by Val Ross
PACIFIC ISLANDS MAPS
When Europeans began to explore the far-flung islands of the vast Pacific, they probably didn’t realize that the local people there were among the most remarkable sailors the world has ever seen. These islanders had sailed with their families and their livestock, in open rafts, across the world’s largest ocean. Hopping from island to island, they had established trade routes and started colonies.
Of course, the Pacific Islanders made maps. Few survive, but there is a rare example in the Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, made by inhabitants of the Marshall Islands in the 19th century. (Marshall Islanders guarded the information by which they made these maps as state secrets.) The Marshall Islands map is a rectangular frame of palm fibers. Thinner fibers curve across the frame, representing the direction of ocean currents. Small seashells lashed at key places on the curving fibers represent islands. Marshall Islands sailors could orient the frame according to the direction of the waves, and, by watching the currents, sail long distances to remote islands.
At Cooks request, the Navy agreed to let him sail a Whitby cat. Cook patrolled the shipyards to make sure that the remodeling of his cat, the Endeavour, would make her ship-shape. He had the ship loaded with strange cargo: supplies of sauerkraut and carrot marmalade. Cook wanted to prevent scurvy, and he suspected (correctly) that if he fed his sailors — he referred to them as the People — a better diet than the Navy’s traditional salt beef, he could save their lives. The People were told that if they didn’t eat their vegetables, they would be whipped.
Off they sailed to South America. In January 1769, the ship reached Cape Horn at the southern tip, a place where the Atlantic and the Pacific collide in horrendous storms. But Cook seemed able to handle anything the ocean threw in his face. He was strict, but the People had to admit that Cook’s sailing skills were superb.
When the Endeavour dropped anchor in lush, green Tahiti, the People went crazy, chasing local women and gorging on roast pig. Meanwhile Cook set up an observatory and successfully recorded the transit of Venus. Then he opened the envelope with his secret orders: Find the Great Southern Continent — or prove that it does not exist.
Cook ordered the Endeavour to set sail straight for the South Pole. Finding nothing as far south as the 40th latitude but rolling sea, Cook turned the Endeavour west to New Zealand. Its outline was still unmapped — could it be part of the Great Southern Continent?
When the English sailors went ashore and visited abandoned camps of the local people, the Maori, they noticed human bones in cooking pots. A few friendly Maori explained that they didn’t eat everybody, just enemies killed in battle. Still, Cook realized that it was too dangerous to survey from land as he had in Newfoundland. He made most of his charts by running traverse.
This is Cook’s map of Dusky Bay, New Zealand. He declared it to be “one of the most beautiful places which nature unassisted by art could produce.” He arrived here first in 1769, and returned again in 1773.
After Cook proved to his own satisfaction that New Zealand was not part of the mysterious southern continent, he set sail for Australia. It had been sighted by Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642, but no European had ever visited Australia’s eastern coast. Cook charted 3,200 kilometers (2,000 miles) of it in four months.
Then he discovered Australia’s Great Barrier Reef by running into it. On August 17, 1770, the Endeavour’s hull was pierced and she began to take on water. The shore was far away, and most of the People (including Cook) couldn’t swim. They had to pump the Endeavour’s leaking hold, or die. Yet even in the crisis, Cook ordered a few men off the pumps to take measurements of longitude — which later proved admirably accurate. The People patched the leaks by stuffing them with old sails, and threw heavy equipment overboard to lighten the ship. After anxious hours, the tide turned, and the Endeavour floated up and off the reef. The People repaired her and sailed on.
Today’s map of Cook’s Australia and New Zealand.
When a tattered but triumphant Endeavour finally returned to England in 1771, Cook should have become famous. His men boasted that he had saved them from scurvy, storms, reefs, and cannibals. When he had set sail, almost a third of the world — the Pacific — was missing from the world map. Now the map was filling in.
Instead of hailing Cook as a hero, London society was more impressed with the ship’s botanist, a rich aristocrat named Joseph Banks. Newspapers spoke of “the Banks voyage,” and Banks, a snappier writer than Cook, rushed into print with a book about narrow escapes and natural marvels.
