The Pacific

by Meaghan Wilson Anastasios

  DR RICK KNECHT

  The big prize, of course, was the North-West Passage. He must’ve been terribly disappointed when he didn’t get through the ice. When he went down to Hawai‘i and made a few bad decisions and things ended so badly for him, I wonder whether that disappointment kind of caught up to him. I wonder if it contributed to the uncharacteristic moves on his part.

  Cook might have been a little disappointed he’d been unable to crack open the North-West Passage. But his achievements were significant. After leaving Nootka Sound, Cook had charted most of the north-west American coastline for the first time. He determined the extent of Alaska and mapped all the way to the Bering Strait. Ensuring no other mariner would ever suffer as he did from the inaccuracies in the Russian maps, he corrected their errors, while also filling in the gaps in the Spanish and Russian charts of the northern Pacific.

  The Admiralty had been unequivocal in their instructions. If Cook failed to find the North-West Passage, he was to winter in Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka and try again the following summer. But the Russians on Unalaska had told him provisions in Kamchatka were thin on the ground and would cost him an arm and a leg. With that in mind, he cast his mind back to the fertile and inviting islands he’d named the ‘Sandwich Islands’ as he’d travelled north from the equator . . . Hawai‘i.

  Ignoring the instructions he’d been given, Cook turned south.

  It was a fateful decision, and one that would cost him dearly.

  SEVENTEEN

  BEYOND THE MORTAL REALM

  I’ve been thinking about Cook’s killing here and, there seems a terrible inevitability about it. For right or wrong, he was the man at the front, taking action. Taking the lead. Cook had enjoyed such good luck throughout his three voyages around the Pacific and that luck had finally run out. That luck had led to hubris and that overconfidence had consequences. I see shades of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness here . . . Captain Cook as Mr Kurtz . . . weariness, anger, illness, arrogance – possibly even madness – and then death.

  SAM NEILL

  Hands up who’s been to Hawai‘i? OK – hands up who’d like to go to Hawai‘i?

  American popular culture has done a great job at promoting Hawai‘i as everyone’s ideal tropical island getaway. From Elvis Presley’s hip-swaying endorsement in Blue Hawaii to Hawaii Five-O, the marketing of the exotic American possession in the centre of the Pacific has worked like a charm.

  Not that its reputation is unwarranted. Like Tahiti, Hawai‘i is blessed with soft sandy beaches; towering mountains clad in lush green forests; crystal clear water; rolling surf and more coconut palms than you can shake a stick at. So imagine how badly the men on board the Resolution and the Discovery wanted to get there once Cook made the announcement they were heading south to the balmy climes of the Sandwich Islands to escape the Arctic winter. They had been in the inhospitable northern Pacific region for nearly twelve months and stuck with the same group of men for two and a half years. They were about due a change of scenery.

  SAM NEILL: Cook when he’s up here, it’s been years at sea with the same crew. Can you imagine what that’s like?

  CAPTAIN PHIL PRYZMONT, Arctic Fisherman: My guys would have strangled each other.

  SAM NEILL: . . . And then strangled you?

  PHIL PRYZMONT: No . . . strangled each other.

  SAM NEILL: You’ve just been to sea for two months with the same guys. Did anyone strangle each other?

  PHIL PRYZMONT: Yes.

  SAM NEILL: They strangled each other?

  PHIL PRYZMONT: Close enough. They beat the hell out of each other.

  For four days, Cook’s ships were battered by the worst gales of all his three voyages. And considering the brutal weather he’d endured at sea, that was saying something. Once they had survived that, imagine the itchy feet on board when the island of Maui loomed over the horizon on 26 November 1778, a month after they had departed Unalaska. But it wasn’t only the men’s feet that were itchy – Cook knew they were riddled with venereal disease and didn’t want them spreading the love on shore.

  SAM NEILL

  Cook forbade his poxy crew from having sexual contact with the women . . . Well that was never going to work. But he feared the spread of venereal disease through the islands, though of course he was already too late because they’d already dropped anchor here a year ago and deposited nasty diseases that were by then running rampant through the Hawai‘ian Islands.

