Secret Life of James Cook

by Graeme Lay

  The others walked up onto the foreshore. Looking about, they agreed that the place could not be better suited for an astronomical observation post. On one side of the river mouth was a headland which overlooked the estuary, the water of which was translucent. Trees with contorted boughs grew on the cliff edge, their roots clutching the crumbling rock like talons. The plain was covered in tussock grass with flax bushes sprouting from the lower-lying land. Although the wind was fresh the sky was clear, with just a few feathers of cirrus cloud showing up against the pale blue.

  Packs on their backs, Banks, Solander and Sporing set off inland to botanize while Green instructed the marines to erect the tent on a patch of level land a little way along from the river mouth. James walked down to the beach. In the distance, seeming to float on the sea, was a cluster of islands. Already he had a name for them. The Mercury Islands. Squinting into the morning sun he saw a canoe come from around a headland and paddle towards the ship. Seeking to trade with us, he assumed. Considering it best to return to Endeavour to oversee the barter, he ordered two of the marines to stay with Green and the other four to row him back.

  They were halfway to the ship when they saw a puff of smoke come from midships, then a second later heard the crack of a musket. The canoe began to paddle away frantically. As it did there was an explosion of cannon fire. A ball struck the water a little way from the canoe. James stood up in the launch. What had happened to precipitate this? As they drew closer to the canoe, he was appalled at what he saw.

  The body of a young man, naked from the waist up, was sprawled face down across the gunwale of the canoe. There was a huge wound in his back and blood was gushing from it. Although his right hand clutched a piece of cloth, it was obvious that the wound was mortal. Two other men in the canoe were paddling desperately shoreward. As they passed the launch they shot frightened glances at James and the others.

  Gore was standing at the rail, resting his musket across it. Others of the crew were standing about, looking anxious. James stepped quickly from the launch and climbed the ship’s steps to the deck.

  ‘You shot the native?’ he demanded of Gore.

  The American, colouring visibly, evaded James’s glare. ‘Yes.’ He laid his musket on the deck. ‘We were trading. The Indian took the bark cloth, which I lowered to him on a rope, but refused to present me with his cloak in return.’ His expression was truculent. ‘So I shot him.’

  ‘You killed a man for a cloak of dogskin?’

  ‘Yes. And the other natives were brandishing their paddles.’

  Furious now, James said in a mocking tone, ‘What damage could the natives cause you, high above them, with wooden paddles?’ Struggling to contain his anger, he said, ‘Such a killing cannot be justified, Gore. You were not being seriously threatened. It is unconscionable.’

  The officer’s gaze was now downcast. But for James this was not enough. Thrusting his bunched hands into his jacket pockets, he spoke loudly so that the crew could hear. ‘As civilized men we cannot condone such killing. We are not backwoodsmen.’ At this word the American looked up sharply and his lip twisted. Ignoring this, James continued. ‘We have been in this land long enough for you to know the Indians’ ways. Their thievery is to be anticipated. You should have demanded to receive the cloak first.’ He added through clenched teeth, ‘Your action could well imperil our relations with the people here on the eve of the transit of Mercury. It will be my disagreeable duty to write a full report on this incident for the Admiralty.’

  With a crow-like caw of rage Gore snatched up his spent musket, turned, ran along the deck and down the companionway. Watching him retreat, James hoped he would stay below. Too often the man was high-handed, too often he reached for his musket. He may have sailed around the globe twice already, but he lacked sound judgment. And to think that some in authority thought Gore should have led this expedition. James strode towards the foredeck. Gore was no leader.

  The other crew members resumed their duties, muttering to one another about the killing and the upbraiding they had just witnessed. Still livid, gripping the rail, James looked shoreward. Two other canoes were coming out from the coast and were being paddled in their direction. He waited until they came closer, and to his relief saw that they carried flax baskets filled with sweet potatoes, fish and rock oysters. It seemed that the killing may not, after all, affect their trade with the natives. These people were from a different clan perhaps.