But the Admiralty lords knew who the real hero was. They made Cook a captain and announced that he would lead a second great voyage of science and discovery. A pair of German botanists, Johann Forster and his son Georg, would replace the grandstanding Banks.
The Admiralty told Cook that his new expedition would carry a device that would solve the riddle of how to calculate longitude — Larcum Kendall’s copy of John Harrisons longitude watch — which would let him compare the time at the ships position with the time back in London. Soon after the voyage began, Cook wrote in his journal, “Our error can never be great, so long as we have so good a guide as the watch.”
Aboard the Resolution, Cook kept everything ticking nicely. His People munched their way through the expeditions 9,000 kilograms (20,000 pounds) of “Sour Krout,” 135 liters (30 gallons) of carrot marmalade, and 1,000 bunches of raw onions. But Tobias Furneaux, captain of the Resolutions sister ship the Adventure, seemed to think that a bad diet was British navy tradition. After only three months at sea, when the two ships dropped anchor at Cape Town, South Africa, Furneaux had lost several men to scurvy. Cook, who had lost no one, was furious.
In November the two ships sailed south in search of the Great Southern Continent. On a calm January day, the Adventure and the Resolution crossed the Antarctic Circle. Then ice floes began to close in, threatening to crumple the little wooden ships like paper. Cook didn’t know that they were just 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the Antarctic coast when they headed back towards open seas.
Fog closed in and separated the Adventure and the Resolution, so each headed to New Zealand for a rendezvous. Captain Furneaux arrived first. Afraid of what Cook would do if his men got scurvy again, he sent a party of ten ashore at Grass Cove to gather wild vegetables. They never returned. A search party the next day found a Maori campsite and parts of the missing crewmates, roasted. Sick at heart, Furneaux set sail for England.
Meanwhile, Cook and the Resolution once again crossed the Antarctic Circle — something no one else would do until the next century. They sailed so close to some of the icebergs that the men on deck had to push the ship away with long poles. But there was no sign of land, only great cloud banks above a dazzling whiteness along the horizon, and ice all around.
THE LONGITUDE PRIZE
In 1728, the year James Cook was born, John Harrison entered the contest to win the British government’s Longitude Prize of £20,000. Harrison was a carpenter and self-taught watchmaker, and he thought he could design a watch so perfectly balanced and buttressed from shock that it would tell accurate time despite wild waves and extremes of temperature. It would have to be really accurate — if it was out by one minute, a ship’s course would be off by 20 kilometers (12.5 miles). The Longitude Board wasn’t impressed by Harrison, a poor man with a northern accent. But ever since 1707, when Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell had miscalculated longitude and driven four ships onto the rocks off England’s south coast, causing the deaths of 2,000 men, the British were willing to consider anything.
Harrison worked on his watch for decades. Finally he produced a shiny watch about the size of a small plate. Its jeweled mechanism was made of special combinations of metals that expanded at different rates — so the watch kept steady time despite extremes of heat and cold — and balances — so the watch would keep ticking even in the worst of gales. Harrison’s watch kept almost perfect time on two voyages to the West Indies. However, the aristocrats
on the Longitude Board were reluctant to give such a huge amount of money to a lower-class senior citizen, and insisted that a replica of Harrison’s watch be submitted to a third test on Captain Cook’s second voyage. The copy worked beautifully, and Harrison was finally awarded the Longitude Prize in 1773, when he was seventy-eight years old. Cook liked his copy of the watch so much, he took it on his third voyage too.
In 1775 Cook and the Resolution headed home. The People had been gone for three years and seventeen days. They had sailed 110,000 kilometers (70,000 miles), the equivalent of three times round the world. Cook was once again hailed as a hero by his men. They boasted that they would follow him anywhere — which is what they had done.
This time, Cook didn’t make the mistake of letting anyone else write about the voyage. This time, he concentrated on getting his journals ready for publication, and taking Mrs. Cook, pregnant with their sixth child, to parties in London’s high society before his next mission. For Cook was to search for a route from the Pacific to the Atlantic across the top of North America — the fabled Northwest Passage.
