Secret Life of James Cook

by Graeme Lay

  For myself, I must emphasize that this appointment and expedition is the culmination of all I have striven for since I first walked out of that haberdashery in Staithes a disenchanted young man, twenty-two years ago. The responsibility I have now been given is considerable, but I am confident that I have the abilities to bring the venture to fruition. We have a goodly store of Union Jacks aboard, which I intend to have raised above all those lands I shall claim for our king. Another of my ambitions is to arrive home without the loss of a seaman to scurvy. I will be enforcing a strict dietary regimen to ensure that this aim is accomplished.

  But the strongest incentive to bring the ship home safely with its multiple aims accomplished is to once again be united with you and our beloved children. My thoughts are much with you, night and day.

  I have in my cabin a copy of the poems of Thomas Gray, whose verse I was first alerted to by my sister Christiana, following the death of our mother. His ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard’ continues to move me deeply. When I consider this couplet from the poem,

  No children run to lisp their sire’s return

  Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share

  I am reminded painfully of the absence of little James and Nathaniel, and their awe over their papa’s sea tales. I will have many more to tell all four of our children upon my return.

  With all my love,

  James

  1 SEPTEMBER 1768

  Latitude 44° 56' Longitude 9° 9' West of Greenwich

  Very hard gales, with some heavy showers of rain, the most part of these twenty-four hours, which brought us under our two courses, broke one of our main topmast futtock plates, washed overboard a small boat belonging to the bosun and drowned between three and four dozen of our poultry, which was worst of all. Towards noon it moderated so that we could bear our maintopsail close reefed. At midnight wore and stood to the southward.

  Although the pitching had reduced, the ship was still rolling violently in the Biscayan swells. As he put his journal away, James heard the unmistakeable sounds of human retching coming from the other side of the lobby, in the adjoining cabin. He crossed the lobby and knocked on Banks’s door. There was a groan from within which James took to mean ‘Enter.’

  The two greyhounds were soundly asleep just inside the door. Banks was lying face down in his cot, hanging over the edge. There was a pool of vomit on the floor below. Hair damp with sweat, face greenish, shirt smeared with vomit, he convulsed again. A stream of pink dribble was added to the pool on the floor, a distillation of the claret he had indulged in over dinner. Suppressing a smile, James said, ‘You’ll not be cured of the sickness by lying in your cabin, Banks. Get up onto the quarter deck and into fresh airs.’

  ‘I cannot move. I feel as if I am dying.’

  ‘You will by choking on your own puke, if you stay below. Get up on deck, man!’

  Groaning, Banks hauled himself upright and put his bare feet on the floor. As he did so the ship rolled again. He was thrown forward, then hurled against the larboard wall of the cabin. He picked himself up, moaning like a pole-axed calf. James opened the door which led to the wardroom. Banks stumbled through the doorway, then tacked across the room towards the companionway. More vomiting noises were coming from Dr Solander’s cabin, which adjoined his own.

  James smiled to himself. The sea was no respecter of class, rank or qualification. And what a grand thing that was.

  13 SEPTEMBER 1768

  Island of Madeira

  Fresh breeze and clear weather. At 8 pm anchored in Funchal Road in 22 fathoms water. Found here His Majesty’s ship Rose and several merchant vessels. In the morning new berthed the ship and moored with the stream anchor half a cable on the best bower and a hawser and a half on the stream.

  13 SEPTEMBER 1768

  Dearest Beth,

  I hope things are well with you and the children, especially little Joseph/Mary, who must now have put in his/her appearance. I trust the new child and his/her siblings thrive. It was little Elizabeth’s second birthday eleven days ago, and I know that it must have been a happy occasion for all. She is the sweetest child, and makes me think that every man should have a daughter. Wish her every happiness from her now-distant but ever-devoted papa!

  We are now at our first port of call, Funchal, the capital of Madeira, a Portuguese possession off the western coast of Africa. The port is located in a great natural amphitheatre. A British man-o’-war, Rose, is also here, a sight which gladdened my heart as we joined it in the roadstead. The island is very steep, with soaring peaks and terraced vineyards covering the lower hills. There are no proper roads or carriages, the land being so precipitous, so the people rely entirely on horses for transport. The island is quite different from anything I have previously seen, unlike even Spanish Tenerife, where I was on Pembroke a decade ago, though equally sweltering.