  On 9 November, from noon onwards, Green successfully observed and timed Mercury’s transit of the sun. And using the lunar method, James recorded the site’s longitude. That evening on his chart he wrote ‘Mercury Bay’ across the cove and ‘Mercury Islands’ over the group several miles offshore. At Parkinson’s suggestion he named the towering headland at the northern end of the bay Shakespeare Cliffs, and the secluded cove at the foot of the cliffs Lonely Bay.

  Gore was now conspicuously absent from the gatherings in the Great Cabin. In a fit of self-pity he had taken to his berth, instructing the servants to bring his food and drink to him there. While Endeavour continued to lie at anchor he was little missed.

  On their last day in Mercury Bay, James, Banks, Tupaia and his newest taio, Eruera, were rowed around the Shakespeare Cliffs and into another, wider estuary, the one Eruera said was called Whitianga. The name meant ‘a crossing’, Tupaia explained. They disembarked a little way up the river, on the south bank. There was an extensive, scrub-covered plain on the other side, and a forested hill on the other, joined to the rest of the land by a narrow neck of land. ‘His people come here when their enemies attack,’ Tupaia explained. James nodded. The hill would be a natural fortress. Eruera led them across the isthmus, along a track through the forest and across the top of the hill to a place where the land fell away steeply to the river.

  James was struck by the beauty of the vista before them: the crystal-clear river, the white sand beach at its mouth and the forested mountain range in the distance. ‘So lovely a prospect,’ he murmured.

  ‘Uncommonly so,’ agreed Banks. ‘The mountains put me in mind of Otaheite.’

  Eruera said something in Maori to Tupaia, then pointed across the river.

  Tupaia gave a little cry of astonishment. His jaw dropped. He looked as though he had been struck by lightning. Then he raised his hands and recited a long, impassioned incantation, all the while with his eyes to the north. After his prayer died away he burst into tears. Turning, he embraced Eruera, who also began to cry.

  James and Banks looked on in astonishment. Two grown men crying. What was this all about?

  Wiping his eyes, Tupaia explained. ‘Across that plain,’ he said, ‘flowing down from the hills is another river which flows into the bay of Hei.’ Tupaia paused, the tears now coursing down his cheeks. ‘And this river is called Taputapuatea!’ He placed his hands on Eruera’s shoulders. ‘His tupuna, Hei the navigator, sailed here from Raiatea and named the river in the new land after my island’s greatest marae. Taputapuatea!’ He gave a roar of delight. ‘So Eruera is my family, my feti’i, and I am his!’ And he fell forward into the arms of his new-found relative.

  25 NOVEMBER 1769

  My dearest Beth,

  As winter begins to draw in for you, with darkening afternoons, here in the Antipodes we are now experiencing true spring. As the holly berries at home herald the approach of Yuletide, there is in this south land a coastal tree which is now blooming with flowers of a similar crimson to holly. The natives call this flowering tree ‘po-hoo-too-kaa-wah’, and it is much in evidence above the bays and beaches here. And as December approaches the daylight hours are longer and much warmer, the winds in general favourable for our purposes. We are now proceeding due north along the eastern coast of New Zealand in order to determine its extent and whether or not it is Banks’s much anticipated continent. I am kept greatly occupied, charting, recording soundings and coordinates, and naming landmarks we discover and observe. Some of the features are thus named: Cape Colvill (after my close fri
end and loyal supporter, Lord Colvill), the Firth of Thames and a river, the Thames (up which Banks and I were rowed some distance inland), two islands which we sailed past but made no landing upon, Great Barrier and Little Barrier (so named because they formed an impediment to entering a sheltered gulf), the Hen and Chickens (a farmyard likeness suggested to me by Sporing), and a cove in which there were islands so innumerable that it declared its own nomenclature — the Bay of Islands. Tupaia has informed me that the New Zealand natives have their own names for these islands, bays and rivers, given to them by their ancestors (for whom they have the highest regard). However, the native names are so troublesome for we Englishmen to pronounce that it is necessary to supplant them with the ones I have chosen. The natives continue to challenge us when we approach their domains, and when on board attempt to steal anything which is not bolted to the decks. Mediation from Tupaia, the offering of gifts (Otaheitian bark cloth they greatly prize) and bartering for fresh vegetables and fish usually results in amicable relations, although it is necessary from time to time to fire warning shots to demonstrate to them the force of which our weapons are capable. The Maoris, I have deduced, are a warlike people, and their many tribes are in constant conflict with one another. But they are also a very proud race, capable of great generosity and gifted in respect of the arts of carving, craft-making, singing and dancing. And their leaders show an aptitude for oratory which would not be out of place in our Houses of Parliament.