This time, Cook was too busy to visit the shipyards — too busy to stop the shipbuilders from cutting corners and using rotten wood. Cook’s inattention to detail would be fatal. On July 12, 1776, the Resolution and her new sister ship, the Discovery, sailed from England.
This time, Cook seemed a changed man. The People were dismayed to see their once sensible captain order men to be flogged for refusing to eat new foods. He always seemed to be angry at himself, as frequent stops to repair his leaky rotten ships reminded him of his failure to prepare properly for the voyage.
But if he was no longer the fair, reliable captain of earlier voyages, he was still skilled, brave, and lucky. Early in 1777, as they crossed the Pacific, intending to chart the west coast of North America, Cook’s men sighted a chain of stunning islands. The islanders were so astonished, it was clear that the English were the first Europeans to arrive there. Cook marked the place with the aid of his longitude watch at around 21 degrees, north, 157 degrees west.
Then the ships turned east to North America. Over most of 1778 they sailed from what is now Oregon to Alaska, past some 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) of rugged coast, searching for the western end of the Northwest Passage. Cook sailed recklessly in these uncharted lands, reaching almost as close to the North Pole as he had come to the South.
He would never know that, when approaching winter forced the ships to turn back in the Bering Strait, they were just 120 kilometers (75 miles) short of the eastward route they were seeking. The ships headed back to the beautiful islands for rest and repair, and anchored at one the local people called Owhyee — we spell it Hawaii.
The stunning horseshoe-shaped bay where the exhausted sailors dropped anchor is called Kealakekua, or “Path of the Gods.” It was the place where Hawaiian legend said that Orono, the god of abundance, would one day arrive in a white-sailed canoe. When two ships sailed into view not only at the appointed place, but at the appointed time of year — harvest time — the astonished Hawaiians went mad with joy. Thousands paddled out to greet the visitors and their tall leader, who was surely Orono himself.
Cook had no idea that the Hawaiians thought he was a god. He only knew that he and his tired men were being given an amazing welcome, and that the natives had draped a magnificent red-feather cloak across his broad shoulders. The English stayed three wonderful weeks, feasting every day.
But the Hawaiians were puzzled by Orono’s visit. He was supposed to be the god of abundance, but he and his people were taking more than they gave. Worse, the People chased women, got drunk, and fought. The Hawaiians were happy to see them go.
After a few days at sea, the Resolutions rotten mast broke. The Hawaiians were dismayed when the visitors came back. The Orono legend had said nothing about this. Cook explained courteously that his ships needed more repairs. The Hawaiians shrugged and kept to themselves — except for one, who demanded proof that Cook was a great warrior. Obligingly, Cook showed the scar on his right hand.
Then came the morning of Valentine’s Day, February 14. Some young Hawaiians had taken a landing boat from the Discovery the night before. In the morning, Cook and twenty men went ashore to demand its return. The Hawaiians said they didn’t have it. The English tried to take an old chief hostage until the boat was given back. But as they started to drag him away, the old chief stumbled. The Hawaiians felt humiliated. They decided they’d had enough. The killing began.
The death of Captain Cook is pictured in A Collection of Voyages Round the World, published in London in 1790. Cook is shown at front left, hand lifted as if to stop the bloodshed to come. In fact, the British boats were much further from shore when Cook died.
From the decks of the Resolution and Discovery, the sailors could see their fellow sailors being clubbed and speared. And they could see the tall figure of their captain — soon the only white face among the brown crowds in Kealakekua Bay. Alone, Captain Cook walked slowly and deliberately, as if willing everyone around him to calm down. One Hawaiian finally decided that even the powerful Cook-Orono was merely human.
The warrior raised his club and bashed the Englishman on the head. Cook staggered and fell on one knee. Another Hawaiian stabbed him in the back of the neck, and he pitched into the shallow water. His men could see him struggling to raise himself onto the shore. After a third crushing club-blow, Cook sank for the last time.
