Secret Life of James Cook

by Graeme Lay

  The islands of New Zealand, large and small, have been claimed for our king, and charted to my satisfaction. It is a fair land with many resources: sheltered harbours, stands of straight-grained timber and, once cleared of forest, fertile land which I believe will be well suited to agriculture. Although the winds were often unfavourable to us, Endeavour proved her fitness for the testing voyage and showed again the sterling quality of English shipbuilding. The native people of New Zealand, although by custom warlike towards each other, are also intelligent, open and receptive to English influences and customs, and thus, I believe, capable of attaining a civilized standard of living. Our own adopted native, Tupaia, who is related to the New Zealanders, is an example of the degree of civilization his people are capable of achieving. His role as mediator between us and the New Zealand natives has also proved beneficial throughout our visits to their shores, and it is my earnest belief that he will also greatly assist our communication with the natives we will encounter in New Holland.

  It is my hope that we will make landfall in New Holland sometime before this month is out. The crew is already cheered by the knowledge that we are now bearing in the direction of the equator and are thus proceeding towards the northern hemisphere. As your cousin Isaac Smith remarked to me yesterday, ‘It is my belief that the greatest hardships are now behind us.’

  Every day’s progress northwards brings us closer to our beloved England and those whose affections we hold dearest.

  My love, as always, to you and our little ones,

  James

  ‘Land! Off the larboard bow!’

  The cry came from Zachary Hicks, dangling in the mainmast rigging like a gibbon. It was two and a half weeks since they had departed from New Zealand and the portents had been there for some days — porpoises cavorting around Endeavour’s bow, and a small land bird, fluttering into, and gratefully clutching, the mizzen mast’s rigging. But the actual sight of land was gratifying, and brought all the crew up on deck. Hicks climbed down.

  James shook his hand vigorously. ‘Well done, Hicks. The landform shall be named after you.’

  Abashed, the officer looked down. ‘First a bay, then a point. At this rate I shall grow conceited.’

  James smiled. ‘You, conceited? Never, Hicks.’

  That evening in his authorized journal, he wrote:

  19 APRIL 1770

  In the pm had fresh gales at SSW and cloudy squally weather with a large southerly sea. At 6 pm took in the topsails and at 1 am brought to and sounded but had no ground with 130 fathoms of line. At 5 am set the topsails close reefed and at 6 am saw land extending from NE to West at the distance of five or six leagues, having 80 fathoms of water and a fine sandy bottom. We continued standing to the westward with the wind at SSW until 8 o’clock at which time we got the topgallant yards across, made all sail, and bore away for the easternmost land we had in sight. I judged this lay in the latitude of 38° 58' south and longitude of 211° 07' west of Greenwich. I have named it Point Hicks.

  They continued on their northward course for day after day since first raising land but could find no safe landing or bay to enter. As the end of April approached and still no landing was possible, James’s concerns grew. His clerk, Orton, had reported that stocks of water and food were running low. They saw smoke rising from the land in several places, but no challenging canoes came out to investigate the ship or offer to trade while a combination of high surf and rocky cliffs made a landing out of the question. In the meantime they stared at the coast, sketched its features, watched the smoke, and speculated upon the nature of the people who had lit the fires.

  After the noon dinner and with the ship still making her way north, Banks opened one of the books from the Great Cabin’s library and began to read from it to the others. ‘“They are the miserablest people in the world. Setting aside their human shape, they differ but little from brutes. The colour of their skins, both of their faces and the rest of their body, is coal-black. They all of them have the most unpleasant looks and the worst features of any people I ever saw, though I have seen a great variety of savages.”’

  ‘Who penned that description?’ asked Green.

  ‘William Dampier,’ Banks said. ‘The book is his New Voyage Round the World.’

  ‘He is describing his meeting with New Holland’s natives in 1688,’ said James, who had read it several times.

