by Marele Day
Your very humble servant
James Cook
The dockyard work dragged on, sometimes coming to a complete standstill, even though the Navy required that the barque should be refitted ‘with the greatest dispatch’. It was not only landmen and coal heavers who were striking, but seamen and dockyard workers as well. Bills were posted all along the riverside—men would not return to work until they had a fair wage. It was late May by the time the Endeavour was out of dry dock and in the water.
‘Only one ship?’ said Elizabeth. ‘All that way, and only one ship? Wallis and Byron had two, didn’t they?’
‘Don’t worry yourself,’ James tried to assure her. ‘I’d stake my life on Mrs Endeavour. A Whitby-built collier, sturdy as they come. As you shall see for yourself.’
They’d left baby Eliza with Frances Wardale, a cousin of James’s who had come to live with them. Jamie and Nat were told to be on their best behaviour but it was an unnecessary warning, for as soon as they boarded the vessel they were awed by the size of it, not large by navy standards but huge to two small boys.
‘Can you manage, my dear?’ James asked his wife as they prepared to descend the companion to the afterdeck. She felt queasy every time she boarded a boat, and this time, to make matters worse, she was again with child. But she was determined to come. She wanted to see where her husband would sleep, to know every inch of the barque, so that when he sailed, she could imagine him there. ‘Yes,’ she said, turning to descend the ladder backwards. The boys followed, clambering down like a couple of monkeys.
They came into the great cabin, as large as the living room at Mile End, but much more elegantly furnished. Sash windows fitted with heavy shutters for bad weather, with lockers below. A stove for heating, a serving table with cutlery drawers, and a large table surrounded by chairs taking pride of place in the middle of the cabin. James had requested for the floor the same green baize that covered the table, but the Navy Board would only run to painted floorcloth.
Though James was the Admiralty’s chosen man, recommended by their secretary, Mr Stephens, and by Hugh Palliser, he was not a commodore like Byron, or post-captain like Wallis, just returned from the South Seas, and James Cook’s wish was not yet the Navy’s command. The matter of floor covering was one thing. Another was the selection of crew. The ship’s cook they had assigned him was lame and infirm and, as James wrote to the Navy Board, ‘incapable of doing his Duty without the assistance of others’. The Navy Board took note of the complaint but three days later, James found himself writing to the board yet again. John Thompson, the first cook’s replacement, ‘hath the misfortune to loose his right hand’. The one-handed cook remained.
While James sat the boys on the chairs, their legs dangling down, chins barely level with the tabletop, Elizabeth fingered the edge of the green baize on the table where her husband would sit with his officers. At the moment the baize was as neat as a bowling green, not even as much as one speck of dust on it, but during the course of the voyage it would be covered in charts.
‘Specimens and drawings as well, no doubt,’ said James. ‘I am sharing the great cabin with the naturalists. I only hope they don’t take over completely. Banks has had extra storage cupboards fitted to his cabin.’ James escorted the family to it. ‘For specimens and botanising equipment. Also, I dare say, for his creature comforts. Four servants are coming along to take care of him.’
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. She knew the ways of gentlemen but thought that on a ship of limited proportions even a gentleman might consider paring his entourage to a minimum. But that wasn’t the end of it. ‘Two artists—Sydney Parkinson to draw natural history specimens, and Alexander Buchan to do figures and landscapes. Then there is his secretary, Mr Sporing, a Swede. So Dr Solander will have a countryman aboard. Banks also intends bringing two greyhounds—for hunting, he says, though I suspect they are pets that he cannot bear to leave behind.’
James paused for a moment, a memory floating back to him. ‘Banks came to Newfoundland,’ he told Elizabeth.
‘You knew him there?’
‘We were never introduced, but I saw him briefly. At the time of the anniversary ball.’ He related the episode to Elizabeth.
