to the island;
Friendship was evident in another direction. A message came for Tu to be present yet again, next day, at Utuaimahurau, this time for a peace-making ceremony, and Cook was invited. He could not go, he was 'much out of order', but would send King and Omai instead. With him on his return to the ship went Tu's mother and three sisters, and eight other women, who announced their intention of staying all night and curing his disorder, some sort of severe rheumatism on one side. They fell on him simultaneously, as many as could get at him, with the massage called rumi, squeezing him 'with both hands from head to foot, but more especially the parts where the pain was, till they made my bones crack and a perfect Mummy of my flesh—in short after being under their hands about a quarter of an hour I was glad to get away from them.'Journals III, 214.
Although Cook felt he should go, he was still rather reluctant. For the main purpose of his voyage he had time in hand; there were still such quantities of provisions coming forward in this season that he did not need to go to other islands for them, and by now he understood the system of bartering 'presents' so well as to make it a mode of reasonably fair exchange; the trickster's side of Tu, his meanness (he levied toll every morning on the girls coming away from the ships or the tents) did not annul his utility as a chief of power. The complicating factor was Omai. He had to be deposited at some place which would offer him and the two boys the prospect of a tolerable life; he had rejected Tahiti and certainly the people there had had enough of him, unless they could have got hold of his remaining treasures, on which Cook had kept a strict eye. The only profitable exchange he had made himself was with To‘ofa, a handful of red feathers for a fine double sailing canoe, round which he hung as many flags and pendants and streamers as he could summon up. Cook also could have taken away a canoe, if there had been any way conveying it, a sixteen-foot well-carved Bligh saw it in 1788. 'Captn. Cooks Picture which was left by him in 1777 and drawn by Mr Webber was brought to me, With a request to repair it. They said it came from Otoo, that it was Toote Errie no Otaheite. They said Toote told Otoo when he gave it him, that when his son came out he must show it him, and they would always be good Friends, Excepting a little of the background [of] the Picture being eat off, it was not at all defaced. The frame wanted a little repair and as all came within my abilities I assured them it should be done and they left it.'—va‘a—not a war canoe—which Tu wanted to give to the monarch of Britain, as the only thing he could send worth His Majesty's acceptance. It was true that His Majesty had been generous to him; Cook was none the less highly pleased. Tu gave Cook a list of the presents he wished the ari'i rahi no
Pretane to send him next time. Cook got from Tu four goats, two for Raiatea, which had none, and two for any other island he might meet with on his passage to the north. Cook had Webber paint his portrait, and gave it to Tu, perhaps as a parting gift. He does not mention this himself, but we know it was done; for it was recognised in later years by visiting seamen, some of whom had sailed on this voyage.Log of the Bounty, I, 372–3. Cook's midshipman John Watts, when lieutenant in the Lady Penrhyn, homeward bound from Voyage to Botany Bay (1789), 233–4.
Light westerly breezes and calms detained the ships in the bay a few days longer. At length in the afternoon of 29 September an easterly sprang up, Matavai Bay was saluted with seven guns, Cook obliged Tu with a short run out to sea, and then bore away for Moorea.
One may find it rather odd, as Cook did himself, that he had not before visited this high island, so close to Tahiti and from it visually so striking. He had been told that there were no harbours, which could have been easily enough verified: in fact there were on the north side two excellent harbours, easily accessible through the reef, and others on the eastern coast. One wishes, now that he did pay his visit, that the episode had not happened; for it left him with regrets. It leaves the reader of his journal both regretful and baffled, as at some odd unintelligible phenomenon.
The canoe-borne Omai had preceded him, and marked his way through the reef. He entered Mahine's harbour, the more western of the two, and sailing right up to its head, anchored so close to the shore that he could moor the ships to the hibiscus trees, with the pure water of several rivulets flowing into the bay near by. He looked on this place with a severely practical eye, as 'not inferior to any harbour I have met with in any of the islands' for security 'and the goodness of its bottom'—which hardly conveys an idea of the immensity of the backdrop to the calm sheet of water; for in this dead volcano
The neighbouring bay Paopao has no right to the name Cook's Bay which has been given to it.Resolution's too many rats would take advantage of it. Hogs, breadfruit and coconuts were plentiful. The purau, or hibiscus, made good firewood, and they loaded up with it. The islanders set no value on it, and no wood had been obtained at Tahiti: 'the geting it at that island is attended with some difficulty, as there is not a tree at Matavai but what is usefull to the Inhabitants.'Journals III, 232.
This was the bay where To‘ofa had so recently brought his fleet, and it carried the obvious signs of invasion. There was a suspicion on shore, not unnaturally, that Cook, the friend of Tahitian chiefs, might have come in their support. On the second day only did Mahine, rather hesitantly, visit the captain—a middle-aged chief with what was most unusual in the islands, a bald head, covered by a sort of turban. Was this because the story of shaven heads as a punishment for thieves had spread? Cook noticed that those of his officers who were short of hair had doubtful glances directed at them. In the obligatory, though not extravagant, exchange of presents Mahine got a morning gown, printed all over with large flowers, for which he returned a hog. Amity, Cook thought, was sealed. For a few days all was peace and goodwill, and he put his remaining goats ashore to graze, bringing them off again at night. Mahine asked for two of them. This Cook's plans for the other islands did not allow, but he sent Tu a request, accompanied by still more red feathers, to oblige Mahine with a pair. The fatal 6 October came. A man who shared the charge of the animals took something by force from a native; the native in simple revenge filched a young goat. It had been taken to Mahine, so the story went; Cook chose to fasten the responsibility on him, and next morning sent him a threatening message, demanding both the goat and the criminal. He also put the goats on shore again, and in the evening another was skilfully
ibid., 229. ibid.
'This bloody advice', says Cook, 'I could not follow', but he behaved as if a cold rage had taken possession of him. On Thursday the 9th he marched a strong party right over the island, a hot and wearing journey, burning houses and war-canoes, and being met on the other side by Williamson with three armed boats; on Friday the 10th he warned Mahine by messenger that if the goat were not delivered up he would not leave a canoe on the island, and broke up three or four on the beach at once, taking the timber to build a house for Omai. Then he went to the neighbouring harbour of Paopao and burnt on broke up twice as many, as well as houses. Omai and the sailors took an enthusiastic part in the destruction, and plundered with joy. When he got back to Opunohu in the evening the goat was there. 'Thus the troublesome, and rather unfortunate affair ended, which could not be more regreted on the part of the Natives than it was on mine.' ibid., 231–2. More at length—' … these good people, whose ridiculous conduct in stealing those Goats, and most absurd obstinacy in keeping them, has brought upon them such damages, inflicted as retaliation and punishment, as they will not recover from these many months to come; but it was wholly their own seeking; we sollicited their friendship at our arrival by every social attention, and were upon the best of Terms, till the Devil put it in their Heads, to fall in Love with the Goats: when they had taken these, every gentle method was tryed to recover them, and the consequences of their obstinacy, very clearly and repeatedly explained to them, before any destructive Step was taken; but their strange perverscness in this Business, is I think equally foolish and unaccountable.'—Journals III, 232, n. 1.
Not being able to account for CapnCooks precipitate proceeding in this business, I cannot think it justifiable; less destructive measures might have been adopted & the end gain'd, whether it was simply to get what was of little value or Consequence back again or in future to deter them from thefts; I doubt whether our Ideas of propriety in punishing so many innocent people for the crimes of a few, will be ever reconcileable to any principle one can form of justice.
JournalsIII, 1383.
Next morning friendship seemed to be restored, to judge from the amount of fruit brought early to barter. We may doubt its reality: 'in future they may fear, but never love us', King had added. But there was not time for proof. Cook had been delayed three days beyond his intention. That same morning he put out for Huahine.
It was but a twenty-four hours' passage to Fare harbour. This did not give time enough for Cook's passion to die down entirely. We have King again: 'Just before we got in the harbour, an indian we had brought from Eimaio had been caught with something he had stolen, on which the Captain in a Passion ordered the Barber to shave his head & cut off his ears.' ibid. Bayly noted (13 October) Cook 'a little indisposed at present'. ibid., 233, n. 4.
Although Ori the old chief had been deprived of power and was now at Raiatea the arrival of the ships had brought all the principal people together, and they were more important for Cook's purpose than the new titular ari'i rahi of the island, a boy eight or ten years old. After the ceremonies, usual at Huahine, of presentations to the gods as well as the chief, made as impressive by Omai as possible, Cook came at once to the point. He wanted properly conducted relations, he wanted them to make over a piece of land for Omai's settlement, failing which Cook would carry him on to Raiatea, but he would neither aid nor permit any action against the Borabora people. A spokesman rose up and announced with magnificent hyperbole that the whole island and everything in it was Cook's: let him give Omai what he liked. Omai was delighted. Cook preferred something less expansive, and finally a piece of land on the shore of the harbour, something over two hundred yards square, was settled on, at the exchange rate of fifteen axes, with beads and other trifles. In the next few days the ships' carpenters were set to putting up a house, while other hands planted shaddocks, the rescued vines from Tahiti, pine-apples, melons and other desirable vegetables, and nearby Cook established his observatories and trading post. The house was built with as few nails as possible, as a precaution against its being pulled down for their sake; and Cook, thinking of the belongings he had preserved for Omai, and the envy they would bring him, advised him to cultivate some of the most important chiefs by sharing a part of them out as an insurance premium; adding a statement for general consumption that when in due course he came back there would certainly be weighty resentment shown if Omai were worse off. Omai was sensible enough to take his advice; sensible enough also to trade back to the ships a number of the articles for which neither he nor the otherwise rapturously gazing multitude had a use. He kept the barrel organ and the compass and the toys, but as for the wares of British domesticity—he 'now found that a baked hog eat better than a boiled one, that a plantain leafe
Omai was concerned in another matter, which proved troublesome. More than a week went by before anything appreciable was stolen—a week in which, apart from building and planting, the only notable event was a tremendous but unavailing onslaught on the Resolution's cockroaches—and then on the evening of the 22nd a sextant was taken from Bayly's observatory. A dramatic performance was in progress: Cook put a stop to it and again threatened punishment worse than that at Moorea if both sextant and thief were not delivered up. The criminal, pointed out sitting calmly in the audience denied the crime; Omai flourished a sword and said he would run him through; the chiefs all fled; Cook, a little in doubt, sent the man on board the ship and put him in irons. Omai, by threats and promises wormed a confession out of him, and in the morning the sextant was found unharmed where he had hidden it. He appeared to be 'a hardened Scounderal', says Cook; 'I punished him with greater severity than I had ever done any one before and then dismiss'd him.'Journals III, 236.Discovery out of his sight; Mackay the midshipman turned before the mast; Morris the marine, the sentry, given a dozen strokes of the lash on three successive days.
By the end of the month Omai was installed in his new house, and again giving dinner parties to the officers, who were quite willing to help him 'drink his wine out.' Besides his New Zealanders he had accumulated retainers at Tahiti and Huahine, so he would not lack for company; and Cook, getting all the ships' belongings on board,
ibid., 240–1.
Cook wanted to make a last call at Raiatea. He rounded its southern end as usual and was soon off his old harbour at Haamanino, at the northern end of the west coast. The wind blew right out of the entrance, as it always did for him, and it took the whole afternoon of 3 November to warp the ships in. While still anchored off the entrance he was visited by the chief Orio, accompanied by his young son and his son-in-law, husband of the beautiful and well-remembered 'princess', Poetua; and as soon as the ships were inside, there was the usual circle of canoes filled with people, hogs and
Fine girls on board were not, it seems, enough. Another sentry got into trouble. Just before midnight between the 12th and 13th, the time of his relief, The phrase is that of William Griffin, the Resolution, vanished from his post at the observatories and took his arms with him. When morning came Cook got news which way he had gone and sent a party after him, unsuccessfully. The following morning Orio was asked, and promised, to apprehend him; but did not. That day some thefts were committed, and most of the people, including Orio, fled in fear of reprisals. This was the time, thought Cook, to insist on the delivery of the deserter and the following morning himself set off with two armed boats and a native guide for the other side of the island, where he heard that Harrison had taken refuge. He picked up Orio on the way, and leaving the boats, 'marched briskly' up to surprise the stronghold. Needless: the only person surprised was poor Harrison, at his ease in a native house in native dress between two women. It is possible that Cook did not find this little excursion unpleasant; for he uses calm language. The two women
Journals III, 244.Resolution's cooper.—ibid., 247, n. 1, in which note are quoted other tributes.
Not every sailor was moved purely by female blandishments. The idyllic life had other aspects, and there were many invitations quite pressing. There must, after so many weeks in the islands, have been a great deal of talk—of what
Upon the discovery of this spirit of desertion Captain Cook Turned his men up and Made a Long speech on that head. He Made use both of Entreateys and Threats and with a Deal of Art and Eloquence, for he could speak much to the purpose but this was but one of the Smallest Ackomplishments of that Excellent man. Amoungst Other things he told them they Might run off if they pleased. But they might Depend upon it he would Recover them again: that in Such a Case he had Nothing to do but to seize their Chiefs and although they Might like them very well to stay Amoungst them yet he knew for certain that they liked their Cheifs far better and Indeed with such a degree of partiality that they would Not give A Cheif for A Hundred of us, and they all Must know that his Authority over these Isles was so great that Never Man had a people More under his Command or At his Devotion. They Might fly if they pleased to Omiah King Ottou or to the Most distant Country known to these people. His authority would bring them back and Dead or Alive he'd have them.ibid., cxiii, from the
Msin the National Library of Australia, Canberra.
These arguments, hard upon the example of Resolution, perhaps; but not in the Discovery, where Clerke had made no tremendous speech. On the night of the 23rd Alexander Mouat,
Mouat was the son of Captain Mouat of the navy, who had commanded one of Byron's ships, and to Cook's determination to recover a deserter were added both a wish to stop a young man, however foolish, from blasting his life and a sense of duty to a brother officer. Clerke, although ill, first went fruitlessly with two armed boats and a party of marines to the northern part of the island. Cook then took on the chase, having been told the two had moved to Tahaa, the island a mile or two north of Raiatea, and within the same reef. His expedition also was fruitless; they had fled to Borabora. It was now the 25th. Next morning Orio, his son, daughter and son-in-law came on board the Resolution. Cook passed word to Clerke, who was also there, to invite the young people on board his ship and make them hostages, and Orio was invited to secure their release by reclaiming the deserters. He was not, thought Cook, who suspected him of general enticement, being unduly put upon in thus being made responsible; and he did immediately despatch a canoe to Puni, the great chief of Borabora, with the request to seize the men, wherever they were, and send them back. To keep track of everybody else, the ships' companies were mustered morning and evening. Meanwhile a different drama had begun to centre on the Discovery. Poetua of the conquering charms, her husband and her brother were all three particular friends of Clerke, and in no fear for their safety settled down comfortably in the great cabin with a sentry at the door; but outside the forces of formal distress were released. It is imperative to use the words of Clerke.
The News of their Confinement of course was blaz'd instantaneously throughout the Isle; old Oreo was half mad, and within an hour afterwards we had a most numerous Congregation of Women under the Stern, cutting their Heads with Sharks Teeth and lamenting the Fate of the Prisoners, in so melancholy a howl, as render'd the Ship whilst it lasted, which was 2 or 3 Hours, a most wretched Habitation; nobody cou'd help in some measure being affected by it; it destroyed the spirits of the Prisoners altogether, who lost all their Chearfullness and joined in this cursed dismal Howl, I made use of every method I cou'd suggest to get them away, but all to no purpose, there they wou'd stand and bleed and cry, till their Strength was exhausted, and they cou'd act the farce no longer. When we got rid of these Tragedians, I soon recover'd my Friends and we set down to Dinner together very chearfully.
JournalsIII, 1318.
Thereafter half a dozen old women came daily with 'a little serenade', but the main action was on shore, and principally on this first day.
If one could plot, thought Orio, another could counter-plot; hostages could be taken on both sides. He knew that Cook went unarmed every evening to bathe in fresh water, and that Clerke was then generally taking a walk. But Cook this day decided not to bathe, although invited to repeatedly by Orio; and Clerke, walking with Gore, was playing visibly, though idly, with a pistol, and even shot at a tree. The ambush retired. Suddenly the people about the harbour and in the canoes began to move off, on the assumption that somebody had been seized and there would be vengeance; while a Huahine girl, the mistress of an officer, 'a Fat Jolly good Natured gir' who had heard of the plot and disliked fighting, had warned the We hear of another prospective desertion from Samwell.—‘It is something remarkable that at this time another of the Discovery's People was on the point of deserting and had just embarked in a Canoe for that purpose, when hearing our Boats firing after the Canoes which were paddling out of the Bay & seeing them pull after them immediately concluded they were in pursuit of him, & therefore paddled ashore as fast as he could where joining those people who were going to CaptDiscovery. Those on board called out to Cook on shore: he instantly sent an armed party to rescue Clerke and Gore, and ordered the boats to cut off fleeing canoes from leaving the bay.n Clerke's Assistance, he went on board the Ship again witht being in the least suspected of the Design he had just been attempting to put in Execution, & it was not till some time after that he informed his Shipmates of it.' A few days later Samwell himself and a friend, bathing alongside their vessel, took it into their heads to swim ashore, where they informed the people they had deserted, but received scant sympathy and were told to go back again.—ibid., 1077, 1078.
The ships had already been moved from their moorings, and there was nothing but the wind to keep them longer in harbour. Hulls, masts, yards, rigging, sails had all been overhauled. The lamenting women—‘our Otaheite sweethearts’ The phrase is Samwell's.—ibid., 1078. Nor, probably, did it last long. The information comes from Bayly, 13 October, just after they had arrived at Huahine: 'Omi is very ill at present & Capt Cook is a little indisposed at present… We have 1/2 of our people ill with the fowl disease & 4 or 5 has had the Yallow jaundice.'—ibid., 233, n. 4. Nobody else mentions Omai's illness, and the nature of Cook's indisposition is undefined.
Anderson represented to Captain Clerke their inability to encounter the severities of a frozen climate, and they mutually agreed to ask leave of Captain Cook to resign their situations, that they might remain where they were, and trust themselves to the care of the natives, as the only hope left them of being restored to health. When the time approached for the ships to sail, Captain Clerke's papers and accounts were not in order; and as we were next bound toHuaheine, one of theSociety Islands, it might answer their purpose as well to quit the ship there as atOtaheite.AtHuaheine, the same thing happened, and the execution of their plan was deferred to our going toUlietea, the next island. AtUlietea, the ships remained above a month; but that time did not suffice Captain Clerke for the settlement of his accounts. As Captain Cook proposed to stop atBolabola, the last ofthe Society Islands, Mr. Anderson consented to the postponement of their intention to our arrival at that place; and there I believe Captain Clerke, if the opportunity had not failed, would have really landed and settled.Burney,
Chronological History of North-Eastern Voyages of Discovery(London, 1819), 233–4.
This is not a story of mutiny. Anderson, not yet thirty, able and clearsighted, might well have thought the chance of life and scientific work in the islands worth taking; Clerke might well have been moved by the arguments of so rational a man. Then why, in all those weeks, could Clerke not get his papers and accounts into order? The task could not have been so formidable; Gore, who would have succeeded him, would have had no difficulty in understanding them, and would have made an adequate commander of the Discovery. It is improbable, one feels, that Clerke was really willing to leave his ship: probable from what we know of him, that what he failed to master was not his accounts but his sense of duty and his loyalty to his own commander.
It is true that Cook intended to stay a day or two at Borabora, previously unvisited by him. He had heard that the chief Puni had one of the anchors lost by Bougainville at Hitiaa in Tahiti in 1768. This he hoped to acquire, not for use as an anchor, but as old iron which could be converted by the armourer into hatchets and other articles of trade. When, therefore, after a week of waiting, on 7 December a light north-easterly breeze at last sprang up, he set all the boats to towing and, once outside the harbour, steered for Borabora, high-peaked, steep and craggy.
He gave Orio and half-a-dozen other Raiateans a passage with him, most of them sorry they were not getting a passage to England. He tacked all night off the south end of Borabora, with its reef and breaking sea; and in the early morning the wind fell scant, so that, short as the passage was in miles, the day had well begun before he was off the harbour of Teavanui, on the westernside. It is a good, deep, and sheltered harbour, but tide as well as wind were against him. After some trial, he abandoned the idea of taking the ships in, and rowed in with the boats. Puni that great man was waiting on the beach in the midst of a large crowd. Cook, after paying his respects, came straight to the point; for, as he was not staying, he thought he had not time to lose. Borabora had been outside the lines of trade, and the variety of presents he set out produced a sensation; Puni positively refused to accept them until Cook had seen what he was getting in return. It was certainly only a portion of an anchor; nevertheless it was a lump of iron and he was glad to have it, and
It may be that Cook was struck with a sudden impatience. He had lost a season, but he was early with the new season, and he would waste none of it. His men were refreshed. There was a great amount of ocean still to be crossed, and beyond it waited the coast of America. It may even be that as he gave the order to steer north, he had the sense of relief. That was not the sense that attended the generality of the ships' companies, if George Gilbert spoke truly for them: 'We left these Islands with the greatest regret, immaginable; as supposing all the pleasures of the voyage to be now at an end: Having nothing to expect in future but excess of cold, Hunger, and every kind of hardship, and distress … the Idea of which render'd us quite dejected.'Journals III, 256, n. 1.
The Sense of relief: perhaps it was also with a sense of release that Cook made north, the islands behind him. He had desperately wanted to reach them, but they had ceased to be an objective; had become, in fact, a sort of entanglement; and now, seventeen months out of Plymouth, with the run to New Albion ahead of him, and nothing as far as he knew in the way, he may at last have felt that the prospect was fair, that he was about to grapple with the real purpose of the voyage. He had enquired of his late hosts if they knew of any islands to the north or north-west: they did not. Nor had the Spanish galleons, passing and repassing the ocean between Acapulco and Manila for two hundred years, ever reported land in the middle of it. A vacant and wintry ocean, then, Cook expected, as he advanced into the northern hemisphere, a passage 'of considerable length both in distance and time', a part of which 'must be performed in the very depth of Winter when gales of Wind and bad Weather must be expected and may possibly occasion a Seperation'; so he wrote in giving Clerke his rendezvous. His own instructions were to be on the American coast, at latitude 65°, a degree and a half short of the Arctic Circle, in June. He had thus six months to get there, from 17° South to 65° North, with the complication that from 45° North, where he was to make his American landfall, the voyage must be a coastwise one; and, in spite of the maps, who knew what the coast would be like?
It would have been useless to try to sail a direct course to that American coast, against the prevailing easterly and north-easterly winds, and Cook's plan is clear enough, to steer north until he should strike the westerlies that drove the galleons home. Even as it was, he was pushed a few degrees to the west. For the first two weeks he did find an empty passage ahead, as he sailed not very far westward of the most southerly of the scattered small Line Islands, with Tongareva, the largest of the Northern Cook group, some 350 miles farther west still, though sea-birds indicated the presence of land;
11 December; The land of Christmas Island is 300,000 acres, though the land is not good for much. On the place of the island and its neighbours in pre-Cook Polynesian history see t Cook's desire, as the Discovery is the fastest Sailing Vessell, I make all sail every morning at daybreak and run as far as I can ahead till Sunset, when I shorten to an easy Sail for the Resolution to come up; by this means we see a good part of the Sea's we cross during the Night.'Journals III, 256, n. 2.Vikings of the Sunrise, chapter 11, and Archaeology of the Pacific Equatorial Islands (Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 123, Honolulu, 1934)—for Christmas, pp. 17–24.
The turtling and fishing parties were highly successful, and some of them had good sport, which they remembered long afterwards. The men who had to carry a heavy turtle two or three miles, however, across the sandy land and through coral-bottomed shallows to the boats, might not have thought of sport, and two of them from the ibid., 259.Discovery had a most unpleasant adventure. They got lost. How they managed to get lost on that flat and almost treeless island, from a good part of which the ships' masts were visible, Cook could not well make out; but lost they were, one for twenty-four hours, the other for two days, blundering about beneath a blistering sun or struck with cold by night, with nothing to drink but turtle's blood, which one of them could not stomach; finally picked up on the beach in the last extremity of distress and fright. For all that terrestrial direction meant to them, they might just as well have dropped from the clouds. Cook meditates again on the nature of his kind: 'Considering what a strange set of beings, the generality of seamen are when on shore, instead of being surprised at these men
Journals III, 260.
Apart from turtles and fish and sea-birds, there was nothing on or about the atoll to support life unless one points to crabs, small lizards, and rats. A few poor coconuts, a few other scrubby trees, one or two shrubs and a like number of creeping plants and grasses, made up its botanical resources. There was no fresh water, though this would not have mattered to islanders. If Cook had made a full exploration of the place he would, none the less, have found signs of earlier habitation, platforms and enclosures of coral stone, memorials of some forgotten Polynesian past. What hurricane or starvation time depopulated it we shall not know. He gave it what he could. Having some coconuts and sprouting yams, he planted them on the observation islet, and sowed melon seeds elsewhere. Also on the islet he left another of those seamen's bottles enclosing its inscription to the honour of Georgius tertius Rex. He took from it three hundred excellent green turtle; a spot where they were particularly plentiful was, Samwell tells us, given the name of Alderman's Point. He departed from it at daybreak on 2 January 1778. The same sort of agreeable sea weather continued; in spite of which he had the carpenters caulking the main deck, and on the 6th served out fearnought jackets and trousers, so it is possible he thought that weather must soon come to an end. At the same time Clerke was putting his men on an allowance of water. It seems that neither commander anticipated another tropical or sub-tropical island. The ships made
Nebe, and soon after more in the north, quite distinct from the first.
The wind was light, and the ships came up with the land slowly. The following day a fresh breeze blew, right off the first heights seen, and Cook stood for those in the north; a short time later he saw a third piece of land in the north-east, again distinct; certainly here was a set of high islands. He was advancing towards one of his important discoveries, the Hawaiian group, that stretched in a line from north-west to south-east, and these were the three northern islands—the first Oahu, then Kauai, then Niihau. He was off the eastern end of the roughly circular Kauai on the afternoon of the 19th, wondering if this, like the so different Christmas Island, were uninhabited; but before long canoes put off from the shore and were about the ships; to general astonishment the people in them were talking a language clearly close to Tahitian, and intelligible. These too were at branch of that remarkable oceanic race! How, then, was it that at Raiatea there was no knowledge of further islands to the north? Cook did not ask himself that question; but evidently in the centuries there must have been a break of tradition. He had come to the apex of the 'Polynesian triangle'; and here the question he asked himself yet again was, 'How shall we account for this Nation spreading itself so far over this Vast ocean'—from New Zealand to these latest islands, from Easter Island to 'the Hebrides'? He does not recur to the castaways of Atiu, who had seemed to make clear a great deal; and indeed, they had little to contribute to the part of the problem now before him. He did not formulate the problem immediately; his eyes were on the land, as he coasted the south-east shore, with its gradual rise to the great hills and ridges, and on the people who ran from their villages to view the ship, while the canoes alongside traded freely their pigs and potatoes for nails. Another land of plenty this, just as the diet of turtle was coming to an end; the sad gentlemen of the departure from Raiatea did not foresee the day on which they would eat both turtle and fresh pork for their dinner. And within a day or two more their grog would be restored.
People ventured on board, rather nervously, but their surprise at
Journals III, 265–6. I say 'a little more stringent', going on his description of the measures he took, but he writes, 'It is no more than what I did when I first visited the Friendly Islands yet I afterwards found it did not succeed'; and he adverts to the recklessness there of the gunner of the Discovery, in spite of the expostulations of his companions.ali'i'ai moku. When he got them to rise they brought the ceremonial plantain fronds and pigs and he gave them what he had in return, all was peace, the water proved excellent.
On the morrow, while a brisk trade went forward, and the people helped roll the water-casks, Cook, Anderson (recovered for the time) and Webber took a walk up the river valley, through the taro plantations, to what Cook called a 'Morai'—the more elaborate Hawaiian equivalent of the Tahitian marae, that is, called heiau. A guide and herald went before them, a train of followers behind; every person they met fell flat as on the day before. The walled enclosure of the heiau, with its oracle tower, carved images, sacred
Resolution a little further out. The moment his last anchor was up the wind veered to the east, he had some trouble in clearing the shore, was driven to leeward, had a strong current against him as well as the wind when he tried to regain the road, hoped uselessly he might find a better harbour at the west end of the island; and on the morning of the 24th found that in spite of light airs and calms all night the current had carried him right to the west of Kauai, with the other island of Niihau to his own south-west. The morning before, when he found he could not regain the anchorage, he had sent boats ashore for more water and refreshments, and they had come back safely, in spite of the surf. He had also sent a message to Clerke to follow him to sea if it was plain he could not return; for Clerke, anchored outside the Resolution, had felt safe enough without moving. Now a northerly breeze sprang up: this, thought Cook, would bring the Discovery to sea, and he steered towards Niihau to pick her up, and possibly find a safe anchorage there. She was not in sight, so he determined, rather than risk a separation, to make his way back to Waimea Bay and complete his water there. Next morning, when the bay lay north, he was joined by his consort; and then neither could regain the anchorage. After struggling for four days they found that the currents had again been at work, and they were within three leagues of the south-east point of Niihau. The open bight of Waimea Bay, however attractive to the newcomer, charmed deceptively.
This tedious struggle kept one or two things out of Cook's journal that he would normally have noticed. While the ship tacked off Kauai his quartermaster, Thomas Roberts, died of the dropsy that had plagued him from the first day of the voyage; and Sergeant Gibson of the marines, his captain's great admirer, laying himself
Journals III, 276.
Sheltered water was found inside the south-east point of the island, and a man swam through the surf with a message to Gore to go there. Cook himself went to pick the party up. We have come to the first day of February. He took goats, pigs and seeds that he had intended for Kauai, and bestowed them on a person who seemed to have authority and received him with some ceremony. As he walked inland people ran from all directions, and these too prostrated themselves as he passed. The soil seemed poor, but nurtured the most sweet-smelling plants; the rain had filled a small stream where a few casks were replenished; he returned on board with the intention of landing again next day. Again misfortune descended: soon after sunset, in a heavy swell, his anchor started and the Resolution drove from the bank; it took a long time to get in a whole cable, secure the anchor, hoist up the launch alongside and make sail; so that at daybreak next morning the ship was three leagues to leeward of this last anchorage. Cook was not inclined to spend more time in regaining it. He signalled the Discovery to join him, and though the surf had gone down and everything was fair for a pleasant trade, there was nothing for Clerke to do but comply. They again stood away northward.
Thus, on 2 February, Cook left the group he called the On Cook's renderings of these names see p. 653, n. 20 below. For some remarks on its identification, see Journals III, 604, n. 4.
Some of their possessions called forth a good deal of admiration, like the 'neat Tippets made of red and yellow feathers'—no doubt the ibid., 281, n. 2. His name was Kaneoneo.lei worn by distinguished ladies round the head or neck; the brilliant short cloaks, of similar feathers, attached to a finely woven network of vegetable thread—Cook on this visit saw none of the full-length
Journals III, 280.Discovery; the social Clerke clapped him on the back to make him feel at home—'upon which they gently took away my hand, and beg'd I wou'd not touch him.'
Admiration and ordinary interest were not all to be recorded: there was also matter for a little wonder and conjecture. Not merely were these people anxious to acquire nails, and generous in payment, but they had one or two bits of iron already, used for cutting tools. It followed that eighteenth-century Englishmen were not the first to visit the islands, thought some; were not these helmets a memory of sixteenth-century Spaniards? ibid., 285–6 for Cook's discussion; and 285, n. 4 for extracts from other journals, and some editorial remarks on the matter.
Of the passage to the coast of North America, almost five weeks of
Clerke, 11 February, 21 February; Bayly, 1 March; ibid., 288, nn.porras, and regarded as a sign that their eastward crossing of the ocean was almost over, was encountered. Other records than the journal supply us with a few details of activity:Resolution's boats, stove in at Niihau, the sailmakers on the sails; the rats eat a hole in the Discovery's quarter-deck to get at Clerke's yams, and his carpenters are employed on that—'Oh! my poor Cats at Anamooka', he cries; Bayly sees the Aurora borealis; in the calm Cook sends his boat to beg a few yams for Sunday dinner for himself and his officers. Quite early, after little more than a week, we get a note from Clerke that reminds us that hedonism is at an end: 'We have been so long Inhabitants of the torrid Zone, that we are all shaking with Cold here with the Thermometer at 60. I depend upon the assistance of a few good N:Westers to give us a hearty rattling and bring us to our natural feelings a little, or the Lord knows how we shall make ourselves acquainted with the frozen secrets of the Artic.' The thermometer continued to go down steadily —in March it was in the forties. With the north wind that succeeded the day's calm Cook turned his course east for the land. He was not far short of the designated 45° latitude. On 6 March life appeared in the sea at last, seals and whales; next morning at daybreak, ten or twelve leagues distant, stretched the land from north-east to south-east, the 'long looked for' coast of New Albion.
The irony that broods over so much of this voyage again appears in the skies. Having lost his passage in the previous year, at least— Cook could have argued—he had made up the loss by being at 45° early in the season this year; and surely, unless luck were badly against him, he could cover twenty degrees of coast line and be in 65° in three months. Luck was badly against him. By a double irony, even if he had been able to move swiftly up that north-west coast, he could not have profited; even if he had been able to reach 65° by the very end of June, which was about the earliest that ice would have allowed him, he could not have pushed much farther till much later. Not having foreknowledge, he could not but be put
ibid., 292. ibid., 292, n. 4. ibid., 294.Cape Foul Weather from the very bad weather we soon after met with'.Journals III, 289.Nw attall',Strait of Juan de Fuca, but we saw nothing like it, nor is there the least probability that iver any such thing exhisted.' Night swallowed up a large strait before he could see it, providing a sort of subsidiary ironic comment on his own scepticism; for, wherever the real Juan de Fuca went and whatever he saw, here opens the passage that
On the morning of the 29th, standing north-east after being well out to sea, he came in with the land again. It was now a land of high snow-crowned forest-covered mountains. On a stretch of the coast that he called Hope Bay—a reflection of his feelings rather than of its real trend—he saw two indentations out of several, and into the more southern of these he determined to go for water. There were inhabitants, whose canoes soon surrounded the ships; their faces were thickly painted, and they were clad in skins; they were eager to trade, and seemed a mild inoffensive people. The inlet, or sound, promised well. Cook decided quickly that it would do for more than merely watering the ships: what appeared to be a snug cove was found for a longer anchorage, and even before they were moored he ordered the sails to be unbent and the Resolution's foremast to be unrigged for repair. On the last day of the month they were moored securely head and stern to the shore, for a stay, as it proved, of four weeks. This anchorage, named then Ship Cove, and since then Resolution Cove, not good, but satisfactory enough for the time, is to be found at the seaward end of an island named (also since then) after Bligh, inside Nootka Sound, on the western side of Vancouver Island. It is not good because, though sheltered from the sea, it is directly exposed to violent south-easterly gales; this was discovered soon enough from the fallen and mutilated trees, as well as from the first gale that blew. There was an infinitely better harbour just inside the south-west point of the sound; but Cook, contemplating a brief stay only, was unwilling to spend more time than he had to in securing the ships. At least there would be no difficulty in wooding and watering.
Vancouver Island is built on vast proportions: no one approaching it from the sea, or even flying down its coast, would take it for an island—the scale of the hills behind hills is too great, the snowy mountains inland recede too far, the line of breakers is too long; the very clouds are almost too immense. The spruce and hemlock and cedar of the forest cover it, to within a few feet of the sea; the flat points reaching a short way into the ocean are covered; the islets off-shore are crowned with trees, like grave barbaric princesses pacing up the coast to some remote festival; trees spring, it seems, from each individual solid rock. The sides of the sound and of the minor inlets that run off it, north, east and south, fall precipitous to the water, with only here and there a naked narrow strip of land
Some of the timbers supporting the fore topmast were decayed or sprung. This was remedied within a week, and Cook saw the ships putting to sea again, when it was found that the foremast head itself was damaged, the result of inadequate work in England, and that the mast would have to be taken out and repaired on shore. Meanwhile some of the lower standing rigging being decayed, and there now being time to put it in order, he ordered a new set of main rigging to be fitted and the best of the old to be converted to fore rigging. So far the weather had been fine, but on 8 April a tremendous storm blew across from the opposite side of the sound. In this storm the mizen mast, the only one with its topmast still aloft, gave way at the head; obviously it would have to be taken out too, and as soon as the main rigging was fixed this was done. It was so rotten that the head dropped off in the slings. This meant a whole new mast. A tree was cut and dragged to the shore, and as soon as the carpenters had finished the foremast they set to work on the mizen; they were well advanced when they found that their stick had been sprung in the felling, 'so that their labour was lost and we had a nother tree to get out of the wood which employed all hands half a day.' The new mast was finished and rigged by the 21st, when these hard-labouring men had to produce a new fore topmast.
