by Rob Mundle
This was the day when the men aboard Endeavour saw their first ‘double canoe’ in New Zealand waters: a large catamaran measuring about 70 feet overall. It was crowded with Maoris, and stayed in company with the ship until dark, then turned back towards shore – ‘but not before they had thrown a few stones’, Cook noted. This last episode occurred while Endeavour was crossing what Cook would name Bay of Plenty, because of the fertile appearance of the coastal strip and hills beyond.
Much to everyone’s surprise, the same canoe returned the next morning, now under sail. Its occupants approached as close as they dared to Endeavour, and immediately commenced a bombardment of rocks onto her deck. A warning shot from a musket-bearing marine brought the assault to a rapid conclusion, but these friend-or-foe confrontations involving up to forty-five canoes at one time would continue to occur on a daily basis.
After crossing Bay of Plenty, Endeavour followed the eastern coastline of what fifty years later would become known as the Coromandel Peninsula (named after the RN ship), and rounded another rugged headland midway along its length. She then entered a 6-mile-wide bay where Banks described the shoreline as ‘barren and rocky but many Islands were in sight’. Cook began easing his ship around the rim of this bay under reduced sail while searching for an inlet that would provide a well-protected anchorage.
Again, the visitors were being shadowed by several canoes, all the way to where Cook elected to anchor, and always remaining a safe distance away. The locals held that position throughout the afternoon, watching things happen on this strange vessel that were way beyond their comprehension. They saw the anchor being lowered, figures scampering through the rig and others working on deck, all making sure that everything was shipshape. It was not until nightfall that these Maoris moved within hailing distance to deliver a message. As the captain noted with interest, they were ‘so generous as to tell us that they would come and attack us in the morning’.
They lied. Instead, the warriors returned in the depth of night with the intention of raiding what they expected to be a ship full of sleeping sailors. But the men standing watch on deck saw them approaching and raised the alarm. The would-be attackers could only abandon their plan and hurriedly paddle off into the darkness.
Cook’s reason to name this expanse of water Mercury Bay was simple: it was here that they would go ashore and set up a base to observe the transit of Mercury, on Thursday, 9 November. If successful, this would allow the captain to establish a very accurate longitude for their location at the time – a valuable reference point for ongoing navigation. These transits occur at a rate of thirteen or fourteen each century, either in May or November. They are more frequent than the transit of Venus because Mercury, being closer to the sun, completes more orbits.
Good fortune played into Cook’s hands when an old man, ‘Torava’, who was obviously a Maori chief, came aboard not long after Endeavour had anchored. He was feted with presents, including cloth and iron, after which, with Tupia acting as an interpreter, he explained that his people were ‘very much afraid’ of the visitors. Not surprised to hear this, Cook then made an assurance: ‘we promised friendship if they would supply us with provisions at their own price.’ It was a promise that brought the desired result because, when the Englishmen went ashore after breakfast that morning, ‘The Indians who were on one side [of the river] made all the signs of friendship imaginable, beckoning to us to land among them.’
On the day of the transit, Cook, Second Lieutenant Hickes and others took their instruments ashore and set up a position where they could best observe the event. They landed along the south of the bay at what is now Cooks Beach, near the Purangi Estuary. The weather could not have been more favourable – clear skies – but regrettably, while preparations were underway, the attention of all those onshore was drawn to the sound of gunfire emanating from the ship. It came after a large number of native canoes went alongside Endeavour to engage in bartering, and a subsequent incident had fatal consequences. One of the Maoris, who had been given a piece of cloth by Third Lieutenant Gore, then refused to hand over the cloak he had agreed to trade. Instead, the canoe moved away from the ship, and according to Banks, ‘they immediately began to sing their war song as if to defy any revenge those on board might choose to take; this enraged the … lieutenant so much that he levelled a musket at the man who had still got the cloth in his hand and shot him dead.’
Having received a report on the incident, the captain later expressed his disappointment: ‘Mr Gore fired a Musket at them, and, from what I can learn, killed the Man who took the Cloth; it did not meet with my approbation, because I thought the Punishment a little too severe for the Crime, and we had now been long Enough acquainted with these People to know how to Chastise Trifling faults like this without taking away their Lives …’ Despite the incident, Cook and his men were able to maintain what he described as ‘a great deal of good nature and friendship’ with the Maoris, who, as Banks noted, ‘acknowledged that the dead man deserved his punishment’.
This would prove to be another location where there was a proliferation of food, including cockles, clams, oysters, fish and lobsters. Banks proclaimed the oysters as being ‘as good oysters as ever came from Colchester and about the same size’, and, when it came to the lobsters: ‘We have had them in tolerable plenty in almost every place we have been in and [these] are certainly the largest and best I have ever eat.’ There was also ample wild fowl to be had, including shags – or cormorants – of which Banks and his party managed to shoot twenty. This quarry was then broiled for a meal where everyone declared ‘they were excellent food’.