  Solander spoke up. ‘But Dampier was a great distance from this coast, I believe.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said James. ‘He was writing of the natives of the north-west of New Holland. Thousands of leagues distant from here.’ He gave Banks a meaningful look. ‘So the “savages” he describes as being so disagreeable may not be the same as the inhabitants of this coast.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Banks, his expression doubtful. ‘From that description they certainly do not seem in any way related to the Otaheitians, or the natives of New Zealand.’ He looked again at the text. ‘The colour of Tupaia’s people, and of the Maoris’ skins could never be described as “coal-black”. They are chestnut-brown.’

  ‘It may be the climate that causes the difference,’ suggested Solander. ‘Where Dampier came ashore was in the low southern latitudes. The climate there would be constantly hot, almost equatorial.’ He shrugged. ‘Hence exposure to the high sun and the consequent blackness of the savages’ skin.’

  ‘But not their “unpleasant looks”,’ said Green, making a face that was itself far from pleasant.

  Banks closed Dampier’s book and placed it back on the shelf. Peering out the larboard window of the cabin at the rocky, swell-beaten coast, he said, ‘I wonder how much longer it will be before we encounter the natives of New Holland.’

  Three more days, it was, the afternoon of 28 April when James ordered the ship brought through the entrance of a bay they had sighted the day before. The pinnace had been hoisted, and soundings taken by Molyneux from it confirmed that the bay was deep enough for Endeavour to anchor in. It was broad scrub-covered land, surrounded by white sand beaches and low-lying. The afternoon was intensely hot, and shimmers of heat were rising from the land as the ship was brought to, opposite the southern shore of the bay, and an anchor lowered. From the ship they could see groups of men, women and children, all completely naked. ‘And they are indeed black,’ Parkinson murmured to James as they stood in the stern watching, spyglasses to their eyes. ‘As black as my hat.’

  ‘The women’s breasts are pendulous,’ observed Banks, ‘and their pudenda are uncovered and prominent.’ He kept his telescope to his eye. The women were gathering shellfish, while a little distance away four men were fishing with spears from small canoes. Tupaia immediately took up a pencil and pad and began to draw the men. Although the fishermen looked up at the sound of Endeavour’s anchor chains rattling, their expressions were of total indifference to the vessel. Huge and alien though it must have appeared to them, it was as if the ship and those aboard were invisible. The natives returned to their spearing, and Tupaia continued his drawing.

  That afternoon James, Banks, Solander, Green, Sporing, Tupaia, Parkinson and Isaac Smith got into the pinnace and prepared to go ashore, rowed by four of the marines. James had given Smith special permission to join the landing party as he had been so diligent with his hydrographical work. And Elizabeth would be pleased with this gesture when she learned of it, he reasoned. He carried his musket and a fowling piece; the scientists had their specimen bags, Parkinson his drawing materials.

  As the pinnace moved into the shallows the native women and children stared. Then, obviously alarmed, the women gathered up the children and ran into the huts, leaving only two men on the beach. They were tall and bony with white stripes painted down their arms and legs and across their chests. Their noses were flat, almost crumpled, their faces deeply pleated. One, clearly much older than the other, had greying hair. Both held long spears and a flat, paddle-like instrument. James nudged Tupaia. ‘Tell them we mean them no harm and that we require fresh water.’
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br />   Tupaia joined James in the bow of the boat and called loudly in Otaheitian to the naked men. It was his now-standard greeting, recounting his ancestry, his people’s gods, the islands where they lived, and what the visitors required. The speech went on for some minutes, accompanied by the usual gesticulations and exhortations. But the brows of the men at whom it was directed grew more and more furrowed, the whites of their eyes standing out in their charcoal faces. Then the older man moved a little way down the beach, shook his lance, and uttered a guttural cry which sounded like ‘Warra warra wai!’

  Tupaia, shocked that his greeting had not been understood, turned and shook his head. ‘These people do not understand my language!’ he cried. ‘And I cannot understand theirs.’