While all this was going on, with supplementary activity such as caulking, the cutting of firewood and the brewing of spruce beer—which the crew resolved, without effect, not to drink ibid., 1095. Our witness is not Cook but Samwell. ibid., 302–3. Cook passes over the watch incident, which we learn about from others. His small shot, says Bayly, 'wounded three or 4 men in their Backs & backsides—which made the whole party leave us rather apparently in an ill Humour with us.'—ibid., 307, n. 2. He may have consciously fallen back on the policy adopted by Clerke, in the face of 'industrious' and 'audacious' thievery: 'I ever made it a point to reconcile matters as well as I cou'd; determin'd, as our acquaintance was to be of so short a duration, sooner to put up with the loss of some trifles, than bring matters to a serious decision; this plan in short visits answers very good purposes; but had our business detain'd us here any durable term of time, I must have totally changed my scheme of Operations, or these Rogues wou'd have rifled the Ship.'—ibid., 1328–9.Journals III, 479.a of their furniture and Copper kettles, Tin canesters, Candle sticks, &ca all went to wreck; so that these people got a greater middly and variety of things from us than any other people we had visited.'
Nor were the Indians mild among themselves, but conducted their many quarrels with a rage of passion that seemed subject only to an odd form of ritual, unless it went on to physical violence; and their sense of property was certainly extended to the two ships, as was evident in the first week in their attitude of defiant hostility towards newcomers whose canoes were brought into the sound by the news of profitable trade. For a time it was Cook and his men who thought they were menaced. Trade with outsiders had to be carried on through those who were there first. But such behaviour did not preclude from all parties a great deal of oratorical display for the benefit of the visitors, in a language that seemed designed to rupture the vocal chords; or a great deal of ceremonial dancing in fantastic costumes surmounted by the animal masks which were here the chief productions of art; or the songs which struck more than one hearer as deeply and excellently harmonious. Nothing could be more different from the sounds of Polynesia; nothing could be more different from the aspect of Polynesian life than the long communal log-framed, heavy-boarded houses in which these people lived on their ledges of land, or their square-sterned, shovel-nosed canoes hollowed out of great cedar trunks, needing no outrigger for stability; or their smoking of fish, or their cooking of food in water heated by stones from the fire; or, among implements, the harpoons with which they pursued the whales off their shore. They always had a supply of fish for the ships, though the seamen could catch none by line, could find no beach from which to cast a net, and were reduced to collecting mussels, which were excellent and in plenty; finding that Cook approved much of a wild garlic, which they did not eat themselves, they kept him supplied also with that. Edible vegetables there were in that place but few: the Indians, like the New Zealanders, ate the rhizomes of bracken fern and, among plants, 'some others unknown
Wak'ashians, from the word Wak'ash which they frequently made use of, but rather more with the Women than the men; it seemed to express applause, approbation and friendship; for when they were satisfied or well pleased with any thing they would with one voice call out Wak'ash wak'ash.'Journals III, 323. The language of the Indians of northern Vancouver island is still known as Wakashan, though there are two very divergent dialects, Nootka on the west coast and Kwakiutl on the east; almost different tongues.
There are better accounts of the botany of the place than Cook's, it must be confessed; more vivid impressions of birds—the spiring eagles, the beautiful humming birds and their fellows—from King and Clerke and Anderson; but it is Cook who asks the question, why should albatrosses cross the line into the northern hemisphere in the Pacific ocean and not in the Atlantic? Animals, apart from two or three small ones, racoons, squirrels and 'polecats' or ermines, were seen by nobody except in the forms of skins, and from their variety it was apparent that the people were good hunters. Cook's first duty, of course, he esteemed to be geographical, however much else he observed; although not until three weeks had gone by, 'having now got the most of our heavy work out of hand', could he start off early in the morning and have himself rowed all round the sound by his midshipmen. He found better harbours than the one he was in, inlets, islands, huge trees; and the young gentlemen, though tired after thirty miles, did not regret the expedition. A midshipman under Cook must have expected to be hard-worked, as well as taught a great deal, and at times roundly cursed for incompetence. We
We were fond of such excursions, altho' the labour of them was very great, as, not only this kind of duty, was more agreeable than the humdrum routine on board the ships, but as it gave us an opportunity of viewing the different people & countries, and as another very principal consideration we were sure of having plenty to eat & drink, which was not always the case on board the Ship on our usual allowance. Capt. Cooke also on these occasions, would sometimes relax from his almost constant severity of disposition, & condescend now and then, to converse familiarly with us. But it was only for the time, as soon as we entered the ships, he became again the despot.Another of Trevenen's notes on the printed
Voyage.It refers to the expedition round the sound, 20 April.
The midshipman does not stop at this bald statement: a higher strain, as not infrequently with him, was called for. He treads close behind Thomas Perry, that bard of the second voyage.
Or again:
The verses occur in the National Maritime Museum Ms of Penrose's memoir of Trevenen, pp. 470-I.
'And sure Nootka Sound I shall never forget', affirms the hungry poet. It is hard to think that any of those ships' companies ever would.
The day after this expedition the sails were bent, and the observatory tents and instruments got on board. The position of Ship Cove had been settled with the utmost care, the longitude being the mean of ninety sets of lunars taken at the observatory, twenty before arrival and twenty-four after departure, these being reduced by the chronometer, 134 sets in all; corresponding care, though the process was not so continuous, was taken with the variation of the compass and dip of the needle. The tides were closely observed. In two days more the ships were ready for sea, and at noon on 26 April the moorings were cast off. As the anchors were weighed, all the nearby canoes assembled and their occupants sang a parting song, flourishing the more valuable goods they had acquired, while one man, mounted on a platform, danced to the singing in a succession of masks. The boats towed the ships out of the cove. There was a final exchange of presents with a friendly chief, whom a new broad sword with a brass hilt made 'as happy as a prince. He as also many
What name should he confer upon this useful inlet? With no great originality, he hit on King George's Sound. The native Indians, he gathered, called it 'Nookka' or 'Nootka'—which argues some misunderstanding, because that was no Indian word at all. Although he had a leaning for indigenous names, when they could be found out, he neglected this one. Nootka Sound was a decision of the gentlemen in England.
Thick hazy weather, a tumbling barometer, all the signs were of a storm from the south; but Cook was anxious to get to sea. Scarcely were the ships outside the sound than the storm fell on them with an instant shift of the wind, squalls, rain and a darkness that made it impossible to see the length of either ship; and to avoid a lee shore again they stretched off to the south-west with all the sail they could bear. Next morning they were clear of the coast, and steered northwest, parallel with what Cook judged to be its trend. As the day wore on the storm increased to a hurricane, and there was nothing to do but lie to. It was just at this time, in the early afternoon—so soon after all the work done in harbour—that the Resolution seemed to have sprung a leak, 'which at first alarmed us not a little'; and if Cook was alarmed not a little, what must have been the feelings of others? The fish room, in the after part of the ship, was full of water. There was a leak, but not a serious one; the sound of water rushing in was rather the sound of water washing about, as the coals which lay under the casks of fish kept it from the pumps; bailing and clearing made it possible for one pump to control the danger; apprehension faded. But this unpleasant storm, with some intervals, lasted for most of five days, during which Cook was out of sight of land—out of its sight, that is, for six degrees of latitude; driven right outside—or rather keeping sedulously clear of—the northern part of Vancouver Island, the Queen Charlotte Islands, and Prince of Wales Island. At least he was increasing his latitude, and so far the gale was favourable. In the early morning of 30 April he altered course in order to make the land, 'regreting very much that I could not do it sooner, especially as we were passing the place where Geographers have placed the pretended Strait of Admiral de Fonte.' This fabled admiral's strait, it will be remembered, or river Los Reyes, lay in latitude 53° N. He registered at once his scorn and his reason.
For my own part, I give no credet to such vague and improbable stories, that carry their own confutation along with them nevertheless I was verydesirous of keeping the Coast aboard in order to clear up this point beyond dispute; but it would have been highly imprudent in me to have ingaged with the land in such exceeding tempestious weather, or to have lost the advantage of a fair wind by waiting for better weather.
JournalsIII, 335.
When he sighted land again he was in latitude 55° 20′, in the evening of I May: a broken coast it was, but he could not distinguish the islands and islets which formed its bays and harbours. Not Spaniards, but Chirikov and Bering were now the predecessors in his mind; he talked of putting into harbour to repair the leak, and oh! thought King and others, that providence would lead them to rescue the miserable men lost by Chirikov hereabouts, surely, thirty-seven years before. Cook was more of a realist: the leak having become inconsequential he would not sacrifice a favourable wind for so romantically improbable a notion.
Once more in sight of that wild tremendous landscape he was determined to keep it in sight, whatever the wind. He would not only remark a general trend of the coast, but fix upon it such an intent gaze that if he could not chart every inch of it, and every inch of the waters lying behind islands and long projections of land, he could at least make fair inferences, and suggestions which his successors would more often verify than deny. To realise how intently he gazed, one must oneself follow slowly and intently the lines of his journal, with their constant record of positions and bearings, with the chart before one's eyes. No swift reading will do. With Mount Edgecumbe and Cape Edgecumbe, in latitude 57°, he resumes his naming of the geographical features, and it is pleasant to record that before long he has a Cape Fairweather to balance the Foulweather of early March. Rising over it was Mount Fairweather, the highest of a ridge parallel to the shore, covered with snow from top to bottom; and then appeared the 18,000 foot peak of what must be Bering's Mount St Elias. These early days of May were days of light airs and calms: 'We are forwarding our business in tracing the Coast, but our breeze enables us to get on but very leisurely', writes Clerke on the 6th; and on the 7th, 'We continue to have most extraordinary fine Weather, with such gentle Breezes that we just crawl along shore'; and Cook could hoist out a boat for the carpenters to work on the leak. He was most anxious to identify Bering's anchorage, but at his distance off shore—some eight leagues—found this difficult. We must turn from his journal to his log and back again, over a period of five days and longer, to see how his mind wavered, set, and then
ibid., 338–41. I have tried to explore the processes of his mind in the notes on the pages. ibid., 358, entry for 24 May, which is very much a repetition of his log for 9 May, 340, n. 3. Cape St Elias was the outer point of St Elias—i.e. Kayak—island.t Elias is the same as the one to which he gave that name and as to Cape St Elias I can form no judgement where it lies'.
The wind shifting to north on the morning of 11 May, he abandoned the idea of anchoring within the bay and bore up for the west end of the island: later, the wind dropping away, he landed intending to climb its heights and take a view. He found that this also would take too long, and contented himself with leaving a bottle containing the usual inscription and some of the Maundy money presented to him by his friend Dr Kaye. ibid., 341.
After getting out to sea a few leagues, Cook continued to make north-west. He was, in modern terms, sailing into the head of the Gulf of Alaska—the north-east corner, as it were, of the ibid., 342, n. 9.Sw was nothing but a group of islands.'Journals III, 343.Se and we were threatened with both a fog and a storm and I wanted to get
Resolution man to feel some heightening of curiosity. King, who identifies Stählin with Maty his translator, looked from the ship even with excitement: 'We have Dr Matys map of the N0ern Archipelago constantly in our hands, expecting every opening to the N0ward will afford us an opportunity to seperate the Continent… We are kept in a constant suspense….'
When the fog cleared, intermittently, there seemed to be clear sea ahead in one direction at least. Men were set to fish, not very successfully; Gore went over to some small rocky islands to see if he could shoot anything to eat, but he had hardly reached them before two boatloads of Indians appeared and he thought best to return. Indian or Eskimo it is hard to say, because of the mixing of cultures in that place; certainly their canoes, of wooden framework covered with skins, were quite different from those of Nootka Sound, as was the garb they wore, of skins somewhat in the fashion of English waggoners' frocks. They seemed friendly though they would not come close. Next morning, in improving weather, Cook weighed again to look for some place more suitable for repairing the leak than the rather exposed cove he was in, sailing steadily north till late afternoon, when he found a promising harbour on the eastern side of the sound. It was as well; for the weather had gone back, hard squalls with rain turned into violent squalls which nevertheless did not dissipate a thick fog, and by the time darkness had fallen, leading on an 'exceeding stormy' night, he was glad to be anchored securely in that harbour. Bad weather did not deter further Indian visitors in the night, at first three men in kayaks who bore the symbols of friendship, wands with large feathers or birds' wings tied to them, then many more. Some of these ventured on board—once sailors had become hostages by stepping into their boats—and were prepared to trade for a few beads anything they had, even fine seaotter skins. They did not stay long, fortunately, being like other native peoples of a 'thievish' disposition. Indeed, during the course of the following day they attempted, with a sort of naive effrontery, not merely to take one of the Resolution's boats, but to make general plunder of her consort. A part of them finding the Discovery's deck empty, except for one or two men, while her company were at dinner,
Resolution to reinforce them, drew their knives, invaded the vessel and began to sweep it clean. At the alarm the men from below tumbled up with cutlasses, and the Indians tumbled overboard, rather deliberately, empty-handed but in the best of tempers. At this moment they saw the Resolution's boat out sounding, and all made for her. The officer in charge hastened back to the ship. The boat's crew were hardly on board before the Indians thrust the guard aside, cast her loose and began to tow her away. But the instant they saw a display of arms they desisted, quite unconcerned, and motioned aside the weapons. Cook could hardly feel what he was accustomed to call resentment. Surely these people must be unacquainted with fire-arms: 'for certainly if they had known any thing of their effect they never would have dar'd to take a boat from under a ships guns, in the face of above a hundred men for the most of my people were looking at them at the very time they made the attempt. However after all these tricks, we had the good fortune to leave them as ignorant as we found them, for they neither heard nor saw a musket fired unless at birds.'Journals III, 348.
This was on 14 May, and the boat was sounding the head of the bay to see if the ship could be laid ashore to stop the leak. The gale came on as hard as before. How long it would last heaven knew. Cook therefore resolved to keel her where she was, and sent out a kedge anchor to moor her to—in which operation a maladroit seaman, tangled in the buoy rope, was nearly drowned. He survived with a badly broken leg. The day had not been without incident. The next morning the ship was given a good heel to port, the leak being in her starboard buttock, The buttocks of a ship were the timbers on each side of her sternpost, from the bottom of the cabin windows downwards. In spite of careful observation of native characteristics, pp. 344–6, 349–50, it was difficult to discriminate. Not very long afterwards Cook writes of the Cook Inlet people 'All the people we have met with in this River are of the same Nation as those who Inhabit History of Greenland by the Moravian missionary David Crantz. These people, small in stature, thick set, good-looking (as Cook thought, or—to quote Clerke—'fine jolly full fac'd Fellows') were much like, though not quite like, those described by Crantz. They wore the same sort of clothing. Their fishing and
Sandwich Sound, but differ essentially from those of Nootka or King Georges Sound, both in their persons and Language.'—371. On which opinion Frederica de Laguna comments (Archaeology of Cook Inlet, Alaska, Philadelphia, 1934, 14–15), 'It is by no means certain that this opinion is correct, for we know that the Indians had adopted much of the culture of their Eskimo neighbors'. The people he now met might therefore be either Athapaskan Indians (to which group the Nootka people belonged) or Eskimos.
At the end of the second day the weather cleared, and for the first time Cook could examine his surroundings. He called the place of his anchorage Snug Corner Bay, 'and a very snug place it is'. From the purely nautical angle he was probably right, but no one confronted with the crags and icy mountains, snows and few trees and cold sky that Webber and Ellis portray would find it other than forbidding. Certainly their waters are calm. Early next morning Cook made sail to the north-west, thinking that would be the most likely direction for any passage north; by the beginning of the afternoon he was forced to anchor again, having covered only a few leagues and escaped with difficulty the dangers of sunken rocks and a failing wind. He took thought. In the north the land seemed to close. The flood tide came from the south: 'altho this did not make wholy against a passage, it was however nothing in its favour.' He sent
After the voyage the gentlemen in London decided that this name should be superseded by that of Prince William Sound, which has remained.Journals III, 353.
Cook steered south-west. He was off the south-eastern coast of the Kenai peninsula, turning inside the corner of the Gulf of Alaska, and now, if the land had been continuous, would have sailed down the southern coast of the Alaskan peninsula, projecting like a long finger from the main coast of the continent. But was the land continuous? On the 21st he sighted a high promontory, in latitude 59°10′—Cape Elizabeth, after the princess whose birthday that day was. No land was seen beyond it: perhaps it was the western extremity of the
Marmot Island (which Cook called St Hermogenes Isle) and Cape St Hermogenes. ibid., 358, n. 7.Journals III, 358–9.0ward damps ones expectations….'
We are still in the same predicament as yesterday in respect to our Western Gale. Here's a fine spacious opening, which this wind will not enable us to examine: as the Season now advances so fast, shou'd we leave a passage to the N'ward behind us, it wou'd be a most unfortunate incident; or on the other hand shou'd we get engaged in an extensive Sound, and after searching its various crooks & corners, find ourselves under the necessity of returning, from whence we came, it might have a most unhappy effect upon this Seasons operations.ibid., 359, n. 1.
The heart of one man, however, rose within him. The island of the cape Gore named 'Hopes Return'. He did not make charts, but on the very useful chart that Roberts made of the inlet they were about to enter he had a coruscation of his own names, somewhat different from Cook's, inscribed— 'Cape Hope', 'Mount Welcome', 'The Gulf of Good Hope', 'The Land of Good Prospect'. Alas!
The contrary wind sank, a north-east breeze sprang up; in the morning of 25 May Cook steered into the empty space with 'Hopes Return' close aboard. He would not emerge till 6 June, with hopes blasted. He sailed immediately towards what on the 23rd he had
Journals III, 361.Nne—'in the Middle of the inlet… but as this was supposed to be an island it did not discourage us.' An island on the evidence of the deep bay of which it formed the northern shore, perhaps; but it proved in fact to be the eastern side of almost the whole inlet, backed by a range of high mountains.
In the next few days there was slow advance only, partly because of contrary gales and squalls, occasional mist and drizzle, partly because of dangerous shoal patches—more because of the strength of the tide, which rose and fell twenty feet and in places ran like a race; the farther up the inlet the ships pushed the stronger it was, and in the end the boats could make no headway against it at all. Cook was reduced to sailing with the flood and anchoring with the ebb. He first remarked this difficulty off Anchor Point, after his stationary night there, when the ibid., 362, n. 1. ibid., 364.Resolution began to drive. He dropped a kedge anchor to stop her, the hawser parted, and he lost hawser and
The last day of May and the first day of June determined the matter for Cook. Most of his men were of the same opinion as he was, but Gore still stood out. The inlet had definitely turned east. At clear intervals in misty drizzling weather there were indications that beyond an area of shoals it divided into two arms, one running directly east, the other north-east. Bligh was sent to examine the north-east arm, and returned to report a deep and navigable river for the ten or twelve miles he had been up it, between continued ridges of mountains. Cook tried to get the ships into the eastern arm, but was stopped by a breeze directly against him and by the ebb
Journals III, 365.
If the discovery of this River should prove of use, either to the present or future ages, the time spent in exploring it ought to be the less regreted, but to us who had a much greater object in View it was an essential loss; the season was advancing apace, we knew not how far we might have to proceed to the South and we were now convinced that the Continent extended farther to the west than from the Modern Charts we had reason to expect and made a passage into Baffin or Hudson bays far less probable, or at least made it of greater extent. But if I had not examined this place it would have been concluded, nay asserted that it communicated with the Sea to the North, or with one of these bays to the east.ibid., 368.
Even this moderate man, clearly, was not exempt from the vanity of human thought. Neither he nor King had seen with eyes, had laid down on paper the end of that eastern arm he had called the 'river' Turnagain. Sixteen years later his midshipman Vancouver came again and did both. Had the 'great and first discoverer of it', wrote Vancouver, 'dedicated one day more to its further examination, he would have spared the theoretical navigators, who have followed him in their closets, the task of ingeniously ascribing to this arm of the ocean a channel, through which a north-west passage existing according to their doctrines, might ultimately be discovered.' Vancouver,Voyage of Discovery(London, 1798), III, 125.
He sent King away again to land and take possession of the country and the 'river'. King's party was met by a friendly band of natives, who were happy to observe a turf turned and the flag flown, share the bottled porter in which King George's health was drunk, and accept the empty bottles. The other bottle, containing the relevant
Journals III, 1421.
Cook turned his back; and as he did so the wind, which had been in his teeth for the last nine days, went round to the south. Fortunately it blew no gales, and now anchoring with the flood and tiding with the ebb, he plyed his way back. He had one lucky escape from disaster. His judgment over the agitated water between the two headlands, that it was due simply to the strength of the stream, will be remembered. He was wrong. It was on the first day of this return passage, as he sailed down the middle of the inlet, that, 'by the inattention and neglect of the Man at the lead', the Vancouver was to write later, in his own Resolution struck the eastern side of a great bank or ridge of hard sand and rock above the headlands and stuck fast.Voyage (p. 120), that 'it must be considered as a most fortunate circumstance, that neither Captain Cook nor ourselves had attempted to pass on the south side of that shoal'. On Chart LI the thing is called 'The Snare'. Its name is now Middle Ground Shoal.Discovery to anchor, which prevented her narrowly from running on the other side. No damage was done, the ship floated off with the flood, and Cook worked round the northern end of the bank into deep water and anchored. If he had had time to investigate, he might have been glad that his luck had kept him away from the bank's southern end, a cruel jungle of perpendicular rocks rising from quite deep water. Perhaps the leadsman was not highly to blame. Next day, the 3rd, while they were anchored two miles below the western headland, the mountains cleared for the first time since they came into the inlet, among them a volcano 'emitting a white smoke but no fire'.Journals III, 370. Redoubt Volcano, 10,198 feet high. There was another, Iliamua, almost as high, not far to the south—at the time, it must be supposed, concealed by cloud.
Cook found no name for this gash in the land. King referred to it merely as the Great River. Bayly, sharing the no doubt general feeling that they had been 'had', hit on 'Seduction River'. Gore fell silent. Later on, in London, Lord Sandwich ordered that it should be called Cook's River. Vancouver, who in the end knew more than them all, in 1792 altered the word River to Inlet. Cook summed up his feelings in his log for 6 June, in a passage that refers to both the inlets he had just explored. It is an interesting passage for more than one reason. It registers the state of his own mind—a sort of disgust at being swindled and at being a party to the process himself—while at the same time he had to admit that he had learnt something. It illustrates the fashion in which he composed his journal; for some of these phrases form the substance, expanded, distributed, of passages in the journal which hinge on different and earlier dates. Certainly in the journal he took some care to speak with less acerbity of his officers.
It is now sixteen days since we came in sight of the land before us, which time has been spent to very little purpose, and is the more to be regretted as the wind has been favourable the most of the time for ranging the Coast to the South or sw and would probably have carried us to its extremity inthat direction. I was induced, very much against my own opinion and judgment, to pursue the Course I did, as it was the opinion of some of the Officers that we should certainly find a passage to the North, and the late pretended Discoveries of the Russians tended to confirm it. Had we succeeded, a good deal of time would certainly have been saved but as we did not, nothing but a triffling point in Geography has been determined, and a River discovered that probably opens a very extensive communication with the Inland parts, and the climate seemed to be as favorable for a settlement as any part of the world under the same degree of latitude.
JournalsIII, 368, n. 2.
'Late pretended Discoveries': the Russians are now classed with de Fonte and de Fuca. And it is unusual to find Cook referring to any point in geography as trifling. We have Clerke giving his own succinct summary: 'a fine spacious river … but a cursed unfortunate one to us'.
A cursed unfortunate one. Latitude 65° N in June? On the first day of June they were in latitude 61°30′, and turning from Stählin's map to Müller's, were confronted by the prospect of sailing WSW down a conjecturally hatched in, but none the less continental coast, to latitude 53° before they could turn north again. True, Müller showed a number of islands, but they were nothing like Stählin's; and Cook, in his three weeks of coasting, was to find a quite large number of islands—some which were without doubt islands, some which were perhaps rather a highly indented mainland coast, perhaps only islands which (to use his own phrase) locked in one behind another. In any case, in all those three weeks he saw no way through. He found a way through, finally, at a point that in no way resembled anything on Müller's map, except vaguely in latitude; and on the last day of June, as he lay in harbour on the northern side of the great projection, he was in latitude 53°55′. On the map, towards the western end of the projection, was indicated a Mt St Johns, overlooking a cluster of offshore islands, which proved of no use at all as a point of reference; the only other names to which he could refer, apart from Cape St Hermogenes (and he was not sure that he had correctly identified that) were Bering's two, Tumannoi or Foggy Island and Schumagin Island. Foggy Island, where there were so many foggy islands, nagged at him day after day, and he never did see it. Schumagin, or Shumagin, or the group of which it was one, called after a sailor whom Bering buried there, gave him surprisingly little trouble. He conferred comparatively few names of his own, and of those fewer still have survived. Overhead flew
Cook, with only one gale, had much better fortune with the weather than Bering had had; but it was a tedious and sometimes anxious navigation, off shores barren and rugged, brown with the dead herbage of the previous summer, fringed with steep cliffs and formidable rocks. Inland were snowy mountains; in places snow covered the lower hills and deep valleys, and came down beaches almost to the edge of the sea. Land could not always be seen; nor did the two ships always pick up the same points of land. There was only one gale: the difficulties came rather from frequent contrary, though not strong, winds, and a combination of misty, drizzling and rainy weather that gave way to fog, and fog that turned to rain and drizzle again. The first three days were clear enough, then came three on which there was hardly a sight of the coast, and when it was seen it could be all too close. The absence of a sight of the sun was embarrassing to accurate navigation and Cook is more sparing with daily positions than usual; but he never lost a chance of a sight, and when he fixes a position for some natural feature, a cape or an island, he is rarely more than a minute or two out. His journal preserves the level unimpassioned tone of a man whose only interest is observation. Not quite so Clerke: 'the confounded fog…. A thick fog and a foul Wind are rather disagreeable intruders, to people engaged in surveying and tracing a Coast'; or again, 'These have been 24 Hours more of wretched Weather for our Work, however we are getting forward as fast as we can, and hope & trust that soon, our darkness will be enlighten'd.'Journals III, 375, n. 2. Clerke writes thus for 10 June, 11 June.
On 14 June, close in with the land, he saw and named Trinity Island, a sort of small appendix to the massive Kodiak and its neighbours. From this point onwards, if the weather had been clear, he would have had most of the Alaskan peninsula in sight, behind its fringe of islands and islets. Could Trinity Island be Bering's Foggy Island? No, because Bering's island was supposed to be thirty leagues from the coast. On this day he saw his first Eskimos, two men
Discovery's people. Foggy Island?—he thought not. Vancouver saw it again, in the same position, in 1794; and now it has vanished. The gale came, and the journal, still in its level tone, illustrates the anxieties of that navigation. It was the 15th.
At 8, being flatered with the hopes of the weather clearing up, ster'd WNW and at 10 NW. But at Noon seeing no land and the gale increasing with a thick fog and rain, I steer'd WNW under such sail as we could haul the wind with; for I was very well apprised of the danger runing before a strong gale in a thick fog, exposed us to. It was however necessary to run some risk when the wind favoured us, for clear weather was generally accompaned with a Westerly wind. Between two and three PM land was seen through the fog bearingNwnot more than 3 or 4 Miles distant, upon which we immidiately hauled up South close to the Wind. Soon after the two Courses we had bent were split so that we had others to bring to the yards, and several others of our sails recieved considerable damage. At 9 the gale abated the weather cleared up and we got sight of the coast extending from WBS toNnwabout 4 or 5 leagues distant.ibid., 379.
'This was no agreeable discovery', says the log; the fog soon returned, there was little wind all night, and 'a prodigious swell' rolled them by morning half the distance towards the land. The north-eastern point of 'the Main' that could be seen Cook called Foggy Cape, in latitude 56°31′ (its modern determination is latitude 56°32′, and it is the eastern extremity of an island, Sutwik, which here masks a bay in the mainland). Lying off it eight or nine leagues (in reality about twenty miles) was an indubitable island—surely, at last, ' ibid., 380, n. 2.Foggy Island, a name given it by Behring'. He was wrong: this was one of the group called the Semidi islands; it was precisely the fog that concealed from him Bering's island, a little farther east. But the name, placed on the chart, remained; and when Vancouver in 1794 made the correct identification he called it, with a due sense of history, Chirikov island. Let Clerke be again our summary: 'I hope and trust Providence will favour us with a little clear Weather: never had a set of fellows more need of it, here's such a Labyrinth of rocks and Isles, that without a tolerable distinct vision, they will puzzle our accounts, confoundedly.'
Providence was indeed for a few days kind, though accompanying its gift with a first day's calm. Cook lost no time in making observations for longitude and variation. Then, with a fair wind, he steered
Discovery, two miles astern. But she had no sudden accident to report, merely a visit from pursuing kayaks, which had delivered, to Clerke a sort of small box containing a message written in Russian, 'as was supposed'; and it was at first supposed to come from shipwrecked sailors in distress. Cook would have none of this idea: much more likely it was some note connected with Russian trade, and in spite of an upset crew he refused to delay. He was to prove right. Russian influence was confirmed two days later. While the crew were fishing, very profitably, for halibut during a calm, three or four miles from the shore, a single man came off in his canoe, took off his cap and bowed very politely, as the Discovery's visitors had done; he wore breeches and jacket of cloth instead of fur beneath his waterproof frock of whale-gut, and had little to barter. His physical likeness to the Sandwich Sound people was marked, but his face was unpainted and he wore no ornament in the perforation of his lip. The wind failed more than once during this period. Fortunately it did not fail so soon as to let the ships drift in the early morning of the 20th, and the weather was then clear; for of the two fearful dangers they survived on the Alaskan-Aleutian coast this provided the first. They were running westward with a gentle north-east breeze: at 2 a.m.
some breakers were seen within us at 2 Miles distance; two hours after others were seen ahead and on our larboard bow and between us and the land they were innumerable, and we did but just clear them with a south course. These breakers were occasioned by rocks some of which are above and others under water; they extend 7 leagues from the land and are very dangerous especially in thick weather, which this coast seems subject to.
JournalsIII, 384.
Cook never made an understatement more laconic. His seamanship must have been as masterly as it ever was, because what he had 'just cleared'—indeed he must have been within them—was the Sandman
As the men fished in the calm the ships lay off the Sanak islands. Over them could be seen high mainland covered with snow, some summits in particular towering above the clouds 'to a most stupendious height', the most south-westerly a pure cone, a volcano from whose top rose a column of smoke vast enough to stain the sky. But Cook was not now looking at the mainland; the great peninsula had come to an end; the volcano was Shishaldin, the highest summit, over 9000 feet, of the island of Unimak, separated from the continent by the narrowest of straits. He had arrived at the north-eastern end of the thousand mile-long thread of the Aleutian islands. Müller's hatched coast was still continuous; but the wearied student of Müller, if he cared to sail all down it, would find ample opportunities of sailing through it into an open sea. Curiously enough, Cook, who had desired and sought that open sea so long and so pertinaciously, missed his first chance to do so; and looking back, without a considerable effort to understand his mind, one may find his alternation of caution and boldness curious too. For three days the weather was dark and gloomy, with few gleams of sunshine, even when the fog did not settle down. He kept off the land, making very slowly west. On the 24th he saw land to the north-west—still, he was convinced, a continuation of the continent, though it was in fact Unimak; and to the south-west more land, obviously islands. Next day there was the unusual combination of an easterly breeze and clear weather, and the whole coast was plain. He thought he could see the mainland terminate at a point to his north-west (the end of Unimak), and a large opening between this and the neighbouring islands, and he steered for it. Then he raised land beyond the opening, which might not be part of the continent—but on the other hand might. He had second thoughts about the land to the south-west, and a recurrence of his reluctance to run any risk of embaying: if all were continent, 'the opening would be a deep bay or inlet into which, if we entered with an Easterly wind we could not so easily get out'. He turned about; and thus he turned his back on the Unimak pass, ten miles wide at its narrowest part, and quite the best passage through the Fox group of the Aleutian islands.
After getting away from the land he steered west. They were islands after all south-west of the opening he had abandoned. He passed three of them and had more to the west, but the most south-westerly part of them bore WNW. The weather in the afternoon took on its normal composition, gloom and mist turning steadily thicker,
ibid., 389. ibid., 389, n. 1.Journals III, 388–9.
He stayed where he was for twenty-four hours, at the end of which the fog had dispersed enough for him to weigh again, and work through one channel between islands to another leading north. But for a further day he was uncertain about the prospect. It was possible that the land might trend away to the northward; on the other hand, he might find a passage to the west or the south-west. Surely he could not be merely in another inlet! Anchor in a failing wind; weigh with a light north-east breeze and the flood tide; anchor with the ebb for the night—a trifling tide here, but half a mile north-east 'a race that looked frightfull.' Weigh at daybreak next morning, the 28th, with a light southerly, then variable light airs from every direction. The Resolution nevertheless got through the channel with the last of the flood tide from the south; the Discovery astern got caught in the ebb, was twirled round and round with the sea breaking
Cook's purpose in putting in here was to get water. He had all he wanted by the evening of the following day, 29 June, but the thickest of fogs and a northerly wind kept him in harbour until 2 July. The second day of July, and latitude 53°55′; how long to 65°? Fog was not continuously so thick that men could not walk on shore, and a surprising amount of information, for three days, was collected about the place and the people that were encountered—Eskimos of the Aleut branch, obviously affected by their Russian contacts. Cook received from them another note like the one that had caused so great a sensation ten days before; he returned it with one of his own, in English and Latin, giving the names of the ships and their commanders. King, ascending the highest hill nearby in spite of snow and ice, as if he were Cook himself, to take a view, lost the view in the fog, and fell down a crevasse. He was lucky enough to be able to walk out of it. A large amount of wild pease, angelica, celery and sorrel was gathered. The air was clear enough at one moment, while the watering was going on, to make observations that settled the position of the place very accurately. On what precise spot the observations were made we do not know. They gave the result lat. 53°55′ N, long. 193°30′ E (= 166°30′ W); which is remarkably close to the position now given for the eastern entrance point, lat. 53°57′ N, long. 166°14′ W.
The fog thinned, the wind went round to the south; they put to
He got easily enough round Cape Newenham before the wind failed again, and then he found himself over the fearful shoals of Kuskokwim Bay, parallel hard banks of sand and stones and mud flats, some of which dry at low water, stretching far out of sight of land. He was well within sight of land, and anchored. At the first attempt the Clerke for 18 July: 'Whoever will reflect on what we have already encounter'd for these last 5 days will Allow that we have been in no small danger, which might have proved very serious, had not the Wear all that time been remarkably Moderate & fine.'—King, ibid., 1429.Resolution's cable parted from her anchor. While the masters were away sounding for a channel he managed to recover it. He was determined about this, because he had lost one anchor already; he had a 'very excellent swimmer' on board, who was sent
Journals III, 401, n. 2.
Instead of following the coast north, he was now forced into a sort of large semi-circular cast out into the Discovery, drawing less water, in the lead; then west, then west-north-west in a northerly wind, anchoring for the worst of the fog, then for a few hours one day even north till the wind went round again. The 28th gave a space of clear sunshine: lunars were taken, the position worked out—latitude 59°55′, longitude 190°06′ East. They were gradually working north—were, approximately, in the middle of the Discovery unmanageable. Monday the 3rd, two degrees further north, a degree and a half further east, a south-east breeze and a course to the northward: but this day brought an expected grief. Anderson died. Cook, no great hand at obituary phrases, does his awkward best; we feel that there was an unspoken affection within him.