  I will close now, dearest wife, with the assurance that my thoughts are forever with you and our children.

  Your loving husband,

  James

  Twenty-four

  WITH FAVOURABLE WINDS THEY PROGRESSED further and further due north, sailing as close to the land as they safely could in order to chart the coastal landforms. Near a group of small islands at latitude thirty-five degrees south three canoes manned by Maori men came out to greet them. Gathering under the stern, the natives showed no hostility. Their canoes contained flax baskets filled with golden-skinned sea bream which they called ‘tamure’ and which they offered to trade. James joined Tupaia and Banks at the open stern window. He said to the Otaheitian: ‘Before we barter ask them how much further north this land extends.’

  Tupaia did so, and one of the paddlers, a burly young man with thick lips and a full facial tattoo, replied.

  ‘He says,’ Tupaia told James, ‘that the land north from here is called Muriwhenua. Then, three days’ paddling after that, the land turns south.’

  ‘Ah,’ said James, grateful for the information. So the end was, if not in sight, then impending.

  Banks leaned forward eagerly. ‘Now ask them if there is more land beyond that.’

  Tupaia asked the question, and this time the reply was lengthy. The young man stood up and made emphatic pointing movements to the north-west. Then, accompanied by gesticulations, he launched into some sort of story.

  ‘What does he say?’ asked Banks.

  Tupaia laughed derisively. ‘He said that many years ago a waka of theirs sailed to the north of Muriwhenua across the ocean. Only a few people returned here, and when they did they told of a large land they had found. The people there killed and ate booah.’

  ‘Booah?’

  ‘Pigs,’ said Tupaia. ‘Same word as in Otaheite.’

  Banks frowned. ‘But these people have no pigs. We have not seen one in New Zealand.’

  Tupaia leaned out the window, spoke again, and waved his left hand dismissively. At this the men in the canoes all began to laugh, falling about helplessly as they did so.

  Banks said, ‘That must have been a very funny joke, Tupaia. Tell us what it was.’

  ‘I told them that booah makes very fine food so their ancestors must have been very stupid people not to bring some pigs back here from the land that they found.’

  Still chortling, obviously not offended by Tupaia’s remark, the men in the canoes held up their baskets of fish. James looked at Banks. ‘That was not a very funny joke, I think. So why are they all laughing?’

  Banks shrugged. ‘The Indians, I think, have a different sense of humour from us.’ His face lit up. ‘But the land their forebears found, to the north, it must be the Great Southern Continent!’

  James sensed, before he actually saw it, the foul weather that lay ahead. There was a brooding stillness in the air, accompanied by intense heat. Two days later dark clouds began to build and the sea appeared to be streaming away from the land, making sailing north difficult. Ordering Hicks, the officer of the watch, to bear away to the east, James climbed to near the top of the foremast and stood, feet braced, on the yard. From there he could see that the swells were not only increasing but were now cross-hatched with conflicting currents. One arm around the mast, he put his scope to his eye. What land he could see was wide and low, thus providing no barrier to the strong westerly winds. That the sea was in such conflict with itself, James reasoned, could mean but one thing — that two oceans were coming together. This confirmed they were approaching the farthest point of this land and that soon they must reach whatever landform lay at that extremity.

  As James hugged the mast with his left arm a swell much larger than normal reared in front of the ship. She plunged into the swell, rose, plunged again. Spray erupted upwards, almost reaching him where he stood. In the distance he could see that the sea was in turmoil, the swells rising, then crashing against one another chaotically. Looking down, he turned. Anderson and Gray were wrestling with the wheel with Endeavour making heavy weather of it.

