The Pacific

by Meaghan Wilson Anastasios

  In 1773, after Tobias Furneaux in the Adventure lost sight of Cook and the Resolution in the soupy fog of the Antarctic, he sought refuge on the island of lunawuni (later named Bruny Island) for five days, naming the bay he anchored in after his ship. Of course that body of water already had a name – kaparati – but to Furneaux and the Europeans who followed in his wake, it became Adventure Bay. There was no shortage of evidence that people were living there, but Furneaux had no contact with the Aboriginal occupants. He left a selection of gifts – medals, gunflints, some nails and an old barrel with iron hoops – at a deserted campsite.

  Bruny Island’s Adventure Bay was the destination of choice for Cook as he sought sustenance for his ravenous menagerie.

  SAM NEILL

  Most of the early European explorers stopped in Adventure Bay: Furneaux, Cook, du Fresne – even Bligh on the Bounty. It’s easy to understand why because it’s the first logical stop after crossing over from the Cape of Good Hope. I like Tasmania a lot. In many ways, it’s a sort of idealised version of Australia. But I’m also slightly haunted here. It almost feels like a dark place to me and that’s because it had such a dark colonial history.

  The Resolution and Discovery anchored there on 27 January 1777 and took on water, food and wood. Not to mention armloads of grass to keep the animals happy.

  Cook’s encounter with the Aboriginal people on lunawani was quite different from his experience with the locals on Australia’s east coast on the first voyage.

  ROYCE EVERETT, Ben Lomond Nation

  Well, if Cook didn’t discover Australia, who would have done? It could have been the French . . . the Japanese could have taken over . . . who is to say we would have been any better off or worse off with anyone else, you know? It had to be discovered sometime. So I think we got the better of the worse evils.

  As the crew were busy sawing down trees, a group of Nuenonne people appeared out of the bush carrying spears.

  JOHN WEBBER (1751–1793), Artist, Cook’s third voyage

  They were quite naked & wore no ornaments except the large punctures or ridges raised on the skin . . . they were of the common stature but rather slender; their skin was black and also their hair which was as woolly as any Native of Guinea, but they were not distinguished by remarkable thick lips nor flat noses, on the contrary their features were far from disagreeable; they had pretty good eyes and their teeth were tolerable even but very dirty; most of them had their hair and beards anointed with red ointment and some had their faces painted with the same composition.

  A flighty marine turned tail and fled to the boat before the Nuenonne men relinquished their weapons and showed themselves to be less interested in driving off the new arrivals than they were fascinated by the dynamics of tree-felling by saw. Cook and Mai arrived carrying some knick-knacks, along with a brace of freshly baked bread and some recently caught fish and birds. Turning their noses up at the unfamiliar smell of the freshly baked bread, the Nuenonne also refused the fish, but happily accepted the dead birds.

  Cook convinced one of the men to throw his spear at a target. He missed. Mai, presumably keen to show off the military superiority of his friends’ weapons, used his musket to blast the target to smithereens. The shocked Nuenonne very wisely took off into the bush. Cook was less than pleased; he assumed this would be the last he’d see of the locals. He’d struggled to make any meaningful connection with the Aboriginal inhabitants of the Australian mainland, and for a minute or two had thought he was going to do better in Tasmania.

  He was wrong. As the boats from the Resolution and Discovery sailed into the cove the next morning, a group of twenty or so unarmed Nuenonne men were waiting on the beach. Cook did his usual thing and placed medals and beads strung on ribbons around their necks. The Nuenonne weren’t interested in these offerings. But Cook’s waistcoat? That was another thing altogether. One man was fascinated by it, so Cook handed it over. The ice was broken, and the Nuenonne broke out in what was described as the ‘most immoderate fits of laughter’. Perhaps they were delighted by the waistcoat – or perhaps they thought it the most ludicrous thing they had ever seen.