He was a Sensible Young Man, an agreeable companion, well skilld in his profession, and had acquired much knowlidge in other Sciences, that had it pleased God to have spar'd his life might have been usefull in the Course of the Voyage. Soon after land was Seen to the Westward, 12 leagues distant, it was supposed to be an Island and to perpetuate the Memory of the deceased for whom I had a very great regard, I named [it]Andersons Island.
JournalsIII, 406.
He would—a further touch of sentiment—have preferred to bury his friend ashore; but when the time came, next morning, there was no land to be seen. Not many deaths at sea can have been more felt than that of this attractive modest man. Clerke: 'The Death of this Gentleman, is a most unfortunate Stroke to our Expedition alltogether; his distinguished Abilities as a Surgeon, & unbounded humanity, render'd him a most respectable and much esteemed Member of our little Society; and the loss of his superior Knowledge of, and wonted attention to the Science of Natural History, will leave a Void in the Voyage much to be regretted.' King writes at length with the greatest admiration, concluding, 'If we except our Commander, he is the greatest publick loss the Voyage could have sustaind.'—ibid., 406, n. 1, 1429–30.Resolution to take his place; his friend Samwell, to whom he had left his books, went as surgeon to the Discovery.
Anderson's Island was not quite a new discovery: it was St Lawrence Island, sighted and named by Bering almost exactly fifty years before. Cook maintained his northward course, with a favouring wind though in thick weather. On the afternoon of the 4th he saw land again, extending north-east to north-west, low next the sea, swelling inland to high hills; bare, so far as he could see, of either wood or snow. He judged it was the American continent again, though he had not laid eyes on that since he put the shoals of Kuskokwim Bay behind him. There was a small high island close by. He anchored seven or eight miles off the main and next morning ran down between it and the island and anchored again. He was anxious,
ibid., 409. The position of the cape now accepted is lat. 65°37° N, long. 168°06′ W (191°54′ E), so that, taking the haze into account, Cook's error was again indeed small.Cape Prince of Wales, is the more remarkable by being the Western extremity of all America hitherto known'; and when the pale sun shone for a few minutes at noon he was able to settle its position fairly well—latitude 65°46′ North, longitude 191° plus an indeterminate distance East, the observations being 'liable to some small error on account of the haziness of the weather.'
One can say more circumstantially where he was. He was anchored in Bering Strait, about three miles off Cape Prince of Wales; his high steep rock was Fairway Rock, his island was Little Diomede, with its larger companion rising close behind it, in the middle of the strait. The strait is fifty-five miles across at its narrowest, and he could not see the other side. It is hard not to assume that he knew that if he sailed across he would arrive at Asia, like a sixteenth-century cartographer skirting the Strait of Anian; and indeed Müller's map told him he would. But Stählin's map told him he would arrive, anyhow as an intermediate stage, at a large island called Alaschka; and though neither map, in certain respects, was
He continued, 'we had almost forgot the cheerful & pleasing Sensations, instilled by a clear Atmosphere & enlivening rays of the Sun.—Got every thing from between Decks & clean'd Ship.'—ibid., 410, n. 1.
A new world virtually it was; and inhabited. As the ships were standing in Cook saw a village, from which people were departing hurriedly inland with burdens on their backs; and when he went with the boats to land near the place he found a band of forty or fifty men drawn up to receive him, all armed with spears and bows and arrows. They had sent their women and children away. He did not know what we know, that these people, Chukchi, a Mongoloid group tenacious of their freedom, took the ships for Russian, and they had no love for the Russians. They could see very well that the boats were armed. Cook's behaviour illustrates clearly his attitude and policy on first meeting a strange and potentially hostile people; and the man who had made such contacts at
As we drew near three of them came down towards the shore and were so polite as to take of their Caps and make us a low bow: we returned the Compliment but this did not inspire them with sufficient confidence towait our landing, for the Moment we put the boats a shore they retired. I followed them alone without any thing in my hand, and by signs and actions got them to stop and receive some trifles I presented them with and in return they gave me two fox skins and a couple of Sea horse teeth. I cannot say whether they or I made the first present, for these things they brought down with them for this very purpose and would have given me them without my making any return. They seemed very fearfull and causious, making signs for no more of our people to come up, and on my laying my hand on one mans Shoulder he started back several paces. In proportion as I advanced they retreated backwards always in the attitude of being ready to make use of their Spears, while those on the hill behind them stood ready to support them with thier arrows. Insensibly my self and two or three more got in amongst them, a few beads distributed to those about us brought on a kind of confidence so that two or three more of our people joining us did not Alarm them, and by degrees a sort of traffick between us commenced.
JournalsIII, 410–11.
Their weapons, however, they would not part with: even when they danced they kept them within reach. But cautious as they were, they let Cook examine everything he wished—their persons, their extremely well made clothing of skins or leather, their winter houses partly sunk in the ground, their tent-like summer huts, the high stages built of bones on which they dried their skins and fish. They were a taller, longer-faced people than the northern Americans, they did not wear the Eskimo frock, though certainly their boats and canoes were of the same pattern and, like them, they depended on the sea for their living. Cook's observations, for the two or three hours that he stayed, were remarkably wide. Soon after he returned to the ship the wind veered to the south, and he at once stood out of the bay and steered north-east between the coast he was on and the two islands, through the strait.
He was uncertain where he had been. In his log he refers tentatively to the Island of Alaschka 'or the Westland'; in his journal he more directly registers his doubt.
This land we supposed to be a part of the island ofAlaschkalaid down in MrStaehlins Map before q[u]oted though from the figure of the Coast, the situation of the opposite coast of America, and the longitude it appeared rather more probable to be the Country of the Tchuktschians explored by Behring in 1728. But to have admitted this at first sight I must have concluded MrStaehlins Map and account to be either exceeding erronious even in latitude or else a mere fiction, a Sentance I had no right to pass upon it without farther proof.ibid., 414.
Nor was this immediately important. The important thing was the passage north, and all eyes were on the lie of the land. As they left the two capes, east and west, of the strait behind them, Alaschka or Asia did not seem to matter. How close the captain came to the feelings of King we do not know, but that lieutenant looked cheerfully at the prospect. 'Which conjecture is right we cannot determine, but we are in high spirits in seeing the land to the N 13 August, ibid., 414, n. 2. 16 August, ibid.0ward of these Extremitys trend away so far to the Ne, and the other NW, which bespeaks an open sea to the N0ward free of land, and we hope of Ice, as we have hitherto seen no signs of any.'
In that highest latitude of 70°44′ Cook was out of sight of land,
ibid., 418.Discovery a mile astern, with the main body of ice driving down on them, and it would certainly drive them right on shore unless it took the ground before they did—or unless they could get away to the south-west, where was the only opening. 'Our situation was now more and more critical': both ships tacked together; 'the Wind proved rather favourable', the water deepened; for a third time in a few weeks disaster was skimmed by.
This might have seemed not merely baffling but decisive, to a man who wished to follow a coast that ran north-east, and it must have been shattering to King's computation of the distance to Baffin Bay. Cook, on the other hand, clearly did not intend to abandon the ice yet, and even (it also seems fairly clear) for a short time considered the chances of forcing his way into it and so working north. By the time the wind went round to the west again, next morning, he was well away from the land, and tacked to the north through drift ice to the edge of the main field again. It was not quite continuous; there were in it a number of clear places like pools (thus his log), 'so that had there been a necessity the ships might probably have been forced into it, had they been strengthened and armed against Ice like Greenland ships; but even if they had, it would not have been prudent to have done it at this advanced season of the year.' Log: ibid., 418, n. 4. See the conflicting opinions quoted in the long note 3 of p. 419 of Journals III. Cf. also King, ibid., 1453–4, on the determination of Cook to conquer Prejudice and caprice' in the cause of fresh food: 'when we first fell in with the Sea horses which we calld by the name of Sea Cows, we were full of the Idea of the excellent repast they would afford, accordingly eat of them with good appetites. The Captn finding this, was more precipitate than his usual good sense & penetration warrant'd, for he stopt the allowance of Salt provisions altogether. At the same time some of the Sailors on board, who had been to Greenland, spread the report that these were only Sea horses, & that they were consider'd to be such bad food, that no one in these voyages ever thought of eating any parts but the heart.' If Cook had held back only half the allowance of salt meat, thought King, and left the sea horse to free choice, he was convinced that as Cook at his table, and the officers at theirs had nothing else, 'the whole would have been very happy at eating what was far preferable to any salt meat.'
The larder was replenished, but when it was done, on this 19 August, the drifting ice was all around them, and it was necessary to beat a retreat to the south. Cook would not yet abandon the ice in this part of the sea, and for three days he tacked back and forth about latitude 69°30′, while the light breezes went round from north to east to west to south, in gloom and fog. The sun might not go beneath the horizon, but did little to illuminate the waste, and the direction of the main ice edge, as it slowly moved southward, was announced by the roaring of walruses or the noise of the sea surging upon it. On the 21st the fog cleared, and to the south the American shore appeared again, a low-lying coast marked only at its furthest limit by the bare precipitous hill of Cape Lisburne—a name not conferred by Cook himself, who was this month not fertile with names, nor had much use for them. He went in to the land to get a nearer view 'and to look for a harbour'—but what would he have done with a harbour just then? He would surely not have immobilised himself before the advancing mass? There was none. He returned to the north till he heard the midnight surge and grinding of the ice. A calm was succeeded by a north-east wind, the fog cleared for a while, and he came to a decision: 'finding I could not get to the North near the Coast for the ice, I resolved to try what could be done at a distance from it', and he steered west. The northerly brought a raw, sharp, cold air, and the weather now was varied by showers of snow or sleet. By the 26th he was once more close to the ice, about ten degrees of longitude west of where he had
But the ice-edge seems to have had a fascination for him. Next day he tacked back again, and the wind falling, went in the boats to examine it at close quarters. The separate broken pieces were so tight-packed that it was difficult to get a boat between them, and it would have been quite impossible for the ships. He observed the surface. He sounded the underwater ledges. He killed a few out of the almost incredible number of walruses that drifted upon it; and then, a blinding fog coming down, had to return to the ships rather prematurely—so he thought—finding them not without difficulty, and with only one walrus for each. The fog lifting a little the following morning, he sent the boats out again for this 'marine beef'; for he was persuaded, against some at least of the evidence, that by this time his men began to relish it. His latitude was still above 69°, but the ice had advanced twenty miles in the previous forty-eight hours, a wind from the south made it a lee shore again, and not until midnight, with a shift of the wind to north-west, could he feel agreeably situated. He stretched to the south-west close-hauled. The morning of 29 August came. In the north the main ice-field was still visible. In the south-west and west was land. As he approached it the water shoaled rapidly, repeating the pattern of the American shore; and the coast was very like that of America, low next the sea, except for a cape or two, rising steadily inland, without wood or snow, brown with dried herbage. One point stood out steep and rocky. King called it Cape North; it was the present Cape Mys Shmidta. Beyond it the coast trended west. There Cook must go. But he could not weather the cape, the wind freshened, the air once more turned to thick fog, with snow added, 'and being fearfull of the ice coming down upon us, I gave up the design I had formed of plying to the Westward and stood off shore again after standing into 10 fathoms water.' The decision had to be taken.
The season was now so very far advanced and the time when the frost is expected to set in so near at hand, that I did not think it consistant with prudence to make any farther attempts to find a passage this year in any direction so little was the prospect of succeeding. My attention was nowdirected towards finding out some place where we could Wood and Water, and in the considering how I should spend the Winter, so as to make some improvement to Geography and Navigation and at the same time be in a condition to return to the North in further search of a Passage the ensuing summer.
JournalsIII, 427.
The ice had beaten him. He meditated on the nature of the enemy, though not at such length as he had done in the southern hemisphere, where also he had been defeated. There were some certainties. Quite certainly the great mass stretched from shore to shore, east to west, was as impenetrable as the shore, was a 'moveable Mass', advanced and retreated with the seasons. Quite certainly it was not river ice; for how could so vast an extent, of such height and depth, float from rivers 'in which there is hardly water for a boat'? He must have been generalising, in this estimate of arctic streams, from Samuel Hearne's account of the Coppermine river as it debouched through shallows into a shallow sea. Nor did this ice carry with it anything that originated in the land. It must have been all formed at sea. There may be a tribute to the force of European dogma in that even now, with all his experience, he would not assert, or guess, that the sea froze. 'It appeared to be intirely composed of frozen Snow.' It could not be produced by one winter only, one summer could not destroy a tenth part of it. None the less it waned as well as waxed—then how? He thought the sun, whose rays he had so infrequently seen, must be an ineffectual agent; and where he saw from the masthead a rugged surface and pools of water could hardly assume that this was the typical appearance of old ice where summer melting had taken place. It was the surge of the sea that undermined, that broke, that ground the great pieces together, that washed away, that left for a while submerged platforms over which a ship might sail, on which upper lumps and fragments stood like rocks on a reef. 'Thus it may happen that more ice is distroyed in one Stormy Season, than is formed in several Winter[s] and an endless accumulation prevented, but that there is always a remaining store, none who had been upon the spot will deny and none but Closet studdying Philosiphers will dispute.' ibid., 425.
Beaten: he might himself have preferred to say baffled, and baffled to fight better; for he would try again in the ensuing summer and then undoubtedly he would be earlier on the scene of struggle. Nothing need stop him from being at latitude 65° in June. He simply
With useful experience in his mind, nevertheless, he bore away eastward and later south-eastward to trace this new coast, through four days of heavy snow with but few intervals, and a freezing air. This did not impede the general cheerfulness that the ice had been left behind, or the prospect of warm joys to come. At times the lead was the only guide. Fortunately the clear intervals, though not many gave a far enough view for Cook to see that the coast, now barren white instead of brown, was continuous, and to settle its main features. By the first day of September he was 'well assured' that this was 'the coast of Tchuktschi, or the 'It is a Peninsula of considerable height, joined to the continent by a very low and to appearence narrow neck of land; it shew[s] a steep rocky clift next the Sea and off the very point are some rocks like Spires. It is Situated in the latitude of 66° 06′ N, longitude 190° 22′ East ….—ibid., 431. The now accepted position is lat. 66°5′ N, long. 169°40′ W (190°20′ E). ibid., 433.Ne coast of Asia'—in modern terms, the Chukotskiy peninsula, truly the north-eastern extremity of Siberia—and that he could connect it with the sightings of Bering's
Why, then, having merely ascertained the existence of an island in the reported position of St Lawrence island did Cook without further investigation steer for the American shore? True, his store of firewood was diminishing. But also the purely geographical problem of Stählin's Alaschka continued to gnaw at him. If he had just left the Asian coast now, at the beginning of September, it was crystal clear that he had been on the coast of Asia, and not of an island, at the beginning of August. What then had happened to Alaschka? The comparative width of the large strait between America and Alaschka and the narrow strait between Alaschka and Asia, on Stählin's map, could be ignored: the map contained other things just as extraordinary as that. Although in escaping from the shoals north of Cape Newenham he had had to sacrifice his view of the land, he had concluded that the land formed one continuous coast from Cape Newenham north to Cape Prince of Wales. Was that conclusion wrong? Was part of that coast insular, and had he
r Matty's places the large Island of Alashka in this latitude & therefore many suppose this to be it.' Well: what then? If the Stählin strait indeed existed, where might it lead?—to an ice-free sea?—to a passage into Baffin Bay? To resolve the dubiety was important; not to waste time the following summer in fruitless quests was important. 'It was with me a matter of some Consequence to clear up this point this Season, that I might have but one object in View the next….'
spruce, birch and willows, and an ample supply of berries of various sorts. A change of wind sent him over to anchor for the succeeding night in the shelter of what he had taken for an island, which proved next day to be the peninsula he called Cape Denbigh—how the land joined up!—with a quite large bay beyond, a sort of flattened semicircle lined with shoals; everywhere shoals, and a bottom of mud. It was difficult to load the boats with wood from the peninsula, because they grounded so far from the shore. He stood over to the other shore again, inside Cape Darby. Here it was easy to get drift wood from the beach, more difficult to load with water.
There is a curious air, not exactly of leisure, but of relief from pressure, about the days spent in this not very ingratiating gap in the land—Norton Sound, as Cook called it in honour of the Speaker who had provided that valedictory dinner. The weather was throughout fine and favourable. Certainly every time he weighed anchor and moved to a fresh position his sailors had to bow their backs; and when he sent King away with the cutters to complete the exploration of the inlet from which the ships had been rebuffed, so emulous of good was that young officer that he made his crew row till they collapsed asleep at the oars. He had been given a week's provisions and a rendezvous at 'Samganoodha', in case he should find a channel or the ships should have to leave before his return; he was back in two days with a report of nothing but sandbanks and mud and marsh, a small river, hills and distant mountains; and when he arrived on board at Cape Denbigh (where Cook had moved the ships again, and climbed another hill) he found the captain already 'pretty certain of the Event'. The men had been given leisure to wander on shore and pick berries; shooting parties of officers had tried their luck, with no brilliant success, among the geese and bustards, snipe and grouse; spruce had been cut for beer; there had been many friendly encounters with the people of the place, a people very like all other Americans encountered north of Nootka Sound, and as generous—much more generous indeed trading their skins and fish than the sailor whom Clerke overheard 'damning his Eyes very heartily because they gave him only 2 Salmon for a small yellow Bead.'Journals III, 439, n. 3.
Meanwhile, Cook had been giving some thought to his next movements, and the paragraph in which he summarises his cogitations
Haveing now fully satisfied myself that MrStachlin's Map must be erroneous and not mine it was high time to think of leaving these Northern parts, and to retire to some place to spend the Winter where I could procure refreshments for the people and a small supply of provisions.PetropaulowskainKamtschatka, did not appear to me a place where I could procure either the one or the other for so large a number of men, and besides I had other reasons for not going there at this time, the first and on which all the others depended was the great dislike I had to lay inactive for Six or Seven Months, which must have been the case had I wintered in any of these Northern parts. No place was so conveniently within our reach where we could expect to meet with these necessary articles, asSandwich Islands, to these islands, therefore, I intended to proceed, but before this could be carried into execution it was necessary to have a supply of Water. With this View I resolved to search the America coast for a harbour, by proceeding along it to the Southward and endeavour to connect the Survey of this coast with that to the North of Cape Newenham. If I failed of finding a harb. then to proceed toSamgoonoodhawhich was fixed upon for a Rendezvouse in case of Separ[a]tion.ibid., 441–2.
He weighed anchor again on 17 September and slowly, with a light wind and the boats ahead, skirted the shore of the sound outside its islands. Anchoring for the night, he was not outside until the end of the following day, when he steered for the southernmost point of the continent he could see. In vain: he ran into shoals again; forty or fifty miles, as he judged, off the coast he had only four fathoms beneath him, and had to steer directly away from it. That southernmost point he called Point Shallow Water, and suspected the disemboguing of a considerable river. He was right, except that his 'point' was rather a bulge, the northern part of the delta of the river Yukon, and of land so flat, only a foot or two high, and so with an invisible shore, that he largely overestimated his distance from it. When he steered west he was retreating from the Yukon flats. Cape Newenham he would not see again; the coast for three degrees of latitude, 63° to 60°, from Point Shallow Water to the equally dangerous shore of Kuskokwim Bay, must remain 'intirely unexploared'. That being so, there was no harbour and for water he must go to Samgunuda.
So at least he had determined; but other possibilities began to come forward. After getting away from the shoals he set a more southerly course, for the land he had sighted on the 5th, a fortnight before, 'Andersons island or some other land near it.' He came up
sic] far to the West to be Andersons island I named it'—and he leaves a blank, filled in by a later hand as Clerke's Island. But he had given no position for the Anderson's Island of 3 August, his first sighting, only a bearing, 'to the Westward, 12 leagues distant'. He had sighted the island of St Lawrence on 4 September, and on the following day 'Andersons island or some other land near it'—and if other, why not St Lawrence? Why should Cook assume that his position for 'Clerke's Island' was correct, when he got sight of it in a fresh northerly gale with showers of hail and snow and a high sea? Was he misled by Stählin's shamble of islands to think that four separate sightings must be sightings of four or, at the least, three separate islands? They were, we know, all sightings of St Lawrence, which is the largest island in the
From what we have seen of this Island it cannot be less than 35 or 40 leagues in circuit, and is composed of Mountains and plains, so that [at] a distance it looks like several islands, each hill or mountain appearing as one, and this may be the reason why we find a group of Islands, nearly in this situation, in the map of the New Northern Archipelago discovered by the Russians; for unless these Navigators have taken every hill for an Island, many of their Islands must either have no existence, or a very different situation to that which they have in the above mentioned Map.
JournalsIII, 445, n. I. Summarising, we may say that Cook made four imperfect sightings of the same island: his St Lawrence is Cape Chibukak, the north-west extreme, and a small part of the land adjoining; his Clerke's is large parts of both eastern and western halves though unconnected on the charts then made; his Anderson's is the high land of the eastern end between East Cape and North-east Cape, some eleven miles. A 'gross mistake', says Bligh, quoted in the note here cited; and also, 'This unaccountable error arose only from sheer ignorance not knowing how to investigate the fact, & it is a disgrace to us as Navigators to lay down what does not exist. I know it does not from a perfect knowledge of the lands….'—Bligh to Burney, 26 July 1791, Dixson LibraryMss, printedJournalsIII, 1565. But even this positive expression did not make Bligh's knowledge quite perfect: he merely reduced the number of islands to two-(I) St Lawrence (2) Clerke's—'for Anderson's Idand the East end of Clerke's Idis one and the same land'.
Then why did he suspect no flaw in his own conception? Assuredly the Cook of the second voyage would have disentangled the truth.
He hung about the northern side of this island, fruitlessly looking for a harbour, until noon the following day, when he stood south-west
Journals III, 446.Resolution sprung a starboard leak which gave trouble as long as she was heeled over on a western tack. Cook was fearful of heading eastward prematurely lest he should fall on the Kuskokwim shoals, but that danger and the gale came to an end together. The wind remained contrary; it was not until 2 October that he raised the coast of Unalaska, and the day after that, having tried one unsatisfactory anchorage, he was returned to his previous harbour, and the spendthrift sailors were handing over their precious tobacco for dried fish.
Cook had come to a pause. He remained in this harbour for three weeks. There was much work to do on his ship and the Discovery's carpenters were put to it as well as his own. The leak was in the starboard buttock again, fortunately above the water-line, but under the sheathing many of the seams were found quite open. To get the water freely to the pumps, in case of further leaks, he re-stowed his spirit room—which had filled during the last leak—fish room and after hold; and in addition cleared his fore hold right out and took in new ballast. There was no lack of fresh water, and both ships completed their supply. Fish was equally abundant: every morning a boat went out and returned with enough halibut and salmon to feed all hands. If fishing might be regarded as part of the ships' labours, there was compensation in leave to wander ashore berrying, and in the softer side of Unalaskan custom; and whatever penalties might be consequent on the latter, half a dozen different sorts of berry in
There was ample to observe in the place besides its dietary advantages. The Aleut people were of a sort Cook had not encountered before. The 'Indians' of his previous Pacific experience whom he had been able to study at leisure—Tongans, Tahitians, New Zealanders—had been in their original state, their societies unaffected, even in Tahiti, by the touch of an outside influence, except in so far as he brought it himself. At Samgunuda there was a difference. It was not simply that these were 'the most peaceable inoffensive people I ever met with'—though they had not ever, it seems, been a markedly warlike people. They were under a Russian yoke: from Cook's paragraphs, added to by his officers, we get an account of a primitive society under the first impact of commercial exploitation that is rare in the records of exploration. It was a society which had ceased to be quite savage without becoming civilised; it had, for instance, been deprived of its weapons without being given new and deadlier ones. The Russians, after losing a few of their own men to the defenders of freedom, were nothing if not precautionary. So Cook was received with politeness by Aleuts and with geniality by Russians, and had no difficulty in examining what he wanted to, whether public matters or private—if private matters could be said to exist in that very open society. They were an Eskimo people, short of stature, round-faced and 'plump', wearing the frock and trousers standard on that northern part of the coast, the women's of seal skin, the men's of tough bird skins, all made by the women, who were skilful sempstresses with their bone needles; all of both sexes had their underlips pierced for ornaments, but the men wore none. The article of clothing that most interested Cook was the 'snouted' painted wooden cap or eye-shade, stuck over with bristles of seal or walrus, worn by all the men: but why, if an eye-shade, he wondered, in that sunless clime? Interesting were the capacious communal houses, dug into the ground, but high enough above it, with their frames of driftwood and covering of grass and earth, to look like so many small hillocks; fish-houses and tanneries as well as living quarters and the centres of a surprisingly amoral (at least in the European sense) hospitality. Domestic furnishings and implements were few. It was an economy based on the sea, in a treeless country, where few plants grew besides grass and berry-bushes, and birds and land animals were not many. But the sea still offered abundance, fishing and hunting gear was well made, and though large boats
The Russians, it was clear from all accounts, when they first came here for furs on Bering's report, did not have it all their own way; but now, in the islands that they knew, they did, and were gradually pushing up towards the peninsula. They were the masters, adopted a lofty tone, they took the sea otter skins, they bestowed payment of chewing tobacco and snuff; and chewing tobacco had become a necessity of life for their subjects, an indispensable currency for Cook's sailors. But where were the Russians? Only on the fifth day was contact made, when an Aleut brought Cook and Clerke each a present of a sort of pie or loaf of rye flour with a salmon baked inside it, and an incomprehensible note. Cook reciprocated with a few bottles of rum, wine and porter, and sent with them as ambassador Corporal Ledyard of the marines, nothing loth to make a name for himself, and perfectly willing to travel stowed away inside a kayak. He was taken to the bay where Cook had failed to find good anchorage on his arrival, and a settlement called 'Egoochshac'—apparently the modern Unalaska or Iliukliuk harbour, where a small band of Russians, with their Kamchatkan followers and Unalaskan servants, maintained storehouses and a joint dwelling, and the rum, wine and porter was drunk out with an intense Russian devotion. There was no tendency to deny that the newcomers were English, Friends, and Allies; and not, as a cautious peep over the hill had led on the suspicion, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish or French; and if French, enemies. Ledyard returned with three Russian seamen or furriers, intelligent persons, and Cook's geographical enquiries immediately began. Language was the difficulty, interpreter there was none, yet somehow through the production of maps, and signs and nods, information filtered through. One of these men, Cook understood, claimed to have been with Bering, but Cook's chart of the American coast meant nothing to him. Nor, to any of them, did Stählin's map;
This man, who appeared first on the 14th, adopted some state, though susceptible to the power of Cook's liquor; he was clever and shrewd, and knew a good deal, though not as much as he pretended to—or he may have had reasons of his own for denying certain things that Cook knew to be so; he had travelled to Canton and France, though he spoke no language but his own; he had been with Sindt; he was well acquainted, naturally enough, with the extent of the fur trade and of Russian discoveries; and during mutual hospitalities Cook both picked up a good deal and reciprocated, in spite of the gap of tongues. 'I felt no small Mortification in not being able to converse with him any other way then by signs assisted by figures and other Characters which however was a very great help.' ibid., 453. ibid., 456.Journals III, 450.Bering and Tcherikoff, will amount to little or nothing.'Ooneemak, however the Indians as well as the Russians call the whole by that name and know very well that it is a great land.'
IfMwas not greatly imposed upon what could induce him to publish so erroneous a Map? in which many of these islands are jumbled in in regular confusion, without the least regard to truth and yet he is pleased to call it a very accurate little Map? A Map that the most illiterate of his illiterate Sea-faring men would have been ashamed to put his name to.rStahlinibid. And King, p. 1448, 'We felt ourselves not a little vext & Chagrind at the Publication of such a Map, under the title of an Accurate one, & the attention we had paid to it.' Stählin's unlucky phrase had come on p. 16 of his little book.
Cook, quite clearly, felt that he had been imposed upon. He had paid attention to a worthless document, and had spent weeks of time in trying to verify it. Yet he had been imposed upon to the world's advantage; for his incidental discoveries had not been unimportant. Nor—as we can see though Cook could not—did the maps available to him have any relevance to his arctic adventure; if Stählin had in fact been extremely accurate, it would not have advanced one inch the discovery of the North-west Passage. He was just as much imposed upon by
Amongst the many grand discoveries of C. Cook, this event of ascertaining the true distance between the Continent of Asia & America will surely not be deemd the least splendid. Philosophers will no longer find any difficulty in accounting for the Population of America. The Grand bounds of the four Quarters of the Globe are known, & one part of Geography is Perfect, at least as far as it can be of use.
JournalsIII, 1436.
One may summarise a little more soberly, in modern terms, from the first sighting of the American coast. Its general line was settled from Cape Blanco north to Nootka Sound, and from a few degrees beyond Nootka to the 'Great River' or Cook Inlet. Storm had driven the ships away from island groups, and fog had made it impossible to separate islands from mainland. Nevertheless the general line of the Alaskan peninsula, south and north, was firmly placed, and the true nature and direction of the Aleutian chain realised. The American side of the We are taken back to the New Hebrides: Journals II, 509, n. 4.
Not the coast of America only, but the whole voyage, was in Cook's mind as he composed a letter to the Admiralty, the first such communication since he had left the Cape almost two years before. Ismailov would send it to Petropavlovsk in the spring, it would reach St Petersburg the following winter, and London perhaps, if there were no delay, at the end of 1779. It was dated very precisely, 'Resolution at the Island of Unalaschka on the Coast of America, in the Latitude of 53°55′ North—Longitude 192 30 East from Greenwich the 20th of October 1778.' It sketched his proceedings and his intentions. He would go to the
But I must confess I have little hopes of succeeding; Ice though an obstacle not easily surmounted, is perhaps not the only one in the way. The Coast of the two Continents is flat for some distance off; and even in the middle between the two the depth of water is inconsiderable: this, and some other circumstances, all tending to prove that there is more land in the frozen sea than as yet we know of, where the ice has its source, and that the Polar part is far from being an open Sea.
JournalsIII, 1532. The original letter and a copy are in PRO, Adm 1/1612.
Here was new reasoning. What were the 'other circumstances', apart from the flight of birds? And why, having already disposed of the theory of land-formed ice, should he now recur to it? Did he want to let the philosophers down lightly, or would he not permit himself to believe he had disproved that particular hypothesis unless he had scoured the whole arctic extent? He may, possibly, merely have been going through a phase of worried thought, as he considered the chart he had just had 'hastily copied' for his masters, running off into polar ignorance; for he disliked extremely leaving an unsolved problem behind him. But an end to effort must come, even if apologetically.
Stores and Provisions we have sufficient for twelve Months, and longer without a supply of both it will hardly be possible for us to remain in these seas, but whatever time we do remain, shall be spent in the improvement of Geography and Navigation….ibid.
We may, as we gaze also over the shoulder of King, filling his journal pages with experience reflected upon, catch again his pride in being the lieutenant of such a commander, and see that he had long since
Journals III, 1454.
The day after the letter was written, Ismailov departed with it and a Hadley's octant Cook gave him; for the man seemed able and educated enough to use such an instrument with profit. He in his turn gave Cook letters to the governor of Kamchatka and the commandant at Petropavlovsk. The brief international interval had pleased everybody. Though rough, the fur traders—people who were not Indians—appeared in that savage ambience like an unexpected group of old friends and neighbours. Officers went over to Egoochshac, and were received with merriment and hard drinking. Still another Russian came to visit, a man so European as to have been born in Moscow, and the total reverse of his fellows in his modesty and soberness. He was Jacob Ivanovich, the master of the sloop who was to have charge of Cook's letter, and as he was anxious to take some token to the governor, who would forward the letter, Cook sent a small spy-glass. Ivanovich, arriving late, met Cook only because a first attempt to get to sea had miscarried; for while the Resolution, having unmoored on the 22nd, was warping to windward in a south-east breeze, to get under sail, the wind suddenly fell, and some puffs blowing into the harbour with the ebbing tide set her stern fast aground. It was a minor misadventure, although it meant a few days' delay: on the morning of 26 October the ships put to sea, once more with a southerly wind, and Cook stood west.
He Stood west, one can hardly do otherwise than think, in the hope of clearing the confusion that lay upon the further islands, whether their existence were affirmed or denied. If he could do that he would put out of the way one more problem that might tempt him from his single purpose when he came north again; and he had his time-plan laid down in the instructions he gave to Clerke—rendezvous at the Ne or Nw Passage'. But any hope he had of verifying or supplementing Ismailov was blown to pieces by four days of gales all round the compass, hard and vicious, sometimes with rain, hail or snow, sometimes with all three together. In the early morning of the 28th, in a fearful gust of wind, the Discovery's main tack gave way, killed a seaman and badly injured others; there had hardly been four days' worse weather in the voyage than in this little cruise, thought King, and Cook gave it up on the 29th, deciding to reverse his course through the uninviting but known strait eastward of Unalaska. Westward he had certainly picked up some land through the gloom—probably Umnak, but impossible for him to identify. In a continuing north-westerly gale and a snowstorm on the 30th he bore away for the strait, passed safely through and steered south, the weather clearing though the gale still blew. Within three days it veered round to a violent southerly storm, which played havoc with the Discovery's headsails and brought her to a dead stop: both ships had to lie to, parted for the night, and it was fortunate that from this peak of bad weather the storm fell away by morning—the morning of 3 November—and the wind became favourable again. It went almost entirely for a while on the 7th, while a weary lost shag flew heavily round the ships, Clerke visited the Resolution to compare notes, and Cook first learnt of the fatality his consort had suffered so soon after leaving Samgunuda.
By this time they were, reckoning in latitude, half-way to their destination; but it took twice as long to cover the second half of the
Resolution's main topsail, just repaired, to pieces; on the whole, however, the weather was fair, the temperature—which had begun to rise from the end of October—went up steadily to pass 80°, the men sat on deck sewing old sails, putting old rigging into order, and working up junk; the stores were aired, the carpenters repaired the boats; all no doubt thought of joys to come. After a short diversion easterly, Cook steered steadily south. On the morning of 25 November his latitude, 20°55′, put him a degree south of his reckoning for his Kauai anchorage at Waimea Bay, while his longitude was about four degrees to the east. He therefore, full of expectation, spread the ships and steered west till nightfall, and at midnight brought to. Next morning there lay the land, the island of Maui, with its 'elevated saddle hill'—the extinct 10,000 foot volcano Haleakala—raising its summit above the clouds, and descending gently towards the deep ravines and falling waters of that steep rocky coast, where the trade wind hurled other waters into perpetual surf. The coast he approached ran a little north of west, and he thought best to follow it. Before long people, houses and plantations could be seen; at noon he was only three or four miles from the shore, and the canoes began to come off. The regulations, few and basic, which he published this day to govern the conduct of his men nevertheless prove that he was determined on a strict discipline, both in their own interests and in those of the islanders. A steady supply of provisions being of the highest importance, and the ships' articles of trade now being few (and no wonder) private trade was strictly forbidden. This was an old rule. A new one shows, perhaps, that the captain had been reflecting on his Tongan experience (we can think of the 'Officers and others' implicated):
And whereas it has frequently happened that by Officers and others travelling in the Country with Fire-Arms and other Weapons, in order to obtain which, the Natives have committed thefts and outrages, they otherwise would not have attempted; it is therefore Ordered that no Officer or other person (not sent on duty) shall carry with him out of the Ships, or into the Country, any fire Arms whatever, and great care is to be taken to keep the Natives ignorant of the method of charging such as we may be under a necessity to make use of.26 November 1778;
JournalsIII, 1534, printed from a copy sent to Clerke, in Dixson LibraryMss.
The third treated of disease. It was well enough known that Unalaska had been a great encouragement to 'the Venereal'; some days before all the men had been examined by the surgeons; the complaints
ibid., 1534–5.