  Mr Banks, Dr Solander and their retinue have disembarked and are the guests of the oddly named Mr Cheap, the British consul here. No doubt they will be carrying out their botanizing and will return to the ship with a collection of exotic foliage and blooms for Sydney Parkinson to draw. He is a draughtsman of considerable talent, I have already observed, having witnessed his sketching of the Atlantic sea creatures dredged up by Banks in his trawl. Parkinson, a Quaker like my former employer, John Walker, draws at remarkable speed but renders his subjects faithfully in all their minute detail.

  We have lost our first crew member and, by a strange twist, not at sea but in port. Endeavour’s quartermaster, Alex Weir, a Scotsman, was carried to the bottom of the harbour whilst trying to retrieve the stream anchor. He had become entangled with the anchor’s buoy rope. The anchor was retrieved, along with his body. The incident was most regrettable as Weir was a capable seaman who had served for many years. I will be writing to his family, giving the account of his death and expressing my sorrow for their loss. We have impressed a sailor from an American ship in port, John Thurman, to take Weir’s place. He is from the colonial town of New York, but as such is British so he will be at home among the crew.

  The Portuguese are strong allies of Britain, so we are treated well here. Provisions are supplied on reasonable terms, and Sam Evans has taken over the quartermaster’s duties from the drowned man. As this will be our last port for some time, the crew is busy stowing provisions we have taken aboard here. These include a live bullock (for future fresh meat), fresh beef, onions (20 pounds per man), more poultry and, Madeira being an island of vineyards, over 3000 gallons of wine. There is the usual maintenance to carry out, caulking, varnishing of spars and masts, and repairs to sails and rigging. The scrubbing of the decks, top and below, is continuous, as cleanliness of the ship is paramount. So, too, is diet. After two men refused to eat the fresh beef issued to them three days ago I did not hesitate to let the cat out of the bag. I was scarcely able to believe that seamen could refuse fresh beef, which to most is a luxury. The miscreants were given twelve lashes each for disobeying my dietary orders. If it is necessary to flog the proper diet into the crew, so be it. (Although I ordered the entire crew to witness the flogging, Mr Banks went below to his cabin while it was administered, the gentleman evidently having no stomach for the lash.)

  We weigh anchor in two days’ time, bound for Rio de Janeiro, the capital town of Brazil, another Portuguese colony. We cannot be there in less than two months, so much hot, hard sailing lies ahead of us, including crossing the line. This letter I will take across tomorrow to the purser of HMS Rose, as she leaves for Portsmouth in a week’s time, in the hope that you will receive it by November.

  If only you were able to send me your news so that I can learn of the newest little one! Be assured, dearest, that my thoughts are constantly with you and our children as I go about my daily duties, serving our nation and His Majesty.

  My love to all,

  James

  13 SEPTEMBER 1768, ASSEMBLY ROW, MILE END

  ‘Mama. Mama!’

  Elizabeth stared into the cradl
e, hands held up in supplication but unable to move, unwilling to reach down to the child. Baby Joseph’s face was the colour of whey, his little eyes open but sightless. Elizabeth’s mother, Mary, ran into the bedroom from the parlour. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  Turning away from the cradle, Elizabeth put her face in her hands. ‘Little Joseph. I fear—’

  Mary bent over the cradle. She put out her hand and laid it gently on the tiny white cheek. Although Joseph’s skin was soft it was also deathly cold, and Mary withdrew her hand sharply as if she had put it into a flame. Giving a little cry, she turned away and went to her daughter. The two women clutched each other, not speaking, sobbing. Tears streaming, Elizabeth said, at last, ‘He was not yet three weeks. Not three weeks.’

  The two boys stumbled into the room in their nightgowns, Nathaniel holding his piece of flannel to his face. Their eyes were huge with fright. ‘What is it, Mama?’ whispered James. ‘Mama?’ He looked from her to the cradle, then back.

  Elizabeth went to the boys, knelt, and put her arms around them. Voice catching with anguish, she said, ‘Baby Joseph has gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ said Nathaniel, frowning at the cradle. ‘Where?’