  ROYCE EVERETT: Now that some of our land has been handed back, the opportunities here are just colossal. When you think where it came from – this was Aboriginal land and dispossessed from the people who lived here. Now, some of it is repossessed. Which is great. I’d love to come back in fifty years’ time and see all this – what has become of it. It’s a great opportunity for the Aboriginal people of Tasmania.

  SAM NEILL: Someone said to me, you don’t know what loss is until you’ve had a whole continent taken from you.

  ROYCE EVERETT: How true, how true. Still a long way to go . . . of course we’ve been given a lot back. But, by golly . . . still a long way to go.

  Bobbing about in the placid waters of karapati, the men of the Discovery decided they were less interested in cementing their friendship with the locals than they were determined to cut loose. Half a world away from home, they had the only fun they could – they nicked the rum rations and drank themselves silly. Being reasonably sozzled on board was par for the course, but drinking yourself into oblivion was not the done thing at all. Charles Clerke ordered the men flogged – which on top of a brutal hangover would not have been a pleasant thing – and in a fit of pique, Cook ordered the men to pack up and leave. The Resolution and Discovery departed karapati after just two days.

  Yes, the irresponsibility of the harebrained drunkards got under Cook’s skin. But something else was bothering him. Thanks to the shoddy fit-out of the two ships before they’d departed England, Cook had been forced to stop for repairs in Cape Town, and the Discovery had needed to have its leaks plugged as well. The diversion to Tasmania for stock feed had also been unplanned, and they were already well behind schedule to make it north in time for the northern summer. Cook was hoping to make it to the Arctic Circle before the ice closed in for winter. And the delays were making that less likely by the minute.

  Despite the fact that an important geographic question was staring him in the face, Cook’s mind was elsewhere. This is usually cited as the reason for his peculiar neglect of Tasmania.

  SAM NEILL

  When Cook leaves the Tasmanian coast after just five days, he does something very strange. At this point in time nothing is known about what lies between here and Point Hicks, the first part of Australia that Cook spotted in 1770. Given the assiduous and curious nature of Cook the cartographer and explorer, it’s strange that he didn’t bother to venture north to explore. Instead he travels directly to New Zealand.

  Uncharacteristically, Cook was happy to accept Tobias Furneaux’s assessment that Tasmania was joined to the mainland. It would be almost another thirty years before the body of water separating the two and now known as Bass Strait was identified and navigated by George Bass and Matthew Flinders. The Cook we know from the first and second voyages would have insisted on circumnavigating the island just to make sure. But this time round, science and geography weren’t at the top of the list; for Cook and the Admiralty, this expedition was all about commerce.

  *

  Before he headed for Tahiti, Cook decided to divert to Tōtara-nui, which the British had dubbed Queen Charlotte Sound. The anticipation on board the Resolution and the Discovery must have been at fever pitch. Cook and his men had unfinished business in New Zealand. The grisly end of the ten sailors from the Adventure in Whareunga Bay – Grass Cove – was now common knowledge, and the crew expected their captain to wreak righteous vengeance upon the Māori who had killed and consumed his men.

  Portrait of a New Zealander, John Webber, 1774. Cook accepted Ngāti Kuia chief Kahura’s account of the ‘cannibal’ incident, much to the dismay of his men, and angered them further by agreeing to Kahura’s request for a portrait. SLNSW, SAFE / DL Pe 214, IE1690213

  SAM NEILL

  How on earth had this happened . . . this horror? And now the British were returning. Would he avenge the fallen men . .
. would more blood be shed?

  When the Māori saw the two British ships sailing into the Sound on 11 February 1777, they reached the same conclusion. They expected Cook to seek revenge for what had happened. Tensions on both sides of the beach were high. What would Cook do?