Nails, bits of iron, even iron tools, the only things that could be used for trade, were exchanged on this and the succeeding days for roots and small pigs. Cook made no attempt to land, but going close inshore by day, stood off again as trade slackened and brought to for the night. Lying to on his second night, he noticed that a current carried him to windward, in spite of the strength of the wind, and he changed his mind about the course he would pursue: he decided to take advantage of the current and ply to windward with it, and so getting round the east end of the island have its whole lee side before him—one presumes at this time with the hope of finding a harbour there. The islanders continued to come off to the ships, sometimes with obvious chiefs among them, making no attempt to cheat or thieve, even rescuing and returning to the Discovery a small cat that had fallen overboard and gone astern. This was admirable, and as the decks became thronged native amiability was expressed in dance and singing, though the women were still turned away. Among those on board on the last afternoon of the month was a chief who was important indeed, handed up the side with great care by his followers, partly because of his rank, partly because of the feebleness to which he had been reduced by excessive drinking of kava, manifested in his scab-encrusted skin and his red inflamed eyes. But he was observant and good-natured, visited the captain's cabin, and
Possibly he was relying on the favourable current. If so, his reliance was misplaced, as he found within a few days, and working to the east became a singularly tedious exercise. He himself, aided by King, had the short-lived diversion of observing an eclipse of the moon; He goes to some pains to elaborate on the imperfections of his method: 'Indeed these observations were made only as an experiment without aiming at much niciety.' This done, they immediately proceeded to observe 'the distance of each limb of the Moon from Pollux and Arietis, the one being to the east and the other to the west. An oppertunity to observe under all these circumstances seldom happens, but when it does it ought not to be omited, as in this case the local errors these observations are liable to, destroy one the other, which in all other cases would require the observations of a whole Moon.'—Journals III, 477. They were settling the longitude, and we have indicated not merely Cook's passion for exactitude but the refinement of technique which he had attained. His results and King's differed by a little over one minute.Resolution was six days in regaining it, and was parted from the Discovery for a fortnight. Both ships' companies were by then heartily sick of the process. There had been signs of strain in the Resolution before.
In his first trade with the Hawaii people Cook had acquired a quantity of sugar cane. Always experimental, he found that a 'strong decoction' of this made what he considered 'a very palatable and wholesome beer which was esteemed by every man on board'; and we have King's testimony that both the captain and the officers liked it. Cook therefore ordered more to be brewed, with the same view that he had had at Tahiti, to save his spirits for the future push into the arctic cold. He came close in with the shore again on 6 December, by which time the favourable current had ceased. 'Here', he writes, 'we had some traffick with the Natives, but as it proved but trifling I stood in again the next Morning, when a good many visited us and we lay trading with them till 2 PM then made sail and stood off; having procured Pork, fruit and roots sufficient for four or five days.' ibid., 478. Cook felt so strongly over this matter that he deleted two or three sentences about it in his journal and substituted for them a whole circumstantial indignant paragraph.— Journals III, 479–80. tt
remonstrated with yeCaptnby Letter, at same time mentioning the scanty Allowance of Provisions serv'd them, which they thought might beincreas'd where there was such Plenty & that bought for mere trifles. This Morning therefore y eCaptnorder'd the Hands aft, & told them, that it was the first time He had heard any thing relative to yeshortness of yeAllowance, that he thought they had had the same Quantity usually serv'd them at the other Islands, that if they had not enough, they should have more & that had He known it sooner, it should have been rectified. He likewise understood He said they would not drink the Decoction of Sugar Cane imagining it prejudicial to their Healths, he told them it was something extraordinary they should suppose the Decoction unwholesome when they could steal yeSugar Cane & eat it raw without Scruple he continued to tell them that if they did not chuse to drink the Decoction he could not help it, they would be the Sufferers as they should have Grog every other day provided they drank yeSugar Cane, but if not the Brandy Cask should be struck down into yeHold & they might content themselves with Water, intimating to them that He did not chuse to keep turning & working among these Isles without having some Profit. He gave them 24 Hours to consider of it.10 December; ibid., 479, n. 4.
Twenty-four hours did not alter their resolve, and the brandy cask went down into the hold. The following entry is equally indicative of a captain and crew at loggerheads:
Standing off & on. Punish'd WillmGriffiths, (Cooper) with 12 Lashes for starting yeCask of Decoction which was sour. At the same time yeCaptnaddress'd yeShips Company, telling them He look'd upon their Letter as a very mutinous Proceeding & that in future they might not expect the least indulgence from him.'12 December; ibid.
When else did Cook write of his crew as mutinous and turbulent over such a matter?—or, in spite of giving himself no trouble to oblige or persuade, address them like an outraged schoolmaster? If there ever was such an incident, we have no record of it. We certainly have records enough of distaste for food or drink; and now for the first time, it appears, the captain heard of the men's abortive decision over spruce beer at Nootka Sound. For the first time, also, he seems to feel it necessary to go on the defensive, as if he had never written the famous paper for the
Every innovation whatever tho ever so much to their advantage is sure to meet with the highest disapprobation from Seamen, Portable Soup and Sour Krout were at first both condemned by them as stuff not fit for human beings to eat. Few men have introduced into their Ship's more novelties in the way of victuals and drink than I have done; indeed few men have had the same oppertunity or been driven to the same necessity.It has however in a great measure been owing to such little innovations that I have always kept my people generally speaking free from that dreadful distemper the Scurvy. ibid., 479–80.
The matter blew over. How much sugar cane beer was in the end drunk we do not know. As for indulgence, Cook had already, on his second approach to Hawaii, relaxed his rule on women; for it was too apparent that nothing he could do now would avail to keep the islanders unharmed. True, that was of little use to seamen as long as the ships were so far out of the reach of canoes.
In six days they were six leagues further to windward. Cook stood in for a little more trade; then, with a wind slightly less unfavourable, he thought he might stretch eastward to round, or at least get a sight of, that end of the island. Then conditions deteriorated; squalls were varied by calms with thunder, lightning and rain. On the evening of 18 December he was north-east of the point he had to weather, Cape Kumukahi, and had no doubt he would clear it; but at one o'clock in the morning the wind fell and he was at the mercy of a north-easterly swell heaving him fast towards the land, in a rainy darkness which thunder and lightning did little to improve. At daylight the surf on the shore was not more than a mile and a half away. Fortunately the cape has no offshore dangers, and a breeze that had sprung up just enabled him to clear the land with all possible sail set—additionally fortunate, in that just at the peak of anxiety ropes gave way, and the main topsail and both topgallant sails were rent in two. A narrow escape, thought King; indeed, it was as narrow an escape as Cook ever had from losing his ship. Once in safety, he made another attempt, the same day, to weather the cape. It was fruitless, and he ran down to join the Discovery, so far astern that she had not been in danger. Clerke had inconveniences enough; having dressed his ship in her old clothes, as it were, for the agreeable informality of weeks of refreshment in balmy weather, he found some worn decayed garment constantly giving way, and his men were as constantly knotting and splicing the ropes, unbending and sewing and bending his sails. The Resolution was in no better state, as they heaved and pitched in the highest sea Cook had ever known in the tropics, irrespective of the winds: it might shift its direction three or four points, but never seemed to go down. Hence, general experience culminating in the crisis of escape, a second explosion so soon—a few days—after the first, which rocks the pages of the captain's journal; and now administration rather than trifling mutiny receives the
On this occasion I cannot hilp observing, that I have always found that the bolt-ropes to our sails have not been of sufficient strength, or substance to even half wear out the Canvas: this at different times has been the occasion of much expence of canvas and infinate trouble and vexation. Nor are the cordage and canvas or indeed hardly any other stores made use of in the Navy, of equal goodness with those in general used in the Merchant service, of this I had incontestable proof last voyage. When the Resolution was purchased for the King her standing rigging, some runing rigging, blocks and sails were also purchased along with her, and altho the most of these things had been in wear fourteen Months yet they wore longer than any of those of the same kind put on board new out of the Kings stores. The fore rigging are yet over the mast head, the brace blocks and some others in equal use still in their places and as good as ever. And yet on my return home last voyage these very blocks were condemned by the yard officers and thrown amongst other decayed blocks from which they permited my Boatswain to select them when the ship was again fited out. These evils are likely never to be redressed, for besides the difficulty of procuring stores for the Crown of equal goodness with [those] purchased by private people for their own use, it is a general received opinion amongst Naval officers of all ranks that no stores are equal in goodness to those of the Crown and that no ships are found like those of the Navy. In the latter they are right but it is in the quantity and not in the quallity of the stores, this last is seldom tried, for things are generally Condemned or converted to some other use by such time as they are half wore out. It is only on such Voyages as these we have an oppertunity to make the trial where every thing is obliged to be worn to the very utmost.
JournalsIII, 481–2.
This onslaught may well have startled Palliser, as Comptroller of the Navy, when he later came to read it; for he, of all men, was responsible for the dockyards and what came out of them; and he, certainly, was one of those who held the article of faith that stores from the royal yards were best. Sometimes the navy, he was willing to admit, particularly in wartime, was driven to use cordage made by contract. Cook might be 'in part' right, if he spoke of such cordage; but it was improper of him—said the Comptroller, deleting from publication all of the passage that defined Cook's personal experience—to make charges that implied abuse or mismanagement, the economical regulations of the yards were out of his line. Undoubtedly all the stores taken on a ship of discovery should be of the best that were made. Dr Douglas when editing the journal took Palliser into consultation, and Palliser's letter is extant, B.M., Egerton Ms 2180, f. 171. Douglas printed the gist of this as a footnote in Voyage, II, 538. He omitted from Cook's words the passage 'of this I had incontestable proof…. purchased by private people for their own use'.
'Be that as it may'—he has long given up this once favourite phrase—he continued to ply, convinced that the least shift of wind in his favour must carry him round the point; trading when he was close enough to the land, with varying luck, and full of admiration for the straightforwardness of the native people in their exchanges. Sometimes he had small boats out himself as intermediaries, but that did not stop eager ones, men and women, from swimming to the ships with their breadfruit or plantains or personal charms and piling up noise and confusion. In the early morning of the 23rd, between two of these commercial occasions, he was on a south-east tack, when again the wind died away and left him at the mercy of the landward-moving swell. It was not so hair-raising an experience as that a few days earlier; for he was six or seven miles from the shore and the wind returned in puffs enough to make the ship manæuvrable. He wanted no further lesson on this unreliable wind, the sight of furiously breaking surf was no pretty one, he would keep well away from it; and the spirits of his men continued to sink. Nevertheless, it seems to have become a point of honour to double the cape. In the middle of the night between the 23rd and 24th, while the ships were stretching to the north, Cook decided to tack to the south-east once more, and thinking the Discovery could see him, omitted the usual signal. She could not, and in the morning they were apart. This day Cook succeeded in getting to windward of Kumukahi, where he cruised, well off the land, in the expectation that Clerke would join him, trading when he could, until the first day of the new year. Through that period wind and weather were unsettled, and there was the discomfort of a great deal of rain, but by the time he
Resolution doubled the point, Ka Lae, short as the distance was; for the nights were spent tacking and part of each day lying to and trading, up to twenty miles out at sea; nor, indeed, was it an inviting shore that she passed by, with the bare slopes of its lava flows, its masses of volcanic rock, and a whole desert at the foot of the great mountains. Ka Lae itself was flat and grassy, with a considerable village standing on it, whence men and women thronged to the ship. Cook was fairly well provisioned, but he needed water; and now, sheltered at last by the land from the almost remorseless easterly wind and the vast swell, thinking at last of anchorage, he found none. Bligh sounded in vain a quarter of a mile from the shore with a line of 160 fathoms; where he landed he found only rain water, brackish with spray, lying in holes in the rocks. At that moment the Discovery appeared, after a separation of thirteen days. This at least was satisfactory. Cook's guess had been wrong. She had not gone to leeward. Clerke, with as much persistence as his own, had cruised five days about their place of separation, then had got far to the eastward before coming in with the land again south of Kumukahi, and in two days more had caught up.
It was 6 January 1779, but eleven days still were to pass before the anchors went down. Cook realised that he could not stay at sea indefinitely, and had the master out sounding more than once. The Burney, Resolution was leaking again, the Discovery so leaky in her upper works that they could not wash down the decks; both ships were 'in a most tattered condition', so much so that Clerke had bought a quantity of small cordage from the islanders for repairs.Journals III, 490, n. 5; and Edgar, 489, n. 2.
Excitement on the Hawaiian side was balanced by relief on the seamen's: 'we were jaded & very heartily tir'd', wrote King, 'with Cruising off these Islands for near two months…. The Disappointment in not trying for a place of Anchorage had a bad effect on the Spirits of our Ships Company'—and he harks back to the rather absurd but so indicative sugar cane beer quarrel and the short rations. He tries to account for his captain's course of action, and it is hard to believe that Cook, though he did not explain himself at length, had not dropped some hints.
Captain Cook has observ'd that in a harbour, from the impossibility of bringing the Natives to a proper understanding of the advantage of a regular supply, it was always either a glut or a Scarcity, particularly in respect to Vegetables, more would be brought to the Ship in one day than would serve a Month; if it was purchas'd the greatest part would spoil, & if the people were sent away, they would not return again, both parties were therefore injured; by cruising off he had it in his power to proportion the quantity, & keeping up the Value of his Iron, which began to be a scarce article, & of course getting a more plentiful supply for the length of time we might stay, & of hogs for Salting; as by this means every part of the Island had opportunities to dispose of its produce. Besides these reasons, there was another, founded on the Safety of the Ships; for from what we had observ'd of the Islands to leeward last year, & of Mowee & Owhyhe now, there appeard little chance of finding any harbour, & nothing better than an open bay like that at Atoui, which would be very insecure: Cruising about was therefore the safest way. These were I presume the motives that made us keep the Sea to the great mortification of almost all in both Ships.
JournalsIII, 503–4.
From what we know of Cook, we may guess at other motives. The longer the policy of trading at sea continued, the fewer the opportunities of theft presented to the islanders, and the fewer the difficulties arising thereby. The more passing the contacts of his men with the people, the fewer the quarrels, the fewer the opportunities for irresponsible officers wandering with fire-arms to get into trouble. The longer from the land—he may have thought at first—and the longer the separation of his men from the island women, the greater the chance of controlling the 'foul disease'. We may possibly add, once he had decided on a plan, his own obstinacy in continuing it. The faithful, jaded, and knowledge-hungry King could think of an objection that his captain may have thought of also, but was prepared to ignore.
If it be an object, & if there be one amongst us, whose abilities & leisure would have enabled him to have made enquiries into the Customs of the Natives, & of the produce of the Islands, it certainly by this mode of proceeding was greatly frustrated, our connextions were with the lowest & most ignorant of the people, who were too much occupyed in selling their goods & getting on shore again, to attend to ones enquiries: & of the land we could speak but very superficially.
Nevertheless he was to learn a good deal.Journals III, 504,
Kealakekua Bay—'Karakakooa'—though not a harbour, is the best anchorage on the west side of Hawaii, safe at all times except in south-westerly storms, which are not frequent. It is not large: from Cook Point in the north to Palemano Point south-south-east the direct distance is no more than a mile and a quarter; from Kaawaloa in the north-western corner of the bay, the seat of old Hawaiian royalty, across the water, to the great ibid., 490–1. There is here a little difference in observation from King, who says, 'There were not many regarding us from the Shore'—although he estimates the number of canoes at not less than 1500, and thinks 'we should not exagerate, in saying we saw at this time 10000 of the Inhabitants.'—ibid., 503. ibid., 491.heiau or religious structure then called Hikiau, at the modern village of Napoopoo. once Waipunaula, is perhaps seven eighths of a mile. The Resolution was anchored closer to Kaawaloa, the Discovery a little farther within the bay towards the heiau and a beach which gave easy landing. They were both opposite the precipitous rugged long cliff, the pali, which cuts apart Kaawaloa and the southern half of the bay, and was passable only at low water; covered on its heights, like so much of the lower land, with the pili grass that was the staple of Hawaiian housing, roof and walls. It is a volcanic place: almost everywhere a rough lava lip meets the water, where the great mountain Mauna Loa anciently poured out its liquid fires. But the ground within was fertile enough,
Discovery heeled over with the number clinging to her side. It would have been impossible to do anything had not two handsome chiefs, Parea or Palea, and Kanina, come to the rescue and driven the mob, temporarily, overboard. There was one other visitor, at least, who did not get this summary treatment—'a man named Tou-ah-ah, who we soon found belonged to the Church'; Koaa or Koa, a little, old, kava-affected, highly important priest. This man introduced himself with much ceremony, presenting Cook with a small pig and two coconuts, and wrapping a piece of red cloth around him, gifts supplemented with a long sort of prayer, a large hog and a quantity of fruit and roots. Ceremony did not end thus; indeed it became surprising and baffling. 'In the after noon', records Cook, 'I went a shore to view the place, accompaned by Touahah, Parea, Mr King and others; as soon as we landed Touahah took me by the hand and conducted me to a large Morai, the other gentlemen with Parea and four or five more of the Natives followed.'
It became immediately clear that he was not for the time being a free agent. The party landed on the beach below a stone wall that fronted a grove of coconut trees. At the north end of the beach was a village, at the other end the heiau, built up with stones from the sloping beach sixteen or eighteen feet to its flat surface. Close about the huts of the village their occupants had cast themselves down prostrate, like the people of Kauai when Cook landed there; otherwise the place was empty, except for three or four men who held wands tipped with dog's hair—and silent, except for some sentence they kept repeating, always including the word 'Erono'. Cook and his supporters were conducted by these officers to the heiau, a paved
marae, and every part had some significance in Hawaiian ritual; but it was natural that the visitors should be left in some wonderment.
Cook, attended by King and Bayly, and led on to the ibid., 506.heiau near the seaward end, was halted at the two images there, for an exchange of words between Koa and a tall grave young man called 'Kaireekeea'—Keli'ikea; they then proceeded to the scaffold end. Koa placed Cook under the 'altar', took the rotting hog and uttered what seemed to be a prayer, let it drop, and holding Cook's hand, climbed the risky scaffolding with him. A procession of ten men came round the railing to the short wall bearing a hog and a large piece of red cloth (the sacred colour red); Keli'ikea took the cloth to Koa, who wrapped it round Cook; the hog was handed up to Koa; he worked through a sort of litany with Keli'ikea and dropped it again, and he and Cook came down to the ground. He now conducted Cook round the semicircle of images, addressing each, 'in a very ludicrous and slighting tone', except one in the middle, which was only three feet high—half the height of the others—and covered with cloth; 'to this he prostrated himself, & afterwards kiss'd, & desird the Captn to do the same, who was quite passive, & sufferd Koah to do with him as he chose.'Journals III, 505–6.heiua: they were now brought forward, Cook was seated between the images by the sunken square, one arm supported by King, the other by Koa; and here they remained while another procession led by Keli'ikea brought an offering of a baked hog and other provisions. Keli'ikea, holding the pig and facing Cook, made a series of rapid speeches, which became shorter and shorter—perhaps incantations or invocations—with responses from the others, who in the end chanted only the single word or name 'Erono!' The company then sat down to prepare the food for eating,
n recollecting what offices Koah had officiated when he handled the Putrid hog could not get a Morsel down, not even when the old fellow very Politely chew'd it for him. We rose as soon as we could with decency, & the Captn gave some pieces of Iron, & other trifles which he said was for the Eatooa at which they were well pleas'd, but took care to divide the Spoil between them.'
This was not the end of the ceremony, however. When the party walked by the houses along the shore to the south they were preceded by wand-bearers repeating the magic word Erono, at which all the people fell on their faces. It seemed too abject; it probably signified co-operation and assistance; but how much preferable, just then, seemed the cheerful shouts, the enthusiastic hindrances, of the Friendly Islanders! There was something in the air far beyond the relatively simple veneration of Kauai in the preceding January.
Nevertheless quiet co-operation and assistance had value. Close to the heiau and the beach was a walled-off sweet potato or uala field. No difficulty was experienced, on the promise of compensation, in securing this for the observatories and tents, and having it tapu-ed by the priests; added protection was given, though hardly needful, by a few marines in their regimentals, with Lieutenant Phillips himself in command to enforce Cook's regulations on keeping fire-arms from the people. Men would sit on the boundary wall, but not venture inside unless with permission; nothing would induce any woman ever to brave the tapu, even for a red-garbed marine. The only people habitually near by were the priests and their dependants who lived in a few huts about a rather dirty pond behind the coconut grove, and with these from the start there was an entire understanding and trust. No canoe would land opposite the observatories, though that might have been from a religious respect for the heiau; and all trade was carried on at the ships. Fresh water enough came from a spring at the northern end of the beach—not enough to replenish the ships fully, but that could be done at Kauai; so little disturbance occurred there. In charge of this post was King: very tranquil, he thought, getting on with his observations. The ships
Resolution's rudder was sent ashore for repair; then plank had to be cut for some of her rail work. Certainly the carpenters were busy. Certainly also thieves began to be busy, in a very honest sort of way—like those who swam off with small flint-pointed chisels to prise the nails out of the ships' sheathing and were surprised to be the object of small shot: to quote Law the surgeon, 'they seemed when they were desired to Go Away not to have any Idea they were doing wrong.'Journals III, 491, n. 1.
To Cook continued to be paid the most remarkable observances, a quite extraordinary homage. When he first went to visit some houses, priests were at hand; he was placed at the foot of a clearly important image, King again supporting him, and once again dressed in red cloth; there was the most ceremonious presentation and sacrifice of a pig, much ritual recitation, the making and drinking of kava, the feeding of pork. Whenever he went on shore to the astronomers' marquee, the priest Keli'ikea—'the Taboo-man', as the English called him—bearing a long wand stood at the bow of his pinnace announcing the approach of Erono, people in canoes immediately squatted down, on the beach they prostrated themselves, none but priests or chiefs would approach him. He was always received by a priest, once he was in the marquee Keli'ikea and his train came with the ceremonial food—always as a duty, thought King, and with no expectation of a return; inferior chiefs might bring some pig-offering, but while they held it, not without trembling and marks of dread, the priests 'pronounced the necessary Orizon'. Curiously enough, there is no mention of such abasement among the people who thronged the ships, as if—there is a little paradox—people could be more at ease in Erono's natural sphere, and even abstract what suited them. Cook, although embarrassed in his movements, seems to have accepted it all, so bafflingly beyond anything in his experience of other islands, philosophically. As a matter of policy, he deemed it duty on his side to co-operate for a week or two in island custom. He could hardly have been overjoyed. Clerke, when he went on shore, was less tolerant of form. There was no attempt to confer on him what could hardly be other than a religious aura; but he was obviously a great chief, and was accorded the ibid., 596—'by application to the Arees I got this troublesome ceremony taken off.' Again, 597: 'At my first landing they got me to their Morai and with a vast deal of ceremony, singing and fuss, sacrificed a small Pig to me with as much respect as though I had been a being of a superior Nature; this they very frequently did to Captain Cook and afterwards would often have done to me but I always avoided it as a very disagreeable kind of amusement….'kapu moe, the sacred prostration. He would have none of it, he
The priesthood was generous: trade was quite unnecessary for the astronomical party, whatever the consumption of the ships. The abundance came in the name of an absent elder called Kao, who seemed to be the principal priest, Keli'ikea's grandfather. But where was the secular power? Its encouragement might be very useful. Chiefs of secondary importance there were: Palea and Kanina, for example, exerted considerable authority. The really great man, the 'king' of the whole island, whose dependants they were, whose dependant it seemed also the priest Koa was (he seemed to have a rather different interest from the establishment at the In the present pages this chief's—or 'king's'—name is given as Kalei'opu'u, a shortened and correctly alternative rendering of Kalani'opu'u, simply as the accepted modern version. The pronunciation was certainly heard by Cook and others as Terreeoboo, though not by all others; for Samwell's version is Kariopoo, and some write Kerrioboo. The difficulty is that the Hawaiian language as spoken was at that time undergoing a consonantal change, working up from south-east to north-west, but still rather dubious when the early nineteenth-century missionaries reduced it to written form. The Polynesian heiau), was also absent. He was at Maui pursuing, as we know, matters of conquest, not very successfully. His return in a few days to Hawaii was expected and Palea and Koa left to escort him. His approach was announced on the 24th, when a solemn tapu was pronounced over the whole bay, which kept people in their houses, canoes on shore, and the ships short of vegetables. Neither on that day nor through most of the next did he come, so that a few unorthodox and daring spirits were prevailed on to bring a small supply of provisions; at last, as evening fell, a long line of large sailing and paddling canoes came round the north point, and some visited the Resolution. King Terreeoboo, or Kerrioboo—or Kalei'opu'u the ali'i 'ai aupunit and k, l and r, v and w, b and p were all affected, and spellings in the journals vary accordingly, according to the progress of change as well as to the acuteness of the listening ear. King notes a geographical difference. Samwell registers one change, but not others (still delayed) in the name of the village 'Kavaroa'—i.e. modern Kaawaloa—in the island of Hawaii; but to the north-west he has, like everybody else, a t, not a k—Atowai, not Kauai—and writes, no doubt with accuracy, 'Bootaberry' for the place name Pu'ukapeli. The matter of glottal stops and the rendering of vowels are also interesting, though they need not be touched on here. We may say compendiously that the versions of Polynesian names we get in Cook and his officers are not the work of ignorant and careless seamen, but an invaluable index to linguistic change in the Pacific. Cook himself seems to have had a good ear.tapu was off the bay, and ladies—'our old Sweethearts', in Samwell's phrase—were restored to their lovers.
Next day there was a water-procession from Kaawaloa that captured all eyes. Though only three canoes took part, they were large double ones. In the first stood Kalei'opu'u and a crowd of his chiefly retainers, glorious in feather cloaks and helmets of yellow and red, the royal and sacred colours, most brilliant raiment of the whole ocean; in the second were chanting priests, led by the old Kao, who had returned with the king, escorting four images of gods, feather-covered basket work with distorted furious features, dog's teeth, eyes of pearl-oyster shell; in the third was a vast load of hogs, coconuts and vegetables. They passed by but did not stop at the ships, making for the tents, where King turned out the guard, and Cook followed them. On their meeting Kalei'opu'u threw round Cook's shoulders his own cloak, placed on his head a helmet and in his hand a feathered kahili or fly-flap, part of the royal insignia; and at his feet laid half a dozen more cloaks—a truly regal gift. Then came venerable Kao at the head of the priests; he wrapped round Cook the ritual cloth and made oblation of the ritual pig, while Keli'ikea and his fellows recited the customary chants. Once again, while all this went on, visible commoners were prostrate, and not a canoe stirred on the waters of the bay. The king went back to the ship with Cook for dinner, and himself received presents valuable in his eyes, iron hatchets and such things. Presents came constantly from the chiefs to Cook and Clerke in the remaining days; somehow the captains summoned up enough to give in return, with the armourer hard at work at old iron at his forge. Cook managed a tool-chest complete for Kalei'opu'u. Kao, familiarly known at the ships as 'the bishop', retired to the settlement of priests, whence he exercised his benevolence; Keli'ikea—'the curate'—was frequently his agent.
An unarmed party that attempted to climb the 'snowy mountain', Mauna Loa, and was away for five days in the forest without succeeding, was guided and watched over by men whom Kao sent with them; the carpenters on their timber-cutting expedition were similarly aided by natives who bore their heavy loads; gentlemen on their rambles were fed and entertained, welcome to inspect anything from surf-riding or mourning over the dead to a game of draughts;
Discovery; sailors suffered more for their usual mindless offences. In the last few days, as it was evident the ships would not go short of provisions, Cook threw trade open to everyone.
January passed, and February began with two incidents which are not only part of the voyage, but cast some light on Hawaiian religion. The first concerns one of Cook's necessities, firewood. Why he did not follow his usual practice, and seek permission to fell trees near by, we do not know: there may have been none suitable near by, or his men may have been otherwise too busily employed. He could anyhow see, surrounding the space of the heiau, a fence which, though stout enough, looked as if it were being let go to decay; from which, indeed, from time to time people appropriated palings to use for purposes of their own. There could hardly be any impropriety or impiety in offering to buy the whole thing for the needed firewood, and King was sent to treat with Kao. The old man was most accommodating, and did not trouble to put a price on it at all, though a handsome price was paid; and on the morning of 1 February the ships'launches took it off. The men were also taking, they said at native bidding and with native help, the carved images, and had actually got the whole principal semicircle out of the ground and down to the boats before the alarmed King could take notice and run to Kao. He was still unruffled, asking only that the small central clothed image should be returned, and the two others by the sunken square left standing. Hence the first burning, at European hands, of Hawaiian 'gods'; but it is clear that those were mistaken who later declared Cook guilty of some vast blasphemy in Hawaiian eyes. Neither the enclosing fence nor this particular class of images (however much Cook or King would have respected them) had any
tapu.
The second incident was the death on this day of This at least is Samwell's version. King says 'at the head of the grave a post was Erect'd & a Square piece of board naild on it, with the name of the desceased, his age, & the date, this they promised shou'd always remain, & we have no doubt but it will as long as the post lasts & be a monument of our being the first Discoverers of this Group of Islands.'—heiau, at the foot of one of the images that had been left, to which a board was affixed with wooden pegs (to circumvent nail-stealers)—'HIC JACET GULIELMUS WATMAN'.Journals III, 517. This was optimistic.
Cook now waited only for the carpenters' return to take his departure. The fortnight had been crowded and profitable, to the ships, to the astronomers, to the amateur anthropologists, to Nelson the botanically-minded gardener, to the bird-collectors; the ordinary carnal man had no cause to complain. Nowhere else in the ocean had they been supplied so generously. It was time to look at the leeward side of Maui and investigate the other islands of the group, to water the ships at Kauai if no other source of supply was found, before striking north to Kamchatka and the cold. The chiefs, Kalei'opu'u no less than the rest, were beginning to enquire when they proposed to leave, and unlike Tongans and Tahitians, seemed pleased that it was to be soon. From this general wish they excepted King, whose politeness and consideration had obviously ingratiated him in no small degree; it was proposed to him that he should 'elope', and be hidden in the hills, and made a great man. Kalei'opu'u and Kao, finding him unreceptive, and persuaded that he was Cook's son, approached Cook himself with the more honest proposal that he should be left behind; and Cook felt himself forced to temporise that
heiau where the sailmakers had worked went up in flames, when men with torches ransacked it for possible booty; the field below, tapu removed, had already been rushed and explored. Early next morning, 4 February, the ships unmoored and sailed out of the bay, with an escort of canoes.
We may not unnaturally ask, as they steer north, why Cook should have received such extraordinary notice at this particular island. He had been presented with pigs before, and with large quantities of produce, but he knew that this was part of the Polynesian life-pattern, it was a gift-pattern that was also a trade-pattern. It was far transcended by what was now happening at moe, the abasement with which commoners approached the feet of Paulaho, the royal person of Tonga, and Paulaho approached the feet of one other person, a woman. He had experienced the kapu, or tapu, moe, at Kauai, and he saw it again at the feet of Kalei'opu'u as that chief went on his way, as well as at his own; and Clerke, who was also a great chief, had had expressly to forbid it. It made chief-ship a rather absurdly and inconveniently puffed up thing, he could see, it conferred a measure of sanctity; but even this was nothing compared to the ceremony, the ritual, the chanting, the anointing, the exalting in a savage (or if the word is too unjust, an 'Indian') place of worship that had here befallen him. It was as if he had been given divine honours. Those were precisely the honours, one is driven to conclude (though there has been argument about it) that
kapu moe, the sacred obeisance, was itself a semi-divine thing; for the highest chiefs of Hawaii, to whom it was accorded, the ali'i kapu, had a tinge of the god in their blood, as much as the Tu'i Tonga—a virtue beyond that of ordinary men or ordinary chiefs. To such a virtue, to such beings, veneration, obviously, was due. How large is the step from veneration to adoration?
Gods could appear on earth, if they were the right sort of gods. Such an event might be unlikely, but it could not be ruled out. Again, as when Cook was in the New Hebrides, we must not forget the thinness of the line between the seen and the unseen, the ease with which, for these islanders, the trembling veil could be split. The ghosts, the enemies, the ancestor-spirits, the white-faced ones, at Eromanga, were all around, in the forest, on an off-shore islet, they came in from the sea. We must consider, too, the nature of the gods. They also, in a more or less remote degree, were ancestral. The primal god begat other gods, and they still others, and they in turn begat human beings. In a more literal sense than that of Christian thought, the Polynesians were all children of God—or at least of a god: not immediately, perhaps, of a primal god, but of some divine ancestor-spirit. But the ancestor-spirit might reflect the nature of the primal god: so was it on the island of Hawaii. There the greatest of gods was Ku, in whose honour would be built the In his report to the Admiralty from Petropavlovsk, 8 June 1779, Adm 1/1612: printed in ibid., 621. The tradition that Cook was taken for a god, here supported, has not met with universal acceptance. The opposing case was put by luakini, the royal heiau. No one, however, could have a warm feeling for Ku, creative as he was; for he was also terrible, the god of war and of human sacrifice. Of a different nature was Lono or Rono, also great, known elsewhere in Polynesia as Rongo, Ro'o, 'Ono: the god of light and peace, of the tilling of the earth, of abundance and the games of peace. There were very many lesser gods—lesser in status but none the less atua or akua. Thus Lono was also, in the legends of Hawaiian antiquity, a divine chief who participated in the name as well as the benevolence of the primal god, an ancestor who had worked good for his people, of whom it had been prophesied—as of other gods—that he would come again, bearing gifts. Now with the Hawaiian there was a season called makahiki, four months beginning in October or November, when warfare was forbidden and hard work was in abeyance, a season of games and sports beyond the ordinary, a season of abundance which was also that of the gathering of taxes. The god of this season was Lono, Lono makua, 'Father Lono'; and the gathering of taxes, the produce of the earth, was done on a slow clockwise progress round the island, the presence of the god being symbolised by a long staff bearing a banner of tapa, attached to a cross-piece somewhat like the yard of a ship's mast, and in form much like a
heiau with which his visit was inaugurated went in its totality far beyond the greeting of the greatest chief, though what exactly was contained in all the formulae and incantations used we cannot know. The apparently despiteful words used by Koa to the images of inferior divinities, those who merely waited on, as it were, the central figure; the central, though smaller, figure of Ku, sacredly wrapped, Ku-nui-akea, 'Great Widespread Ku', the lord of the heiau and of all, which Koa, having prostrated himself, kissed, and caused Cook to kiss—all this was bringing together of god and god. The ceremonies continued day after day, the red cloth, the prayers that accompanied the proffered pigs, the nervousness of inferior chiefs making their oblations, the mediation of Keli'ikea and his train of priests—all this was appropriate to a god, not to a sea-captain. In Clerke's plain words, in a report that eschewed all mention of Lono, the respect the islanders upon all occasions paid Cook more resembled that due to a Deity than a human being.Journals III, 1535 ff.Report of the Director for 1944, B. P. Bishopatua or akua, the god. There could be only one person to whom this could refer.
We have in King's pages another passage on this theme, which does not, however, bear on the god; which meditates earlier on Hawaiian well-doing, and the subjection of the people to their chiefs. 'What praise soever we may bestow on our Otaheite friends & still more on those at the friendly Islands, we must nevertheless own, that we durst never trust them with such entire confidence as we have done these people…. It is very clear … that they regard us as a Set of beings infinitely their superiors; should this respect wear away from familiarity, or by length of intercourse, their behaviour may change ….'Journals III., 524–5.
They were back in a week. In winds at first light and variable they made their way slowly north, a few miles off the shore. They had a number of Hawaiians on board, men and women, bound for Maui, including Koa, who announced that his name was now 'Brittanee'; canoes came off in crowds, and if anyone thought food might be running short on the island, the supply these carried would have been an ample contradiction. On 6 February they were off a large bay, Kawaihae, which runs in between the western and the northern points of the island. Here, according to Koa, would be found shelter and water, and Bligh put off with him in the pinnace to look. There was no shelter, and no water near the shore, and Koa preferred not to return. At noon the weather became squally, canoes coming out put back; the squalls off the land became so heavy that the ships had to bring to, and Bligh himself returned with three natives he had rescued when their canoe was thrown over. Another canoe was hoisted on board, and its company added to the seasick unhappy women already there. The weather moderated and grew more boisterous in turn. Still another canoe was rescued, with exhausted occupants. The night of the 7th brought a succession of strong gales, the canvas was double-reefed, the topgallant yards got down. In the morning the head of the ibid., 527.Resolution's foremast was found to be badly sprung—that mast that had given so much trouble to the carpenters at Nootka Sound ten months before. The two fishes then bolted on had been made from what seemed well seasoned drift wood, but King now thought he remembered some suspicion attaching to it.