  James said sombrely, ‘Mama means he has died, Natty. Joseph was sick, and now he’s died.’

  Little Elizabeth appeared in the doorway, sucking her thumb. She looked around the room, blinking with bewilderment. ‘Mama? Mama?’ Then seeing the others’ grief, she ran, wailing, to her mother and grandmother.

  They gathered beside the tiny grave, adults and children dressed in black, the women with dark veils over their faces. The block stone tower of St Dunstan’s Church, Stepney, overlooked the sprawling graveyard, whose remains included hundreds of victims of London’s Great Plague of 1665.

  This autumn morning it was bitingly cold, the sky matching the drabness of the gravestones which jutted crookedly from the ground. Most of the leaves of the oak and elm trees in the grounds had fallen and lay strewn dark and sodden over the graves and tombstones, staining them with dark brown smears. A mound of yellow earth lay at the head of the little grave.

  The burly, bewigged figure of the Reverend George Downing, draped in his cassock, read from a large open Bible as the tiny pinewood casket was lowered into the grave on ropes by two black-coated attendants. Unable to bear the sight, Elizabeth turned away and fell against her mother, who held her. Their faces frozen, unable to comprehend any of what was happening, James, Nathaniel and little Elizabeth stood in a row at the foot of the grave, staring into the little pit. The attendants withdrew and the minister completed his rites. Still unable to look, Elizabeth heard but did not see him recite the bitter words: ‘We therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’

  Elizabeth looked up into her mother’s face. Her voice broken and barely audible, she said, ‘James never even knew the child.’ She stifled a cry. ‘And he may never know who he was, or what happened to him.’

  The Reverend Downing bent, picked up a handful of dirt and tossed it into the grave. Elizabeth’s stepfather, John Blackburn, black three-cornered hat under his arm, came forward and did the same. The minister said to James and Nathaniel, ‘Now boys, you do as we have.’

  James stared up at the commanding, frocked figure, then down into the grave where the coffin of his baby brother had been spattered with the soil. ‘Go on,’ said the minister, ‘throw down some earth.’

  The young boy shook his head, defiantly. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I won’t. And neither will Natty. We won’t throw dirt on our brother.’ Taking Nathaniel’s hand, he walked away from the grave.

  James spent much of the morning of 29 September at the masthead, taking bearings and studying the currents that showed up against the shiny surface of the sea like stretch marks on skin. Towards the stern of the ship an albatross was skimming the water, its great pinions veering this way, then that, only inches from the surface. Endeavour was making sluggish progress in these latitudes as the four veterans from Wallis’s expedition — Gore, Wilkinson, Pickersgill and Molyneux — had predicted. The ship’s sails were slumped, her buntlines slack, the telltales barely moving. The ensign at the sternpole and the Jack at the bow both hung limp. Yet for James the view from the masthead was captivating.

  For the past two weeks he had been in new waters and was well aware that they were bound for even newer ones. And what a mighty ocean this Atlantic was! Its vastness became more apparent by the day, its moods ever-changing. The barometer climbed and temperatures increased to the hottest James had ever experienced. A day last week — 22 September — had marked the vernal equinox. Now, when the ship’s noon bell tolled, the sun was almost directly overhead. Although he and Charles Green were excited about this benchmark, it produced mainly grumbles from others about the intensity of the heat. Consequently, James had ordered John Ravenhill, the ship’s elderly sailmaker, to rig a canvas awning made from a spare sail around the mainmast and over the midships deck as a shelter from the increasingly ferocious sun.

  Directly below him, on the main deck, six barefoot seamen were on their knees, canvas buckets beside them, scrubbing at the decking. Others were below, scrubbing the orlop deck in accordance with James’s instructions. Turning towards the stern, he saw that Banks and Solander were busy in the yawl, which was tethered to the taffrail. The two naturalists, naked from the waist up, backs lobster-red from the sun, were dragging a net from the sea and emptying the contents into buckets. As James watched Solander hauled on the yawl’s painter and began to pull it alongside amidships, taking it out of James’s sight. Banks’s two greyhounds were prowling the main deck, impatiently awaiting their master’s return to the ship.