The ball was held one Saturday in late October 1766, to celebrate the anniversary of King George III’s coronation, but James was away surveying La Poile Bay and didn’t arrive back at St John’s till the Monday. He greeted Commodore Palliser, then made a courtesy call to Sir Thomas Adams, captain of the Niger. With a day in between to nurse headaches, there was much talk on that Monday of the ball and celebrations. Plenty of gentlemen had attended but the paucity of ladies in St John’s was so great that even humble washerwomen had received formal invitations. Despite the uneven numbers, everyone had danced and worked up a hearty appetite for an elegant supper, followed by fine wines and Italian liqueurs.
As he was accompanied to Sir Thomas’s quarters, James noticed in one of the nearby cabins a young man, a gentleman judging by the cut of his clothes, and a botanist if the specimen box was anything to go by. As James waited to be received by the captain, he perused the specimens—meadow rue, Newfoundland mosses, a kind of cuckoo flower, and moon wort, all of which James had observed in their native state during his onshore surveying. In a cage on the young gentleman’s cot was a porcupine, as large as an English hare, with black and white quills.
But the most memorable trophy hung above the escritoire. A scalp, so well preserved that James immediately recognised it as Sam Frye, a fisherman who had been shot by the Indians the summer before. He was able to identify it so precisely because it had been taken by the Indians of Labrador who, unlike the other Canadians, removed not just the hair but skinned the upper face as well, almost down to the mouth. James wondered how the young gentleman had come by the scalp.
Busy writing, he had his back to James, but was not so absorbed that he didn’t, from time to time, stop to scratch his earlobe or the back of his hand. James recognised the telltale angry red spots of mosquito bites. Welcome to Canada, he thought to himself. James had experienced those mosquitoes firsthand. The only place that provided some relief from the swarm of them was on board ship. He had grown accustomed to them after the first year, although it was reported that they were capable of bringing down large animals—caribou and deer.
As James waited for the captain to finish his business, the young man turned to feed the porcupine—ants perhaps, or hopefully mosquitoes themselves. He nodded and smiled at James with largesse, not at all concerned that he was being observed. James would like to have struck up a conversation but before any words could be exchanged the door of the captain’s cabin opened and James was ushered in. Next day the Niger sailed for Lisbon, taking the young botanist with it.
‘The canoe that went overboard last year in the storm,’ James reminded Elizabeth, ‘that was destined for Banks, along with some Indian costumes.’
‘A pity,’ mused Elizabeth. ‘Otherwise he and his suite could have trailed along behind the Endeavour in it.’
James chuckled. Nevertheless, he could not dismiss Banks so lightly. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and though only twenty-five, had a great deal of influence—and was a friend to men of influence such as Lord Sandwich. He would have known about the proposed voyage before even James himself, and with the opportunities for adventuring and botanising it promised, would have made sure he was going. Influence was one thing, authority another. The Admiralty had made it clear that James was to receive ‘Joseph Banks Esq. and his suite consisting of eight persons with their baggage, bearing them as supernumeraries for victuals only’. Anything else Banks required he could supply himself. He did. Machines for catching and preserving insects, nets, trawls, a library of natural history, a type of telescope which, when put into the water, allowed you to see the bottom even at a great depth. The estimated cost of the expedition for Banks was in the region of £10 000. The Cooks counted their income in hundreds, not thousands of pounds. Ten thousan
d pounds was more than the salary of an admiral or post-captain.
‘It sounds as if he’s trying to make this his voyage,’ Elizabeth commented.
‘I’ll accommodate him as much as I can but our first priority is arriving in Tahiti in time for the transit. He won’t be doing a skerrick of botanising without my say so. I’ll not jeopardise my ship or the lives of those on board for botanising, Mr Banks’s included. But I’m glad to have him aboard, Elizabeth. He promises to be entertaining company. A charming fellow with a zeal for adventure. He was considering a trip to Sweden, to pay homage to his hero, Linnaeus, perhaps to continue on to Lapland. “But the South Seas,” he told me, “that will truly be a voyage of discovery”. The next is my cabin,’ James said as they moved away from Banks’s.