  Sensing the mutual incomprehension that was developing, James reached into his jacket pocket, withdrew some beads and nails and tossed them onto the beach. The men bent down, picked up the trifles and examined them curiously. As they did so James said, ‘We can now go ashore.’ He turned to Elizabeth’s cousin. ‘You may have the privilege of first landing, Smith.’

  The prow slid onto the sand and the midshipman stepped out, followed by the others. But after they had done so the two natives rushed down the beach towards them, spears raised. James quickly brought his musket to his shoulder and fired a shot, deliberately aiming between the pair. Startled by the report, they both stopped and turned away. Then the younger man picked up a rock, spun about and hurled it at James. It missed. James snatched up his fowling piece and fired it, aiming it at the men’s legs. The older man yelped as shot struck his shin, then ran towards the nearest hut, went inside and came out with a shield which he held up in front of him. The other man hurled his spear at the newcomers, just missing Parkinson. Banks immediately fired his scatter gun in retaliation, also aiming low. The pellets struck the spear-thrower’s legs and he leapt in the air. The women and children emerged from the huts, crying out in terror, and both men limped up the beach and vanished into the undergrowth. The women followed, leaving the few infants and toddlers alone, huddling together in fear. Some began to whimper.

  ‘Not an honourable people,’ said Banks as they wandered about the encampment. ‘Abandoning their little ones like that.’

  He began to collect up some of the spears and paddles that were scattered over the ground. ‘Yes, unmanly conduct,’ said James. He tried to pacify the children by giving them beads, but the offering was ignored. ‘Their canoes are primitive,’ he observed, kicking at the bark hull of one. ‘Held together by sticks. Scarcely seaworthy.’

  Parkinson looked anxiously at the petrified infants. ‘I think we should leave this place,’ he said, ‘so the parents of these little ones can return to them.’

  James nodded. ‘Yes. We’ll cross to the other side of the bay, and look for water there.’ As they returned to the beached pinnace, he felt disconsolate. If Tupaia could not be understood by the natives of this land, and he could not understand them, what hope could there be of productive intercourse with the New Hollanders?

  But in the days that followed the bay itself proved bountiful. Most of the Endeavours spent the daylight hours ashore. Although the aboriginals had not returned, there were fish and oysters galore in the bay, and ample fresh water from holes dug on shore. Stingrays could be skewered with swords in the shallows. And, unlike New Zealand, this land had a diverse indigenous animal life. They spotted but could not catch small feral dogs, and saw large lizards, some with frilly necks, which scampered away at their approach. They recoiled from banded brown-and-yellow snakes that slithered through the undergrowth. Brilliantly plumed parakeets swooped through the trees and made easy targets when they alighted. There were dozens of species of new plants, many with flower spikes and fruiting cones. Banks, Solander and Sporing botanized blissfully; Parkinson was kept busy all day and half the night drawing the new specimens; James sounded and thoroughly charted the bay.

  There was sorrow, though, when Able Seaman Forby Sutherland, a consumptive, succumbed to the disease on the last day of April. He was buried ashore, near the place from which the Endeavours drew water. Although Tupaia wandered off in search of natives he could mediate with, when he approached them they either ignored him or repeated the phrase ‘Warra warra wai!’, accompanied by shooing movements with their hands. It was now clear what they were saying: Leave us alone! Angry that they had rejected his overtures and understood nothing of what he said, Tupaia became openly contemptuous of the aboriginals. ‘They are worthless people,’ he told James. ‘They have nothing that is useful.’ He put on his haughtiest expression. ‘And they are ugly. The women especially.’

  ‘To us, certainly,’ James replied. ‘But to each other — which is the most important consideration — probably not.’

  Tupaia scowled. ‘They are bad people. Stupid people.’