There were continued gales and squalls, one of which carried the Resolution too close to the breakers; without further misadventure, however, by the morning of the 11th both ships were anchored within the north point of the bay, and the necessary labour started immediately. The preceding afternoon Koa had turned up again, with his customary pigs and coconuts for the captains; and another visitor to the Discovery had been an unprepossessing but highly important chief, already familiar, called Kamehameha. He was related to Kalei'opu'u; he was to be the first ruler of a consolidated Hawaiian kingdom. There was no glimpse of the future as Clerke bargained with him for his elegant feather cloak; but there was perhaps something a little symbolic in the price that had to be paid—not adzes, but nine long iron daggers; which product of the armourer the people had latterly preferred, and certainly preferred to their own wooden ones. That afternoon of 10 February Samwell had cast his memory back from priests and chiefs and savage sweethearts: 'It is three Years to day since the two Ships were put in Commission.' Three years, and the voyage might be about half over; but losses had been few, health and spirits were good, and into his mind, that welcomed so much miscellaneous poetry, came almost inevitably a Virgilian tag: 'tho' we have still a long prospect before us and an arduous Undertaking in hand yet when we consider the Man who is to lead us through it we all agree that
ibid., 1191.
Indeed it would have been hard for anyone to imagine worse storms, narrower escapes, more forbidding cold and darkness than they had already triumphantly encountered, behind that indestructible leader.
No time was lost. The main topmast of the Kerrioboo 'appeared much dissatisfied at it', indeed; these are the words in the Mitchell Library Discovery was requisitioned, with that of the Resolution, to use as sheers, and on the morning of the 13th the wounded foremast got out and sent on shore. The work was unimpeded because there had been no rush of natives to the ships, and the bay was strangely empty of canoes. This, however advantageous, was rather hurtful to British vanity, which had expected a crowd and general rejoicing; it was sufficiently explained by the information that Kalei'opu'u, then absent, had laid a tapu on the bay until he should pay the first visit himself. He arrived this same morning, inquisitive about the reason for the ships' return, and not (at least so Burney thought) very satisfied to see it.Ms of Burney's journal: ibid., 528, n. 3.heiau was a house that they lent for the carpenters and sailmakers to live in; in front of this they allowed a marquee and a tent to be raised for the guard of marines and the astronomers and tapu-ed the mast to keep away meddlers; the observatories were placed for King and Bayly on the heiau itself, where the two huts had been burnt down the night before the ships sailed. The heel of the foremast also was found to have rotted with a hole in it 'large enough to hold a coconut', so there was further repair to be done. Timber cut at Moorea for anchor sticks was to be used as fishes. With these arrangements on shore, and the ships surrounded with canoes, 'full of Hogs & roots of all kinds, such was the Situation of affairs on the 13th at Noon', says King, who commanded this shore detachment. He was not quite all-inclusive; for a number of large canoes had arrived at Kaawaloa, where their occupants added to the population, putting up temporary huts for the period of the ships' stay; and a distressing affair had already happened on board the Discovery. A man who had stolen the armourer's tongs was somehow identified, seized up to the main shrouds, given the severe punishment of forty lashes, and kept there till the tongs were returned, which they fortunately were in half an hour. The 'propensity to theft', thought Clerke, was stronger than on the first visit; he finished by turning all the people out of his ship except chiefs, and indeed it was in the afternoon of this day that he had a visit
Not for alarm; for the irritation had been undergone often enough before, and surmounted. Yet why should the wretched propensity be stronger now, and why should it be exercised so much more effectively on the Discovery than on her consort? Did some aura of the god lie upon the Resolution, even in her maimed state, a sort of discouragement to itching fingers, or was it that the Discovery lay nearer the beach, or was it pure chance? Did the reappearance of the ships, with that obvious damage to one of them, lower the esteem in which they had been held? Should the ship of a god have suffered damage at all? Had the prestige of Lono been damaged too? Had the people never really believed in Cook—Lono—or, after initial belief, had a week's reflection convinced them or influential chiefs to the contrary? We may remember King's words on the superiority the Hawaiians attributed to their visitor—'a Set of beings infinitely their superiors'—and the possibility of their respectful behaviour changing with greater familiarity. He had added a further reflection: 'the common people which are generally the most troublesome, are I am afraid here kept in so slavish a subordination to their Chiefs, that I doubt whether they would venture to give us offence without great encouragement in so doing from their Masters, whose passions & desires are as great as any of their brethren to posses such Novelties as we have.'Journals III, 525.
We get a partial answer to one of our questions from an incident of the afternoon of this 13 February. While the carpenters were busy over the mast beneath the heiau, at the other end of the short beach a party of sailors and Hawaiians, who had been paid for their help, were filling water for the Discovery, with her quartermaster, William Hollamby, in charge. A chief hindered the Hawaiians, and together with a mob of others caused a good deal of trouble; Hollamby therefore came to King and asked for a marine to act as a
Journals III, 529.
Much worse occurred in the later part of the afternoon. Kalei'opu'u had left the Discovery, and Clerke was entertaining in his cabin Palea, the chief whose spontaneous good offices had been so useful earlier. While he was doing so a 'rascal' (the word is Clerke's) somehow got up the ship's side, dashed across the deck, seized the armourer's tongs—the fatal attraction of that piece of equipment!—and a chisel, and was overboard again almost before anyone saw what he was about. A canoe—Palea's canoe—immediately picked him up and made for the shore. Clerke, hearing the alarm, ran up on deck and ordered muskets fired at her, but as she was rapidly getting out of range despatched his master, Edgar, after her in his small cutter with Vancouver the midshipman and two men, in such a hurry that they took no arms. The canoe won the race to the beach, and the thief vanished; but as Edgar was following her in he was met by another canoe, bringing back both the tongs and the chisel, and a third article which had not been missed, the lid of the water-cask. Meanwhile several other things happened. Palea told Clerke he would see that the stolen property was returned, and went on shore to do so, though not in his own canoe. The Resolution's pinnace, with a few men in her, rowing off the beach waiting for Cook, saw the chase, and pulled to the cutter's assistance. Cook and King, both busy, the one with the carpenters, the other in his observatory, heard the firing and saw the beginning of the chase. They could see that something valuable had been stolen. Cook called to King, and together with the corporal of marines and a private carrying his musket, they set off as fast as they could to intercept the thief as he reached the shore. King, outrunning the others, was too late even
Discovery's boat, had gone on at a great rate to catch the thief—quite misled by his informants for miles as to direction, and threatening that the marine would fire if they did not produce the man. There was a mob close about, and other bodies gathering as the dark came on; at first when the marine made as if to present his piece, the mob would fall back; then they began to laugh. Where now was the respect, where now were the prostrations before Lono, the murmurs of awe? Cook, the victim of a wild-goose chase, in an impossible and ridiculous position, simply had to accept the fact, and walk back to his boat; 'but I believe', records King, 'it was not from the smallest Idea of any danger.' The Hawaiians led him back by a different way.
Reaching the tents he heard another tale of woe from his coxswain, which must have been very like that recorded by Edgar. When Edgar was joined by the pinnace he assumed that she was armed—which she was not—and in addition seeing Cook and King running along the shore he assumed that he now had the advantage, and by seizing the thief's canoe could impose some punishment on evil-doing. The canoe, however, was Palea's, and he quite naturally objected. When Edgar persisted Palea took hold of him, on which one of the pinnace's men struck Palea on the head with an oar; and this provoked a shower of stones from part of the crowd on shore and a rush on the pinnace. She was aground; her crew leapt out and swam to some rocks not far off, where the cutter took them in. Edgar's story becomes a little confused, but it is clear that he and Vancouver were being stoned and beaten, while the pinnace was being gutted of her oars and moveables, and that Palea was their saviour; the chief stopped the mob, returned the pinnace with a whole oar and a broken one, and sent them off. They were joined by the cutter, which, wisely though ingloriously, had been lying out of stone's throw, and set off to report to Cook. As they went they were pursued by Palea in a canoe, bringing Vancouver's cap, snatched from him when he was knocked down in a separate mêlée; and with the question whether it would be safe for him to come on board next morning. He seems to have been an admirable man. He went on to Kaawaloa, where no doubt he gave his own version of the story, in which the emphasis would have been rather different from that of
n expressd his sorrow, that the behaviour of the Indians would at last oblige him to use force; for that they must not he said imagine they have gaind an advantage over us.'Journals III, 530.
Before King returned on shore he enquired for orders. Cook told him to call at the Discovery and hear all Edgar's details, and report on them in the morning when he came to take the chronometer on shore. King, with his mind a little perturbed, thought it wise to give the sentry particular instructions: if potential marauders were descried lurking at any distance, he was to be called; if any came so close that their intentions must undoubtedly be bad, the sentry was to fire at once. Half a dozen did come creeping warily at the bottom of the heiau during the night; shoot if one came on top, said King; and about midnight one appeared close to the observatory. We must suppose a nervous sentry; he seems to have dropped his piece, and when he at last let fly the intruder was gone. The rest of the night was peaceful; but in the dark hours something else happened. The Discovery's larger cutter was taken away. She was lying moored to one of the anchor buoys, sunk to the level of the water to prevent her plank from splitting in the hot sun, and she had gone without a sound, her moorings plainly cut through. This was a most serious loss, if it should prove a loss; for, though the Hawaiians might enjoy pulling a boat to pieces for the sake of the ironwork in her, she was the only large boat the ship had, and she could not cheerfully be let go. The people of the bay later put the blame on Palea. After the attempted impounding of his canoe and the blow on the head the evening before, he might quite well have wanted to solace some sense of injury, and presumably iron was as valuable to him as it was to his fellows. But he was anxious over his standing with Cook, and this would have been no way to improve it; in the light of his behaviour before and later such a plot seems unlikely; while it is not impossible that the Hawaiians, for reasons of their own, should have named him as someone known to the ships—or even named him at random.
Clerke hastened to the ibid., 549. Burney, Mitchell Resolution to inform Cook of the matter, and after some consultation Cook proposed sending the boats to the
Resolution's great cutter was sent after her. The cutter could not get up with her, but forced her ashore within the point. While Clerke was away, Cook came to another, apparently sudden, decision. King arrived on board, and 'found them all arming themselves & the Captn loading his double Barreld piece; on my going to acquaint him with the last nights adventure, he interruptd me & said we are not arming for the last nights affairs, they have stolen the Discoverys Cutter, & it is for that we are making preparations.'Resolution, to confirm that he had done as agreed. He found not Cook but Gore. Cook had gone on shore at Kaawaloa, his own musket loaded, one barrel with small shot, the other with ball, with an armed escort of Ms, Safe 1/79; ibid., 529, n. 1. Burney can hardly have heard the words himself, unless he were just then accidentally on board the Resolution, and he was certainly not at the scene of action, but he seems to have collected his information carefully. He adds to the words quoted, 'indeed, so many instances have occurred which have all helped to confirm this Opinion, that it is not to be wondered at, if every body thought the same.' Of course, the instances did not need to be Hawaiian ones.
But what did he—or anyone else, for that matter—know about the reaction of Hawaiians to musket fire? He had had no experience of it at all. Everybody thought the same, says Burney, who tells this story, founding the opinion on 'so many instances' of Indian
Looking back on this wearing, this worrying voyage we have remarked times of irritation, points at which the cautious, deliberate man was less than cautious and deliberate, and we have seen reasons for this. We have seen the problem of theft on all the voyages, so much a problem because to the islanders it carried no taint of crime—what should they know of crime?—but was, apart from being the means of acquiring articles useful or useless, both an amusement and a battle of wits. Multifarious as were the things that had been taken or attempted, a boat had never been stolen before—and one of the ships' best and most useful boats. It was too much. When King came on board the Resolution, then, this morning, after Clerke had left her with a clear understanding of what was to be done, he found a Cook—we must conclude—whose patience had been tried beyond its limit; who felt in some rather obscure way that the time had come when, once and for all, he would put an end to the burden these Polynesians—not Hawaiians only—put upon him. His hasty preparations themselves cast a light on the exasperation of his mind. We may, of course, throw away all this hypothesis and think only of calm action in a calm atmosphere. But then the action becomes almost casual: it is hard to see the connection with events. The hypothesis does not presuppose that Cook should not maintain the appearance, and a considerable measure, of calm.
Cook went away from the ship with three boats, himself in the pinnace, accompanied by the small cutter and the launch. The cutter, under Lanyon, the master's mate, was sent to lie off the north-west point of the bay to prevent canoes from leaving, according to the arrangement with Clerke. Cook, Molesworth Phillips, and the nine marines landed in a little cove of the rocks close to the village; the launch under Williamson and the pinnace under Roberts withdrew separately a few yards to keep off the bottom, hereabouts almost a labyrinth of lava. Of what was to happen from this moment we have a number of accounts, and a great deal of circumstantial evidence, all interesting, and mostly unreliable. Only Phillips was with Cook. He does not seem to have been an imaginative man, and is probably to be relied on. He reported to Clerke, who probed him before writing his own journal, and was careful in statement. What was seen from the pinnace, fairly close to the shore, is obviously important, though it is equally obvious that this was one of those affairs, the dramatic, emotional, swift-moving moments in history, of which every witness gives a different story, and every story is
In analysing what actually happened, once Cook was on shore, I have leant heavily on Phillips. There is a large amount of contributory evidence, apart from the accounts given by Clérke and King, Journals III, 533 ff. Not much of it is really revealing, and little of it comes from people who knew anything directly. I have collected most of it in the long footnote on pp. 536–8, and in other smaller pieces of annotation, pp. cxlix-clvii. Samwell obviously made a considerable effort to sift out a clear, circumstantial and honest account, ibid., 1194–1202, and did not feel that King as printed had the whole truth; but he himself did not wholly satisfy Trevenen. Trevenen, says Penrose (Memoirs, Turnbull Ms, 14) 'was highly pleased with the general spirit with which his friend Samwell's account of that transaction was written; yet he expressed himself not so thoroughly satisfied as he expected to have been from the very high opinion he entertained of that gentleman's abilities.' He thought Samwell's pamphlet (Narrative of the Death of Captain James Cook, London, 1786) was highly useful; yet 'it is not what I expected from him—some things are represented different from my conception, and in situations which should seem to render minute detail impossible.' This is a criticism which could be made of most of the accounts. Trevenen himself was in the small cutter with Lanyon and three other midshipmen.
Cook and the marines marched into the village, where Cook enquired for Kalei'opu'u and his two lively young sons, who spent much of their time on board the Resolution. The boys soon came and took him and Phillips to their father's hut. After waiting some time Cook began to doubt whether he was there and sent in Phillips to see. He was just awake, but came out to see Cook at once. A few words made it obvious that he knew nothing of the stolen cutter, and he very readily accepted the invitation to the ship. He started off for the beach with Cook and Phillips; one of the boys ran ahead and jumped happily into the pinnace. So far all was well; but near the waterside Kalei'opu'u's wife and two lesser chiefs came up, began to argue with him, and made him sit down. There was a change in the chief: he 'appear'd dejected and frighten'd', says Phillips; apparently he was being told he would be killed. A great crowd had now gathered, quite clearly not well-disposed. So many muskets, and the obvious lack of friendliness, had caused alarm. Cook pressed the chief; his friends insisted he should not go; the noise increased. The few marines were huddled in the midst of the Hawaiians; Phillips proposed to Cook that they should form a line along the rocks by the water, facing the crowd; Cook agreed, and the people quite willingly made way for them. Nevertheless the Hawaiians were arming themselves with spears and stones—to repel any force that might be exerted on Kalei'opu'u, so Phillips thought: many had daggers, some of them the iron ones obtained from the English. Then, remarks Phillips, 'an Artful Rascal of a Priest was singing & making a ceremonious offering of a coco Nut to the Capt and Terre'oboo to divert their attention from the Manœuvres of
Two things now happened difficult to put in order, nor is their precise order particularly important. One, in relation to Cook, was a mere chance. At the other end of the bay, to keep a canoe from escaping, muskets had been fired—by Rickman among others—and a man killed. The man was Kalimu, a chief of high rank. Another chief hastening to the ships in indignation to pour out the story to Cook was disregarded, and forthwith made for the beach. It was Cook he wanted, not the crowd. It was the crowd that got the news, spreading like wildfire, not Cook; and the news was enough, with the other thing, to carry them over the borderline of excitement into attack. The other thing was Cook's own act. As he made his way to the boat he was threatened by one of the mob with a dagger and a stone—seriously or in mere bravado we cannot tell. Cook fired one barrel of his musket, loaded with small shot, at this person, and at that moment, when, we must think, the strained cord of his temper snapped, he lost the initiative. The man being protected by his heavy war mat, the shot did no damage—except that it further enraged the Hawaiians. Kalei'opu'u's young son in the pinnace was frightened and was put ashore; but even then the men in the boats saw no particular reason for alarm. In the next second the wave broke. A chief attempted to stab Phillips, stones were hurled, a marine was knocked down, Cook fired his other barrel, loaded with ball, and killed a man; Phillips fired, there was a general attack, Cook ordered the marines to fire, and the boats joined in unordered. Phillips had time to reload his musket. The overwhelmed marines did not. Cook shouted 'Take to the boats!', an order hardly necessary, as the unfortunate and ill-trained men were already scrambling into the water and towards the pinnace, 'totally vanquish'd', as Phillips said. Phillips himself was knocked down by a stone and stabbed in the shoulder, shot his assailant dead and managed to get to the pinnace; and then out of it again to save the life of a drowning man. In all this tumult he lost sight of Cook. The men in the pinnace saw Cook's last
There is no justification for the statement commonly made that he was waving to the boats to stop firing.Resolution, hearing the uproar and the firing, and seeing, whatever might be the meaning of it all, that there was trouble on shore, fired those of her own four-pounders that could be brought to bear. It seems that the crowd had retired somewhat, and there was a space of time enough to reclaim bodies. The men in the boats may have been shocked out of all awareness of this. Leaving the dead, Cook and four marines, where they lay, the boats rowed back in silence to the ships; and the ships fell silent.
On no one did the inconceivable fall more heavily than on the sick man Clerke. If he had been crushed, or if he had been swept into an excess of excitement, in either case it could have been understood; but the wasting away of his body did not disturb the quality of his mind. He briefly entertained, and discarded, the idea of summary vengeance. His level-headedness made even King, unbalanced for a day or two and ready for extreme measures, think that he was unable to reach any decision at all: in reality his perceptiveness was matched by his tact and his firmness, and made him the master of a situation which could quite easily have gone from disaster to disaster. His men would have turned the bay into a shambles; the Hawaiians might have put the ships into such a state of siege as to cancel the rest of the voyage. Vengeance on a grand scale would certainly have been both difficult and inept. It was not possible to maintain a complete control. In some sporadic skirmishing round the heiau and the spring the men of a watering party showed how savage sailors could be—were guilty, in the words of a King who had regained his balance, of'many reprehensible things'; the people, at once appalled and exultant at what they had done, did not omit to provide temptation. A few guns were fired; there was no assault on canoes. On both sides, as the days passed, the temperature was lowered. It may have helped, in the ships, that the immediate rage for revenge was mingled with a rage against Williamson over his conduct at the crisis. He faced a storm of accusation, as the person who could have saved Cook's life and did not. Clerke felt compelled to make some sort of specific enquiry. He could not be convinced of any real degree of turpitude, whatever he thought of the man's power of judgment, and the matter dropped. Phillips, who hated Williamson as much as anyone did, was clear that nothing he could have done would have had that sort of utility. The first conclusion Clerke came to we may regard as a determining thought in all his policy of these last days at t Cook attempted to chastise a man in the midst of this multitude'—relying, in the last resort, on the fire of the marines to disperse it.Journals III, 538–9.Journals III, 593–4.
Whatever might be thought on that matter, there could be no divergence on two immediately necessary things. The first was to get back the abandoned bodies—or anyhow Cook's. The second was to secure the mast and put the Resolution into order—for 'we were now really in a tatter'd condition'. There was less difficulty about the second than the first. A strong armed party brought off everything on shore at the heiau, and the mast was placed fore and aft on the forecastle and quarterdeck for the carpenters to work on it. In the evening the boats were sent with King and Burney to demand the bodies. The people seemed pleased to see a flag of truce and discarded their weapons; the priest Koa swam out to King and said that Cook's body, carried far into the country, could not be delivered till the morrow; other people told Burney that it had already been cut up. Of the marines there was little mention. When the unsuccessful party returned Clerke got the impression that next day, in some state or other, the remains would be returned. No one knew the Hawaiian habit with the bodies of great men, especially great men—perhaps gods—killed in war, and those in the ships could but speculate during the night on the meaning of the lights flickering high up on the hill above the pali and the obvious fires that burnt there. The new day brought nothing but old Koa and a companion in a canoe with a white flag, some little pigs, and fair promises; and Koa became both tedious and suspect. There was no reason, indeed, why the Hawaiians should have readily fallen in with British sentiment, which they in their turn would have found quite incomprehensible; and after all, they were the victors, even if they had lost more men in the wretched affray than the defeated—four chiefs, in fact (including two who had been very good friends to the ships),
heiau and the chiefs of the other end of the bay: the priesthood remained as benevolent and generous as always. The exception was Koa, against whom he gave warning. Kalei'opu'u all through these days seems to have played an entirely passive part, though for the ultimate decision to return the bones his consent, at least, must certainly have been necessary.
Clerke made it clear that he wanted these last remains. There was still delay. Meanwhile, as Cook's successor in leadership, he re-arranged the command on orthodox lines. Gore went to the Such trophies were normally distributed among great chiefs, and accordingly with Cook's remains there was a little problem in collecting them again. King learnt that the head or skull had gone to 'kahoo-opcou' (? Kekuhaupio, a warrior of immense distinction); the hair to 'Maia-maia' (Kamehameha, the future king); 'and the legs, thighs and arms to Terreeoboo.'—Discovery as her captain; King became first lieutenant, and Williamson (by virtue of seniority) second lieutenant of the Resolution; while Harvey, the banished midshipman of Huahine fame, was brought back to her as third. He had outlived Cook's resentment, and Clerke could reflect that the promotion was something already designed. Then there was the episode of the watering party, its stoning by natives still belligerent, the brutal retaliation, the firing of a village and the belongings of priests who had been promised immunity. Outrageous as this was, it brought submission, the green boughs and white flags of peace, a revived trade in provisions; perhaps helped on the resolve to surrender sacred trophies. On the 19th, the day that work on the mast was finished, Kalei'opu'u sent a present as earnest of his desire for peace. First, said Clerke, the remains of Captain Cook. Next morning the mast was stepped, not without difficulty; and at noon a procession came down the hill opposite the ship, with hogs, fruit and roots, bearing flags, beating drums, uttering loud cries; the chief in the lead handed over a bundle 'very decently wrap'd up', and covered with a cloak of black and white feathers. Good, said Clerke, who was prepared to be hospitable; but what about the marines? They, alas, it was explained, had been distributed among various chiefs in different parts of the island, to collect them would be impossible; it was different with Cook, the property of the king. Clerke thought best to drop the subject. The bundle was opened in the cabin of the Resolution. It contained,
Voyage to the Pacific, III, 78. The missionary heiau dedicated to Lono on the other side of the island, and carried in annual religious procession—until, with the 'abolition of idolatry' in 1819, they disappeared, probably hidden in some secret cave. Almost everything else that could be called a relic of Cook's visit was venerated, he adds.—Narrative of a Tour through Hawaii (London, 1827), 117–18.
There was one more day. The fatal mast was now in place and rigged; trade was plentiful and theft unknown. Kalei'opu'u remained invisible, though he had sent to claim a red baize cloak edged with green that had been promised to him before the disastrous event, and let one of his sons, a charming and accomplished beggar, come on board the King, Resolution. Women had never entirely deserted the ships; they had even stood on deck and admired the flames of the burning village. Some, as they saw the preparations for departure, took passage for another island—they did not seem to care which. It was a pattern repeated. How really friendly the people were in general, and how they regarded the deeds of the lapsed week, it is impossible to say. Some wept over the death of Cook, and asked when Erono would return—a curious question, thought King. Some enquired what he would do to them when he returned; some said he would return in two months, and begged their English friends to mediate with him.Journals III, 561; Trevenen, ibid., n.; Samwell, ibid., 1217. On the general question of Cook's godhead, and the sceptical case put by Narrative) and Colnett.
The winds were not good, and progress was rather slow and painful, as close in as possible to the westward coasts of Kahoolawe, Maui with its great extinct crater, Lanai, the mountain mass of Molokai, and between that island and Oahu, tracing another eastern shore, well populated, green, fertile, most beautiful. Rounding its north-eastern point, Clerke anchored for a few hours in a promising bay; landing, he was received with prostration and pigs, but found only a brackish supply of water. Obviously he must make for Kauai, where he hoped also for yams, good keepers at sea; and having got rid of all his women on Oahu, lest they should talk too much of Hawaiian misfortune, he was at the old anchorage in Waimea Bay on 1 March, prepared for a stay of some days. He at once sent a watering party on shore. Whether or not the news of Cook's death had arrived, and lowered the prestige of the visitors, the people were at first truculent, and on that day in defence a man was shot dead. It could not be called a cruel or gratuitous act, like that of Williamson the year before—the careful King was in command, there was little further conflict, and watering was completed without trouble. Trade went on apace; Kauai, thought Clerke, was 'the most extraordinary Hog Island we ever met with', and there was fruit; but the season, as luck would have it, was bad for yams. As there was plenty of salt, a large amount of pork was cured for future needs. The everlasting problem of the Resolution's leaky sides was again evident, and all the carpenters were employed on them. Chiefs, even a 'queen' came on board the ships; a great deal was learnt about the tangled politics of the island, which possessed some extraordinary personalities and a lively civil war—in which Cook's goats had perished; great inducements were held out to likely persons to stay and lend their aid in the struggle; but the idea of desertion, which had seemed so fair at Tahiti or Raiatea, had become not at all attractive, and there was no trouble on that score. After a week the ships crossed to Niihau, to try again for yams. Here also the supply was disappointing, and another week was productive of little beyond boisterous weather. On 15 March they departed south-west on a brief unavailing search for the elusive turtle island 'Modoopapappa', which remained an
Journals III, 576. Clerke attributes the severity of the visitation in Hawaii, in contrast to the Friendly and Society islands, to the quantity of salt the Hawaiians made use of in their customary diet. —'It certainly is a most unfortunate and ever to be lamented incident, here's a most miserable curse entail'd upon these poor Creatures which never can end but with the general dissolution of Nature.
At Niihau Clerke's longitude was about 200° E, his latitude a little short of 22° N. His plan—which may have been Cook's, or perhaps was a modification of it—was to stand to the west in latitude 20°-21° as far as longitude 170° E before turning north, so as to cover as much of the unknown part of the ocean as possible, though he could hardly avoid crossing the Manila galleons' course at some stage; but with the varying weather and baffling breezes that he had he was no farther on this course than longitude 180° by the end of March. He therefore decided at that time to haul to the northward for Kamchatka, confident that he would still be on a course not previously sailed, and be as likely to pick up new discoveries as on the one he had set out to follow. There were no new discoveries. There were old trials. In April gales old rigging gave way, old sails split; both ships leaked, especially the Resolution, though in new places. As the ships got farther north the men, who had traded most of their clothes for female favours in the islands, felt the cold; fortunately the warm jackets that had been issued for the Arctic had all been collected on the passage south from Unalaska and were in store, and these, together with a few slops that still remained, saved them from too bitter a frost-biting. They were abundantly fed. On 19 April the temperature was 29½ degrees, a fall of 53 degrees since
Resolution's chronometer, 'the Time Keeper', the 'trusty guide', had broken down. As the month ended the ice which blocked Avacha Bay was clearing; on the 29th the Resolution got inside, and within a mile of the village of Petropavlovsk before she was stopped; on 1 May she was joined by the Discovery, and everybody could shudder at the idea of a winter spent at that place.
Avacha Bay was the only harbour on the east coast of Kamchatka. Petropavlovsk, like a few other villages in the southern part of the country, was supposed to be a fortified post; but when King and Webber, despatched as linguists, reached it by stumbling painfully over the ice, they found that its armament and its scurvy-ridden exiguous military force, as the Kamchatkan winter drew to a close, could stimulate nothing but sad laughter. The sergeant in charge was most obliging, and concealed the alarm he felt at the appearance of two armed ships, large by his standards, before the few log houses and native huts of his command in that dreary snow-covered wilderness. The country had, indeed, been largely depopulated by smallpox, and what supplies were to be obtained must obviously be sent for and bestowed by higher authority. The only place of account was Bolsheretsk on the other side of the peninsula, the seat of government and of trade, and the sergeant was willing enough to pass on to the governor, Major Behm, the letters which Ismailov had given Cook at Unalaska. When two persons came in reply to this to inspect the situation it was clear that Ismailov had badly misrepresented the ships, and Clerke decided to send King, Webber and Gore (the last eager to go for the novelty, though useless on an embassy as he spoke nothing but English) on the river and sledge journey overland to interview Behm. They were absent a fortnight, while the ice cleared and the early herbage appeared above ground, and the carpenters set once more to work on the rotting heart-breaking Resolution. Cook's regimen in diet was in full force, nettle-tops and wild onions were collected, fish was obtained in vast quantities, under the surgeons' directions even the Russian garrison was
The governor was amazed at the healthy appearance of the seamen, three years out from home, in so much better order than their ships were. Yet one more man had died, Alexander McIntosh, a respected carpenter's mate of the King gave a full account of the difficulties in a letter to the secretary of the Board of Longitude from Petropavlovsk, 10 June 1779, a copy of which is in the Banks Papers in the Mitchell Library Resolution, of a long-lasting 'flux'—the only man to perish of sickness, it was thought, who was not doomed from the start of the voyage. As June began the vessels had been made seaworthy once more, though ropes and cables would stand little strain. Ropes could be spliced, or some substitute found: the Time Keeper presented a more difficult problem. It had been religiously guarded and wound by Cook and King, and no one could imagine why it should have stopped. Among the Resolution's people was Benjamin Lyon, a seaman who had served his apprenticeship to a watchmaker, and had kept his hand in by odd work on the voyage. Clerke called him into consultation: he found
Ms A 78.1, printed in Journals III, 1541–2. He hoped for the best, but Bayly (Astronomical Observations, 69) says it was rendered 'in a manner useless during the remaining part of the voyage'. After repair by Kendall it went with Captain Phillip in the First Fleet to Australia, returned to England in the Supply in 1792, and seems to have served with Jarvis/St Vincent till 1802. See Derek Howse, 'Captain Cook's Marine Timekeepers', in Antiquarian Horology, 1969, 190–9.
By the middle of June, after final exercises of friendship, the ships were engaged in the tedious process of getting away from Petropavlovsk and out of the bay, weighing, anchoring, weighing, towing, the dismal gloom of fog intensified by the ash and cinders thrown over them by a tremendous eruption of Avachinskaya, the most active of the volcanoes that stud the land for some distance north. On the 18th they were safely at sea, and for the next two and a half weeks followed the Kamchatkan coast amid much foggy weather, in which still the true nature of St Lawrence island could not be made out. They were through the strait by 6 July, and at once among heavy drift ice. The following period of three weeks was one of utter frustration. Cook could have done no more, on this attempt to do what Cook had failed to do. Clerke first made over to the American shore, to investigate the piece of coast from Kotzebue Sound northwards that had been missed the previous season. He was blocked by ice, still firm. He bore away to the west, in latitude 68°1′—the penalty of being so early in the season was that the main ice field was farther south than Cook had found it—running through the drift ice and trying to force a passage northward, the ships brought to a dead stop with battered bows when they hit some formidable lump, finding the ice bent round south-westward towards the Asian shore; finding that to keep in touch with its main line they must be always among the drift. Obstinate and unconquerable the barrier remained. Clerke persisted in his effort until the early morning of 19 July, when, at the end of a deep bay formed by solid ice, he was in latitude 70°33′, a few miles short of Cook's farthest north, and about one degree of longitude to the west of it. Then there was nothing he could do but follow the line of ice southward.
0ward': but he would not quite give up. 'I therefore think it the best step I can take for the good of the service to trace the Ice over to the Asiatic Coast, try if I can find a Hole that will admit me any farther North, if not see whats to be done upon that Coast where I hope but cannot much flatter myself with meeting better success, for this Sea is now so Choak'd with Ice that a passage I fear is totally out of the question.'Journals III, 696–7. The position for this day was later added to his entry—latitude 69°37′ N, longitude 193°7′ E.
There was no hole leading to the north; there was no passage to the west; the Asian coast was thickly bordered with ice; the Mitchell Library, Brabourne Papers, Discovery, having survived some frightening danger from entanglement in the ice, emerged with much of her sheathing gone and a bad leak; the attempt was on the 27th abandoned, and on 30 July the ships repassed Bering Strait. They made their passage south farther out to sea than on the way north, to the east of the Komandorski islands, Bering and Medni, before turning into the coast. On 10 August Clerke dictated to King, his 'very dear and particular friend', his last letter to another friend, 'ever honoured', Banks—the document that carries most pathos in all the records of these voyages.Ms A 78; Journals III, 1542–4.
Two days more and they were in harbour, gazing with a lift of the heart at the transformed country, the Kamchatka of summer. Gore, now commander of the expedition, returned to the The greater part of the letter was a formal explanation of the reason for putting into Petropavlovsk: 5 October 1779.—Resolution, bringing with him Burney and Rickman as the senior lieutenants; King took command of the Discovery, to which went also Williamson and William Lanyon, a master's mate in the Resolution and a veteran
Resolution. It was a stay of seven weeks, and some men found it tedious. Tents were at once set up for wooders, waterers, sailmakers and coopers; the forge was taken ashore; there were hands gathering greens and hauling the seine. There was much to be done to both ships: planks were stove, ironwork twisted, rudders damaged, sails in rags, rigging unkempt. On the 29th Clerke was given burial ashore, with salutes and all the dignity that could be provided; his shipmates planted willows round his grave, and Gore himself composed inscriptions for it and for the 'escutcheon' which the good pastor agreed should be hung in the church at Paratunka. Bullocks were driven to Petropavolvsk from the interior; other stores were brought from Okhotsk. An interpreter, who understood French and German, and played the fiddle, was provided by the Russians; he was the exile Ivashkin, strange figure of an alien romance, thus given fame;Journals III, clxvi, 1276.Resolution and at the tents for the local ladies. The ships' freemasons held lodge meetings. Anniversaries were appropriately celebrated: the British monarch's coronation, the name day of the Russian empress. The talk of furs from America brought merchants across the country from Bolsheretsk, who paid well for them; as there was neither gin nor tobacco to spend money on, observes King, the sailors were before long kicking their roubles about the deck. Other, more responsible, sailors now had time to consider the prospects of a regular fur-trade with the American coast. Spruce beer was again brewed, and before long it had to be drunk, if men were to drink anything besides water: on 5 October the last of the grog ran out. The short summer came to an end, and the winter began to set in; the leaves fell, the country became desolate and barren, the inland mountains were covered with snow; it was high time to be gone. One man wanted to stay, the Discovery's drummer, not from love of island ease but of a Kamchadale woman. He was torn from her arms. Gore felt it incumbent on himself to address the British Ambassador at the
Journals III, 1546.
