by Graeme Lay
The others looked displeased at this news. The East India Company? But they agreed that Hodges’s depictions of New Zealand and Otaheite were superb.
Palliser said to James, ‘That painting of the waterspout in the strait named after you is wonderfully dramatic.’
‘Indeed it is,’ said Stephens. ‘Particularly since the painting also includes the cape named after myself.’ He gave Palliser an impish look. ‘Cook may have named a cape after you, but he has named a cape and an island after myself.’ The others chuckled. Then Stephens made a note. ‘I will approach the Royal Academy and enquire as to which other artists may be able to sail with the expedition.’
Wiping his mouth with a napkin, Palliser said, ‘And there must be naturalists.’ He looked around the table. ‘Do any suitable names come to mind?’
James had anticipated this subject and had prepared his response: ‘There will be no naturalists.’
Silence descended on the table. The others looked puzzled. Sandwich, his face now rhubarb-red, said, ‘No naturalists? On a voyage of discovery? Why ever not?’
James set down his knife and fork. ‘You all know what a trial Banks was to me on Endeavour. His collecting habits became an obsession and caused innumerable inconveniences. Johann Forster was worse. His whining was endless, his personality odious, his four-thousand-pound salary outrageous. His only useful contribution to the voyage was his son, George.’ James looked levelly at the others. ‘So there will be no civilian naturalists grafted onto the next expedition. I will be the naturalist. My charts, observations and journals will cover all aspects of the voyage and its discoveries. And if I need assistance in this work, I suggest that William Bayly again be appointed astronomer. His work as part of Resolution’s company was first rate.’
Looking unconvinced, Sandwich swirled the remaining wine in his goblet. ‘The Royal Society will not be pleased if a naturalist is not aboard.’
‘It is the Admiralty, surely, that is in charge of this expedition,’ James replied mildly. ‘So it is the Admiralty that should have the final say. Moreover, since I am now a Fellow of the Royal Society, I declare myself in favour of not including a naturalist on the expedition.’
The others laughed, in spite of themselves. Sandwich broke into a coughing fit. When he recovered he said, ‘Very well, then, no naturalist. That will save the Exchequer a considerable sum. And as for the nomination of Bayly, are there any objections?’
There were none. Stephens made a note of it. James felt a swell of satisfaction. He could ask for practically anything now and the Admiralty would agree. He was relishing this authority.
James had arranged to meet Charles Clerke in the Noah’s Ark, a tavern near Shadwell Dock where mariners not only from London but from Europe and Scandinavia often gathered. ‘Captain! How good to see you again!’
‘Charles. Good it is to see you, too.’ He pointed to a table under a window. ‘You’ll have an ale with me?’
Clerke smiled. ‘Possibly more than one.’
Below them the water of the dock was almost colourless with the cold, and greyness pervaded the air on the opposite bank of the river. To the west of the city the sun was just a dim disc behind the clouds. Clerke raised his ale to James and they clinked mugs. His features were now very familiar to James from the two voyages they had shared, first on Endeavour, then on Resolution. Expressive brown eyes, broad receding forehead, long nose and prominent mouth. James was also familiar with Clerke’s distinguished naval history. As a twenty-year-old he had served on HMS Bellona during the Seven Years War. When the ship’s mizzen-top was blown away by a French cannon in 1761, Clerke was the only survivor among those who fell overboard. His nautical miles exceeded those of James, as he had also sailed with ‘Mad Jack’ Byron on his circumnavigation of 1764 to 1766 on HMS Dolphin.
‘You’ve had a letter from the Admiralty?’ James asked.
‘I have. I am offered command of HMS Discovery. A consort to your Resolution.’
‘And you have accepted?’
Clerke brought his shoulders to attention. ‘How could I not?’ He inclined his head in mock deference. ‘I am inordinately fond of the South Sea—and its alluring inhabitants.’
‘Yes.’ James gave him a sharp look. ‘As an officer you enjoyed certain entitlements, but as commander you will have to set an example.’
‘Of?’