  ‘We still must endeavour to communicate with them,’ James replied coolly. He realized that the real source of Tupaia’s disdain was not only his snobbishness, deriving from his elevated status in his homeland and in New Zealand, but the fact that the natives here did not appreciate or comprehend him. Hence his value to the expedition as a go-between had gone, and his personal ‘mana’ — to employ his own word — with the others on the ship had gone with it.

  Hoping perhaps to regain some of his former status, that evening Tupaia presented James with his newest watercolour. It depicted three of the New Holland natives in two bark canoes. Two boys in the leading canoe were paddling, towing the second canoe in which a crouching man held a spear, ready to plunge it into a fish beneath his canoe. The eyes of the two boys were wide and watchful; the spear fisherman was bending forward, staring down at the water. His penis was clearly visible.

  James studied the painting, struck by the uncanny way the Otaheitian had captured the personalities of the trio as well as the physical characteristics of the men and their craft. Tupaia would never be the artist that Parkinson was, of course, but how quickly he had learned the skills of drawing and colouring. There were some who denied that natives could acquire the civilized talents of Europeans, but James was not such a denier. The carved stone maraes of the Tahitians, the wood and jade carvings of the Maori, were these not artistic achievements of distinction? And this man was also producing images of real worth. ‘It is a fine work,’ he said, ‘every bit as good as your Otaheitian paintings.’

  Tupaia blushed slightly. ‘Thank you, taio. I very much like to draw and paint. When I am in England, I will paint King George and his queen.’

  The latest collection of new plants was laid out on the table in the officers’ mess, ready for cataloguing. Earlier they had dined on fried stingray, which Gore had speared. Also on the mess table was one of the spears which Banks had seized from the encampment. He held it up to the others. ‘The savages’ principal weapon, I should say. The shaft is hardened wood, strong but flexible.’ He thumbed the point of the spear gingerly. ‘And this is sharp enough to penetrate a man’s chest.’

  Wincing, Parkinson said, ‘Is it carved from some sort of animal bone?’

  ‘No. It is the tail of a stingray.’

  Intrigued, the others came closer. Banks explained. ‘It is lashed to the shaft with a type of fibre. The ray’s tail is composed of a bony substance and is severely barbed.’ He ran his hand along its edge. ‘The serrations add to its lethal nature.’ He laid it on the table. ‘A very effective weapon, for a primitive people.’

  Tupaia, who had been watching intently, came forward. He said, with enthusiasm, ‘My people too know this weapon.’ He drew up his shirt, exposing his chest. Just below his sternum was a shiny scar about three inches long. ‘During a battle on Raiatea an enemy from Bora Bora threw a spear which struck me.’ He fingered it. ‘This was where the stingray barb was pulled out.’ Turning about, he displayed his back. ‘And this was where the spear went in.’ Below his left shoulder blade was a shiny indentation, the size of a florin, which stood out against the surrounding brown skin. The others stared in horrif
ied fascination.

  James said, ‘How did you survive such a drastic wound?’

  Tupaia let his shirt drop. ‘The spear was cut off at the back, then the point was pulled through from the front.’ He smiled. ‘There was much pain. But I was young and strong so I became well again. A priest treated the two wounds with special plants, and they healed.’ He added, with obvious pride, ‘Most men die from such wounds.’

  James picked up the spear. ‘It makes a very useful weapon, doubtless. And as there are so many of the great fish in the waters of this place I propose to call it Stingray Bay.’

  Banks smiled. ‘You may call it that, Cook. But Solander, Sporing and I have already named the bay.’

  James frowned. The impertinence of the man. ‘And what name might that be?’ he asked.

  ‘In view of the fact that we have found dozens of new plants on its shores we have decided to call it Botany Bay.’

  Later that day, upon reflection, James conceded that the name was indeed suitable. Banks and Solander had done sterling botanizing here. So upon the chart of the bay he had drawn, on the northern and southern mandibles at its entrance, he wrote ‘Cape Banks’ and ‘Point Solander’, respectively. He also labelled a promontory on the south coast of the bay Point Sutherland after his recently deceased seaman.