The instructions for the voyage left it to Cook, if he were debarred from returning home by a north-west or north-east passage, to adopt what route he thought fit. Gore, inheriting them, had no dictatorial instinct, and took his officers into consultation. They agreed that the best plan would be to trace the eastern sides of the very inadequately known Kurile islands and Japan and settle some latitudes and longitudes, then call at Canton for supplies, and make directly for the Cape, altogether avoiding Batavia. This, it was hoped, would add something to Geography and Navigation. It added very little. They sailed from Avancha Bay on 10 October, were deprived by contrary winds of any sight of the Kuriles and by fierce gales of anything beyond fleeting glimpses of the Japanese islands, so that the next land to be sighted clearly, and rather unexpectedly, was the Volcano or Kazan islands, far to the east of Formosa; they missed the Bashi, or Batan, islands, where Gore thought he might call for refreshment, south of Formosa, and passing through the Bashi channel into the China Sea narrowly missed running on the deadly Pratas shoal. Reading between King's lines, one feels some unstated reserve about Gore's quality as a scientific navigator, however just his reputation as a practical seaman. By then it was almost the end of November, and the north-east monsoon season; but a fortunate shift in the wind let them make the coast of China, and on 4 December they were moored on 'the Typa', a sort of shallow harbour between the islands which lie off the Portuguese settlement of Macao, at the mouth of the Canton river. A few days before this all journals, charts, and other papers relevant to the voyage had been surrendered. As the Portuguese had nothing they could dispose of, and the Chinese were difficult, it was necessary to get in touch with the merchants of the English factory at Canton to arrange for supplies, and King was sent up the river to expedite them. The merchants were full of courtesies. There was news at Macao that France, as well as the American colonies, was waging war against England. Surely the Americans had given up long ago! Burney set busily about preparing for the worst by making that minutely-written copy of his journal on China paper which is one of the curiosities of the voyage:
On this, see Martin-Allanic, Bougainville, II, 1455, 1459; the text of Journals III, 1535; and the letter of J. H. de Magellan to Banks, 23 June 1779, ibid., 1542. The American Congress was slow to follow the example of Franklin. After the war the Admiralty showed its appreciation of his gesture by presenting him with a copy of the printed Voyage, and the
In the China Sea they called for a week at Pulo Condore, a small high island where they were able to buy a number of buffaloes for fresh meat, to cut wood, and fish; then coasted Sumatra, passed the Strait of Sunda, watering at Prince's Island, and steered for the Cape—or rather, Gore not wishing to call there, for St Helena. The Indian Ocean provided pleasant sailing weather, except in the second week, when a violent storm tore to pieces every sail set, and—probably—started the strain on the Gore to Admiralty Secretary, 1 May 1780; P.R.O. Adm 1/1839, Resolution's rudder which made it necessary for her to seek an earlier port. She could not even turn up round the Cape into Table Bay, and was forced to put in to False Bay—to Simonstown, as we should say—for repair. This was on 12 April. At the Cape the tidings of Cook's death brought dismay. Phillips and Williamson are said to have fought a duel, somewhat to the discredit of the latter. Gore was met by a communication from the Admiralty, addressed to Cook, apprising him of the French care for the safety of the ships, and learnt from the governor that the Spanish, who had come into the war, had ordered the same immunity. He therefore decided he had better not sail in company with any other British vessel; for if she were attacked how could he refrain from battle?—and that could cancel out the benefit conferred on neutral science. In case of any accident that might happen to the Resolution (‘She being very Weak in her Hull’), he informed Their Lordships in the letter that contained this thought, he was sending by His Majesty's Ship Sybil journals, observations and drawings, together with 'a Gentleman (One of our Masters Mates) who goes
Journals III, 1556–7.Resolution's 'birthday' was celebrated—the fourth anniversary of her leaving England; opening the Channel on 9 August they were shut out of it by an easterly, tried in vain for a port on the west of Ireland, and anchored for the first time since the Cape in the Orkney islands, at Stromness, on 22 August. Here Gore waited a month for a favourable wind, to the disgust, the indignation, of midshipmen who wanted to see first their mothers, and then prize-money—was there not a war still going on? Was this immobility in tune with 'the sublime & soaring genius of a Cook?' King was sent overland to London for the benefit of the Admiralty. Sergeant Gibson of the marines, now one of the seniors of circumnavigation, improved the time by getting married. Gore at length thought fit to sail, round the Orkneys and down the east coast that Cook had known so well. Sergeant Gibson, and another man, died. On 4 October the ships were in the Thames; without Cook; without Anderson; without Clerke.
There could be pleasure over their arrival, there could be no vast official excitement. The Admiralty had had the essential information early in the year. England, Europe knew that Cook was dead. The poetasters were at work on their afflicting verse. There was nothing to tell about the great central purpose of the voyage. The ships were paid off. There was no twenty thousand pounds to distribute. There were promotions and appointments. Gore and King became post-captains, and Gore went to Cook's vacant berth at Greenwich Hospital; there was a crop of lieutenants; Molesworth Phillips became a captain. There was scrambling among collectors for the bird-skins and other 'curiosities' brought home: Sir Ashton Lever competed with Banks, Mrs Anna Blackburne of Fairfield nourished a hope. Banks got his dried plants. The booksellers began to scout for anything that could be called an account or a journal. Those returned adventurers who knew on what grand lines their adventure had been planned, and were inquisitive, could enquire into that other expedition, the instructions for which had been made known to
Unfortunate Pickersgill! Everything was against him, the task he was given to do, the circumstances of his appointment, his own temperament. The task was impossible. His ship was the armed brig Lyon, which had spent several seasons surveying on the Newfoundland coast under Michael Lane, who had been Cook's mate in the Grenville on that duty, and had succeeded him in it, with distinction. Lane was now superseded by Pickersgill, and appointed to serve under him—which could not have been pleasant for either of them. The Admiralty, or the History of the Voyages and Discoveries made in the North (London, 1786), 407–8.
He was followed in the Lyon not by Lane, who at least might have
Dixson Library, Coxe to Herbert, 16 January 1780, in Lord Herbert (ed.), The precise dates, as recorded on the family memorial in the church of St Andrew the Great at Cambridge, were Elizabeth 9 April 1771; Joseph 13 September 1768; George 1 October 1772.'Dear Sir', wrote Sandwich to Banks, on 10 January 1780, 'what is uppermost in our mind allways must come out first, poor captain Cooke is no more …'.Ms Q 158; Journals III, 1552–3.London Gazette made the news public next day. Letter-writers less closely implicated were quick to spread it. The Rev. William Cox, his account of the Russian discoveries between Asia and America then in the press, told his young friend Henry, Elizabeth and George (London, 1939), 393; Herbert to Coxe, 16 February 1780, ibid., 413.Endeavour; and now, at ages more mature, they were pursuing their careers in the navy more actively. James had entered the naval Royal Academy at Portsmouth when eleven, Nathaniel was shortly to follow him, and in 1780 they were up and coming young midshipmen. The youngest son was Hugh, the child of 1776, Palliser's godson. Three children had died prematurely (as the custom was, one might say): Elizabeth, the only daughter, at the age of four, in 1771, three months before the Endeavour's return; Joseph, at the age of a month, in September 1768; George, at the age of four months, in October 1772. These losses the wife bore with her husband absent.Thunderer, 74, Captain Boyle Walsingham, on the West Indian station. In a famous and fearful hurricane that sank thirteen vessels of the royal navy his ship went down, off the coast of Jamaica, on 3 October, with all her company; and it may well be thought that
At least she would not be materially cast on the world. The indications are that she was not an extravagant woman. During the last voyage, as Cook's wife, she had been allowed by the Admiralty the yearly sum of, £300 which had been paid up to August 1779, though her pension would begin with the date of Cook's death. The Navy Board, though willing to be generous, had to have specific direction on the matter from their Lordships; Sandwich went to the king immediately, and the over-payment was approved. Navy Board to Admiralty Secretary, 30 May 1780, P.R.O. Probate 11/1060 (10).Adm/BP/1, loose paper; Admiralty to Navy Board, 1 June 1780, Adm/A/2752, loose paper; Journals III, 1557–8.
She was not affected financially by Nathaniel's death, in the week that the returning ships anchored in the Thames, the beneficiaries thereby being James and Hugh. But the ships' return brought King and Bayly before the Board of Longitude to report on their activities; and as the presence of Cook and King jointly in the Board of Longitude Minutes, VI, 4 November 1780, 3 March 1781, Royal Observatory, Herstmonceux; According to Banks, a committee sat on the drawings and the charts, and selected those for reproduction, Banks and Webber were to supervise the engraving of the drawings, Dalrymple (‘at Lord Sandwich's desire’) that of the charts and the coastal views—except the general chart by ibid., and Memorandum by Banks confined to the division of the profits, dated Thursday, 28 July 1785. Grey George Nicol to Banks, 14 January 1801. Grey Resolution had saved the Board the salary of an astronomer, it was resolved to pay Mrs Cook, as well as King, a gratuity of £500—for 'the use of herself and children in such way as she shall judge most proper.' This was settled between November 1780 and April 1781.Journal III, 1561–2, 1563.Voyage to the Pacific Ocean …for Making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere appeared, in three volumes quarto. The first two of these were edited by Douglas from Cook's journal, with considerable interpolations from Anderson's; the third was written by King. The delay in publication, so much deplored by an avid public, was occasioned much by the complications of the unusually large number of engraved pictures and charts. There was no need, one may think, for the tremendous irony of bringing in for a while as adviser on the latter, and attempted meddler in them, of r Dalrymples direction were elegantly engraved at Reasonable prices, but the general chart which was under the sole direction of the admiralty cost a large Sum of money.'—Undated memorandum, Banks Papers, Sutro Library, San Francisco.Mss 59 Auckland Public Library.Mss 71, Auckland Public Library.
Sade and Mary Blade, Mile End, to Mrs Frances McAllister, Philadelphia, 6 July 1788; National Library of Australia, Canberra, Elizabeth Honeychurch, Mile End, to Mrs McAllister, 29 March 1792, National Library of Australia, Canberra, Mrs Cook to Banks, 16 August 1784; E. Honeychurch wrote to Mrs McAllister, 12 September 1794, about her, that the news of the drowning 'quite overcame her, and she has not been able to come down stairs, or eat a bit of bread since, within these few weeks she has eat a small bit of Veal, or Lamb, or a little Fish, since which she has thought herself rather better tho' she has two fits every day Night and Morning and they hold her an hour, and I am afraid they will never leave her, it is a long time to be in such a state….'—National Library of Australia, Canberra, rs Cook has left Mile End, gon to Live in Surry but where Cannot Tell nor neither Do Mutch Care.'Nk 9528. Mrs McAllister, born Frances Wardale, was the cousin of Cook's who had lived with Mrs Cook at the time of the first voyage.rs Cook who I think might have found time to have sent you a few lines tho she lives in high Life at Clapham & keeps a Footman—her eldest son is a Lietenant has a Horse and lives in stile; the youngest is design'd for a Clergyman, he is a fine tall
Nk 9528.Notes and Queries, 8th series, iv (1893), 165.Spitfire sloop of war, at Portsmouth, without delay, and in spite of weather working up to a hard blow, embarked in an open boat. His body was found on the shore of the Isle of Wight, with a head wound how inflicted it was impossible to say, with pockets empty of money or valuables, and the damaged boat not far away. Of the boat's crew no trace was ever found. At that the mother collapsed utterly.Nk 9528.
Yet she must have had enormous physical strength; she had forty-one years more to live. She lived many of them with her cousin Isaac Smith, who on his promotion to superannuated rear-admiral retired to Clapham. Between him and his brother Charles of Merton Abbey close by, and herself, there was great mutual affection; and when Charles died in 1827 and left his Merton Abbey property to Isaac, she went there with him till his death in 1831. Then she returned to her house at Clapham. In her old age handsome, with good bones and a great deal of dignity, rather than warmly beautiful, her white hair rolled back in an eighteenth century fashion, her face a rather squarish oval, nose aquiline, mouth good but rather too
The preceding paragraph is a good deal founded on the childhood reminiscences of Canon Frederick Bennett, son of John Leach Bennett, Mrs Cook's executor, supplied to Sir Walter Besant for his Smith to E. H. Locker, 8 October 1830; Mitchell Library (Safe 1/83). L. Bennett to John McAllister Jr., 7 April 1852; National Library of Australia, Canberra, Her will is preserved in P.R.O., Probate 11/1847 (346). Cook's Copley medal and Mrs Cook's Royal Society gold medal went to the British Museum. There was evidently some discontent. William Slaughter of South Shields, a Fleck connection, writes to McAllister, 30 November 1854, 'Mrs Cook died worth between £50,000 and £60,000 of which, not more than £3,000 came to all the Family of MargCaptain Cook (1890), 190; and of Miss Eliza Elliotson, of Clapham, as recorded by Louisa Jane Mackrell, great-niece of Isaac Smith.rs Cook had employed herself in destroying letters and papers and in giving away, or settling to whom they should be given after her death, articles of more value.'Nk 9528.t Fleck, the only surviving relative of the Capt; how it is I know not; but I am inclined to think there has been a Screw loose somewhere.'—Nla, Canberra, Nk 9528. Certainly the will was sworn for probate at under £60,000. On the other hand, Mrs Fleck had not done badly out of Mrs Cook in earlier years.
There is one remark by Mrs Cook recorded which has a domestic interest. Among her possessions was a painting by Webber of Cook which she disliked because it made him look severe, and she was 'hurt' by the idea that he was severe. Smith to E. H. Locker, 8 October 1830; Mitchell Library (Safe 1/83). Locker himself writes, on the Dance portrait, 'His widow, who preserves all her faculties on the verge of ninety, has more than once expressed to the author of this memoir, her regret that a portrait in all other respects so perfect, should convey this erroneous expression to the eye of a stranger. For she, with the tenderness peculiar to her sex, regards him still with the lively recollection of a husband uniformly kind and affectionate, and of a father dearly loving his children.'—Gallery of Greenwich Hospital, part I (1831), 16. There must, it seems have been some confusion between the two pictures. It is hard to see severity in Dance, not hard in Webber.
The Royal Society's medal, following hard on the Voyage, the armorial bearings of a year later, were themselves panegyrics. The medal, proposed by Banks, the work of Lewis Pingo, the engraver to the Royal Mint, was struck at the mint in gold, silver and bronze for subscribers, and for presentation gratis to a few favoured persons. It is not a remarkably distinguished medal, Pingo being no great artist though technically proficient, but its inscriptions are not infelicitous: Jac. Cook Oceani Investigator Acerrimus, Horace's tag
Nil Intentatum Nostri Liquere. Cook had indeed been a most zealous explorer of the ocean; there was little hyperbole in the declaration that he and his men—'our' men, for were they not Britons?—had left nothing unattempted; there was some pride that he was of the fellowship, socio suo. The obverse was adapted to decorate the title-page of the second edition of the Voyage. The coat of arms was granted to the family in September 1785. It is a curious exercise, not so much in mediaevalism as in a sort of late eighteenth century romantic realism. The shield azure bears between its two golden 'polar stars' no heraldic symbol but a map of the Pacific hemisphere, with every tenth degree of latitude marked and every fifteenth of longitude; superimposed are Cook's tracks in red, ending precisely at Hawaii. 'And for a crest, on a wreath of the colours, is an arm imbowed, vested in the uniform of a captain of the Circa orbem, below the shield another adaptation from the Nil intentatum reliquit. Mrs Cook did not keep a carriage, and what she did with this fantasy is not recorded. It is curious that no addition to the naval monuments in St Paul's Cathedral seems to have been contemplated. The sculptors were ready.
It is easier to write, and one may note that the greatest panegyrists have been sailors or those who sailed with him—King, Samwell, Trevenen—or his contempories in that full age of sail, or later biographers who have known like conditions; or men who gave his work a specialised attention, like Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, I, Ixxxv, Ixxxvii-lxxxix.
Physically, as he grew older, nothing occurred to mar the impression he would have made in his thirties, that of a tall, large-boned, powerful man, with strongly marked features. It was a Yorkshire type. No doubt the mature lines were deeper, the nose and mouth still stronger, for they would not have been softened by easy living. There was the scar on the hand. He was good-looking, obviously, in a plain sort of way. We have one contradiction in description: Samwell says his head was small, with small eyes, but Dance's portrait, declared by Samwell himself to be 'a most excellent likeness', gives us a head to match the body, and large eyes that match the large nose and large forehead, the prominent eyebrows. Webber also gives us a large head, and a heavy, dull one. The engraving from Hodges prefixed to the 1777 volumes provide an impression of a smaller head, and certainly a lively countenance—and large eyes; but neither Webber nor Hodges was a very competent painter of portraits. The eyes were brown, 'quick and piercing', which we may well believe; hair brown, tied behind, though Hodges has a crop of springy curls, Dance and Webber what appears to be a dark grey wig. It was an expressive face, and in the 'most excellent likeness' expresses a disposition friendly and humane. What his voice, that sometimes valuable index to character, was like, no one tells us. Presumably it could be loud, to compete with storms and human misdemeanours. One would infer a provincial accent, from one whose access to the polite world was limited and showed no sign of wishing to enlarge it, some provincial turns of speech, some provincial pronunciations which would stand behind the spellings in his journals. Strong and perspicacious understanding says King; in whatever related to the services on which he was employed, of quick and sure judgment. Of an agreeable lively conversation, says Samwell, sensible and intelligent, rather bashful—by which we are to understand the earlier implication of that otherwise surprising word, that of a sensitive modesty. A sensitive modesty does not conflict with the confidence of assimilated experience, or with some deep convictions on professional matters; nor is it incompatible with losing one's temper.
We still lack the quantity of intimate description we should like, the analysis of character that with all men, great or little, we feel would somehow make all things plain. It is possible not to regret this: he was a man of action, and the tendency is to regard a man of action as adequately described by his acts, his biography a succession of things done. It is not quite so, any more than it would be a sufficient paradox to say that the acts of a man of action are the least important thing about him. But acts are public things, and we want to enter the mind. We hanker after someone who might be supposed to have hold of a thread. What would we not give for a conversation with Clerke, that companionable man, the knowledgeable, the amused, the unabashed? We are not, however, devoid of all the aid we need: by assiduous reading between the lines of all those journals, we may even interrogate Cook himself, and get some honest answers. Indeed we have already done so.
He was not (to proceed in negatives) romantic, dramatic—though his death was one of the great dramatic points in Pacific history— imaginative in any cloudy way; he was not semi-mystical, striving as some rarefied explorers have done after the meaning of existence or some absolute human affirmation; he was not searching for or fleeing from himself. He had, so far as one can see, no religion. His was not the poetic mind, or the profoundly scientific mind. He was the genius of the matter of fact. He was profoundly competent in his calling as seaman. He was completely professional in his trade as explorer. He had, in large part, the sceptical mind: he did not like taking on trust. He was therefore the great dispeller of illusion. He did have imagination, but it was a controlled imagination that could think out a great voyage in terms of what was possible for his own competence. He could think, he could plan, he could reason; he liked to be able to plan clearly for a specific object. But he liked to be elastic: there was always in his mind, as he planned, the possibility of something more, the parenthesis or addendum; there was also the sense of proportion that made him, more than once, refuse to waste time looking for what he was not sure to find. He had New Holland up his sleeve; he would not gratify Dalrymple by producing an island that would fit something on the map devised, for all he knew, by Dalrymple. So he would carry out his mass of instructions with a devoted literalness—perhaps because, as has been suggested before, that sort of honest obedience had been bred into him or came natural to him, perhaps because of an equally natural passion for completeness. That called at times for a great deal of patience, a great deal of persistence, some falling back on nervous reserves. Having done it,
They were all great, all sailors who have studied them are agreed, as exhibitions of seamanship, in an age when good seamen were common. It is practical seamanship, rather than scientific navigation, that one is here concerned with. Among men with Pacific service Wallis, Carteret, Furnaeux, Clerke, Bligh were good seamen; any master in the navy had to be a good seaman; it was part of Cook's job to train young officers into good seamen, and when John Elliott went for his lieutenant's examination it was enough for his examiners to know that he had been with Cook. But there were good seamen who would not feel happy under certain conditions: the captain of an East Indiaman, the master of a line-of-battle ship who would face an Atlantic storm with equanimity, might be little at ease in the midst of the Tuamotu archipelago. It was not merely Cook's familiarity
This is from one of Trevenen's comments on the printed Northumberland, a very considerable responsibility; the totally different years in a schooner on the Newfoundland coast; the swells and high seas as well as the calms and storms of the Pacific, the ice navigation, the reef navigation. It was not faultless seamanship if one means by faultless invariably keeping off the bottom; but far worse seamen have kept off the bottom by sheer good luck. A marine surveyor may sometimes find a rock by hitting it, as Cook did in the Grenville, and the Grenville stuck on the Kentish Knock; Dalrymple held that it was bad seamanship that took the Endeavour on to the reef, though there have been few to agree with him. The Resolution took the ground off Tahiti and in Cook Inlet, both ships scraped the coral in Tongan seas. Cook risked some chances, among the antarctic bergs, edging the arctic ice-field, in the fog off the Aleutians, off the southern end of New Caledonia, but seamen appear to have justified every one of them. He had some enormous strokes of good luck as well as bad luck—a happy puff of wind on the edge of disaster outside the Voyage, referred to in Penrose's Memoir, Turnbull Ms, App. p. 104, 'In a paper loose in the last volume of the voyage, I find the following memorandum, which appears to have been a sketch of the character of Capt: Cook, & from the manner of its construction was clearly meant to have been extended.' This 'comment' runs from p. 104 to p. 106.
The seaman passes over into the navigator, and we are brought back to Admiral Forbes, and to Ontario Historical Society, Pembroke, Captain Simcoe, and to the birth of a professional passion. Among the interesting things that Holland, when surveyor-general of Canada, reported to Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe, was this: 'Mr Cook frequently expressed to me the obligations he was under to Captain Simcoe and on my meeting him in London in the year 1776, after his several discoveries, he confessed most candidly that the several improvements and instructions he had received on board the Pembroke had been the sole foundation of the services he had been enabled to perform.'Papers and Records, XXI (1924), 19.Journals II, 78–9.
Navigation, we learn, may be a matter not quite easy to define. King, having sketched the contributions of his hero to geography, proceeds: 'As a navigator, his services were not perhaps less splendid; certainly not less important and meritorious. The method which he discovered, and so successfully pursued, of preserving the health of seamen, forms a new era in navigation, and will transmit his name to future ages, amongst the friends and benefactors of mankind.' Cook summarised his practice clearly enough in his letter to the Admiralty secretary at the end of July 1775, printed in A Narrative … To which are added some Particulars concerning his Life and Character….Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, III, 51.Civic Crown to him who saved the life of a single citizen, what wreaths are due to that Man, who, having himself saved many, perpetuates in your Transactions the means by which Britain may now, on the most distant voyages, preserve numbers of her intrepid sons, her Mariners; who, braving every danger, have so liberally contributed to the fame, to the opulence, and to the maritime empire, of their Country!' It may be doubtful if Cook was interested, as a professional man, in any of those things. The preservation of the health of seamen was for him an aspect at once of humanity and efficiency—and hence of navigation; for, with all the instruments in the world, it is difficult for a commander to navigate if he is surrounded with men dying of scurvy. Of course any good sea-captain was a humanitarian. The interesting thing about Cook is that without being a scientist any more than he was a sentimentalist, without being original, he was able to get the remarkable results he did get; or perhaps he was original in this, that having proved a point pragmatically, he made it part of a system, which he maintained as persistently as he maintained his astronomical observations. He found his men a little more intractable than the planets and the stars, but they had to accept the system. How much he had studied the problem of health at sea in the current books it is impossible to say. If he had read Lind's Treatise of the Scurvy, of which
Journals II, 954–5, of which his e Introduction of ye most Salutary Provisions or Medecines will sometimes lose their Effects unless supported by some well regulated rules. I hope it will not be taken amiss my Mentioning these which I caused to be observed during ye Whole Voyage, as they are founded on many Years experience & some information I had from Sr e art of Man or Nature had not provided some sort of refreshments or other, either in ye Animal or Vegitable way, & it was first care to procure them by every Means in my power & Oblig'd ye people to make use of them, both by example & authority.'—And he points the contrast with the effects of ignorance in the Adventure on the passage from New Zealand to Tahiti, June-August 1773.Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, III, 48.Journals III, 419, n. 3.Journals II, 613.
As a disciplinarian and a psychologist, he was generally successful in getting the unorthodox stuff into his men. From what he says himself, and from independent testimony, we can see that in the end he even got these hard-bitten and restive conservatives on his side. Thomas Perry the poet will be remembered.
A more valuable, because more circumstantial witness is it is highly probable this disposition has been the principle Means of preserving Our Healths for such a Number of Years Almost Constantly on the water. Captain Cook raised this spirit Amoungst us by his Example for scarc[e]ly any thing Came wrong to him that was Green and he was as Carefull in providing Vegitables for the Messess of the Crews as for his own Table and I do Belive that in this Means Consisted his graund Art of preserving his people in Health During so Many of the Longest and Hardest voyages that was Ever Made.
Green stuff boiled in quantity with pease soup or wheat sometimes offended the taste of seamen.
But as there was Nothing Else to be got they were Obledged to Eat them and it was No Uncommon thing when Swallowing Over these Mess[es] to Curse him heartyly and wish for gods Sake that he Might be Obledged to Eat such Damned Stuff Mixed with his Broth as Long as he lived. Yet for all that there were None so Ignorant as Not to know how Right a thing it was.
We have, too, the half-days in port for recreation: 'He would Frequently Order them on shore in partys to walk about the Country and smell the Fresh Earth and Herbage'—a reminiscence, as it were, of eighteenth century minor poetry, or some benevolent schoolmaster; and as he himself was constantly seen gathering wild stuff, 'in time the Men adopted the same Humour and Disposition as by Infectsin and perhaps in Many it Might be with a Veiw of making their Court to him, for they knew it was A great Recommendation to be seen Coming on board from A pleasure Jaunt with A Handkerchif full of greens.'Journals III, 1456.
Beside this a great deal of the discussion on the prevention and cure of scurvy—and most other ills of the sea—becomes irrelevant. It also explains why Cook, in spite of the wreaths that
Another aspect of the humane captain is a fundamental sympathy for his men, rather wider than the few specific affections or likings that we can trace, not entirely based on the determination to extract the maximum of efficiency. After all, he had been an apprentice of the benevolent John Walker. Desertion was not a thing he could tolerate, but he could very well understand, even sympathise with, the deserter. He saw no sense in working men to exhaustion. He
Kleine Schriften (Leipzig, 1789 …).
In his relations with the 'Indians' of the Pacific was another aspect of his humanity, as well as examples of its breakdown. He took seriously Lord Morton's 'Hints', as we have seen. He was aware that most humane, and inexperienced, men would censure his conduct in
its impossible for them to know our real design, we enter their Ports without their daring to make opposition, we attempt to land in a peaceable manner, if this succeeds its well, if not we land nevertheless and mentainthe footing we thus got by the Superiority of our fire arms, in what other light can they than at first look upon us but as invaders of their Country…. Cook's 'than' = 'then';
JournalsII, 493. For the context see p. 407 above.
He thought the best way to deal with certain situations was to make hostages of chiefs. He did not consider that this might be an outrageous insult, even an act of impiety—was it not better than a punitive expedition and the shedding of blood?—but he could understand the island attitude, the tears and outcry, when his friend Ori, the 'Brave old Chief' of Huahine, made himself a voluntary hostage.
It may be asked what he had to fear, to which I must answer nothing, for it never was my intention to hurt a hair of his head or to detain him one single moment longer than he desired, but how was he or the people to know this, they were not ignorant that if he was once in my power, the whole force of the isle could not take him from me, and that let my demands for his ransom been [sic] ever so high they must have comply'd with it; thus far their fears both for his and their own safety were justly founded.
JournalsII, 220, n. 1.
Here speaks the humanely imaginative man. That particular episode was happy because of the man that Ori was. There were other chiefs made prisoner under easy conditions who were less gratified. We may wish that Cook had not adopted a different procedure at Moorea, on the third voyage. We may wish that, before he did adopt that procedure at
We have seen him punish islanders severely for their cardinal offence, until his own men were shocked. We know that he was anxious that the islanders should see justice done on his own men who had committed offences against them. He does not talk, as some people do, of native 'insolence', and the weight of his 'resentment'. He can feel rage at the truculent stupidity of seamen and marines. He can feel regret. For nothing does he feel more regret—do he and his responsible officers feel more a sense of guilt as the emissaries of western civilisation—than over the spread of the venereal disease that the ships inevitably brought to the Polynesians, the 'incurable disorder which will for ever embitter their quiet & happy lives, & make them curse the hour they ever saw us.'3 But the eloquence
We are confronted by the fact that Cook, with all his humanity, coolness, patience, temperance of expression in the written word, was a passionate man. He could be hot, as we have seen, about sloppy work, false pretences, plain stupidity; he could be impatient when he was prevented from pushing on his work; he could be most intemperate, obviously, in his spoken words. Our witnesses here are of one accord: in temper subject to hastiness and passion, says King; somewhat hasty, says Samwell; cross-grained, 'sometimes … carried away by a hasty temper', says 'If we consider his extreme abilities, both natural and acquired, the firmness and constancy of his mind, his truly paternal care for the crew entrusted to him, the amiable manner with which he knew how to gain the friendship of all the savage and uncultivated nations, and even his conduct towards his friends and acquaintance, we must acknowledge him to have been one of the greatest men of his age, and that Reason justifies the tear which Friendship pays to his memory. He was not free from faults, but these were more than counterbalanced by his superior qualities; and it is very unfortunate that on this last voyage he should have had no friend with him, who by his wisdom and prudence might have with-held and prevented him from giving vent to his passions, which in fact became so detrimental to himself, as to occasion his destruction.'—History of the Voyages and Discoveries made in the North, 404.heiva of the old boy' (and the phrase 'the old boy', is also illuminating).
Heivathe name of the dances of the Southern Islanders, which bore so great a resemblance to the violent motions and stampings on the Deck of CaptCooke in the paroxysms of passion, into which he often threw himself upon the slightest occasion that they were universally known by the same name, & it was a common saying amongst both officers & people: 'The old boy has been tipping aheivato such or such a one'.Note by Trevenen on the difficulties encountered in taking bearings for 'our Sketch of the Sound',
JournalsIII, chiii, 306, n.
This was a sort of catharsis, no doubt; was not the effect of self-importance or vanity, was not vindictive; caused some amusement, did no one harm. The swearing that upset Sparrman as the ship came down on the reef off Tahiti was quite disinterested. Most of the evidence we have on the matter, it may be pointed out, comes from the third voyage—though that may merely be because more persons wrote about the third voyage. Isaac Smith, on the first and second voyages, never thought him severe: he was both 'loved' and 'properly feared' by the crew, Smith to E. H. Locker, 8 October 1830; Mitchell Library (Safe 1/83).
How is one to complete a portrait? He was not a solitary man, but he must have had a good many solitary thoughts, like many another commander who has had to wrestle with particular angels. Some people—notably Forster—were struck by the small degree to which he took his officers—or his scientific passengers—into his confidence. He certainly did not conduct his voyages by consensus. There was discussion enough where discussion could be of any use. It is quite probable that, having arrived at a solution to a problem—as, for example, by what route to return to England after having circumnavigated New Zealand—he consulted his officers, as he said he did, but he made known what he would call his own 'strong inclination', at which few would have inclination to demur. After all, it was he who had been given the instructions, and authority, and discretion. He was quite willing to test the incidental fancies of other men. In matters where he had no claim to exert authority, he seems to have been a tolerant, sober, civilised man of the world. His general knowledge was extensive and various, we are told by Samwell, with no indication of what fields it embraced, or how he acquired it. A great deal must have rubbed off on him from Banks and Anderson and Wales, from acquaintances in the coffee houses, and at dinner with the Sparrman to Johann Georg Forster's Briefwechse (Leipzig, 1829), II, 748.
There are statues and inscriptions; but Geography and Navigation are his memorials. We may find others for ourselves, if we would indulge in sentiment. There are the words of John Elliott, who sailed in the British Museum. Add. Cf. p. 206 above.Resolution in 1772 at the age of fourteen. He was rather proud of the chart he made showing the ship's track, which, like all other records, was impounded at the end of the voyage. But Cook asked Elliott, now a mature youth of seventeen, to breakfast, and promised he should have the precious document back. So Elliott, writing memoirs for his descendants, can say, 'I attended to his invitation, and did recieve my Chart &c with my Name Elliotts Chart and Ships Track, written on it, in his own hand, and which writing I venerate to this day, and never look at Without feeling the deepest regret at the melancholy loss of so great a Man.'Ms 42,714, f. 48–48v.Endeavour called there in 1769. There was one supreme man in that ship, who did not talk much, but looked well into everything, and was good to small boys; and e kore te tino tangata e
ngaro i roto i te tokomaha, a veritable man is not hid among many.
A list of manuscripts, charts and miscellaneous publications, to which reference is made in the text. For fuller information on manuscripts relating to the Pacific voyages see The Journals of Captain James Cook on his Voyages of Discovery [with] (
National Maritime Museum
National Maritime Museum
National Maritime Museum
For, The voyages of discovery the activities of Cook, ships' officers, masters and professional supernumeraries are not indexed in detail. They are covered by the movements and visits of the ships in which they served, under the following abbreviations:
Adv., End., Dis., Res.(1) and Res.(2) are used with names of persons to denote voyage and ship; with place names they indicate where the ship is sailing alone. Res.: Adv. and Res.: Dis. are used when the ships are sailing in company.
Names of ships are under the heading Ships; the heading Ships (Cook's) lists the ships in which Cook served and includes the Adventure and Discovery.
Abo university, Finland, 145
Abraham, Heights of, Quebec, 49
Adams, Sir Thomas, captain Niger, 88
Admiralty, Board of, 26, 76, 85, 95; first lords see Egmont; Sandwich; secretaries see Clevland; Stephens
Adolphus Channel, Aus., 249
Adventure Bay, Tasmania, 516; Adv., 331; Res.: Dis., 517 aborigines, 517
Agulhas, C., S. Africa, 266
Aghulhas current, 266
Aimeo see Moorea
Aitutaki I., Cook Is., 529
Aki Aki atoll, Tuamotu Is., 169
Alacaluf people, T. del Fuego, 426
Alaska, 487, 616, 633, 634; fur trade, 499; maps, 487, 488; Cook's map, 631; Res.: Dis. off Bering coast of, 625–7
Alaska, Gulf of, Res.: Dis., 592–5, 598–9, 605; see also Cook Inlet; Prince William Sound
Alaska peninsula, 487, 488, 598, 634; Res.: Dis., 605–8; north coast, 612; observations, 606, 607
Alderman's Point, Christmas I., 573
Aleutian Is., Res.: Dis., 609–11; Cook's chart, 632; see also Unalaska
Alofi, Niue I., 389n
Amat, Manuel de, viceroy Peru, 343
Améré I. (Botany I.), 419
America see North America; South America
American Congress, 685
Anadyr, R., 485
Anaura Bay, N.Z., 202
Anchor I.,
Anchor Point, Cook Inlet, 600
Res.(I), 299, 444; surgeon Res.(2), 500, 501; illness, 568–9, 574, 603; death, 614; journal, 691, 692
Anderson's I., see St Lawrence I.
