by Rob Mundle
Cook concurred with Banks’ assessment, basing his theory on the existing sea state and noting: ‘The south-west swell still keeps up … a proof that there is no land near in that quarter.’ He added that Endeavour’s impressive run of 660 leagues since rounding Cape Horn confirmed ‘that we have had no Current that hath affected the Ship Since we came into these Seas, this must be a great sign that we have been near no land of any extent because near land are generally found Currents.’
As the weather continued to improve and the threat of gales diminished, Endeavour was able to remain on a course to the northwest. It was easy going, so Cook took the opportunity to have his men raise from the hold the six carriage guns and position them on the waist of the ship.
On 26 March, a day of squalls and rain, there was another tragedy on board, which Banks recorded with some level of emotion:
This evening one of our marines [William Greenslade] threw himself overboard and was not missed until it was much too late even to attempt to recover him. He was a very young man, scarce 21 years of age, remarkably quiet and industrious, and to make his exit the more melancholy was driven to this rash resolution by an accident so trifling [petty theft] that it must appear incredible to everybody who is not well acquainted with the powerful effects that shame can work upon young minds.
Greenslade was accused of stealing a small portion of sealskin while on sentry duty. He intended to use this to make a tobacco pouch; however, when some of his fellow marines discovered that he was the perpetrator of the theft, they bullied him to the point where he went to the bow of the ship and disappeared.
By early April, the balmy south-east trade winds of the South Pacific were well established, and in response Endeavour was surging along in a delightful breeze that was coming over her port quarter. She had all sails set and was bullocking her way down beautiful, blue South Pacific swells with a bone in her teeth – a surging white bow wave. This was the sort of sailing that led Cook to declare: ‘Her best sailing is with the wind a point or two abaft the beam, she will then run 7 or 8 knots and carry weather helm.’ (Weather helm is where the ship has a slight desire to turn towards the direction of the wind, being the preferred ‘feel’ for the timoneer.) However, not every day was truly representative of the imagined temperate tropics. There were numerous occasions when the ship was battered by the pelting rain associated with tropical thunderstorms.
Soon Endeavour’s course had her sailing westward along the latitude on which King George’s Island was said to lie. By doing this, the chance of missing the target was minimised.
On 4 April, sixty-nine days after rounding the Horn, those on board sighted land for the first time since departing from that cape. Cook diarised his observation: ‘an Island of about 2 Leagues in circuit and of an oval form with a Lagoon in the Middle for which I named it Lagoon Island. We saw several of the Inhabitants, the Most of them Men and these Marched along the shore abreast of the Ship with long clubs in their hands as though they meant to oppose our landing.’ Judging by this description, they were seeing one of the islands of the Tuamotu Archipelago, 500 nautical miles to the east of their destination.
They continued on without stopping. Light winds sapped Endeavour’s average speed, so it wasn’t until 6 am on Tuesday, 11 April, that great excitement swept the ship: King George’s Island could be seen off the bow. ‘It appeared very high and Mountainous,’ wrote Cook.
As they continued to close on what was becoming an increasingly beautiful coastline, the captain took the time to contemplate the voyage since leaving England 229 days earlier – the best part of eight months – but it was the condition of his men that impressed him most: ‘At this time we had but very few men upon the sick list, and these had but slight complaints. The Ship’s company had in general been very healthy, owing in a great measure to the Sauerkraut, Portable Soup and Malt.’ Cook was also pleased to note that his theory regarding the medicinal benefits that the malt extract (wort) played in containing scurvy had, thanks to the diligence of the surgeon, Monkhouse, been proved. In time, however, it would be shown that it was the greens that were responsible for the good health of the men.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Arcadia
After seeing her billowing sails emerge over the eastern horizon and head their way, the islanders were quick to respond to Endeavour’s bold approach. They loaded their canoes with all types of tropical foodstuffs and artefacts, then put to sea to greet the visitors, in the hope that they could barter for the most valuable items the strangers might bring, especially those made from iron.
On board Endeavour, Banks was awestruck by the welcome. Ever observant, he quickly became aware that there was one highly prized item among everything being offered:
They had one pig with them which they refused to sell for nails upon any account but repeatedly offered it for a hatchet; of these we had very few on board so thought it better to let the pig go away than to give one of them in exchange, knowing from the authority of those who had been here before that if we once did it, they would never lower their price …
At 7 am on 13 April 1769, Endeavour was guided ever so slowly into what Wallis had earlier named Royal Bay (Matavai Bay to the islanders). The moment the man swinging the lead in the chains advised that the water depth was 13 fathoms, a loud order was barked from the quarterdeck for the remaining sails to be hauled up while the best bower was released from the cathead and lowered.