  Earlier that day, poring over a copy of Abel Tasman’s foreshortened chart of this land, James had seen that before long they would have to double the cape the Dutchman had named Maria van Diemen, after the wife of the governor of Batavia. He noted another name the Dutchman had bestowed: The Three Kings, the islands that lay, he had observed, northwards. James slipped his scope back into its holder. The sky darkened further, the squall struck, and rain began to drive in across the decks. Below, the two quartermasters continued to wrestle with the wheel, while the crew were busy at their stations. James began to climb back down the shrouds, noting that already some splits had appeared in the foresail.

  He stepped down onto the deck and made his way along to the wheel. ‘Order her about. We need to stand off at least eleven leagues!’

  The ship plunged again into a trough, then the cry went up from Molyneux: ‘All hands! All hands! Ready about! Move there, move!’

  There followed three days of constant tacking amid some of the wildest and most mountainous seas they had ever seen, and against winds that on 15 December reached gale force. Heavy rain drove in on them constantly and the pumps were manned around the clock. Their zigzag course meant that their progress northwards was minimal, while the land to the west was hidden by the clouds and the incessant rain. More torn sails were taken in and replaced. James constantly scanned the horizon to the west, aware that the land must still be there, and aware of the menace its unseen presence presented. Lashing himself to the larboard railing on the stern deck, he took regular sightings whenever there were breaks in the cloud and made sketches of the intermittently visible coast. Sextant to his eye, legs hard against the rail, he told himself, Nature will not prevent me from doing what must be done. I will carry out my duty. No part of this land must go uncharted.

  It was mid-morning on 16 December and James was in the Great Cabin, again studying the copy of Tasman’s chart, when the door burst open without warning. ‘Captain!’ James looked up, irritated at the interruption. It was Sporing, drenched to the bone and wild-eyed. Tearing his sodden hat from his head, his cape dripping, he said in his strong accent, ‘I haff seen another ship! Off our larboard side!’

  James sprang to his feet. ‘What? When?’

  ‘Minutes ago. I was on the stern deck, taking air. I had been ill. A squall was approaching, and as I looked to landward I saw another ship. A three-master, but with only one sail raised.’ He hesitated. ‘She was, I think, about two leagu
es distant.’

  James stared at the naturalist. Could he be serious? He said quietly, ‘In which direction was she sailing?’

  ‘South. Before the wind. On a course counter to ours.’

  ‘What flag was she flying?’

  ‘The tricolour.’ Then, unnecessarily, ‘French.’

  French. The word struck James like a blow. Lowering his voice, he said, ‘Did anyone else see this ship?’

  ‘I think not. The crew were at their stations, the quartermasters were hard at the helm. No one was at the masthead in these winds.’

  ‘Did you alert the officer on watch?’

  ‘I tried to. Mr Hicks was on watch and I ran to tell him.’ His face crumpled. ‘Then the squall struck, and I could see nothing but rain. When it passed the other vessel was gone.’ Hat in his hands, Sporing’s expression became one of pleading. ‘I did see another ship, one flying the French flag. It was no illusion.’

  ‘And on a southerly course, you said.’

  ‘Yes.’

  James nodded. Sporing was a man incapable of fabricating such a story. If he said he had seen another ship, then he had seen one. But the very thought of the French also being in these waters was an abomination to James. He said, ‘I believe you, Sporing. But I would ask that you make no mention of this to the others.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. It must remain our secret.’

  Sporing looked confused, as if he now doubted his own memory. ‘Very well,’ he murmured, then turned away and trudged from the cabin. James closed the cabin door after him. No one must know of this, the incident will go unrecorded. This land has already been claimed for King George. The land and its waters must always be English, and I will ensure it is so. If the French make claim to it, such an assertion will be invalid.

  The day before Christmas the wind at last abated. They had been blown several miles north of the land and were yet to double Cape Maria van Diemen, but the welcome light airs allowed the ship to stand to while Banks and Solander went out in the yawl and shot four gannets as the birds emerged from their dives. Taken down to the galley, they were dressed and roasted by Thompson, then delivered to the Great Cabin for Christmas dinner in the form of a pie, along with baked sweet potatoes, wild celery and sauerkraut.