Aniwa I., New Hebrides, 402
Anjas, M. de, gov. St Pierre et Miquelon, 71–2
Annam (Chamba), N. Vietnam, 108
Anse du Foulon, Quebec, 48
Voyage see
Antarctic, 107, 117, 431–2; currents, 311, 316, 317, 366; icebergs, 317, 362–3, 365; icefield, 317–18, 365, 366; pack ice, 317, 362, 436
Res.: Adv., 317–18; Res.(I), 362, 364–7; observations, 364, 365
Antarctic Convergence, 311
Apataki atoll, Tuamotu Is., 379n
Arapawa I., N.Z., 216
Arctic Ocean, 68; ice, 622–3, 635; icefield, 618, 620–1, 681–2; bears, 682; ducks, 620; walrus, 618, 619–20, 621
Arnold, John, watchmaker, 287, 288; see chronometers; see also Ships (Cook's), Adventure; Resolution
Aru or Aroe Is., Indonesia, 254
Arutua atoll, Tuamotu Is., 379n
Astronomers Sound, Dusky Sd, 324n
astronomy, 99–100, 114–16, 482; instruments see navigation; Venus, Transit of
Atehuru district, Tahiti, 381
Athapaskan Indians, 597n
Atiu I., Cook Is., 527–8
Atlantic Ocean, north, 14; End., 153–5, observations, 154, 155; Res.: Adv., 306–7; Res.(I), 440–1; Adv., 447; Res.(2), 508–509; Dis., 510; Res.: Dis., 685
Atlantic Ocean, south, 285; End., 155–6, 159; Res.: Adv., 308; Res.(I), 426–37; Adv., 447; Res.(2), 509; Dis., 510 charts, 286; Cook's charts, 286–7
Atlantic Ocean, south of 50°: fauna, 313, 314, 315, 317, 318; ice, 311–12; icebergs, 312, 313–14; icefield, 313; rafted ice, 314–15
Aubert, Alexander, astronomer, 450
Augusta, dowager princess of Wales, 274
aurora australis, 320
aurora borealis, 581
Australia (Cook's New South Wales), 53n, 110, 112, 113, 117, 251–2, 260n, 273; aborigines, 229, 230, 235, 241, 251–2; fauna and flora, 229–30, 233–4, 235, 236, 240, 247, 251; maps, 226–7
Australian Antarctic Territory, 321
Austrialia del Espiritu Santo, 112, 260, 369, 394; see also New Hebrides
Avachinskaya, Mt, Kamchatka, 681
Baker, George, captain Cuddalore, 125
Balabio I., New Caledonia, 414
Balade district, New Caledonia, 414
Balambangan, Sulu Sea, 105
Balboa: Nuñéz de Balboa, Vasco, 108
Banks, C., Aus., 230
Banks, Joseph, 142–3; patron, 501; portrait, 453; see also Newfoundland
Banks Strait, Tasmania, 322
Bantam Point, Sunda Strait, 256
Barclay, Patrick, Universal Traveller (1735), 77
Barfleur, C., Normandy, 20
Barnarda, Pedro de, 480
Barrett, James, seaman, 54n
Summary observations (1776), 489n
Barrow, John, Navigatio Britannica, 13n
Barrow, Pt, Alaska, 623
Bartolozzi, Francesco, engraver, 448
Bashi channel, China sea, 684
Batavia now Djakarta, 113, 114, 133, 253, 255; End., 256–8, 261–4; sickness, 262, 270
Bateman, Nathaniel, captain Northumberland, 53
Bateman Bay, Aus., 228
Batson's Coffee House, London, 295n
Batts, John, of Wapping, 61; dau. Elizabeth see Cook; wife Mary see Smith
Batz, I. of, Brittany, 20
Bauld, C., Newfoundland, 80
Bayfield, Henry Wolsey, hydrographer, 97
Adv., 301, observations, 336; Dis., 501; Res.(2), 683; see also chronometers
Bay of Islands, Newfoundland, 92–3
Beauchamp, Lord, 273
Beaufort Sea, N.W. Terr., 623
Becket, T. and P. A. de Hondt, publishers, 289–90
‘Behring's Bay’, Alaska, 593
Bellamby Point, Aus., 228n
bell-bird (korimako), 212
Belleoram or Belloram harbour, Newfoundland, 95
Benbow, Mt, Ambrim I., 396
Bennet, Frederick, canon, 694n
Centaur, 290
3B
Bering I., Komandorskiye Is., 682
Bering Sea, 485, 623; Res.: Dis., 612–15, 624–9, 681, 682; observations, 613, 614, 615
Bering Strait, 117, 485, 486, 497, 623, 634; Res.: Dis., 615–17, 681, 682
Bermondsey, London, 61
Bermuda, 31
Berthoud, Ferdinand, watchmaker, 508
Besant, Sir Walter, Captain Cook (1890), 694n
Bessborough, William Ponsonby, earl of, 508
Biddon James, surveyor, 71
Bingley's Journal, 269–70
Birch, Birch & Co., of Cornhill, 504n
Bird I., see St Matthew I.
Bisset, Thomas, master Eagle, 17, 18n; master Pembroke, 24, 28; master Stirling Castle, 28n, 48
Blackburn, John, of Shadwell, 61
Blackburne, Anna, of Fairfield, 686
Black Swan, Holborn, 27
Blade, Sade & Many, of Mile End, 692n
Blanco, C., Oregon, 634
Bligh I., Nootka Sound, 583
Bligh's Cap, Kerguelen I., 514
Blind Bay, N.Z., 220
Bloyd, Thomas, master Three Sisters, 91
Blue Pinion harbour, Newfoundland, 95
Bois or Boys, I. of, Newfoundland, 56
Bombay, 15
Borabora I.,
Borda, Jean-Charles, captain Boussole, 508
Boscawen I., Pacific, 393; see Tafahi
Boscovich, Ruggiero Guiseppe, mathematician, 102
Boston, Mass., 480
Account of Corsica, 452
Boswell, Robert, seaman, 54n
Bosworth, D., 274n
Boulton, John George, hydrographer, 97
Boulton, Matthew, engineer, 291
Bouvet, Lozier, navigator, 118; voyage (1739), 117, 123, 286, 311–12
Boxey harbour, Newfoundland, 95
Braddock, Gen. Edward, 29
Bradley, James, astronomer, 142
Bransfield, Edward, explorer, 366
Break Sea Spit, Aus., 232
Bream Bay, N.Z., 207
Brett, Sir Percy, admiral, 207
Histoire (1756), 117, 119–20, 123, 124, 226, 227n, 311
Brothers, the, Is., N.Z., 216
Brown, Sarah, 62
Brown's Coffee House, London, 452
Bruny I., Tasmania, 331
Buchan Ness, Aberdeen, 27
Buckland, William, seaman, 54n
Burke, Edmund, 496–7
Burnett, Mrs, 307
Res.(I), 299; Adv., 300–1, 309, 446, 447; Dis., 498, 504, 511–12, 677n; Res.(2), 682, 684
Burney, Susan, 500n
Burriel, Andrés Marcos, History of California (1759), 481
Burrow, James, F.R.S., 450
Byron, C., Aus., 231n
Cadell see Strahan
Cadiz, 24
Calcutta, 15
Callander, John, Terra Australis cognita (1766-8), 120
Cambridge, Richard Owen, writer, 467
Campbell, John, earl of Loudon, c. in c. North America, 30, 31, 33
Campbell, Dr John, Voyages and Travels (1744-1748), 118–19, 120, 486; see also Harris, John
Canada, 29–30, 52n, 62; surrender of, 53 see also Halifax; Louisburg; Newfoundland; Quebec; St Lawrence, gulf and river
Candlemas Is., S. Sandwich Is., 431
Canso, C., Nova Scotia, 58
Canso, Strait of, Nova Scotia, 52n
Cape Breton, 30
Cape Town, S. Africa, End., 266–8; Res.: Adv., 308–10; Res.(1), 437–40; Adv., 447; Res.: Dis., 509–12, 685–6
governor see Plettenberg
Capricorn, C., Aus., 234
Capricorn, Tropic of, 167
Caroline Is., Pacific, 110
Carouge harbour, Newfoundland, 80
Life of Captain Cook (1939), 48n, 79n
Carrouge, C., St Lawrence R., 52n
Cartaret, Philip, captain Swallow, 132, 261, 270, 339, 372; journal, 286, 289, 439
Carter, R., curate St Margaret's, 61n
Cave, John, quartermaster Res.(2), 474n
Chalky Inlet, Dusky Sd, N.Z., 323
Chappe d'Auteroch, Jean, astronomer, 101
charts and maps: Cook's, 34, 50–52, 58, 72, 84–6, 89, 95, 97, 221–2, 258, 271, 285, 287, 454, 634, 680, 691n-2n
Chedabucto Bay, Nova Scotia, 56
Cherbourg, Normandy, 20
Chibukak, C., Bering Strait, 628n
China (Cathay), 7, 14, 104, 107, 108, 121, 123, 132, 145, 477
Chirikov, Alexei, navigator, voyages: (1728) 485; (1741), 485, 486, 487, 490, 592, 632
Chirikov I. (Foggy I.), Alaska pen., 607
Christmas Day celebrations, 160, 209, 314, 363, 426, 514, 572, 707
Christmas Harbour, Kerguelen I. see Oiseau, B. de l'
Christmas I., Pacific, 572–3
Christmas Sound, T. del Fuego, 426
Christ's College, Cambridge, 693
chronometers, 115–16; Arnold, 287–8; Harrison, 116, 142, 287; Kendall/Harrison, 287–8; [Kendall], 508
Chukotskiy peninsula, 617, 623; people of, 616–17, 624, 680; see also Lavrentiya Bay
Cinq Cerf Bay (Tweed harbour), New-foundland, 88
‘Circumcision, C.’, S. Atlantic, 117, 305, 443; sighted by Bouvet, 117, 286; position, 311, 312; search for, Adv., 447; Res.(1), 310–16, 368, 429–30, 432, 438
Circumcision I., S. Atlantic, 429
Cleader, John, master Pembroke, 49
Clear, C., Ireland, 18
Clements, Michael, captain Greenwich Hospital, 444
End., 138–9, 141, 269, 271; lieut. Res.(I), 281, 294, 297–8; commander, 444, Dis., 495–6, 506; Res. (2) 675; illness, 568–9, 679; death, 682; burial, 683
Clerke, Sir John, 495–6
Clerke's I., see St Lawrence I.
Clerke's Rocks, S. Georgia, 430
Cleveland Bay, Aus., 260n
Res.(2), 503
Clevland, John, secretary Admiralty, 59, 64; correspondence, with Graves, T., 64; with Colville, 52n-3n, 58, 59; with Saunders, 51
Cloudy Bay,
Cocker, Christiana, 690; see Cook
Cockfield, Joseph, 283
Cocos I. see Tafahi
Coke, Lady Mary, 273
Collier, -, of victualling office, 283
Colnett, C., New Caledonia, 411
Colnett, James, midshipman Res.(1), 411
Northumberland, 49–50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59; correspondence see Clevland
Colville, C., N.Z., 207
Conception Bay, Newfoundland, 57
Concordia see Kupang
Connoire Bay, Newfoundland, 88
Controller Bay, Alaska, 594
Cook, Christiana, 3; see also Cocker
Cook, George, son, 689
birth, 1, 3, 28n; family, 2–3; childhood, 3–5; marriage, 61–2; children, 689; house, 75; private papers, 694; will, 690–91
accident, 80, 670; illnesses, 20, 328, 370, 556, 568n; death see Kealakekua Bay
Arms, 692, 695–6; F.R.S., 450–1; medals, 506–7, 694n, 695–6; monuments, 695, 696; portraits, 452–3, 557, 695
career, in Staithes, 5–6; in Whitby, 9–10; in merchant service, 11–12; in
surveyor, 70, 409–10; see Newfoundland; St Lawrence, gulf and river; see also charts and maps
correspondence, 76, 77, 283, 505, 507, 510; see also
journals, 459–61; End., 258–9, 271; publication, 289–90; see Hawkesworth Res.(1), 438; publication, 461; see see also Res.(2), 680, 685; publication, 691–2, 696
works: Voyage towards the South Pole (1777), 471; Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1784), 691; misc. writings see Royal Society
reflections: on being a discoverer, 246, 266–7, 365, 431–2, 453, 537–8; on coral, 390; on nature of ice, 316, 362, 366, 434, 622, 635; on icebergs, 321, 434–5, on Polynesia, 224, 354, 374, 528, 574; on southern continent, 278–279, 286–7, 337, 431, 433–4; on volcanoes, 406 on cannibalism, 359; on treatment of native peoples, 187, 200, 348, 358, 382–3, 709; on promiscuity, 520–1; on venereal disease, 188; on being offered a woman, 390–1 on ship's discipline, 233; on health, 170–1, 642–3, 704n
Cook, Jane, 3
Cook, John, of Ednam, 2; wife Jean see Duncan
Cook, John, 2–3
Cook, Margaret, 3; see also Fleck
Cook, Mary (b. 1732), 3
Cook, Mary (b. 1740), 3
Cook, Nathaniel, son, 81, 141, 274, 297, 438, 449–50, 689; death, 690
Cook, William, 3
Cook Inlet, Alaska pen., 634; fauna and flora, 603; Indians, 597n, 601, 603 Res.: Dis., 599–605; chart, 603n
Cook Is., Pacific, Res.: Adv., 349; Res.: Dis., 527–30; fauna and flora, 528, 530
Cook islet (Eclipse I.), Christmas I., 573
Cook Shoal,
Cook's Cove, N.Z., 202
Cook's Harbour, Newfoundland, 80
Cook's Lookout, Kaitapeha Ridge, N.Z., 213
Cook's Passage, Aus., 244
Cooper, Robert Palliser, lieut. Res.(1), 281, 294, 297, 299, 303n, 392, 495
Copinsay I., Orkney Is., 27
Copley, Sir Godfrey, 506
Coppermine, R., N.W. Terr., 622
Cornwallis's I., Nova Scotia, 35
Coronation, C. now Puareti, New Caledonia, 416
Cotton, Thomas, of Hackney, 455
Cove, C., Newfoundland, 87
Cox, Matthew, A.B. End., 280
Crantz, David, History of Greenland, 596
Crisp, Samuel, 448
Croque, Newfoundland, 74
Croy, I. de, Kerguelen I., 514
Crozet, Julien Marie, lieut, Mascarin, 438–439, 489, 512; chart, 221n
Crozier, —, surgeon's mate Captain, 35
Cumberland, C., Espiritu Santo I., 409
Cumberland, dukes of see Henry Frederick; William Augustus
Cumberland Is., Aus., 235
Account of Discoveries (1767), 120; 'Pacific Chart', 226, 393; 'South Atlantic Chart' (1769), 286, 311, 428; Memoir (1769), 311n; Historical Collection (1770-1), 120, 286, 349, 354, 368, 372, 410; Collection of Voyages (1775), 443; 'Memoirs' (1802), 125n, 128n; supervisor Cook's charts Voyage (1784), 691n-2n
Voyages, 479n
Danger, Pt, Aus., 232
Davis, Edward, buccaneer, 371
Davis, George, of Poole, 77n
Denbigh, C., Norton Bay, Alaska, 626
Denis, Peter, captain Bellona, 91
Denmark, 124
D'Entrecasteaux Channel, Tasmania, 331n
Depôl des Cartes et Plans de la Marine, 85
Deptford, 97, 128, 687; Grenville at, 81, 84, 86, 88, 90, 91, 94; End. at, 130–1; Res. at, 281, 285, 493
DesBarres, Joseph F. W., military engineer, 57, 58, 62, 69, 97
Deseado, C., Desolation I., Chile, 425
Desolation, C., Basket I., Chile, 425
Desolation I., Chile, 425
Desolation, I. of, 516; see Kerguelen I.
Despair, Bay of see Espoir, B. d'
Devonshire, Georgiana, duchess of, 448
Dewar, Alexander, A.B. Res.(2), 474n
Dieppe maps, 113n
Disappointment, C., S. Georgia, 429
Dis., 499
Dobbs, Arthur, 476–8; Account of Countries … Hudson's Bay (1744), 480
Dollond, John, instrument maker, 137
Doubtless Bay, N.Z., 211
Douglas, C., Cook Inlet, 600
Douglas, Charles, captain Tweed, 71, 72, 74, 75, 88; Admiralty correspondence see Stephens
Hints, 150–1, 177, 181, 187, 199, 358, 707
Res.(2) journal, 644n-5n, 691; correspondence with Cook, 463, 464–9; bishop of Carlisle, 63n
Douwes, Cornelis, mathematician, 114
Downing, George, vicar Little Wakering, 61
Dozey, John, A.B. End., 140
Drake, William, master Three Brothers, 11n
Drake's I., Plymouth, 305
Drawwater, Benjamin, surgeon's mate Res.(1), 299
Dromedary, Mt, Aus., 228
Duck Cove, Dusky Sd, N.Z., 325
Duncan, Jean, of Smaillhome, 2; see Cook, John
Dunnavan, Vincent, seaman, 54
Dunne Harbour, Miquelon see Grand Barachois
Dury, Andrew, publisher, 86
Dusky Sound, N.Z., 323; End., 219; Res.(1), 323–9; chart, 325; observations, 324, 336; people see Mamoe
Dutch East India Company, 112, 113, 254, 267; shipping, 258, 266, 308, 437
Dutch West India Company, 114
Dymond, Joseph, 103
Eagle I., B. of Islands, Newfoundland, 92
East Bay, Port au Port, Newfoundland, 92
East Bay, Q. Charlotte Sd, N.Z., 360
East Cape, Bering Strait see Dezhnev, C.
Easter I., Pacific, 114, 121, 360, 368, 371–372; Res.(1), 372–4
East Foreland, Cook Inlet, 601
East India Company, 7, 15, 104, 105, 269, 303, 304; shipping, 14n, 256, 266, 268, 438, 440
East Indies, 50, 120, 145; shipping route, 104, 108, 110, 113, 123, 132, 224
Eclipse I., Burgeo Is., Newfoundland, 87
Edgecumbe, C., Alaska, 592
Ednam, Roxburghshire, 2
Egg I., G. of St Lawrence, 41
Egmont, earl of see Perceval, Sir John
Egmont, Mt, N.Z., 210
elephantiasis, 414
Elliott, John, midshipman Res.(1), 298, 699; 'Memoirs', 295, 299, 326n, 361–2, 364, 385, 391n, 407n, 418, 440; chart, 713
Elliotson, Eliza, of Clapham, 694n
Ellis, William, missionary, 676n
Ellis, William, surgeon's mate Dis., 500–1; paintings, 501, 597
Endeavour Strait, Aus., 249–50
English Bay (Samgunuda), Unalaska I., 626, 627; Res.: Dis., 611, 629–36; contact with Russians, 631–2, 636; Cook's letter to Admiralty, 635; observations, 611, 632
English Pilot, 86
Entrecasteaux, Antoine Bruni d', 546
Entry I. now Kapiti,
Eromanga I., New Hebrides, 395; Res.(1), 339–401, 402, 407; people see Melanesians
Esquelen, Sieur de, commander Duc d'Aquitaine, 24
'Eua I. (Middelburg), Tonga Is., 349, 353, 393; Res.: Adv., 350–51, Res.: Dis., 545–6
Everard, C. (Hicks point), Aus., 227
Everrest, William, parish clerk, 61
Ewin, William, bosun Res.(2), 474n
Faaa district, Tahiti, 186
Facheux Bay, Newfoundland, 87
Faden, William, publisher, 36
Fair Isle, Shetland Is., 27
Fairway Rock, Bering Strait, 615
Fairweather, C., Alaska, 592
Fairweather, Mt, Alaska, 592
Falkland Is., 118, 122, 123, 124, 161, 275, 285, 368, 428, 481; see also Port Egmont
False Cape Horn, T. del Fuego, 426
Fannin, Peter, master Adv.301, 446
Fatafehi Paulaho see Paulaho
Fatu Huku I. (Hood's I.), Marquesas Is., 375
Faulkner, Samuel, captain Windsor, 20
Fayal I., Azores Is., 441
Fernando de Noronha I., Brazil, 441
Ferryland, Newfoundland, 73
Finau Ulukalala Felotoa, of Tongatapu, 532–7, 538, 540, 541, 542, 545
Flarity, Felix, seaman, 35
Flattery, C., Aus., 243
Flying Fish, C., Antarctic, 366
Foa I., Tonga Is., 533
Foggy Cape, Alaska pen. see Sutwick I.
Foggy I. (Bering's), Alaska pen., 605, 606, 607; see Tumannoi I.
Fonte, Bartholomew de, admiral of New Spain, 479–81, 487, 490
Forster, Lieut. Thomas, 158
Res.(1), 302–3, 470; Voyage round the world (1777), 154n, 370, 470
Res.(1), 302–3, 371; publication of journal, 461–2, 464, 465–70, 506; Observations (1778), 317n, 465, 471n; History of the voyages (1786), 710n
Fort St George, Madras, 104
Fotuhaa I., Tonga Is., 537
Foulweather, C., Oregon, 582
Foulwind, C., N.Z., 219
Fox I., Newfoundland, 92
Fox Island Harbour, Newfoundland, 87
Foxon's hydrometer, 440
France, 267; colonies see North America; exploration, 123–4, 453–4; see Bougainville; Kerguelen
Frederik Hendrik I., New Guinea, 252
Freezeland I., S. Sandwich Is., 430
Mascarin, 221n, 309, 331, 439, 490, 512, 518
Friendly archipelago, 393; see Tonga Is.
Furneaux, Rupert, Tobias Furneaux (1960), 300n
Adv., 281, 300; journal, 332, 445, 466
Furneaux Is., Tasmania, 332
Gable End Foreland, N.Z., 202
Gaskin, William, master Mary, 12
Gaspé, C., G. of St Lawrence, 41
Gayton, Clark, captain Antelope, 20
Gazetteer, 151
George III, 447; salutes to, 54, 184, 271, 276, 335–6, 388, 416, 683
Gerard, John, Herbal (1597), 143
Gerritsz, Dirck, 113
End., 191, 192; Res.(1), 297, 348; Res.(2), 503, 576–7; death, 686
Gilbert, Joseph, master Guernsey, 97; master Res.(1), 297n, 298, 328, 353
Gilbert I., T. del Fuego, 425
Gill, Alice, servant to John Walker, 455
Gloucester, C., Aus., 235
Gloucester, Maria, duchess of, 448
Good Hope, Cape of, 101, 112, 123, 133, 146, 149, 489; Cook's ships at see Cape Town
Good Hope, Gulf of, Alaska pen., 599; see Cook Inlet
Goose Cove, Dusky Sd, N.Z., 325
Gore, John, 297; lieut. End., 138, 269; lieut. Res.(2), 474n, 496, 511–12; in command, Dis., 675; Res.(2), 682, 686
Governor's I., B. of Islands, Newfoundland, 92
Grafton, C., Aus., 236
Graham Land, Antarctic, 366
Grand Bank, Newfoundland, 71
Grand Barachois (Dunne Harbour), Miquelon, 72
Grandy's Cove, Burgeo Is., Newfoundland, 87
Grape Lane, Whitby, 6
Graves, Thomas, gov. Newfoundland, 56, 57, 70, 72; correspondence, with Cook, 76; with Admiralty see Clevland; Stephens
Graves I. see Jacques Cartier I.
Great Garnish, Newfoundland, 83
Great Jervis, Burin pen., Newfoundland, 95
Great Keppel I., Aus., 234
Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, 10
Green, Charles, astronomer, 103, 142n; End., 131, 141, 142, 144; observations, 154, 258, 259, 268; illness, 262; death, 265
Green, John, cartographer, 486n
Green I., Aus., 236
Green I., Newfoundland, 70n
Green I., St Lawrence R., 52
Greenslade, William, marine End., 168
Greenwich, 101, 115, 182, 443; Royal Observatory, 137, 142, 197, 288, 301
Greenwich Hospital, 291n, 444, 445, 472, 474, 492, 503, 507, 686
Gregory, Henry, instrument maker, 282
Gregson, Matthew, of Liverpool, 501n
Grenville, C., Aus., 247
Grenville Rock, Newfoundland, 96
Griguet Bay, Newfoundland, 80
Guernsey I., B. of Islands, Newfoundland, 92
Guernsey I., Channel Is., 20
Hailes, Lord see Dalrymple, Sir David
Haleakala, Mt, Maui I., 638
Halifax, Nova Scotia, 31; British fleet in, 34–5, 39–40, 43, 54–5; Cook's charts, 50
Halley, Edmond, astronomer, 13; voyages (1698-1700), 106, 125, 286, 311; isogenic chart, 117, 433; on transit of Venus, 100–1, 183; Philosophical Transactions, 101n
Hammond, William, of Hull, shipowner, 281; correspondence with Cook, 284, 295
Hanga-roa Bay, Easter I., 372
Hao atoll (Bow I.; San Pablo I.), Tuamotu Is., 169
Hardwicke, Philip Yorke, earl of, 450
Harris, Sir James, ambassador, 683–4
Harrison, Henry, admiral, 22
Res.(2), 564–5
Dolphin, 133
see chronometers; see also Ships (Cook's), Resolution
Harvey, William, midshipman End., 299; Res.(1), 299; master's mate Res.(2), 474n, 498, 562, lieut., 675
Hauxley, Edward, Navigation Unveil'd (1743), 13n
Havana, W. Indies, 59
Hawaii, 110; Res.: Dis., 640–7, 657, 660–1; observations, 640n; sugar cane beer, 641–3; trade, 641, 645, 646, 647–8; see also Kealakekua Bay
Hawaiian Is. (Sandwich Is.), 577–8, 627; Res.: Dis., 574–80, 638–78
bark cloth, 580, 657; canoes, 578; feathered cloaks, 578, 580, 640, 654, 661, helmets, 580; houses, 578; language, 653n ceremonies, 575, 654, 657; entertainment, 655; religion, 649–51, 654, 655, 657–60, burial custom, 674, 676; heiau, 575–6; see also Hikiau see also Hawaii; Kahoolawe; Kauaì; Kaula; Lehua; Molokai; Niihau; Oahu
Hawke, Sir Edward, Lord Hawke, admiral, 18, 32, 125; first lord Admiralty, 125, 202
Hawke Bay, N.Z., 202
Voyages (1773), 439–40, 457–9, 461, 465, 505
Hawkings, Ben, seaman, 35
Heard I.,
Henry Frederick, duke of Cumberland, 409
Res.(2), 474n
Hervey I., Cook Is. 349; see Manuae I.
End., 134–5, 137–8; illness, 262, 268; death, 269; log, 81n
Hicks Bay, N.Z., 204
Hikiau, heiau, 649; ceremonies at, 649–51, 652, 654; observatory at, 651, 662, 664
Hinchinbrook I., New Hebrides, 407
Res.(1), 301–2; drawings, 309, 317, 321, 326, 351, 378, 389, 393, 438; publication, 465, 469, 470, 505; portraits, of Cook, 697; of Omai, 448
Hogarth, William, Rake's Progress, 115
Hokianga harbour, N.Z., 211
Holeva (Observatory Point), Tongatapu, 540
Hollamby, William, quartermaster Dis., 663–4
Honeychurch, Elizabeth, of Mile End, 693n
Hood, Alexander, midshipman Res.(1), 375
Hoorn Is., Pacific, 114
Hope Bay, Vancouver I., 583
Hope Is., Gt Barrier Reef, Aus., 238
Horn, C., 123, 132, 147, 149, 224, 279; discovery of, 114; navigation of, 148n, 166; End., 163–6, 170n, 248, observations, 165; Res.(1), 426, 427n; Adv., 447
Horsley, Samuel, mathematician, 450
House of Commons, 43n; Acts, (1714), 115; (1745), 478, 484; (1748-9), 141n-2n; (1775), 484; grant, 502; speaker see Norton
Howe, C., Aus., 228
Howe, Richard, Earl Howe, 692
Howick Is., Aus., 244
Huahine I., End., 192–3, 388; Res.: Adv., 345–6; Res.(1), 385–6; Res.: Dis., 560–3; see also Omai
Hudson Bay, 103, 301, 311; exploration of, 476, 477, 478; entrance to N.W. passage, 479, 481, 484, 490–1; see also Fort Churchill
Hudson Strait, 64
Hunt, Leigh, essayist, 301
Hunter, John, anatomist, 450
Hutchinson, John, surgeon Dolphin, 136
Hutchinson, William, Treatise (1787), 13n
ice, 311, 315–16, 317, 366, 475, 482, 622–623; icebergs, 320–1, 428, 431, 434–5; iceblink, 365, 618; see also Antarctic; Arctic; Atlantic, Indian, Pacific oceans, south of 50°
Iliamua volcano, Cook Inlet, 604n
'Indian Island', Dusky Sd, N.Z., 326
Indian Ocean, 54, 113, 117, 119; End., 264–6; Res.: Adv. part company, 318–19; Adv., 331; Res.: Dis., 512–16, 685
Indian Ocean, south of 50°: Res.(1), 319–322; icebergs, 320–1
Ingornachoix Bay, Newfoundland, 92
instruments see navigation; surveying; Venus, Transit of
Irish Sea, 12
Irving, Charles, surgeon, 283
Ismailov, Gerassim Gregoriev, factor Unalaska, 632, 635, 679; chart, 636
Ivanovich, Jacob, master Russian sloop, 636
Ivashkin, Petr Mateyevich, 683
Jack's Coffee House, London, 451
Java Head, 255
End., 179
Jervis, John, captain Gosport, 57
Jervis Bay, Aus., 228
Jesuits, 158
Jordan, R., Espiritu Santo I., 408
Juan de Fuca, Strait of, Canada/U.S.A., 582–3
Kahoolawe I., Hawaiian Is., 677
Kaipara harbour (False Bay), N.Z., 210
Kaitapeha ridge, N.Z., 213
Ka Lae Point, Hawaii, 646
Kalani'opu'u, 653n; see Kalei'opu'u
Kalau islet, Tonga Is., 350
Kalei'opu'u (Terreeoboo; Kerrioboo), of Hawaii, 639–40, 653–4, 656, 657, 662–4, 667, 670–1, 675, 676n
Kalimu, of Hawaii, 671
Kamchatka, 483, 485, 486, 682, 684; chart, 632; see also Avacha Bay; Petropavlovsk
Kamchatka, R., 485
Kaneoneo, of Kauai I., 580n
Kao, high priest of Hawaii, 653, 654, 655, 656, 657, 659, 667
Kara Sea, 483
Kauai I. (Atoui), Hawaiian Is., Res.: Dis., 574–6, 653n; trade, 574, 580, 677; see also Waimea Bay
Kaukura atoll, Tuamotu Is., 379n
Kaula I., Hawaiian Is., 577
Kawaihae Bay, Hawaii, 660–1
Kayak I. (Kaye's; St Elias), Alaska pen., 593–4
Kazan Is., Pacific, 684
Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, 648–9; Res.: Dis., 647–57, 661–77; disturbances, 664–6, 671; thefts, 662–3, 664, 666; trade, 653, 657; see also Hikiau
Kelger, —, captain Kronenberg, 258
Kenai peninsula, Alaska, 598
Kendall, H. P., Captain James Cook (1951), 284n
see chronometers; see also Ships (Cook's), Discovery; Resolution
Kepa, of Nomuka I., 546
Kepler, Johannes, astronomer, 99
Keplin, John, A.B. Res.(1), 422
Keppel Bay, Aus., 260n
Keppel's I., 393; see Niuatopatapu I.
Kerguelen I., Res.: Dis., 513–16; fauna and flora, 516
Kerguelen-Trémarec, Yves-Joseph de, navigator, 433, 490; voyages (1772; 1773–1774), 309, 512, 513–14
Kerr Point, N.Z., 20gn
Killick,—, master Goodwill, 44–5
King, James, lieut. Res.(2), 496–7; licut.
Dis., 675, in command, 682; observations see chronometers Res.: Dis.; Hikiau; postcaptain, 686; death, 692;Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, vol. III, 691, 703
King, Walker, bishop of Rochester, 496–7
King George's I. see Tahiti
King George's Is. see Tuamotu Is.
King George's Sound see Nootka Sound
Life of Captain James Cook (1788), 15n, 25n, 47–8, 63n, 75n, 125n, 275n
Captain James Cook(1907), IIn, 22n, 27n, 28n, 84n
Knight, James, gov. Hudson's Bay., 476
Knox, Capt. John, Historical journal(1769), 44–5
Kodiak I., Alaska pen., 606
Korea, 483
Kupang (Concordia), Timor I., Indonesia, 254
Labrador, 63, 64, 68, 70–1, 94, 687; survey, 65, 298; Cook's chart, 84, 85, 97
Labrador current, 68
La Condamine,
La Dezena I., Tuamotu Is., 349; see
Tauere atoll
La Dominica I see Hiva Oa I.
Lahi passage, Tonga Is., 538
La Hunc, C., Newfoundland, 87
La Magdalena I. see Fatu Hiva I.
Lamaline Is., Newfoundland, 83
Lambeth, London, 77
Lanai I., Hawaiian Is., 677
Lands End, Cornwall, 271
Lane, Michael, draughtsman, 65, 90; surveyor Newfoundland, 91, 96, 98, 99, 454, 687; charts, 97
Langley see Petite Miquelon
Lanyon, William, midshipman Adv., 474n; master's mate Res.(2), 498, 669; Dis., 682
La Poile Bay, Newfoundland, 88
Lauraguais, Louis-Felicité de Brancas, comte de, 292
Lavrentiya Bay, Chukotskiy pen., Res.: Dis., 616–17, 624, 680
Lawn Bay, Newfoundland, 83
Leadbetter, Charles, 50, 114; Compleat system of astronomy (1728), 36, 37, 87; Young mathematician's companion (1739), 36, 37
Leeward Is., W. Indies, 18
Legge, Julian, captain Trident, 54
Lchua I., Hawaiian Is., 577
Leith, Scotland, 27
Le Maire, Strait of, 114, 428; End., 159, 161, 164, 165, 230; Cook's chart, 165; Res.(1), 427
Le Rouge, George Louis, cartographer, 486n
Lerwick, Shetland Is., 27
Leven, R., Yorks, 4
Lever, Sir Ashton, 686
Lévis, Francois-Gaston, duc de, marechal de France, 53
Lifuka I., Tonga Is., Res.: Dis., 533–6; conspiracy, 535–6; thefts', 536; trade, 534
Treatise of the scuruy (1753), 136, 703–4
Linc Is., Pacific, 571
Lisburne, C., Alaska, 620
Liverpool, II
Lizard, Cornwall, 23
'Locac' or Beach, 108
London, 7–8, 14n; Tower, 64–5; Cook in, 27, 61–2, 75, 81, 280, 288–9, 450–3 London Gazette, 689
Long Harbour, Newfoundland, 83
Longitude, Board of, 116, 142, 287–8, 292, 501, 502, 508, 691
longitude, calculation of, 109, 114–17, 221, 241, 410, 640n; dead reckoning, 37, 91, 166n; eclipses, 87, 89–90, 115; lunars, 166, 133, 154, 164–5, 250–1, 309, 379; see also chronometers
Long Nose, Aus., 228
Lono or Rono, Hawaiian god, 658–9, 663, 665, 676n; Cook as, 657–60
Loo fort, Madeira I., 154
Lookout, Pt, Gt Barrier Reef, Aus., 243
Lookout, Pt, Moreton Bay, Aus., 232
Lopcvi I., New Hcbrides, 396
Lord Howe's I. see Mopihea I.
Lorient, Brittany, 24
Los Desventurados Is., Chile, 372n
Loudon, Lord see Campbell, John
Louisa Bay, Tasmania, 331
Louisburg, Cape Breton I., 24, 30–1, icebound, 42, 43; siege of, 32–3; British fleet in, 34, 39, 73n; Cook's sailing directions, 39
Lovely, Edward, seaman, 54
Lumsden, Alexander, purser's steward, 35
Luncheon Cove, Dusky Sd, N.Z., 325
Macao, 684–5
McAllister, John, of Philadelphia, 153n, 694n; wife Frances, 692n, 693n; see also Wardale
McDonald Is.,
Mackay, Robert, midshipman Res.(2), 562
McIntosh, Alexander, carpenter Res.(2), 680
Macquarie I., Pacific, 322
Madre de Dios Bay see Vaitahu Bay
Mae, of Huahine see Omai
Magdalen Is., G. of St Lawrence, 74n
Magra, James Maria, midshipman End., 140, 191n, 232–3, 239, 290n
Mahia peninsula, N.Z., 202
Mahoney, Mortimer, cook Adv., 507
Malay Peninsula, 108
Malo I. (St Bartholomew), New Hcbrides, 408
Mamoe people, of New Zealand, 325–7
Mangaia I., Cook Is., 527
Manley, Isaac George, servant End., 139–140; midshipman Res.(1), 299
Maori people, of New Zealand
maps see charts
Marianas Is., Pacific, 133
Maria van Diemen, C., N.Z., 199, 211, 213, 222; End., 209, 210
Marion I.,
Marmot I. (St Hermogenes), Alaska pen., 599
Marokau atoll, Tuamotu Is., 169
Marquesas Is., Pacific, 103, 111, 133, 374; people, 377–8; Res.(1), 375–8
'Marquin Bay', G. of St Lawrence, 34
End., 263; gunner's mate Res.(1), 385, 388, 422; Journal (1776), 456
Marshall Is., Pacific, 110
Marum, Mt, Ambrim I., 396
Marutea atoll, Tuamotu Is., 339
Maskelyne Is., New Hebrides, 398
Matavai Bay (Royal Bay), Tahiti, 172–3, 186, 343; Wallis at, 172, 173, 186, 189
Maui I., Hawaiian Is., 647, 653; Res.: Dis., 638–40, 677; trade, 638–9
Mauritius, I., Res.: Adv. east of, 318
Maxwell, James, A.B. Res.(1), 299
Mayer, Tobias, astronomer, 116
Medni I., Komandorskiye Is., 682
Medway R., Newfoundland, 97
Mcra Lava I. (Pic de l'Etoile), New Hebrides, 394
Merrin, Mt, Tana I., 402
Mcrton Abbey, Surrey, 693
Mewburn, -, of Marton, 3
Middelburg I. see 'Eua I.