  To the sailors’ distress and frustration, Cook stayed offshore, navigating around the islands for eight weeks.

  When he approached the largest island in the archipelago – Hawai‘i – he struggled to find a suitable harbour. The men on board could see white banners flying on shore. They couldn’t have known, but it was a warning that the island was under sacred restrictions for the festival of Makahiki, a celebration that heralded the return of the ancestor god Lono-i-ka-Makahiki, also known as Lono. Canoes paddled out to the ships carrying gifts of pigs, breadfruit, taro and sugar cane. But Cook wouldn’t relent – he had no intention of allowing his men to infect the people living on these islands. It was only when the Hawaiians on the canoes showed him their pox-riddled genitals and asked what might be done to cure them that Cook realised the sexually transmitted horse had already bolted after their first visit.

  Beyond his men’s tainted X-rated bits, there was another reason that Cook wanted to delay their visit to shore – he was determined to control the going rate for metal goods by limiting supply. As long as the men weren’t allowed on shore to exchange nails for sexual favours, demand for what Cook had to offer would remain high. But once the iron-for-sex trade was in full swing, the value of his goods would drop, and it would cost him a lot more to get the provisions he needed. So he intended to keep the crew on board as long as he could.

  The sailors were beyond antsy. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when Cook reduced the daily grog ration and ordered sugarcane beer brewed to supplement the diminishing supply of spirits. A letter of objection was penned by the men, and Cook responded by punishing his crew and cutting their grog allowance altogether.

  JOHN LEDYARD (1751–1789), British American Explorer, crew member, Cook’s third voyage

  This conduct of the commander in chief was highly reprobated and at last remonstrated against by the people on board both ships . . . he was evidently sacrificing not only the ships, but the health and happiness of the brave men, who were weaving the laurel that was hereafter to adorn his brows.

  It was the walrus meat affair, all over again.

  As Cook struggled to maintain order on board, from shore the Hawaiians watched the progress of the new arrivals around the island with mounting excitement. Their anticipation had nothing to do with the prospect of boatloads of randy sailors disembarking on the beach, or the metal they might bring with them. It was a whole lot more momentous than that. Arriving as he did aboard two peculiar vessels at a time that coincided with the festival that celebrated the imminent return of the ancestor god Lono, the Hawai‘ians’ first thought was that perhaps, at last, this was their sacred high chief and god of peace and fertility returning to them as prophesied.

  According to tradition, Lono had departed the islands and portended his ‘return later on an island bearing coconut-trees, and pigs, and dogs’. With Cook’s floating islands sprouting trees and accompanied by both pigs and dogs, the Hawaiians reached a logical conclusion. Cook was Lono.

  TRACY TAM SING, State Archaeologist

  Makahiki is the season of agriculture, and it’s a time when the Hawaiians worship the god Lono. Many gifts were given to Lono – feather cloaks, copper, and food such as sweet potato. These were paid in the form of taxes, and the procession to gather the taxes would go clockwise around the island with the priests of Lono carrying an image of the god. When Cook came here it was perfect timing. One of the reasons the Hawaiians received him as Lono was that the god was thought to have gone away into the ocean. The legend tells that he would o
ne day return to Hawai‘i. So here we have Cook – a foreigner – arriving at the islands. More than that, he’s going around the island in a clockwise motion, which is the same way that the image of Lono would be carried around the island by the priests. Also, Lono was represented as a long staff with a crossbeam and along its sides hung white sheets of tapa cloth – it closely resembled the mast and the sails of Cook’s ships.

  An offering before Captain Cook in the Sandwich Islands, engraving after John Webber, 1784. Arriving in the Season of Fertility, Cook is feted by the Hawaiians with the generous gift of a pig. The artist doesn’t suggest what – if anything – Cook might have given in return.