  30 SEPTEMBER 1768

  Dearest Beth,

  How precious this time is, towards the end of the day, when the Great Cabin is mine alone and I can record my personal thoughts and concerns with you. It is autumn now for you, and the English winter will be impending. Strange to consider, when for us the days are unendingly hot. I trust that our household’s delivery of firewood and coal has arrived in good time, as ordered by me from the yard in Wapping before I left. James and Nathaniel are not too young to assist the coal-heavers with the unloading of the fuel and the fire-making, as I instructed them to.

  We have now been at sea for over a month, making steady progress southwest. Endeavour serves us well and the crew goes about its business purposefully. There are the occasional frustrations, the details of which I will not bother you with, as well as the occasional amusements, such as the crossing-the-line rituals, which all entered into willingly. I forsook my rum ration rather than be ducked from the yardarm, which seemed to me altogether too undignified a procedure for the ship’s commander to undergo. Most of the gentlemen did likewise, but those of the crew who were ducked took the matter in good spirits. A great deal of grog was drunk as part of the equatorial ritual, but this did not concern me as it is part of a long-established maritime tradition.

  Another entertainment for the crew is afforded by the drill practice of our dozen marines, who exercise their ‘skills’ on the main deck under the command of their sergeant at arms, John Edgcumbe. Their antics greatly amuse the crew, due to the clumsiness of their weapon-handling and their lack of military formation. I can only hope that our marines shoot straighter than they march. Some do not know their right foot from their left! Their uncoordinated activities remind me of a troupe of soldier clowns I once witnessed as a boy, in a travelling circus which visited Great Ayton. I believe it will take Sergeant Edgcumbe many more sessions to have his rabble resemble anything else but such a circus act.

  I have by now formed some opinions of the personalities of those with whom I share the ship, and it occurred to me that you may wish to learn something of the nature of these men, in order that you may better imagine the company I am keeping.

  Joseph Banks you have heard me speak of already. Suffice to say he is as opinionated as he is privileged, and his extravagant ento
urage (much scientific equipment, plus fellow scientists and canine company) causes me frustration at times. However, I am bound to add that his enthusiasm for his work is limitless and transfers to those around him. His curiosity about the natural world overrides all other considerations. He is inordinately fond of his two greyhounds. The male, Lord, follows his master everywhere, while the female, Lady, is usually content to stay below.

  The Swede, Daniel Solander, is a scientist of high repute, and utterly dedicated to his profession. Although Banks treats him with some condescension, Solander is mild-mannered and does not retaliate, doubtless because he is aware that he owes his inclusion on the expedition to the Englishman. I have an impression that Solander is the superior cataloguer, probably due to the tutelages of his mentor, another Swede, Carl Linnaeus.

  Herman Sporing is quietly reflective, modest, but a man of many parts. He was once a watchmaker so will be useful if anything goes awry with our instruments. I came upon him yesterday on the quarter deck, sketching the seascape, and his artwork is impressive. His command of English is inferior to that of Solander, his accent very thick.

  Sydney Parkinson, our Scots draughtsman, I admire. Slight of build and quiet of manner, the young Quaker has the elongated fingers of an artist and is able to capture and colour his subjects with astonishing speed. His swiftly executed drawings of sea creatures also depict them as objects of great beauty.

  Alexander Buchan, a young Scotsman and a close friend of Parkinson’s, is very reserved. As his strength is landscape drawing, he has not yet had the opportunity to demonstrate his principal skills. He is very pale and somewhat tremulous, and spends most time below in his bunk. He seems unwell much of the time, but whether this condition is from the sea or his frail physique I cannot tell.

  You will undoubtedly be concerned for the well-being of your young cousin, Isaac Smith. Be assured, the boy is fit, attends to his duties diligently and appears to be relishing the voyage so far. He shows a keen interest in cartography, following his learning while he was on Grenville, and I have admitted him to my cabin on one or two occasions to share with him the courses I am charting. I was quite touched when he said to me the other evening, ‘Sir, I wish you to know that I seek no special treatment from you because your wife and I are cousins. If I transgress, I must be punished like any other member of the crew.’ To which I replied, ‘No, Isaac, because you are a member of my family, if you transgress, you will receive double the usual punishment.’ When he looked askance at this comment, I added, ‘I jest.’