by Graeme Lay
‘Good grief, Cook, look at them all.’
Parkinson’s cot had been folded away along with his easel, brushes and paints. Banks had opened all the drawers of the cabin’s chest. Every one was filled with folios, and every folio was filled with drawings. The larger drawers contained his paintings of plants, people, birds and landscapes — all rendered in beautiful detail. More paintings were pinned to the wall of the cabin. The largest was of two naked New Hollander men. One was holding up a spear, the other a shield, and the two figures overlapped so that their private parts were discreetly concealed. Sydney had entitled the depiction, ‘Advancing to Combat’.
‘Remarkable,’ said James. ‘It is just as they were in reality.’
Banks pulled the bottom drawer of the chest fully open. Along with more folios was a small round box carved from pale wood. Banks removed its lid, peered in, then showed it to James. It contained a locket of glossy black hair. Putting it to his face, Banks inhaled, then smiled tightly. ‘A keepsake from his Otaheitian lover. It carries the fragrance of the island’s coconut oil.’
Startled, James said, ‘He had a lover on the island? I never knew.’
‘Only a few of us did, and he swore us to silence about her.’ He closed the little box. ‘Tehani, she was called, and she was very beautiful. Parkinson promised her he would return to her one day.’ His eyes became misty. ‘As we all did to our special taios.’
There was a wide shelf above the chest of drawers, crammed with books. Banks reached up and took down a large, hard-backed volume. He opened it and began to read aloud. ‘“Journal of A Voyage to the South Seas and Regions Beyond, 1768”.’ His expression brightened. ‘Parkinson’s record of our expedition. This will be of great interest to readers in London.’
He handed it to James, but considering it disrespectful to look into the account so soon after its author’s death, James placed the journal back on the shelf, saying, ‘Sydney’s botanical and animal drawings must go to the Royal Society. But what of the rest? The journal, and his curiosity collection. Who will receive those? His parents are both dead, he once informed me.’
‘Yes,’ said Banks. ‘But he has an older brother in London, Stanfield Parkinson. I will see that Sydney’s curiosities and his painting equipment are passed to him.’
‘And the journal?’
‘I will take it and ensure that it is published.’
For a few moments James was speechless. Then he said, ‘You cannot do that, Banks. The journal was Sydney’s personal possession. Therefore it belongs to his estate. Which should now pass to his closest living relative, his brother.’
Banks sighed impatiently. ‘Cook, you should know the law. I commissioned Parkinson to draw what Solander, Sporing and I collected. Therefore all his work belongs to me.’
James eyed him coldly. ‘I do know the law. And I am aware that you and the Royal Society have the rights to Parkinson’s natural history illustrations.’ He stared hard at the naturalist. ‘But you have no rights to his journal. That is private property. As a supernumerary Sydney retained his record of the voyage when the crew’s accounts were handed in. Now that he is no longer alive to claim ownership of it, the journal must go to his brother.’
Banks’s eyes narrowed. ‘I cannot agree. Parkinson was in my employ, therefore anything which he produced during the voyage is my property, to make use of in any way I consider fit. Including his journal.’
Shaking his head, James said quietly, ‘There are some things which should not be collected and disseminated, Banks. And a personal journal is one of them.’
‘That is your view.’ Banks held his gaze. ‘But it would be interesting to ask a notary for another opinion on the matter.’
A long, icy silence ensued before James said, ‘This is an unseemly dispute to hold in the very cabin where poor Parkinson worked, slept and died. We will speak of it no more.’ He added pointedly, ‘For the time being.’
Leaving the cabin, James fumed. Nothing had really changed between Banks and him, even after nearly three years. The man’s vanity still led him to believe that he was beyond all authority. No doubt he would even try to possess the Elizabeth journal, should he become aware of its existence. Returning to the Great Cabin, James had another thought: If Banks remains as high-handed as this while at sea, what will he be like when we return to London?
15 APRIL 1771
Dearest Beth,
Cape Town, which we finally reached on 15 March, was salvation to us. Overlooked by a great flat-topped mountain, the town’s harbour was filled with Dutch, Danish and French vessels. As we stood out of the bay we received a salute from an East Indiaman, and her cannon fire was like an orchestral symphony to us. And, unlike Batavia, Cape Town provided for all our needs. The ill men were taken ashore and nursed back to health (albeit at considerable expense), the air was wholesome, the water clean, fresh food plentiful and the townspeople attendant to our requirements. Replacements for our lost seamen have been obtained. There can be no finer port or facilities for the repair and provisioning of an ocean-voyaging ship and the needs of its crew than this Dutch outpost.
Now it is halfway through April and we are again at sea, at last truly bound for home. Although thoughts of England and our waiting loved ones make us buoyant, I still cannot disregard the calamities of the past few months. The fact that a third of my ship’s complement has been lost on the last leg of the voyage distresses me so greatly that I constantly struggle to keep it from the forefront of my consciousness. Moreover, the deaths have continued. My trusted young master, Robert Molyneux, succumbed to the flux shortly after we departed Cape Town. He had been a fine and reliable seaman, as well as an accomplished draughtsman. Molyneux’s loss was as if Endeavour had been partially dismasted. Richard Pickersgill has been promoted in his place. How I now regret my foolish boast of not having lost a single man to scurvy! I realize now that it matters not what is the cause of death at sea, what really matters is the incidence of fatalities. And this voyage has seen far too many deaths. The huge toll from the fatal fever cannot compensate for the certain knowledge that an anti-scorbutic diet prevents the outbreak of scurvy at sea.