  David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Centre, Stanford Libraries

  Cook was – as yet – unaware of all this. All he was concerned about was finding a place to drop anchor, which was proving to be no small feat given the ubiquity of cliffs, shallow reefs and Hawai‘i’s famed towering surf. Having at last found a bay that looked as if it had potential, he directed the Resolution and Discovery into Kealakekua Bay – meaning ‘the pathway of the gods’. The bay was beautiful and heavily populated. From the deck, Cook saw cliff-top gardens and arable land crisscrossed with stone walls and hedges that delineated lush breadfruit forests and fields. But what struck the men on board more than anything was the boisterous welcome that awaited them.

  Ten thousand or so Hawaiians were in and around the bay. Cook estimated there to be over one and a half thousand canoes in the water, supplemented by other people who swam out to meet the new arrivals.

  JOHN LEDYARD

  The crowds on shore were still more numerous. The beach, the surrounding rocks, the tops of houses, the branches of trees and the adjacent hills were all covered, and the shouts of joy, and admiration . . . formed one of the most tumultuous and the most curious prospects that can be imagined.

  On Cook’s exploration of Tahiti with Joseph Banks during the first voyage, the two men had been treated to the sight of locals taking to the waves atop wooden boards – the first European record of he‘e ‘ana. Surfing. They would see more of it in Hawai‘i, and confirm that the cabalistic etiquette and hierarchy that prevails in today’s surfing culture has a long history. In Hawai‘i, where surfing had more to do with a ritual practice than recreation, the chieftains had first claim on the best breaks and were given boards made of the best wood.

  *

  When Cook dropped anchor, the Hawaiians had more important things on their minds than surfing. Heading out on their boards and canoes, the rapturous Hawaiians swamped the two ships. So many people clambered onto the Discovery that it keeled over onto its side. Narrowly averting disaster, the men on board were forced to push many of the men and women in the welcoming party off the boat’s side – an indignity they bore with surprisingly good humour.

  DAVID SAMWELL (1751–1791) Welsh Naval Surgeon on Cook’s third voyage

  [T]he decks both above and below were entirely covered with them, so that . . . we could not come at the ropes without first driving the greatest part of them overboard; which they bore with the utmost cheerfulness and good nature.

  A new visitor approached the Resolution. Koa‘a, Lono’s high priest, came on board and quickly identified the man who was the commander of the crew of pale-skinned sailors. To the Hawaiians, who were master navigators and knew all about nautical hierarchy and the ritual regalia that went with it, there was no mistaking it. Cook was their man.

  ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR MARK D. MCCOY, Southern Methodist University

  There’s probably a sense of being kindred spirits – these are clearly ships that were doing long-distance navigation, and that’s something that’s extraordinarily familiar to Polynesians. The Polynesians would also have recognised the hierarchy of the ship, down to the uniforms and the hats and the regalia. You can’t just be in charge – you have to look like you were in charge, and Cook certainly did that.

  Koa‘a began chanting and wrapped Cook in red cloth, offering him gifts of pigs and coconuts. Although Cook had enjoyed an enthusiastic welcome or two from indigenous people, this was one out of the box.

  But that wasn’t the end of the story.

  It was 17 January 1779. Koa‘a escorted Cook to shore where a company of Hawaiians carried the Englishman on their shoulders to the beach. Heralds walked before the two men crying ‘the great Lono is coming!’ as all the people on the beach – other than the god’s own priests – prostrated themselves before Cook. Leading him up to a stone shrine, or heiau, known as Hikiau, the priests made a series of rituals and offerings to Cook.

  TRACY TAM SING

  The Hikiau heiau is a religious structure built by the Hawaiians. It was probably built around 1400 to 1500AD and was used for human sacrifices to please the god Kū. It was also used to serve the god Lono during the Makahiki season.

  As far as the men on board the British ships were concerned, their commander was being venerated as a living god.

  DAVID SAMWELL (1751–1791)

  [T]housands of people prostrated themselves as they passed along and put their hands before their faces as if it was deemed violation or sacrilege to look at them . . . a ceremony was performed by the priests in which he was invested by them with the title and dignity of Orono, which is the highest rank among these Indians and is a character that is looked upon by them as partaking something of divinity.