He pushed open the door and Elizabeth caught a whiff of fresh paint. She breathed away a wave of nausea, and focused on the narrow cot on which her husband would sleep. The mattress was in place but it still lacked bed linen. A lantern hung above the area where the folding table of Spanish mahogany would go, the one still at home at Mile End, on which he would write letters to her. James would have to rely on passing ships, if any, to deliver them. The voyage was to the other side of the globe. How long would it be before her husband shared her bed again? How would her heart know when to turn longing into anticipation? Elizabeth looked at the red curtain on a door. It was pulled aside to reveal panes of glass looking into the officers’ mess. The other entrance led into the great cabin.
‘Where’s Isaac sleeping?’ asked Jamie.
‘On the lower deck,’ James answered. ‘Can you manage another set of steps, Elizabeth?’
The sea chests in which the crew, or ‘the people’ as they were called, would store their belongings sat in neat rows either side, with mess tables suspended by thick ropes above them. Each rope was furnished with a set of tassels.
‘Very decorative,’ commented Elizabeth.
‘Table napkins,’ said James, running his hand down one of them to demonstrate. Elizabeth imagined how greasy and grimy those clean new tassels would become.
‘What’s in the red bag?’ asked Jamie, pointing to a bag hanging from the ceiling.
‘That’s where we keep the cat-o’-nine-tails,’ his father said.
‘For when they are mischievous and have to be punished?’ said Jamie.
‘Precisely,’ grinned his father. ‘But there’s not enough room to swing a cat down here so the punishment takes place on deck.’
‘And that noose,’ piped up Nathaniel, ‘is that for when they are very naughty?’
James smiled. ‘The noose has an entirely benign use. When the people store their hammocks, they must be rolled up tight enough to fit through the noose.’
‘Why?’ asked Nat.
James and Elizabeth exchanged glances, hoping this was not the beginning of another of Nathaniel’s series of ‘whys’. ‘To make room,’ James said. ‘There’ll be more than one hundred men on board, to say nothing of the stores, the hens, cattle and other livestock.’ He thought it better not to summon up clouds on the sunny horizon of the voyage by mentioning also that a tightly rolled-up canvas hammock gave a shipwrecked man a few hours flotation. ‘Wallis has offered me his milch goat, to provide fresh milk for the officers,’ James told his wife.
‘Imagine that,’ Elizabeth said to the boys, ‘a goat that has circumnavigated the globe.’
‘Why?’ asked Nathaniel.
‘Why not?’ replied his father.
THE FOLDING TABLE
On 25 May 1768, as befitting a man who was to command a ship taking a scientific party to the faraway South Seas, James Cook was made lieutenant. It was a rare honour for a man of his background, as both he and Elizabeth knew, but the momentum of voyage preparations was so great that James did not have time to stand still and fully savour it. Even at home he was busy, firing off letters to the Navy Board, the Victualling Board, and every other board concerned with the voyage.
In a quiet moment, with James at Deptford for the day, the boys on an outing with Cousin Frances, and Eliza asleep in the crib, Elizabeth polished the folding table. Being the neat and tidy seaman that he was, James had cleared its surface of writing paper before leaving, and arranged his pens and ink. The soft cloth caressed the slim, straight legs of the table, from top to bottom. It reminded Elizabeth of washing her children, except that when she reached the feet of the table, there were no little wriggling toes.
The table was made of Spanish mahogany, more resistant to worm and damp than any other timber. Some of Elizabeth’s neighbours recommended a linseed rub but Mrs Curtis maintained that such oil would darken the wood and make the piece unfashionable. Besides, the cabinet-maker’s finish seemed to provide adequate protection. Elizabeth kept it so polished in between James’s letter writing that she could see her own reflection in it. There were places she touched with her hands and did not rub away, so that her touch would voyage with him, and be present when he wrote his letters home.
The folding table straddled their lives. At home he wrote letters upon it that would take him away from her, and when he was in the faraway places he would write letters back home. ‘Every week,’ she had insisted.
Though he had told her that the further the Endeavour went the less chance there was of coming across a ship that might convey the letters back to her, he had agreed. ‘I am sailing into the blue,’ he said, ‘do not fret if there is no word. I doubt they have the penny post in the South Seas,’ he said with a smile. There would be months, perhaps years, with no word.