By this time, the ship was like a giant swan surrounded by a flock of cygnets: countless canoes, some of them outriggers and others large catamarans with sails of woven matting. They were all carrying excited men and women eagerly displaying the produce and goods they wanted to trade. In the distance, on the coconut palm-fringed beach of black sand that bordered the bay, hundreds more islanders waited to welcome their visitors. At this point, Lieutenant Gore and the master, Molyneux, both veterans of the Wallis expedition, indicated to Cook a man they recognised as being a leader of the community. As an immediate indication of friendship towards the islanders, the captain then invited this man, and a few others, to join him aboard the ship, so that ‘much could be made’ of them.
After that, Endeavour’s boats were hoisted out, to allow Cook and other senior members of the crew, together with Banks and his colleagues, to be ferried ashore. Banks’ journal recorded: ‘we were met by some hundreds of the inhabitants whose faces at least gave evident signs that we were not unwelcome guests, though they at first hardly dare approach us, after a little time they became very familiar.’
After two days there, Cook, Banks and the others were convinced that this was the right location for the observation of the transit, which was still seven weeks away, and so ‘resolved to pitch upon some spot upon the North-East point of the Bay, properly situated for observing the Transit of Venus, and … there to throw up a small fort for our defence’. This wooden-fenced fortification included a small portable observatory made of canvas, from where they would watch the event; more than fifty tents to house the scientists and members of the crew; plus a kitchen, and facilities for the blacksmith. Logically enough, it became known as Fort Venus, which led to the headland becoming Point Venus today.
On the day the building of the fort began, Cook, Banks and some of his group went a short distance inland, and when they reached a stream, Banks claimed three ducks in a single shot of pellets from his musket. The small band of islanders accompanying them struggled to comprehend the noise and what had caused the ducks to plummet from the sky. It ‘surprised them so much that most of them fell down as though they had been shot likewise’, was Cook’s observation. Whether or not word of this seemingly miraculous event was immediately carried back to other islanders on the beach is unknown, but while Cook and his party were returning to the fort site, they heard a series of musket shots. An islander, who, it could be suggested, was already aware of the potential of the foreigners’ odd-looking weapons, had snatched a sentry’s musket and run off. Before he could get far, however, h
e was shot and killed by marines amid a cluster of 100 shocked islanders.
This incident could have ended Cook’s mission on King George’s Island there and then. It represented a clash of two diametrically opposite cultures, with very different lifestyles, values and understanding. Conciliation suddenly became paramount, although it took considerable appeasement from both sides to reestablish the desired level of relations. Fortunately, through gestures and speech, Cook was able to convince the chief and some of his elders that they should sit down on the beach with him to go over the incident. Banks revealed the outcome:
… we got together a few of [the islanders] and explaining to them that the man who suffered was guilty of a crime deserving of death (for so we were forced to make it) we retired to the ship not well pleased with the day’s expedition, guilty no doubt in some measure of the death of a man who the most severe laws of equity would not have condemned to so severe a punishment.
The contrast between the two cultures was no better displayed than in their respective attire. Despite being in the tropics, Cook was always resplendent aboard ship and onshore in his officer’s uniform, including stockings, leather shoes and tricorn hat, while the islanders wore next to nothing, and were totally uninhibited about it – something the Englishmen struggled to comprehend. Still, they were equally pleased when it came to the svelte, coffee-skinned women. The latter, like the men, wore a knee-length wrap of cloth or matting around their waist, or a shoulder-width woven mat with a hole in the middle through which they put their heads, folded down and tied at the waist.
Within a very short time of arriving, 26-year-old Banks – naturalist and well-educated man of science that he was – had registered in his journal details of the exceptional hospitality afforded the visitors by ‘the Indians’, before adding a bold statement about this paradise: ‘In short, the scene we saw was the truest picture of an arcadia of which we were going to be kings that the imagination can form.’
Apart from the spectacular way that nature had used its colours and forms to create this South Seas paradise, Banks, like every other man, was struck by the beauty of the women and their free-spirited attitude towards sex.
… we walked freely about several large houses attended by the ladies who showed us all kind of civilities our situation could admit of, but as there were no places of retirement, the houses being entirely without walls, we had not an opportunity of putting their politeness to every test that maybe some of us would not have failed to have done had circumstances been more favourable; indeed we had no reason to doubt any part of their politeness, as by their frequently pointing to the matts on the ground … they plainly showed that they were much less jealous of observation than we were.
And later: ‘The foremost of the women … unveiling all her charms gave me a most convenient opportunity of admiring them by turning herself gradually round … she then once more displayed her naked beauties and immediately marched up to me …’
Cook, while similarly impressed with the beauty of the land and its people, was appalled to learn of the locals’ practice and acceptance of what the outside world knew as infanticide:
One amusement or custom … is founded upon a Custom so inhuman and contrary to the Principles of human nature. It is this: that more than one half of the better sort of the inhabitants have entered into a resolution of enjoying free liberty in Love, without being Troubled or disturbed by its consequences. These mix and Cohabit together with the utmost freedom, and the Children who are so unfortunate as to be thus begot are smothered at the Moment of their Birth …
Regardless, relationships between Endeavour’s crew and the captivating young women of Otaheite – which Cook had ascertained as being the name the natives gave to their land – were as abundant as tropical blooms. And while the captain harboured no objection to this, he reminded his men that the primary reason for their presence on the island was to observe the transit. Little else mattered.