  This wasn’t a ridiculous assumption to make considering the pomp and ceremony that accompanied Cook’s arrival, although amongst indigenous Hawaiians today, there’s no consensus about whether or not the locals were worshipping him as a god incarnate, or just being hospitable to a new – and important – visitor to their shores.

  TRACY TAM SING

  Cook was met by the chief, Kalani‘ōpu‘u. He actually brought Captain Cook here to the shoreline and brought him up to the temple – the heiau – where they conducted religious ceremonies in front of Cook, offering him pig and wrapping him in red tapa cloth. That’s where they declared him the human manifestation of the god Lono.

  GORDON KANAKANUI LESLIE, Ho‘ala Kealakekua

  In some accounts they talk about all the women going out to visit the ships when they pulled into their bays and the women spending all night below deck with the sailors. Now Lono is very sacred. And fornication is not one of those things you exercise during that period. So I doubt that the ruling chiefs would have allowed that to happen if they did think Cook was Lono.

  Whether or not the locals regarded him as a deity, this was but a taste of the veneration Cook would enjoy for much of his stay in Hawai‘i. Whenever he went ashore, he was accompanied by a priest who announced that Lono had landed, and the people he encountered would prostrate themselves before him.

  Cook’s standing on the island was consolidated by another important visitor to the Resolution – Hawai‘i’s high chief, Kalani‘ōpu‘u. As the chieftain of the largest island in the archipelago, Kalani‘ōpu‘u was the most important man around. When he came on board, he presented Cook with a gift of three small pigs and fresh fruit and – most significantly – his black-and yellow-feathered helmet, or mahiole, and his exquisite ‘ahu ‘ula, or feathered cloak, both of which were ceremonial regalia worn only by chieftains.

  ANNE LOKOMAIKA‘I LIPSCOMB, Senior Culture Educator

  When Captain Cook arrives on the Island of Hawai‘i, Kalani‘ōpu‘u is the paramount Chief of that island. So he is in a position to not only welcome anyone who comes to the island, but also to bestow upon them all sorts of riches and to feed them. I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind . . . It’s a part of our culture to greet one another with generosity – with an open and welcoming spirit. So Kalani‘ōpu‘u was coming from a place of generous relationship building. He gifts Captain Cook many things, among them his own ‘ahu ‘ula and mahiole. The mana of the wearer is enhanced and reflected by these materials in that they themselves are filled with mana. It’s estimated that the ‘ahu ‘ula given to Cook includes four million
feathers in total taken from about twenty thousand birds. These feathered pieces were worn into battle so that they carry with them the mana of those birds and also the mana of the hands that made that beautiful object so they would be supported and protected in their efforts. Kalani‘ōpu‘u places them upon Cook’s body, which is a tremendously significant gesture. He is giving up himself because his own mana from the many, many times he’s worn it – the many adventures and achievements – all those years of living are imbued in these treasures when he transfers them to Cook.

  Cook and Kalani‘ōpu‘u exchanged names – a ritual Cook knew well from his time in Polynesia – and Cook reciprocated his ritual friend’s gift by presenting him with his own naval sword.

  ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR MARK D. MCCOY

  I think it went in stages. It probably depended on a lot of things – so from the perspective of the priests, they had to look at the signs around them and say, ‘Yes, this is Lono.’ But ultimately the person who was in charge of religion in Hawai‘i was the King. So when the King finally received Cook here and acknowledged him as Lono, then he officially became Lono.

  There’s no doubt the crew – and, presumably, Cook – believed the Hawaiians were exalting him as the manifestation of their god. As a man who shied away from overt expressions of religious belief and seemed to maintain a fairly sceptical outlook when it came to questions of faith, what did Cook make of all this? He had failed in his first attempt to achieve the sole purpose of the voyage, while coming to the brink of mutiny with his men on more than one occasion. It’s safe to assume that when he landed in Hawai‘i he had been feeling rather dejected.