I apologize if my recent entries have been in so melancholy a vein, but if I cannot express my deepest feelings to you, who then can I relate them to? The truth is, I am weary as well as disillusioned at the way the voyage has declined into frustration and fatality. There have been too few discoveries, and too many deaths. I believe also that three years is an excessive time for a voyage, even for a circumnavigation, though much of this time was unavoidably expended in undertaking repairs to the ship.
Day after day, all I enter into Endeavour’s log are the briefest descriptions of weather and sea conditions. But as I write this intimate entry to you, dearest Beth, I am encouraged, as we all are, by thoughts of England and our loved ones. The next few weeks cannot pass too quickly.
Your loving husband,
James
On 29 April he observed that they had crossed the Greenwich Meridian, confirming that Endeavour had circumnavigated the entire globe. There was quiet satisfaction rather than riotous celebration at James’s announcement of this achievement that evening in the Great Cabin. Since the Batavia plague and its ghastly consequences, the mood of the ship had changed. A kind of muted resignation had settled upon the decks of Endeavour. Although each man continued to go about his duties punctiliously, his thoughts were now principally elsewhere. The primary ambitions of the expedition had been acquitted; home was where the Endeavours now needed to be.
On 1 May they stood off St Helena but only Banks went ashore, and only briefly. However, thirteen ships of the East India fleet were anchored in the island’s roadstead, and when they weighed anchor on 4 May Endeavour sailed with them. Her crew appreciated the companionship the compatriot fleet afforded, even though the merchantmen were much larger than their own lumbering vessel.
On 15 May an eclipse of the sun occurred, another event which caused only mild interest
. After all, considering everything that the Endeavours had done and witnessed what did a mere solar eclipse have to offer? Likewise, the sighting of Ascension Island a few days later was not considered a significant event, and there was a similarly subdued reaction three weeks later when they crossed the line and entered the northern latitudes. The crossing itself was a far less celebratory occasion than the knowledge that they were now in the hemisphere of home.
On 19 May a surgeon from one of the East Indiamen was boated across to Endeavour to attend to Zachary Hicks whose consumptive lungs had been worsened by the foul airs of Batavia. However, the surgeon could do nothing for him and a few days later Hicks died of asphyxia. He was thirty-two. Although James was aware that his disease had been contracted before leaving England and that in a sense he had been dying throughout the voyage, his death caused further sorrow, and James ordered that his body be committed to the sea with full naval honours. Somewhat reluctantly, he then promoted Gore in Hicks’s place and, much less reluctantly, declared master’s mate Charles Clerke Endeavour’s acting third lieutenant. James had never quite forgiven Gore for the Mercury Bay killing, but Clerke had proved to be the most conscientious of crewmen.
As May melted into June Endeavour continued to battle her way north, in the wake of the merchant fleet. To ensure that the crew remained dutiful, James ordered constant activities: small-arms drills, the repair of split sails and snapped rigging, the scrubbing of decks and clothing. The men went about these duties silently and largely without complaint. The end of every watch and every duty brought them closer to home.
Until the mid-summer solstice they remained within sight of the East Indiamen convoy, but from 23 June Endeavour proved unable to keep up and their ship was solitary once more. Staring up at her mainmast, James now thought of her as an arthritic old lady, determined to make it back home but condemned to a slow, painful pace. Her timbers creaked and groaned and every other day at least one of her sails needed replacing.
On 4 July there was yet another death. Banks burst into the Great Cabin at first light. James was shaving and was startled by the sight of the naturalist, still clad in his night-shirt, his hair awry, his eyes wild. ‘Cook! She is dead!’
‘Who?’
‘Lady. My faithful bitch. I found her a minute ago, lying on the chair where she always sleeps. Rigor mortis had already set in.’ He put his hands over his face. ‘She must have died in the night.’
James said, ‘I heard her whining loudly last night. Then all was quiet, so I paid it no attention. Did you not hear her?’
Banks, his hands still covering his face, shook his head. ‘Would that I had. I might have saved her. She was such a companion to me, more devoted than any woman. I cannot believe she is gone. Gone.’
James put his hand on Banks’s shoulder. ‘I am sorry for your loss. You will dispose of her body with your own ceremony, I presume.’
Banks nodded, turned away and left the cabin, too distraught to speak. James’s sympathy for the man extended only so far. He recalled Banks callously giving away his male dog to the degenerate pair from Savu in the face of Parkinson’s protests. Banks was such a paradoxical mixture of sensitivity and crassness. This prompted a further thought: Will the other woman in his life, Miss Blosset, be still waiting for him in London?
‘Land! Land ho! Off the larboard bow!’