Middle Arm, B. of Islands, Newfoundland, 93
Middleburg, Flanders, 11
Middle Ground Shoal, Cook Inlet, 603–4
Middleton, Capt. Christopher, 477
Milner, Thomas, owner Earl of Pembroke, 129
Miquelon I. see St Pierre et Miquelon
Mississippi, R., 58
Mitchel, Bowles, midshipman Res.(1), 320
Mitchell, John, map (1755), 77
Mohawk, R., New York, 53
Molokai I., Hawaiian Is., 677
Moluccas Is., 110
End., 139, 179–182, 191, 234, 241–4; death, 268
Monboddo, Lord, 451
Monckton, Brig. Robert, 47
Monk, Simon, butcher Res.(1), 412–13
Monkhouse, George, of Cumberland, 274
End., 140, 191, 238; death, 265
End., 139, 162, 170, 178, 179, 183; death, 262
Monson, Lady Anne, 145
Montagu I. see Emau I.
Montagu I., Prince Wm Sound, 598
Monthly Miscellany, 479
Monument rock, New Hebrides, 398–9
Moorea I., End. party, 183–4; Res.: Dis., 557–60; punishment for theft, 558–60
Mopihaa I., Pacific, 389
Moreton (Morton) Bay, Aus., 232
Morlaix, Brittany, 21
Morris, Thomas, marine Res.(2), 562
Morton, earl of see
Morton, Yorks, 2
Motane I., Marquesas Is., 375
Motuara I., Q. Charlotte Sd, N.Z., 214–215, 333, 335, 421, 525
Motu Arohia I., N.Z., 208
Motu Tu'a atoll, Tuamotu Is., 339n
Mount Edgecumbe, Alaska, 592
Mulgrave, Lord see Phipps
Mulgrave, Yorks, 448
Müller, Gerhard Friedrich, map, 486–7, 593, 594, 599, 605, 609, 613, 615, 632, 633; Voyages from Asia to America (1761),486
Murderers Bay see Tasman Bay
Musgrave, Christopher, vicar St Margaret's, 61n
Mylne, Robert, architect, 450
Napoopoo,
Narborough, Sir John, 479
Natal, S. Africa, 266
navigation, 12–14, 109–10, 117; instruments, 13, 114–15, 136–7, 288; see also chronometers; latitude; longitude
Navy Board, 26; payments, 73n, 78, 79n, 86n; purchase of ships, 128–30, 279–280, 493; supplies, 67, 90, 135, 136, 282, 474
Neutral Is., W. Indies, 76n
New Albion (N.W. coast America), 122, 123, 478, 479, 481, 483, 487, 489, 490; rendezvous, 570, 571; Res. Dis., 581–3
New Brunswick, Canada, 34
New Caledonia, I., Pacific, 439; Res.(1), 411–20; fauna and flora, 413, 415, 419; reef, 416, 418; people see Melanesians
Newcastle, Aus., 231
Newcastle Bay, Aus., 260n
Newcastle-on-Tyne, 8
Newfoundland, 14, 62–3, 68–9, 101, 311;
Cooks surveys, 69–70; east coast, 58; north coast, 73–4, 80; south coast, 82–3, 87–8; west coast, 80–1, 91–3; instructions see Admiralty
Cook's charts, 58–9, 70n, 74, 77n, 84–5, 95–7; published, 85–6, 88–9, 94, 97, 454
governors see Graves, Thomas;
Newfoundland Pilot, 97
New Guinea, 108, 110, 454; in exploration, 112, 113, 114, 117, 118; passage see Torres Strait
New Hebrides Is., Pacific, 112, 395; Res.(1), 394–409, chart, 410n; survey, 70; Cook's approaches to people, 397, 399–400, 403
fauna, 398n; people see Melanesians
New Ireland, I., Bismarck arch., 420
New Mexico, 508
New Orleans, 58
New South Wales (Cook's), 249; see Australia
New Year's Harbour, Staten I., Argentina, 427
New Zealand, 113, 118, 121, 123, 149, 207n, 211, 221n, 227; fauna and flora, 202, 205, 208, 212, 223, 324, 325, 335, 506
New Zealanders see Mamoe; Maori
Solebay, 27n
Nicol, George, publisher, 692
Nomuka (Rotterdam) I., Tonga Is., 349; Res.(1), 390–2; Res.: Dis., 531, 532–3, 538; fauna and flora, 390; observations, 392; thefts, 391–2, 532; trade, 391, 532
Nootka Sound, Vancouver I., fauna and flora, 586–7; Res.: Dis., 583–90; see also Resolution Cove
Norfok I., Pacific, 420
Norman, C., Newfoundland, 80
Norris, Edward, physician, 307
North America, 62, 70; British colonies in, 30, 62, 121, 256, 269, 491, 684; French colonies in, 18, 30, 56, 58, 476
see also Alaska; Canada; New Albion; Northwest Passage
North Arm, B. of Islands, Newfoundland, 93
Northcote, James, artist, 300n
North I. (Aehei no mouwe), N.Z., 215–16, 221; End. circumnavigation, 198–216, 221–2; longitude, 233, 423
Northwest Passage, 475–6; search for, Atlantic entrance, 476, 477–8, 491, 687–8; Pacific entrance, 111, 122, 477, 478–81
Norton, Sir Fletcher, speaker H. of Commons, 504
Norton Sound, Alaska, 634; Res.: Dis., 625–7; observations, 626
Norway, 12
Nowell, George, carpenter End., 276
Nuku'alofa, Tongatapu, 539
Observatory I., New Caledonia, 414
Observatory I., Staten I., Argentina, 427
Observatory Point, Dusky Sd, N.Z., 324
Odiddy (Hitihiti), of Raiatea I., Res.(1), 348, 354, 358–9, 384, 386; interpreter, 378; return to Raiatea, 387, 388, 552
Ogilby, John, publisher, 77
Okhotsk, Siberia, 683
Okhotsk, Sea of, 632
Old Ferolle, Newfoundland, 81
Omai (Mae), of Huahine I., Adv., 346, 348, 354, 384; in England, 447–9, 468; portraits, 448
Onion, C., Newfoundland, 80
Ontario, L., 53
Open Bay, Newfoundland, 81
Opeppe see Boenecha, Domingo de
Opoa district, Raiatea I., 193
Orford, Lord see
Ori, of Huahine I., 193, 345–6, 348, 385–6, 560, 561, 564, 709, 713
Orkney Is. 27, 686
Orléans, I. d', St Lawrence R., 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 51, 52n
Orme, Robert, historian, 104
Ormesby parish, Yorks, 2
Oro, of Borabora I., 551
Oro, Tahitian god, 553
Orofena, Mt, Tahiti, 173
Oropa'a district, Tahiti, 381
Orsbridge, Lieut, 283
Osbaldestone, William, M.P. Scarborough, 25–6
Osnaburg I. see Mehetia I.
Otaheite see Tahiti
'Otu Tolu group, Tonga Is., 390
Pace, Grace, of Stainton, 2; see Cook
Pacific Ocean, north: exploration of, 117, 478–81, 484–6; Res.: Dis., 572–7, 580–3, 591–2, 637–8, 678–9, 684; observations, 581; see also Alaska, gulf and peninsula
Pacific Ocean, south: exploration of, 108–114, 117, 123–4; see also Wallis
End., 166–8, 196–8; Res.: Adv., 337–40, 348–9, 354–5, part company, 355; Adv., 438, 447; Res.(1), 369–71, 374–5, 378–9, 388–90, 393, 419–20, 423–5; Res.: Dis., 525–31, 549, 571–2
charts, 226, 393; Cook's charts, 258, 287; fauna, 166, 167, 196, 197, 361, 369, 371, 420; observations, 166, 197, 338, 369
Pacific Ocean, south of 50°: Res.(1), 361–2, 363–4, 367–9; icebergs, 361; pack ice, 361
Paea district, Tahiti, 186
Palea or Parea, of Hawaii, 649, 650–1, 652, 653, 664, 665, 666
Palliser, C., N.Z., 216, 221, 222, 338, 355, 360, 423, 446, 524
Eagle, 18–19, 49, 63, 67; in Newfoundland, 57, 59, govrnor, 76–80, 83–6, 88, 89, 90–1, 93, 94, 97, 127
Palliser's Isles, Tuamotu Is., 379
Palm I., Aus., 236
Palmerston, Lord see Temple
Paopao Bay, Moorea I., 559
Papetoai (Opunohu) Bay, Moorea I., 558–9
Pare (Oparre) district, Tahiti, 181, 186, 192, 342, 343, 380, 383, 551, 555
Paris, 115, 197, 497, 501; Academy of Sciences, 77, 124, 488
Parker, William, mate Grenvillc, 79–80, 86, 95, 96; licut. Niger, 90
Parker's River, Newfoundland, 97
Parkinson, Sydney, artist End., 145, 270, 301; death, 264; drawings, 155, 178, 204, 231; journal, 173, 219; Journal of a voyage to the South Seas (1773), 274, 459
Parkinson, Stanfield, 173–4
Parry, William, artist, 448
Pasley, Thomas, captain Sybil, 686
Patagonia, 123
Pa Uma I., New Hebrides, 396
Pearl I., B. of Islands, Newfoundland, 92
Pedro, a Maori, 521
Peking, 101
Pelham, Henry, secretary Victualling Board, 283
Penguin Is., Newfoundland, 87
Pentecost I., New Hebrides, 395–6
Pepperrell, Sir William, 30
'Pepys I.', 122
Perceval, Sir John, carl of Egmont, first lord Admiralty, 76, 122, 123, 133
Petty, William, surgeon's mate End., 139, 262, 267, 276, 705
Peter the Great, of Russia, 485
Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka, 485, 486, 491, 627, 635, 636; Res.: Dis., 679–81, 683–4
Phillips, -, captain Spy, 68
Res.(2), 499–500, 651, 667, 669–71, 673, 685, 686; letter, 504n
End., 139, 268, 276; lieut. Res.(1), 298; journal, 305, 313, 315n; charts, 198, 325; captain Lyon, 504, 687
Pickersgill Harbour, Dusky Sd, N.Z., 324
Pickersgill Reef, Aus., 237n
Pigeon House, Aus., 228
Piha passage, Tonga Is., 544
Pilgrim Is., St Lawrence R., 52
Pillar rocks, St Lawrence R., 51
Pingo, Lewis, engraver Royal Mint, 695
Pistolet Bay, Newfoundland, 80
Pitt Passage, Moluccas, 284
Plenty, Bay of, N.Z., 204
Point Shallow Water see Yukon, R.
Polenia Bay, Eromango I., 400n
Polo, Marco, 107–8
Polynesia, 119, 173–4, 193, 401, 500, 573, 657–8, 708–9; language, 653n, see also
people see Hawaiian Is.; Maori; Tahiti; Tonga Is.
Pombal, Sebastian, marquis de, 157–8
Pomponius Mela, 107
Pondicherry, India, 211
Ponto, Antonio, A.B. End., 140
Poole, Dorset, 693
Port au Choix, Newfoundland, 92
Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, 88
Port Famine, St of Magellan, 481
Port Jackson, Aus., 231
Port Kembla, Aus., 228n
Portland, Dorothy, duchess of, 145
Portland I., N.Z., 201
Porto Praya, C. Verde Is., 307
Port Palliser, Kerguelen I., 515
Port Resolution, Tana I., New Hebrides, 402–7; longitude, 410
Portsmouth, 17, 22n, 28, 68, 79, 443; Naval Academy, 449–50, 499, 689
Port Stephens, Aus., 231
Portugal, 157–8
Potatau, of Tahiti, 383
Pownel, -, factor to Palliser, 94n
Pratas shoal, China Sea, 684
Prince Edward Is.,
Prince of Wales Channel, Aus., 260n
Prince of Wales I., Alaska, 591
Prince of Wales I., Aus., 249n
Prince's I., Sunda Strait see Panaitan I.
Prince William Is., Fiji, 547
Prince William Sound (Sandwich Sound), Alaska, Res.: Dis., 595–8; chart, 598; Indians, 595–7
Pringle, Sir John, pres. Royal Society, 451, 452, 475, 483–4, 506, 507, 703
Pringle, Pt, Kerguelen I., 515
Pritchard, John, seaman cook, 141
Public Advertiser, 151
Pudiue I., New Caledonia, 414
Pullen, —, schoolmaster of Ayton, 4
Pulo Condore, China Sea, 685
Purangi, R., N.Z., 205n
Purchas, Samuel, Purchas his Pilgrimes, 476
Purea (Oborea), of Tahiti, 132, 175, 186, 190, 342, 549; visits of, End., 180, 181, 185, 187, 188, 191; Res.: Adv., 344; Res.(1), 384
Putuputua I., Tonga Is., 538n
Pu'ukapeli, Kauai I., 653n
Pylstaert I. see Ata I.
Quebec, 29–31; strategy of British attack, 34, 39, 40, 41; approach of fleet, 40–5; siege and capture, 46–9; British in, 50, 52–3
Queen Charlotte Is., Br. Columbia, 591
Queen Charlotte Sound, N.Z., 279, 319, 512; longitude, 336, 423
Quidi Vidi or Kitty Vitty, Newfoundland, 57
Quiros, C., Espiritu Santo I., 408
Quiros: Fernández de
Raiatea I., End., 193–4; Res. : Adv., 346–8; Res.(1), 386–8; Res. : Dis., 563–9
Ramea Is., Newfoundland, 87
Ram Head, Aus., 228
Raper, Matthew, F.R.S., 450
Rarotonga I., Cook Is., 529
Rautoanui harbour, Raiatea I., 194
Ravahere atoll, Tuamotu Is., 169
Red Bank, Aus., 249n
Red I., Newfoundland, 92
Redoubt volcano, Cook Inlet, 604n
Red Point, Aus., 228
Regiomontanus, astronomer, 115
Reitoru atoll (Bird I.), Tuamotu Is., 169
Rendez-vous, I. du (Bligh's Cap), Kerguelen I., 514
Repulse Bay, Aus., 260n
Resolution Bay see Vaitahu Bay
Resolution Cove (Ship Cove), Vancouver I., Res. : Dis., 583–90; observations, 589; see also Nootka Sound
Resolution I., Dusky Sd, N.Z., 328
Reti, of Tahiti, 342
Revesby Abbey, Boston, Lincs, 142
End., 262
Rhode I., 269
Rice, Henry, captain Dutton, 440
Richardson, John, 61
Richelieu, R., Quebec, 51
Richmond, Charles Lennox, duke of, 123
Rickman, John, lieut. Dis., 499, 667, 671; Res., 682; Journal (1781), 502n
Rimu tree, 324
Dis., 499
Robben I., Table Bay, 167–8
Res.(1), 299; master's mate Res.(2), 474n, 498, 669; chart, 437n, 692n; drawings, 498, 599
Roberts, Thomas, quartermaster Res.(2), 576
Roberts, William, of Fort St George, 104
Elements of Navigation (1754), 12, 13n, 114
Rochford, Wm Henry Zuylestein, earl of, 285
Rocks Point, N.Z., 518
Rodriguez I.,
Rolim de
Res.(1), 456
Rossiter, Thomas, marine End., 265n
Rothsay Banks, Aus., 249
Roti (Rotte) I., Indonesia, 254
Royal Bay see Matavai Bay
Royal Navy, 15–17, 25, 26–7, 35, 54–6, 140, 141n-2n, 644, 707; Regulations and Instructions, 26, 282
Royal Society, 482; election of Cook, 450–1; Copley medal, 506, 693; Cook medal, 693, 694n, 695–6
Philosophical Transactions, 88, 101n, 106, 131, 274, 703; Cook's contributions, on eclipse, 89–90; on health of seamen, 451
promotion of scientific enquiries see Northwest Passage; Terra australis; Venus, Transit of
presidents see see Maty, M.; Morton, Charles; librarian see Robertson, J.
Rudd, Margaret Caroline, 452
Runaway, C., N.Z., 204
Rurutu (Hiti-roa) I., Tubai Is., 196
Russia, 124, 256, 303, 683; exploration, 483, 484–5; see Bering; Chirikov; maps see Müller; Stählin
Ruthven, Richard, captain Terpsichore, 74n
Sacred Bay, Newfoundland, 80
Saguenay, R., Quebec, 41
St Augustine, Mt, Cook Inlet, 600
St Bartholomew I., New Hebrides see Malo I.
St Charles, R., Quebec, 42
St Cuthbert's church, Marton, 3
St Elias, C., Kayak I., 593
St Elias I. see Kayak I.
St Genevieve Bay, Newfoundland, 81
St George, C., Newfoundland, 92
St George's Bay, Newfoundland, 92
St. George's Channel see English Channel
St Jacques, Fortune Bay, Newfoundland, 95
St John, C., Staten I., Argentina, 427
St John, R., New Brunswick, 58n
St John's, Newfoundland, 56, 57, 66, 73; chart, 58; Grenville at, 79, 81, 83, 88, 93, refitted, 78
St Lawrence Bay see Lavrentiya Bay
St Lawrence, Gulf of, 30, 34, 62, 63, 64; ice, 43, 52n-3n; charts, 36, 39, 41, 58n; Cook's charts, 89, 97; sailing directions, 58
St Lawrence I. (Anderson's; Clerke's),
St Lawrence, R., 30, 50, 53; charts, 36, 39, 41, 52n, 59; Cook's chart, 51–2; soundings, 46–8; navigation of, 40–1, 43, 44, 46; see also Traverse
St Lazarus archipelago, 480
St Margaret, B., Newfoundland, 81
St Margaret's church, Barking, 61
St Mary's church, Whitby, 6–7
'St Mathew I.', 441
St Patrick Head, Tasmania, 226
St Petersburg now Leningrad, 482, 635, 680; Academy of Sciences, 144, 483, 485; Admiralty, 485
St Pierre et Miquelon, Is., 63, 68, 69; survey, 71–2, 75n; Cook's chart, 72, 74, 76, published, 85–6, 89
Sambro, C., Nova Scotia, 58
Samgunuda, Unalaska I. see English Bay
Res.(2), 500, 501; surgeon Dis., 614
Sanak Is.,
San Diego, C., Argentina, 161
Sandmàn reefs,
Sandwich, earl of see Montagu
Sandwich I., New Hebrides see Efate I.
Sandwich Is. see Hawaiian Is.
Sandwich Land see South Sandwich Is.
Sandwich Sound see Prince William Sound
Sandy Bay, Newfoundland, 81
Sandy Cape, Aus., 232
San Francisco Bay, 487
San Pedro I. see Motane I.
Santa Christina I. see Tahuate I.
Santo Domingo, W. Indies, 21
Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro, 110
Satterley, John, carpenter End., 182, 240, 257–8, 262; death, 265
Saunders, Sir Charles, admiral, 36, 217; c. in c. St Lawrence expedition, 40–51; correspondence see Clevland
Saunders I., S. Sandwich Is., 431
Savage I. see Niue I.
Saxton, Charles, captain Pearl, 73n
Sayer, Robert, publisher, 454
Scholient, Ernst, servant Res.(1), 385
Scott, James, lieut. marines Adv., 301
scurvy, 15, 55, 211, 259, 308, 338, 371, 679; prevention of, 135–6, 170, 204, 324, 507, 703
Seaford, Lord, 511
Seal I., Dusky Sd, N.Z., 325
Sedanka I., Alcutian Is., 611
Seller, John, Practical Navigation (1669), 12–13
Senex, John, publisher, 77
Seward, Anna, Elegy, 500n
Shapley, Capt., of Boston, 480
Sharp, Granville, 449
Shaw, Thomas, gunner's mate Dis., 566–7
Shelburne Bay, Aus., 260n
Shelikof Strait, Alaska pen., 606
Sherwin, John Keyse, engraver, 453n
Shetland Is., 27
Ship Cove, B. d'Espoir, Newfoundland, 83
Ship Cove, Q. Charlotte Sd, N.Z., End., 211, 212–13, 215; Adv., 330, 332–7, 422, 446–7; Res.(1), 330, 333–7, 356–60, 421–3; message for Furneaux, 360, 364, 367, 421, 446; Res. : Dis., 518–24
Ship Cove, Nootka Sd see Resolution Cove
Ship Cove, Ramea Is., Newfoundland, 87
Ships
Ann and Elizabeth, 129
Antelope, 20, 64, 65, 66, 90; in Newfoundland, 56, 57, 70–1, 74;
Aréthuse, 32
Augusta, 304
Aurora, 142
Bienfaisant, 33
Boudeuse, 289n
Bounty, 191n
Boussole, 508
Britannia, canoe, 383
Captain, 35
Célèbre, 32
Centurion, 47
Cerberus, 498
Ceres, 438
Charming Nancy, 55
Courageux, 138
David, 91
Diligence, 472; see Discovery
Discovery II, 366n
Dolphin, 128, 130; voyage (1764-6) see Byron; voyage (1766-8) see Wallis; ship's company, 138–9, 188, 300; goat, 147
Duyfken, 113
Earl of Pembroke, 129; see Endeavour
Erebus, 366
Eurus, 53
Falkland, 54
Falmouth, 21
Favourite, 92
Ferret, 21
Flying Fish, 366n
Garonne, 71
Gibraltar, 17
Golden Hind, 118
Goodwill, 44
Greyhound, 20
Hunter, 49
Investigator, 250n
Kent, 444
King George, 56
Kronenburg, 258
Lady Penrhyn, 557n
Licorne, 71
Lowestoft, 49
Lyon, 687–8
Marquis of Granby, 281; see Drake
Marquis of Rockingham, 281; see Raleigh
Mascarin, 221n
Mermaid, 24
Monmouth, 19
Norwich, 54
Orange, 113
Otter, 312n
Port au Prince, 535n
Revenge, 19
Rose, 128
Royal William, 44
St Albans, 21
Saint Jean Baptiste, 211
St Paul, 485
Sally 73; see Grenville
Scorpion,
Spitfire, 693
Sultan, 43n
Supply, 681n
Swan, 312n
Sybil, 685
Terror, 366
Three Brothers, Wm Drake master, 11n
Three Brothers, transport, 11n
Three Sisters, 91
Thunderer, 690
Triton, 21
True Briton, 437
Valdivia, 312
Valentine, 129
Vanguard, 53
William and Mary, 94
Windsor, 20
Zephyr, 79n
Ships (Cook's)
Adventure (1772-5), 296–7, 472; change of name, 284–5; fitted, 281; complement, 281, 300–1, 474n; T. Furneaux commander, 281; victualled, 282–3; Arnold chronometers, 305
Discovery (1776-80), 474, 490; fitted, 494–5; complement, 495–504;
Endeavour (1768-71), 128–9, 275–6, 287, 292; named, 130; fitted, 130, 134; complement, 137–46;
Grenville, 74n, 87, 97–8, 99, 136, 140, 153; named, 73; see also Deptford; Thames, R.
Cook's log and journal, 79, 80, 81, 83, 92, 94–5; letter book, 81n, 82n; survey work see Newfoundland; St John's
Mary,
Northumberland, 44, 79;
Pembroke, 24, 29, 31n;
Resolution (1772-5), 441, 444, 445; change of name, 284–5; alterations, 293–5, 297; fitted, 281, 303; complement, 281, 297–9, 474n;
(1776-80), 463, 464, 472, 504; fitted 474, 493–5; complement, 474n, 495–504;
Shishaldin, Mt, Unimak I., 609
Shoeburyness, Essex, 94
Pembroke, 28, 35, 40; death, 43; interest in Cook's surveys, 33–4, 36, 37, 39, 51, 60, 701
Simonstown (False Bay), C. of Good Hope, 685
Simpson, Alexander, A.B. End., 265
Slaughter, William, of S. Shields, 694n
Smaillhome parish, Roxburghshire, 2
Small Good Bay Newfoundland, 92
Smeaton, John, engineer, 137
Smith, Charles, of Bermondsey, 61; dau. Mary see Batts
Smith, Charles, watchmaker, 61
Smith, Isaac, 276, 436n; admiral, 693, 694; A.B. End., 140, 229; master's mate Res.(1), 229, 440
Smith, William, explorer, 366
Smock, Henry, carpenter's mate Res.(1), 307
Smoky Cape, Aus., 231
Snug Corner Bay, Prince Wm Sd, 597
Society Is., Pacific, 194; fauna and flora, 172–3, 176, 185; End., 169–94; Res.: Adv., 340–9; Res.(1), 380–8; Res.: Dis., 549–70; see Borabora; Huahine; Maupiti; Moorea; Raiatea; Tahaa; Tahiti Tetiaroa; Tubai
End., 145–6, 153; preparations Res.(1), 291, 292, 296; correspondence, 447, with Banks, 442, 443, 444, 461 papers, 459
Solander, Pt, Aus., 230
Solander I., N.Z., 218
Solebay, Ferolle Pt, Newfoundland, 96
Solomon Is., Pacific, 108, 111, 112, 113, 114, 123, 211, 439, 454, 481
South America, 163, 199, 483; see also Brazil; Horn, C.; Peru; Tierra del Fuego
Southern continent see Terra australis incognita
South Georgia, S. Atlantic, 434, 438, 443; fauna and flora, 429; Res.(1), 428–9
South I. (Te Wai Pounamu), N.Z., 215–16; End. circumnavigation, 217–20, 222; longitude, 223, see also Queen Charlotte Sound
South Sea Company, 5
South West Cape, Tasmania, 331
Spain, 19, 306, 508, 587; interests in Pacific, 105, 110–12, 118, 122, 124, 479; see also Tahiti
Res.(1), 309, 314, 324, 345–6; Voyage round the world (1953), 341, 365n, 389n
Spear, C., Newfoundland, 57
End., 145–6, 183, 204, 254; death, 264
Staat's Land, 121; see New Zealand
Account of the new northern archipelago (1774), 488
Stainton, Yorks, 2
Starbuck I., Pacific, 572
Stephens, C., N.Z., 220
Stephens, Sir Philip, secretary Admiralty, 64, 127, 214, 473; correspondence, with Cook, 66, 67, 79n, 86, 90, 94, 136, 258–9, 271, 275, 283, 294, 437, 444, 474; with Charles Douglas, 72–3, 74n-5n; with T. Graves, 63, 64–8, 71, 73, 74; with Palliser, 78, 79, 84, 91, 94n
Stewart I., N.Z., 222
Stockton, Yorks, 1
Stokesley, Yorks, 4
Stonebam, Kincardineshire, 27
Storm Bay, Tasmania see Adventure Bay
Strahan and Cadell, 471
Stuart, James, architect, 450
Suckling, C., gulf of Alaska, 594
Suckling, Maurice, comptroller Navy, 594
Sulu archipelago, 105
Sumatra I., Indonesia, 685
Sunda, Strait of, Java, End., 253, 255–6, 264; observations, 255; Res.: Dis., 685
Supper Cove, Dusky Sd, N.Z., 325
Surridge, James, A.B. Grenville, 92 surveying, 69–70, 78, 80, 99, 220–1; instruments, 65–6, 89; cost of, 67, 79n, 97, 136n; see also navigation
Sutton, Francis, seaman Friendship, 455
Sutwik I., Alaska pen., 607
Swainston, John, master Friendship, 12
Swarthowe Cross, Yorks, 284
Switzerland, 291
Sydney, Aus., 260n
Taaupiri islet, Tahiti, 183
Table Bay, S. Africa, 266, 308, 437, 447, 509; see also Cape Town
Table Mountain, 267
Tahiti (Otaheite), 172–7; chart, 190; fauna, 185; flora, 172–3, 176; French in, 261; Spaniards in, 189, 343–4, 439, 549–50, 552, 554; Cook's visits see Matavai Bay; Vaitepiha Bay; discovery see Wallis
Tahiti-iti, 172; see Taiarapu
Tahuata I., Marquesas Is., 375
Takapoto atoll, Takapoto atoll, Tuamotu Is., 379
Takaroa atoll, Tuamotu Is., 379
Takutea I., Cook Is., 528
Tally, John, seaman, 35
Tammata pappa see Modoopapappa
Tanimbar Is., Indonesia, 254
Tapuaenuku, Mt, N.Z., 217
Taputapuatea, marae Raiatea I., 193
Tareu rock, Moorea I., 558
Tasmania (Van Diemen's Land), 113, 226; Adv.., 331–2; Res.: Dis., 517–18; native people, 332
Tauere atoll (La Dezena), Tuamotu Is., 339
Taylor, Isaac, marine Res.(1), 341
Teava Moa, Raiatea I., 193
Teavanui harbour, Borabora I., 569
Tees, R., Yorks, 1
Tekokota atoll, Tuamotu Is., 339
Temple, Henry, Viscount Palmerston, 301
Temple Bay, Aus., 260n
Terra australis incognita (southern continent), 107, 121; reports of, 117, 133; see also Circumcision, C.; theories, 118–20, 277–9, 285–6; see also
Terryaboo see Kalei‘opu‘u
Tetiaroa I.,
Te To‘ofa see To‘ofa
Teu, of Tahiti, 381
Thames, R., England, 9, 21, 45, 128, 130–1, 686; Grenville's accidents in 91, 93–4
Thames, R., Newfoundland, 97
Thames, R., N.Z., 207
Thetis Bay, Le Maire Strait, 161
Thirsty Sound, Aus., 234
Thomson, Thomas, clergyman, 2
Three Kings Is., N.Z., 209
Thrum Cap I. see Aki Aki atoll thrum cap, 169n
Thule I., S. Sandwich Is., 430
Thurman, John, seaman, 159
Thurston peninsula, Antarctic, 366
Tierra del Fuego, 108; End., 160–63; Res.(1), 425–7; fauna and flora, 161–2, 170; observations, 160, 163, 427; see also Horn, C.
Timor I., E. Indies, 254
Tioonee, of 'Eua see Ta‘aufa‘a
Toau atoll, Tuamotu Is., 379n
Tobol'sk, Siberia, 101
Tonga Is. (Friendly Is.), 113, 114, 133, 349–50, 393, 546–7; Res.: Adv., 350–4; Res.(1), 389–93; Res.: Dis, 531–46; see 'Eua; Foa; Fotuhoa; Ha‘apu; Kao; Kotu; Lifuka; Niue; Nomuka; Tofua; Tongatapu; Uoleva; Vava‘u
Tongareva atoll, Cook Is., 571
Tongatapu (Amsterdam) I., Tonga Is., 349–50, 539; fauna and flora, 350, 351, 354, 390
Tor Bay, Newfoundland, 57
Torres Strait, 112, 260; search for, 226, 244–5, 247, 250; End., 252
Tory Channel, Q. Charlotte Sd, 422
Toulon, France, 18
Trade and Plantations, Lords Commissioners of, 62, 64, 66, 76, 477
Tragoz rocks, Brittany, 21
Traverse, the, St Lawrence R., 41–2; survey of, 44–5; chart, 51, 52n
Res.(2), 497, 499, 588–9, 655, 701
Tribulation, C., Aus., 236
Trinity Bay, Aus., 236
Trinity Is., Alaska pen., 606
End., 264
Tuamotu archipelago, Pacific, 111, 114, 132; End., 168–9, 170; Res.(1), 378–9
Tubuai I., Austral Is., 549
Tubuai Manu I.,
Tu‘i Lakeba, of Fiji, 352n,
Tu'i Tonga, 539n-40n
Tumannoi (Foggy) I., Alaska pen., 605
Tupaia, priest of Tahiti, 180, 181; End., 192, 193; guide, 196, 279; interpreter, N.Z., 199, 200, 208, 213, 214; at Batavia, 261; illness, 239, 255; death, 262; on cannibalism, 223, 359
Tupic Yupanqui, an Inca, 110
Turnagain, R., Cook Inlet, 602
Tuteha, of Tahiti, 178, 180–1, 186, 187, 190, 191, 342, 343, 344
Tweed I., B. of Islands, Newfoundland, 92
Twin Is., Newfoundland, 92
Tynemouth, 11
Uhomotu, Niue I., 389n
Ulieta see Raiatea I.
Umnak I.,
Unalaska I., see Aleut/ Eskimo; see also English Bay
Unalga I.,
Unimak I.,
Uoleva I., Tonga Is., 536
Uppsala, Sweden, 145
Upright, Pt, Aus., 228
Upstart, C., Aus., 235–6
Utrecht, Treaty of (1713), 56
Vactua i Ahurai, of Tahiti, 178n
Vahitahi atoll, Tuamotu Is., 169
Vaiari, Tahiti, 190
Vaipopoo, R., Tahiti, 173
Vaitahu Bay (Madre de Dios; Resolution), Tahuata I., 375–6
Vaitepiha Bay, Tahiti, 343, 552; End. party at, 189; Res.: Adv., 340–2; Res.: Dis., 549–51
Vaiuru district, Tahiti, 189
Valdivia, Chile, 479
Vanbushel,-, of Lambeth, 77
Res.(1), 299, 365n; midshipman Dis., 499, 644–5; voyage (1792-5), 593, 604, 607; Voyage of Discovery (1798), 499, 602, 603n
Van Diemen's Land, 118, 227, 322; search for strait, 332, 335; see Tasmania
Varela y Ulloa, Joseph, 508
Vatoa I., Fiji, 394
venereal disease, 187–8, 353, 520, 547, 568, 575, 638–9, 678, 710
Venus, Transit of, 274; theory, 100; observations of (1639), 100; (1761), 101, 116; (1769), End. voyage, 131, 134, 142, 144; instructions, 148, 151; instruments, 137, 182
Vera Cruz, Espiritu Santo I., 408
Vernon, Edward, admiral, 15
Virginia, 19
Vizcaino, Sebastian, navigator, 479
Wafer, Lionel, surgeon, 371–2
Walgreen Coast, Antarctic, 366
Walker, -, of Marton Grange, 3
Walker, John, shipowner of Whitby, 6, 15n, 25, 713; ships, 11–12; Cook apprenticed to, 7, 10, 14, 706; correspondence with Cook, 252n, 276–7, 310, 445, 456n, 474
Walker, Henry, of Whitby, 6
Dolphin, 126, 300; voyage (1766-8), 105, 123, 124, 169, 270, 350, 369, 389, 393; discovery of Tahiti, 131–3; see also Matavai Bay
Wallis Bank, Aus., 249n
Walsingham, Boyle, captain Thunderer, 690
Voyage round the world … by George Anson esq (1748), 119, 148n, 165, 166, 458, 466
Wardale, Frances, 153; see McAllister
Warning, Mt, Aus., 232
Warren, Sir Peter, vice-admiral, 30
Waterman I., T. del Fuego, 425n
Watson, Robert, mate Three Brothers, 10; master Friendship, 12
Res.(2), 501, 679; drawings, 522, 527, 536, 554, 557, 558, 576, 597, 713; publication, 691n; portrait of Cook, 557, 695, 697
Weddell, James, explorer, 366
Wedgeborough or Wedgewood, William, marine Res.(1), 407n, 426
Wegg, Samuel, of Hudson's Bay., 483
Weir, Alexander, master's mate End., 154
Wellington harbour, N.Z., 356
West, C., N.Z., 222
West Foreland, Cook Inlet, 601
Wetjacket Arm, Dusky Sd, N.Z., 328
Weymouth Bay, Aus., 260n
Captain Cook's Journal (1893), 210n, 410n
Whatley, Thomas, secretary Treasury, 76
Whelan, Patrick, quartermaster Res.(2), 474n
White, C., Newfoundland, 80
White, Gilbert, naturalist, 482
White Bear Bay, Newfoundland, 87
Whitehaven, Yorks, 11n
Whitehouse, John, master's mate Res.(1), 299
Whitsunday passage, Aus., 235
Wilkinson, Andrew, captain Niger, 94
Wilkinson, John, shipowner of Whitby, 12
William Augustus, duke of Cumberland, 17
Williams, Sir John, surveyor Navy, 282
Williamson, John, lieut. Res.(2), 497, 559, 575, 672, 673, 675; Dis., 682
Will's Coffee House, London, 275
Wilson, James, 'Dissertation', 13n
Wilson, Richard, artist, 301
Winnipeg, L., 487
Wolf, Archibald, A.B. End., 184
Wolf Bay (B. de Loup), Newfoundland, 87
York harbour, B. of Islands, Newfoundland, 92
York harbour, Labrador see Chateau Bay
York Minster Rock, T. del Fuego, 425
Young, George, Life and voyages of Captain James Cook (1836), 505n
Young, Walter, lieut. Lyon, 688