Within days of their arrival, the euphoria associated with being in this nirvana was dealt a blow when a member of Banks’ party, artist Alexander Buchan, suffered another seizure and died. It was a loss that greatly affected Banks, who held Buchan in high regard:
… his Loss to me is irretrievable, my airy dreams of entertaining my friends in England with the scenes that I am to see here are vanished. No account of the figures and dresses of men can be satisfactory unless illustrated with figures: had providence spared him a month longer what an advantage would it have been to my undertaking’
At all times, the English were keen to show the islanders how they punished men for their misdemeanours. This was a demonstration that, it was hoped, would help explain to the local populace why Cook was seemingly so harsh towards them when they conducted similar acts. One such time came when the ship’s butcher was destined for a date with the cat-o’-nine-tails. Banks took up the story of the punishment, which was initially planned to be carried out on the beach:
… the crowd of people who were with us hindered it from being performed. In consequence of this I took them [the islanders] on board of the ship where Captain Cook immediately ordered the offender to be punished; they stood quietly and saw him stripped and fastened to the rigging but as soon as the first blow was given, interfered with many tears, begging the punishment might cease – a request which the Captain would not comply with …
And the islanders appeared to have no understanding of the meaning of theft. If they wanted something and could grab it, then they would disappear into the coconut palms with it. Banks explained the issue this way: ‘great and small chiefs and common men all are firmly of opinion that if they can once get possession of anything it immediately becomes their own.’ However, that changed on Tuesday, 2 May, when an unknown islander overstepped the mark by taking one of the instruments that was crucial for the observation of the transit of Venus: the astronomical quadrant.
This prized item was stolen from within the fort, and the moment he became aware of the theft, Cook took the law into his own hands. After impounding all the large canoes that were in the bay, he advised the islanders that the boats would not be released until information was forthcoming as to who had stolen the quadrant and where it was located. The threat worked: word soon arrived that the thief had decamped to an eastern point of the island, so Banks and Green headed in that direction. It was a successful mission, with both the quadrant and the villain located.
On 30 May, there was another cause for concern, when the ship’s carpenters hauled the longboat from the water and discovered that its bottom was little different from honeycomb. The dreaded teredo worm had taken a distinct liking to the boat’s timbers and literally made a meal of it. A similar problem was discovered later, when the ship’s anchors were hauled up. The toredo worms had all but eaten away their timber stocks.
As is quite often the case in these latitudes, the weather regularly turned inclement, delivering thunderstorms and heavy rain to the region. This caused Cook and Banks to decide that, as a precaution against unfavourable weather impacting on the observation of the transit of Venus, they should establish three locations for viewing the event. Cook and Green would stay at Matavai Bay, while a group led by Banks went to a distant island. A third group would be sent 30 nautical miles away to Motu Tapiri, a small islet off the east coast.
Any apprehension regarding the weather was eliminated from the moment the sun blazed its way above the horizon on the day of the transit – Saturday, 3 June. The opportunity that this presented for the mission was apparent in Cook’s notes. Even so, considering that this event was the primary reason for the expedition, they were remarkably few words: ‘This day proved as favourable to our purpose as we could wish. Not a Cloud was to be seen the whole day, and the Air was perfectly Clear, so that we had every advantage we could desire in observing the whole of the Passage of the planet Venus over the Sun’s Disk … Dr Solander observed as well as Mr Green and myself …’
Much to Cook’s delight, when the other t
wo parties returned to Matavai Bay after the transit, they confirmed that they too had achieved satisfactory results: ‘This evening the Gentlemen that were sent to observe the Transit of Venus, returned with success; those that were sent to York Island were well received by the Natives.’
Once back aboard the ship, all the relevant data gathered from the observations was collated, and with that, the first major purpose of Cook’s voyage had been achieved. It was at this point therefore that the captain opened his second packet of secret instructions from the Admiralty and acquainted himself with the next challenge required of him.
Within twenty-four hours, preparations for departure were underway, but it would take more than a month for them to be completed. The equipment used in the observation was transferred back to the ship, the fort dismantled, additional ballast in the form of river stones was placed in Endeavour’s bilge, sails and spars repaired, and provisions and water taken aboard.
While this work was being undertaken, the lure of love and the thought of a life spent in this Eden in the South Seas proved too much for some. Two young marines, Clement Webb and Samuel Gibson, headed for the mountains determined to desert the ship and remain with the women they had come to love. Cook would not tolerate this blatant display of insubordination, knowing all too well that such an act would set a precedent for the crew over the remainder of the voyage. Armed officers, assisted by island men, were immediately despatched to search for the deserters, and the following day, they were back aboard the ship, destined to be punished.