‘Carnal abstinence.’
Clerke laughed and set his mug down. ‘Naturally, sir, I shall at all times follow your example. Do you recall the maiden on Annamoka, whom you spurned?’
‘I have no memory of a maiden on Annamoka,’ James lied. He had not forgotten her. Foa.
Clerke shook his head sorrowfully. ‘More’s the pity, sir. More’s the pity.’
They chatted for over an hour, at ease in each other’s company. Clerke reported that their mutual friend and erstwhile shipmate Dick Pickersgill had been commissioned to lead an expedition to survey Davis Strait in eastern Canada, and so would be unable to join the expedition. Both men expressed their regret at this, as they had enjoyed working with him on earlier voyages. Clerke then reported on the affairs of his brother John, who was still away in the East Indies: ‘Before he left, I said I would act as guarantor for John’s business borrowings in the City. He owes the moneylenders a vast sum.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘He’s been gone for nearly four years now, so in view of my recent appointment I should pass that responsibility on to my other brother, Henry.’ He brightened. ‘Oh, and my portrait should be completed by the time we leave. Did I tell you that Nathaniel Dance is painting me?’
‘Did I tell you he’s painting me?’ countered James, then added with feigned indifference, ‘And so is William Hodges.’
They walked a little way along the river before parting. As James drew closer to home, his formerly buoyant mood deflated. Elizabeth had become even more withdrawn lately, her hostility replaced by apathy. Whenever he raised the subject of the expedition she remained silent and distant, sitting for hours by the fire, knitting or crocheting for the baby. Even when he told her that the departure date for the voyage had had to be postponed because of the slowness of the refit of Resolution, meaning that he might well still be in London when the baby arrived, she had remained unmoved. ‘Here for its birth, perhaps, and not to be seen again until its third birthday,’ she muttered, her needles working fiercely. It was as if she wished him gone as soon as possible. This disturbed him, but what else could he do? With a shrug, he went upstairs to his study.
The journal notes which he brought home every day were placed in his writing cabinet, which was under the window in the study. A sloped lockable lid at the top of the cabinet was drawn back until it was parallel with the floor, then supported by two sliding rails at each side, to form a desk at which he could sit and write. The lower half of the desk consisted of four wide drawers, each with its own lock. He kept the four keys to the cabinet’s drawer locks on a ring, which was placed in a small wooden box at the bottom of a chest behind the study door. On the ring was also a much smaller brass key.
He took out the keys and unlocked the cabinet’s lid, drew it down, set it on its supports and pulled his chair up beneath it. Inside the top section of the cabinet was a series of small drawers and pigeonholes in which he kept receipts, bills and letters of both a personal and a business nature.
He unlocked the smallest drawer, the one at the top left, using the smallest of the five keys, and took out the square envelope which comprised the drawer’s only contents. The envelope had been there, unopened, since just before he had left on the Endeavour voyage. On it was written in his own hand: To be opened by Elizabeth Cook in the event of my death—James Cook RN. It had lain there for nearly eight years.
He held it in his hand for a few moments, staring at the inscription, then placed it back in the small drawer, which he locked. When he returned from his final voyage he would destroy the envelope and its contents.
Six
DELAY AFTER DELAY. THE SHIP
S’ DEPARTURE DATE was put back, then put back again. Meeting after meeting was held with the Navy and Victualling Boards. The officials from both boards became fractious with one another. The inefficiencies in the naval dockyards, always notorious, were now worse than ever. Equipment was ordered but not delivered on time; repair work was sloppy and often needed redoing. The crisis in America took priority: all the yards were under pressure to supply shipping for a potential war. Countering the threat to the governance of England’s precious colonies on America’s east coast was a matter of urgency; refitting two small sloops to search for a nebulous North-east Passage on its west coast was not. All James could do was continue to work long hours on his journal, carry out editor Douglas’s rewriting directives, and meet with Admiralty officials to plan what could be done without actually being at sea.