“Thus ended the life of the greatest navigator this or any other nation could boast,” wrote Second Lieutenant John Rickman in the ship’s log. Aboard the ship, one of the sailors reported something strange — the captains longitude watch stopped ticking.
Over the next few days, tensions between the Hawaiians and the English stayed high, and more shots were fired. But two brave Hawaiians took their lives in their hands and swam out to the English ships to sing a song of lamentation for Orono. And when the English went ashore for fresh water, they found some of Cook’s belongings left for them to take back — including a basket containing their fallen Captains hands.
When the news reached England, the nation mourned. The King himself was said to be deeply saddened. Cook’s old rival, Joseph Banks, wrote a glowing tribute for the London newspapers. Mrs. Cook burned all her husband’s love letters. But amid the grief there were also cheers. For a farm laborer’s son had gone farther than any man, and he had drawn a mapmaker’s lines around the last unknown third of the world.
THE MAPMAKER’S NOSE
Alexander von Humboldt
A GIANT IN South America’s Andes mountain range, Mount Chimborazo thrusts its great volcanic peak 6,310 meters (21,000 feet) into the clouds. In the year 1802, it is believed to be the world’s highest mountain, which is why a small group of men — a young German aristocrat named Alexander von Humboldt, a French botanist named Aimé Bonpland, and several South American guides — are climbing slowly up its slopes.
Chimborazo’s first 2,000 meters (6,000 feet) are no problem. Then the team crosses the snow line. The guides turn back, leaving just Humboldt, Bonpland, and a young man named Carlos. As the three trudge upward, the path dwindles to a ridge at times no more than 25 centimeters (10 inches) wide. Sometimes, when the three look over the side, they see cliffs falling away to distant valleys; sometimes there’s only blank cloud below.
The air gets thinner and colder, and hail pelts the climbers. Each breath Humboldt takes makes his lungs ache horribly. But his intense curiosity wins out over the pain, and he makes notes on how the vegetation varies as the altitude changes. He also puzzles over the fact that, so near the equator, they are surrounded by snow.
By 5,000 meters (17,000 feet), all three climbers are nauseous, with throbbing headaches. Their noses stream blood. Blood vessels in their eyes have burst, partially blinding them. Blind, sick, and cold, they have to stop. They take out their barometers to measure atmospheric pressure. The mercury stands at 2/1100 inches, by which they calculate that they are at,878 meters (19,
286 feet). It’s not Chimborazo’s peak — but it is a world record. Their curiosity at least partially satisfied, the three climbers wipe their bleeding noses and begin to grope their way back down.
Alexander von Humboldt, born in Berlin in 1769, was raised to sniff out challenges and mysteries. His father, a Prussian baron, and his mother, a French Protestant aristocrat, sent Alexander to the University of Göttingen. There he studied with Georg Forster, one of the botanists who had sailed on James Cooks second great voyage. The two men went on hiking trips, Humboldt listening avidly to Forster’s tales of the botanical wonderlands of the Pacific. “I can never mention my teacher and friend without feeling the most heartfelt gratitude,” Humboldt wrote.
Humboldt wanted to become a botanist like his beloved teacher, but the Baroness von Humboldt had other plans. Her son would have a career in the civil service. So Humboldt studied geology, and at age twenty-three was made Director of Mines in the Prussian state of Franconia. A gung-ho young man, his version of doing his job included scaling cliffs, going down mines, and studying the weird plants he found growing in the gloom.
In 1796, the baroness died, leaving Alexander a small fortune. He quit his job to become what he had always wanted to be: a traveler and scientist. First he bought state-of-the art equipment, including a tiny latitude-measuring instrument for observing the angles of stars -“my snuffbox sextant,” he called it. Then he joined up with a French naturalist, the moody, gentle Aimé Bonpland, and the two decided to explore South America.
Humboldt took notes on everything he saw in his travels, from plant life to ancient civilizations. He found these hieroglyphs that stand for the days in the Mexican almanac, and put them in his book Researches Concerning the Institutions and Monuments of the Ancient Inhabitants of America, published in 1814.