  What none of them realised was that although Cook fully intended to deal with the events in Grass Cove, he planned to do it his way. And that involved finding out the truth about what had happened there. None of the men involved in the skirmish with the Māori had escaped to tell their side of the story, and so the conclusions reached by their crewmates were based on supposition and assumption, neither of which were things Cook placed any stock in. He was all about hard evidence. The only people alive who could testify to what happened that day were the Māori people involved in the killing.

  Despite Cook’s assurances that he bore the Māori no ill will, five days passed before he was able to get a local perspective on the events that had precipitated the attack on the sailors from the Adventure. Mai spoke with a group of Māori at Grass Cove and interpreted for Cook. A disagreement over trade terms – a British sailor had refused to hand anything over in exchange for a stone adze he had been given – had inevitably led to a tussle. Two Māori had been shot and killed, and Chief Kahura had called for reinforcements.

  While the sailors were reloading their muskets, the Māori had overwhelmed them. These were not people you picked a fight with without expecting consequences and it was always going to end with death, on one side of the beach or the other. That day in Grass Cove, the Māori were the victors and they dispatched the vanquished in the customary manner.

  RAYMOND SMITH, Ngāti Kuia, Rongomaiwahine Tribes, Descendant of Kahura

  Our people were giving and friendly and beautiful. But Cook’s men needed to know not to cross the line, or we would defend our land. For them it was like a war, and in war there are traditions that were followed. Obviously they were killed here – our people burnt them. This was a cultural process and it was natural justice for this country . . . part of our natural law.

  It seemed there was no question about why things had gone the way they had. The sailors had behaved appallingly and had been punished accordingly. Cook chose to believe the Māori account. He’d had trouble with the same sailors in Tahiti and had no reason to believe their behaviour in New Zealand would be any better.

  PETER BEECH, Eco-tour Operator

  All of Cook’s men knew what had happened to their shipmates on that second voyage. And they fully expected Cook to sail over to Grass Cove, turn his ships broadside on, and blow that place to smithereens. So he did go over there and he asked Chief Kahura, ‘Why did you kill my men?’ Kahura told him that that the sailors had come to his bay, looking for scurvy grass. They wanted to trade but had no trade goods with them. They asked one of the Māori for a hatchet, but the sailors refused to give them anything in return. So the Māori thought he was getting stiffed and stole some bread or a coat or something, and the midshipman’s mate fired on this guy and killed him. He fired a second time and killed two of the Māori. But then he had no more shots left and the other guns were back in the boat, so Kahura called out to his men to come down and overpower these guys.

  Now Cook had the facts, his men expected there to be consequences. Strangely enough, so did the Māori.

  Which made what happened next all the more remarkable. Kahura, the chieftain who had led the warriors of the Ngāti Kuia and Rangitāne iwi in the attack on the sailors at Whareunga Bay, came on board the Resolution at Cook’s invitation.

  CAPTAIN JAMES COOK

  I must confess that I admired his courage and was not a little pleased at the confidence he put in me. Perhaps in this he placed his whole safety, for I had always declared to those who solicited his death that I had always been a friend to them all and would continue to be so unless they gave me a cause to act otherwise.

  When Kahura expressed a desire to have his likeness captured by the expedition’s artist, John Webber, Cook agreed with delight rather than punishing him for what he had done.

  Cook was oblivious to the impact of this moment. He was clear on his own motives, writing in his journal of the pride he felt about the equitable way he handled the situation. It was a most Enlightened response, as far as he was concerned.

  CAPTAIN JAMES COOK

  It appeared to me that they were apprehensive we were come to revenge the death of Captain Furneaux’s people . . . they must be well assured that I was no longer a stranger to that unhappy affair, and I did all in my power to assure them of the continuance of my friendship, and that I should not disturb them on that account.

  Most tellingly, he proposed that he would continue to be a friend to the Māori ‘unless they gave me a cause to act otherwise’. Apparently the killing and devouring of ten of his crew didn’t qualify as a ‘cause’ that would induce Cook to repeal his friendship.