The eyes of all those on deck lifted to the masthead where the crewman on watch was the lad, Nicholas Young. It was 10 July 1771 and a fine midsummer day. Young clung to the rigging with one hand and pointed north with the other. On the horizon they too saw it now: a low, undulating coast of green. Men ran up from below and joined the others at the rail, exclaiming at the sight. Amidships, Banks, Solander and Gore all had their scopes to their eyes.
On the quarter deck, James trained his own spyglass on the horizon. Through it he could discern breaking waves, dark cliffs, farmhouses, patches of forest.
‘Land’s End,’ he murmured. ‘I have done it.’
15 July 1771, London
THE BOYS HAD BEEN GIVEN THEIR GIFTS and had gone outside to play in the street, but the other presents lay unopened in the sea chests on the parlour carpet. James and Elizabeth sat side by side on the couch under the bay window, she with her face pale and pinched, he numbed by what she was relating to him. ‘Joseph was baptized, but lived for only three weeks more. He was a poor, sickly mite, but his passing still tore me apart.’ She blew her nose on the handkerchief she clutched. ‘I blamed myself for his weak constitution, I should have given him better nourishment—’
When she began to convulse James drew her closer to him. ‘That cannot be so, Elizabeth. Some infants are born weak. It is no fault of the mother.’
There was a long silence. His arms around her, he could feel her still trembling. At last he asked, fearing that his voice would break, ‘And our little daughter?’
Elizabeth tipped her head back and drew a long, deep breath. When she replied her voice was merely a whisper. ‘Three months ago, just before Easter, she developed a cough, a sneeze and a runny nose. I kept her indoors, thinking it were just a cold. But the cough grew worse. She had fits of coughing, terrible fits.’ She turned to him, her eyes huge, haunted by the memory and unable to go on.
James said quietly, ‘Did you call for the doctor?’
‘My mother fetched Dr Bartlett. He prescribed hot compresses for her chest to ease the coughing and told me to confine her to bed. I did so, but the fits still came. She struggled for breath, and when she did breathe in it made a terrible noise, a kind of whooping and rasping. For that reason they call it the “whooping cough”. Oh, James, it was heartbreaking to see her struggling for breath. Then the coughing worsened, and on Easter Sunday morning she breathed her last.’
Now there were no words to express what they both felt. Instead, they clutched each other. He felt her tears streaming down his neck and the racking of her body. The same thought, the same useless thought, kept running through his mind: Our daughter, our beloved only daughter, died on 9 April. Not long after I left Cape Town. Had I arrived home earlier I may have been able to help save her. The sweetest child, the most loveable child, her mother in miniature.
At last he said quietly, ‘Where are the children buried?’
‘St Dunstan’s graveyard.’
‘We must go there. I must see the little ones’ graves.’
‘Yes.’
They were silent a while. He said gently, ‘There will be other children, Beth, to replace Joseph and little Elizabeth. There must be.’
Her eyes became fixed on his. Although there were dark shadows beneath them, the eyes themselves were as clear and penetrating as ever. Forcefully and with a tinge of reproach, she said, ‘Joseph and Elizabeth cannot be replaced. They were unique. Both are irreplaceable.’
He nodded, understanding too well. Only now did he fully realize the sorrow she had gone through these past years. The loneliness, the grieving. And that awareness filled him with remorse. And yet, and yet, what else could he have done?
‘And James—’
He put his hand softly on the back of her neck, and brought his face closer to hers. ‘Yes?’
‘It was said around the docks and in the city when Endeavour hadn’t returned by last Christmas that your ship must be lost at sea. Some said it had been sunk by the Spanish, near the Falklands. I felt so distressed, and I did not know what to do. So I wrote to Mr Stephens, at the Admiralty, and asked if there was any firm news.’
‘He would not have known. My letter to him from Batavia did not arrive when I hoped it would.’ He put his hand under her chin and held it there. ‘But I did write, Elizabeth, to let you know when I hoped I would return.’
She nodded, blinking away the tears. ‘I had begun to think you and the ship must surely be lost, and the thought was devastating to me. I said nothing to the boys, but already I had begun to mourn for you.’ She swallowed twice. ‘Then yesterday Mistress Norman from Number Twelve came rushing in her
e, waving a copy of the London Chronicle. There was a long story in it about the Endeavour arriving home safely. I have never felt so thankful. I could not sleep all last night for the relief and excitement I felt.’ Then her expression became one of puzzlement. ‘But the news sheet story was mainly about Mr Joseph Banks. It was all about where he had been, and who he had met and all the plants and creatures he had collected during the voyage. There was scant mention of you, James, just a statement saying that you were Endeavour’s commander.’
Through the heaviness of his grief, James felt a slight leavening of validation. What he suspected might happen had already begun. Banks the self-promoter had taken it upon himself to tell their story: Banks the heroic botanist, Banks the conquering adventurer, Banks the great seducer. Well, let him be what he wants to be. James knew otherwise and, in time, the record would be set straight. In the meantime, Elizabeth and their surviving family here was all that really mattered. She had had to grieve for so long without him, and now they needed time to grieve together. He owed that much to her.