At last, in late March, Resolution was taken out of Deptford dockyard and down the Thames to the Nore, a sandbank near the mouth of the river. There she again waited, now at anchor, until Discovery was fit to join her. Like a cast being assembled for a grand maritime opera which could have been entitled Quest for the North-east Passage, personnel were auditioned for the expedition’s various roles. Their past performances were judged, their prospective talents assessed. By April the cast for the grand opera had been chosen.
James’s lieutenants on HMS Resolution would be John Gore, James King, John Williamson and William Harvey. There would be eight midshipmen and three quartermasters. In accordance with James’s instruction, the ship’s company would not include a naturalist, but an artist, John Webber, was appointed on the recommendation of the naturalist Daniel Solander, who had sailed with James on Endeavour. The rest of Resolution’s company included the usual specialists: a carpenter, sailmaker, gunner, cook and surgeon, along with the able seamen and a complement of nine marines under the charge of Lieutenant Molesworth Phillips. Omai would travel back to his home island in Resolution, as a supernumerary.
On HMS Discovery Clerke’s officers would be James Burney and John Rickman. There would be five midshipmen and two quartermasters. The ship would also carry a carpenter, sailmaker, gunner, cook and surgeon, plus a contingent of marines under Sergeant James Kich. William Bayly was confirmed as the astronomer, while the passage of another supernumerary, David Nelson, a botanist from Kew Gardens, would be sponsored by Joseph Banks.
James was also informed that Resolution’s sailing master had been appointed. Stephens told him: ‘He’s a Cornishman. Only twenty-two, but he’s served in the Caribbean for three years and already has a reputation as an accomplished surveyor.’
Aware that the role of master on the voyage would be crucial, James said, ‘Who is he?’
‘He’s called Bligh. William Bligh.’
Some unlikely people had put themselves forward. James Boswell, a round-faced, cheery Scotsman, diarist to the great lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson, visited James at his home and urged to be taken on the voyage. He endeared himself by castigating the late John Hawkesworth, who had written an account of the Endeavour voyage in which he pretended to be Cook himself. This deceit had incensed James, so that when Boswell told him, ‘Why, sir, Hawkesworth has used your narrative as a London tavern-keeper does beer: he has brewed it’, James admired the metaphor and warmed to the diarist. But he could not agree to take Boswell along. He knew the Admiralty would never sanction such a person being taken on the voyage, even as a supernumerary. It was later reported to James that Dr Johnson had consoled Boswell with the words: ‘Shipboard life is like being in gaol, only worse, because there is a chance of being drowned, and a man in gaol has more room, better food and commonly better company.’ What rot, James thought. The man should restrict his judgments to lexicographical matters.
He was now working fifteen-hour days. Time was racing by, and he was determined to complete his writing before the ships’ departure. By April he was covering Resolution’s return voyage. Of the days spent sailing from west to east across the southern Pacific, he summarised:
We now gave up all hopes of finding any more land in this ocean and came to a resolution to steer directly for the Straits of Magellan, with a view of coasting the out, or south side of Tierra del Fuego, round Cape Horn to Strait le Maire. As the world has but a very imperfect knowledge of this coast, I thought the coasting it would be of more advantage to both navigation and geography than anything I could expect to find in a higher latitude.
After another day’s writing, his account covered the visit to the ship by a party of Tierra del Fuegans, on Christmas Day 1774. The meeting still vivid in his memory, he wrote:
They are a little ugly half-starved beardless race; I saw not a tall person amongst them. They were almost naked; their clothing was a seal skin; some had two or three sew’d together, so as to make a cloak which reach’d the knee, but the most of them had only one skin hardly large enough to cover their shoulders, and all their lower parts were quite naked. The women, I was told, cover their privities with a flap of seal skin, but in other respects were clothed as the men; they as well as the children remain’d in the canoes. I saw two young children at the breast, as naked as they were born; thus they are inured from their infancy to cold and hardships. They had with them bows and arrows and darts, or rather harpoons made of bone and fitted to a staff.