  Imagine how the men on board the Resolution and Discovery felt. It’s difficult not to feel some sympathy for the sailors who had been on the Adventure when their shipmates were killed. Cook was a stern leader who tolerated no nonsense on the part of the men under his command. Yet there he was, entertaining the man responsible for killing, and eating, their comrades, in the Great Cabin. Mai, for one, was incensed. ‘You tell me if a man kills another in England he is hanged for it, this man has killed ten and yet you will not kill him, though a great many of his countrymen desire it!’ he protested. The Ra’iatean, who had been on board the Adventure when the killings took place, was one of those who had firsthand experience of the event.

  Fury bubbled over on deck. The men knew that outright mutiny was out of the question. Quiet rebellion was the only safe option. And so Cook’s men concocted a most creative way to protest their captain’s inaction.

  SAM NEILL

  And here followed one of the strangest events of all three voyages. Unknown to Cook, the men of the other ship, the Discovery, put a dog on trial for cannibalism. Now the dog had a nasty habit of biting people, but it was clearly not a cannibal. But here the poor creature is a proxy . . . a substitute. They find it guilty, they cook it, and they eat it.

  This was an unconscious expression of the Māori practice of utu (revenge) to restore mana (prestige). It was also a flagrant act of dissent against Cook’s refusal to avenge his men’s deaths.

  He was never aware of it, but Cook’s failure to seek revenge also undermined his standing with the Māori. As far as the locals were concerned, by not asserting utu, Cook was a man without mana – someone without any spiritual power and no better than a slave.

  PETER BEECH

  When Cook went back to Ship Cove, everyone was very disappointed in him. The old people used to say that Grass Cove was the bay where Cook lost his mana. Māoris say that because utu was a really big part of their culture. Utu is like revenge – it’s like an eye for an eye. If the shoe had been on the other foot they would most definitely have taken revenge. They saw his lack of action as weakness, on his part. And although I’m sure they were happy that he didn’t, they kind of lost respect for him.

  There was a name for it – taurekareka. Cook was diminished in the eyes of the Māori and his men alike.

  Better than almost all of us, Cook knew where he was geographically speaking. But even after all those years in the Pacific, he was still a man adrift in a metaphysical sense.

  Just as he tracked the movement of stars in the skies and traced shorelines through his looking glass, Cook observed the people he met in the Pacific. But he could never truly understand them. Cook was a man of the Enlightenment. His was not the Old Testament God of thunderbolts and lightning, wrath and rightful vengeance. The God for Cook’s age was Christ – a man of forgiveness and clemency. Turn the other cheek, do unto others and all that. But these were meaningless sentiments to the people gathered on both sides of the beach in Queen Charlotte Sound, who wanted things to play out in a far less merciful manner.

  Through his inaction, Cook failed
to secure mana for his own people. But he also failed Māori expectations by neglecting to acknowledge the importance of retribution to achieve balance.

  This was a turning point, and it soured Cook’s relationship both with the people of the Pacific and with his own crew.

  In a sense, it was the beginning of the end.

  FOURTEEN

  OFF THE RAILS

  The longer I’m on this journey – this exploration of the Pacific – the less I’m certain about not just the present but also the past because history is fluid: it’s always being rewritten, manipulated, reinterpreted. Bits are forgotten; pieces of the jigsaw are missing. But also I’m learning that history is us – we are part of history. It is within us and we are part of the story. The story continues and it’s never anything less than fascinating.

  SAM NEILL

  As the Resolution and Discovery packed up and readied to set sail from Queen Charlotte Sound, the relationship between the men on board and the Māori who lived there had been ruptured. Cook might have thought that his humane decision to not seek redress would inspire gratitude and fealty in the bosoms of Kahura and his iwi. But in this instance, Cook had grabbed firm hold of the wrong end of the stick. Any respect the Māori may have harboured for the Englishman and his comrades had evaporated. As far as they were concerned, Cook had lost his mana.