‘I will watch the stars,’ Elizabeth said, ‘the same stars by which you will navigate.’
As she polished the table, Elizabeth recalled letters to the Victualling Board that James had written on it. ‘Provisions for a year?’ she’d asked. What with fish to catch, seabirds to shoot and fresh food to be had when they made landfall, she immediately understood that the anticipated voyage might be much longer. Though she did not say so to her husband, in her heart she wanted the voyage to be over and done with as quickly as possible, and for him to resume his post in Newfoundland, or better, somewhere closer to home.
Newfoundland was far enough away for Elizabeth. At least it was the same ocean lapping its shores and England’s. Now James was sailing to the other side of the world. Though she yearned for him when he was in Newfoundland, at least she knew he’d be home every autumn. ‘When the leaves fall off the trees,’ as she told the boys. But not this year, or perhaps even the year after.
She’d accepted the migratory pattern, and though she was reluctant to admit it, things were easier in the household without James there. She had a routine for the boys and made sure they stuck to it. James did his best to keep the boys to the habits Elizabeth had established, but on his return each year, after their initial reticence, the boys wanted to spend every minute with him. He filled their heads with tales of adventuring. They even wanted to voyage to the South Seas with him. ‘Isaac is going, why can’t we?’
‘When you’re big boys, like Cousin Isaac, you can come,’ James promised them.
The routine would resume but the pattern was broken. When the leaves fell off the trees this year he would not be coming home. Their wedding anniversary, Christmas, New Year, would be spent without him. How great would her yearning be then?
Elizabeth stood up to straighten the crick in her back. At least with James away for so long she’d have a year free of pregnancy. As she massaged the small of her back she caught sight of the celestial globe on the mantelpiece. The purpose of the voyage was twofold. The first was to observe the transit. James had explained what he and Mr Green hoped to see: on 3 June 1769, Venus would be in exact alignment with the earth and the sun. With their instruments, they would observe the planet make its passage across the disc of the sun. ‘How long will it take?’ she’d asked.
‘Approximately six hours. But in astronomy, approximate is not good enough, we need to know precisely. Such a transit will not occur again in our
lifetimes, Elizabeth, not till 1874, according to Edmond Halley. When we are all dead and buried. It is a rare opportunity. There will be observers in other parts of the globe as well. If the weather is favourable and we get a good sighting, we will be able to determine the distance of the earth from Venus, and Venus from the sun. We are measuring the universe, my dear, using the same methods of parallax—working out angles and distances—that I employ in my surveying work.’
‘Will we be able to see it in London?’
‘Possibly, in the evening, for half an hour or so before sunset. If it’s not cloudy. Let’s hope June third is not overcast in Tahiti, otherwise that part of the voyage will be for nought.’
Elizabeth was silent for a moment, then she asked James to repeat what he had said, so that when he was away she could explain to the boys. ‘Don’t let them look directly at the sun or it will burn out their eyes.’ He told her how to look at the image of the sun on a piece of card.
Elizabeth bent down and resumed polishing the table. The second purpose of the voyage was secret, and James was to open the Admiralty’s instructions regarding it only when he was at sea. However, the nature of those instructions was so breathtaking that they had spilt through the bonds of true secrecy. ‘I am to investigate the existence, or no, of the Great South Land.’
The Great South Land. It had fired men’s imaginations since antiquity. A great continent at the southern end of the world to balance the land mass of the northern hemisphere. The earliest maps showed it stretching from the equator to the South Pole. Yet these maps were based on an imagined world; in the absence of fact, the Great South Land became whatever men wanted it to be. A rich fertile land whose civilised, welcoming inhabitants built cities of gold. Some saw unicorns and fabled animals grazing in lush verdant meadows. Marco Polo imagined it as ‘overflowing with spices’. Though the explorations—by the Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch and English—over the last two centuries had reduced the size of the Great South Land, and although no ship that had set sail for it had yet found the continent, it still obsessed the minds of men. Some of the crew aboard the recently returned Dolphin swore that they had seen the mountaintops of a continent.