He concluded this entry with an account of the goose shoot they had carried out:
TUESDAY, 27 DECEMBER
Fine pleasant weather. Having already completed our water, I order’d the wood, tent and observatory to be got onboard and as this was work for the day, a party of us went away in two boats to shoot geese. We proceeded round by the south side of Goose Island and pick’d up in all thirty-one. On the east side of Goose Island, to the north of the east point, is good anchorage in 17 fathom water, where it is entirely land-lock’d. This is a good place for ships to lay in who are bound to the west; on the north side of this isle I observ’d three fine coves, in which were both wood and water, but it being near night I had no time to sound them, but I have no doubt but there is anchorage; the way to come at them is by the west end of the isle. When I got aboard I found everything was got off from the shore, the launch in, so that we now only waited for a wind to put to sea. The festival that we celebrated at this place occasion’d my giving it the name of Christmas Sound.
As always, the act of recounting these events quickened James’s interest in the forthcoming voyage. What, he wondered, would the Indians of New Albion be like? And would they be of any assistance in discovering and surveying a North-east Passage?
The Royal Society, continuing to show a keen interest in James’s previous two voyages, requested that he write and deliver two papers for them. In spite of the additional pressure this brought, he agreed to do so. After a 10-hour day at Greenwich he returned home and worked long into the night in his study, kept awake by the rumble of passing carts on their way to the hay market in nearby Whitechapel.
His first paper was on the subject of the tidal flows along the east coast of New Holland. This drew on his 1770 survey of that littoral and the enforced stopover beside what he had named the Endeavour River. The second address was on one of his favourite subjects, the preservation of the health of seamen during long voyages. An anti-scorbutic diet and a vigorous regime of personal hygiene and cleanliness below decks were crucial considerations, he argued in his paper. The eminent Fellows of the Royal Society listened intently as he delivered these dissertations, then gave them acclaim.
In the midst of these long, demanding days, a note from Stephens was handed to James at the hospital. He read it, aghast at its contents:
Charles Clerke has been arrested and imprisoned. Meet me here as soon as possible.
The usually unflappable Stephens betrayed deep concern as he explained to James what had happened. ‘He was aboard Resolution at Deptford when prison officers arrested him.’
‘Upon whose orders?’
‘A group of moneylenders in the City. As guarantor for the business dealings
of his improvident brother, Charles was also liable for his debts.’
‘What is the amount owed?’
‘Four thousand pounds.’
‘Four thousand?’
‘Yes.’ Stephens’s frown deepened. ‘Needless to say, Clerke’s imprisonment has profound implications for your voyage. He will not be available to take command of Discovery.’
James fell silent. The worst possible news. Clerke’s experience, expertise and cheerful disposition were indispensable. Mind reeling, he decided that Burney, Clerke’s deputy, would now have to command Discovery. Looking at the still-grave Stephens, James asked, ‘Is there no hope of Clerke being released from prison soon?’
‘Only a faint possibility. Parliament is considering an Act that would allow experienced naval officers who are imprisoned for minor offences to be released so they can serve against the rebels in America.’
‘But Clerke is required in the Pacific, not America.’
Stephens waved his hand airily. ‘The Act would encompass Clerke’s case.’
‘When would it take effect?’
‘Not for some months.’ He glowered. ‘Parliament moves so slowly.’
‘Where is Clerke imprisoned?’
‘King’s Bench. Why?’
‘I must go and see him.’
James took a hackney to Southwark, taking with him a small pack containing a book that he had bought at Lambert’s Book Emporium and three apples from the Tower Hill market. The prison’s address was Angel Place, off Borough High Street, St George’s Fields, Southwark. As James approached the building he thought about the irony of the address. ‘Devil’s Place’ would be a more fitting title. Built of brick that was overlaid with a patina of grime, the prison was massive—four-storeyed, with rows of small windows set into its walls. Rows of chimney pots on its roof belched black smoke. James was well aware of King’s Bench’s notoriety. Eight years ago the radical John Wilkes had been imprisoned here, precipitating a riot in which five people had been killed. The event had become known as the massacre of St George’s Fields.