Endeavour remained at Mercury Bay for eleven days, during which time Banks’ team explored, sketched and detailed the people and their surroundings extensively. Meanwhile, Cook conducted surveys on behalf of the Admiralty, for incorporation into charts of the region that would later be recognised as exemplary. He also visited a small fort that the local people had built to defend themselves in the event of an attack from other tribes. This particular contact with the Maoris finally reinforced what for Cook had been a growing belief for some weeks now, about which he wrote: ‘they confirm the Custom of Eating their Enemies, so that this is a thing no longer to be doubted.’
In his role as ship’s captain, Cook put his men on parade, had them clean the vessel from stem to stern, and ordered that the rig, sails and equipment be checked thoroughly. On board Endeavour, he continued to enforce strict discipline among the crew, his log recording one instance that necessitated the lash: ‘Samuel Jones, Seaman, having been confined since Saturday last for refusing to come upon deck when all hands were called, and afterwards refused to Comply with the orders of the officers on deck, he was this morning punished with 12 lashes and remitted back to confinement.’
As stipulated in his orders from the Admiralty, Cook laid claim to the previously uncharted territory on behalf of his sovereign. ‘Before we left this bay,’ he reported, ‘we cut out upon one of the Trees near the Watering Place the Ship’s Name, date, etc., and, after displaying the English Colours, I took formal possession of the place in the Name of His Majesty …’
In 1879, 110 years after Cook’s time in Mercury Bay, New Zealand author John White published The Ancient History of the Maori, a remarkable six volumes covering the lives and traditions of New Zealand’s first settlers. Their heritage dates back to more than 500 years before the European visitors’ arrival there, when Polynesians crossed the ocean in their large canoes and settled in the new land. In his fifth volume, White printed an historic account of Cook’s stay, as recalled by an old chief, Te Horeta te Taniwha, who was a young boy living in the main settlement of Whitianga when Endeavour was in the bay. It provides a valuable insight into the impressions that the Englishmen made on the local people. It was as if they were space invaders.
In the days long past, when I was a very little boy, a vessel came to Whitianga … and when our old men saw the ship they said it was a tupua [a supernatural object c
arrying goblins], and the people on board were strange beings. The ship came to anchor, and the boats pulled onshore. As our old men looked at the manner in which they came onshore, the rowers pulling with their backs to the bows of the boat, the old people said, ‘Yes, it is so: these people are goblins; their eyes are at the back of their heads; they pull onshore with their backs to the land to which they are going’. When these goblins came onshore we [the children and women] took notice of them, but we ran away from them into the forest, and the warriors alone stayed in the presence of those goblins; but, as the goblins stayed some time, and did not do any evil to our braves, we came back one by one, and gazed at them, and we stroked their garments with our hands, and we were pleased with the whiteness of their skins and the blue eyes of some of them.
The goblins had walking-sticks which they carried about with them, and when we arrived at the bare dead trees where the shags roost at night and have their nests, the goblins lifted the walking-sticks up and pointed them at the birds, and in a short time thunder was heard to crash and a flash of lightning was seen, and a shag fell from the trees; and we children were terrified, and fled, and rushed into the forest, and left the goblins all alone. They laughed, and waved their hands to us, and in a short time the bravest of us went back to where the goblins were, and handled the bird, and saw that it was dead. But what had killed it?
After the ship had been lying at anchor … [they] made many of us desirous to go and see the home of the goblins [on board Endeavour].
There was one supreme man in that ship. We knew that he was the lord of the whole by his perfect gentlemanly and noble demeanour. He seldom spoke, but some of the goblins spoke much. But this man did not utter many words. His language was a hissing sound, and the words he spoke were not understood by us in the least.
At 7 am on 15 November, Endeavour weighed anchor and made sail in a light westerly breeze, heading out of Mercury Bay and resuming a course to the north. After sailing for three full days, the ship rounded yet another promontory, this one being named by the captain after one of his former commodores, Lord Colville. It was at the head of a large expanse of water (now known as Hauraki Gulf), which, as Cook and his men would soon discover, extended 50 nautical miles to the south.
After shoal water caused Endeavour to be anchored at a point around 30 nautical miles in, Cook and Banks, hoping to explore some of the interior of the country, took to the boats and rowed another 20 nautical miles to the gulf’s south-eastern corner. There they discovered a river, which they investigated by boat for more than 10 miles inland. The river, and the heavily wooded forests that often lined its shores, reminded the pair of London’s River Thames, so they gave it that name.
Endeavour was forced to remain at anchor in the Firth of Thames for some days due to foul weather, then, once conditions improved, she made haste to the north. All on board were captivated by the spectacular scenery they were observing off the ship’s port side, particularly around Bream Bay, with its backdrop of bold, high peaks. But the peace was broken when local Maoris once again harassed the ship.
The most menacing situation came after Endeavour rounded a headland that Cook recorded as Cape Brett – so named, in an apparent exercise in wordplay, after Rear Admiral Sir Piercy Brett, because one of the rocks there had a large hole ‘pierced’ through it. Having cleared this cape by a safe margin, Endeavour entered another area of great natural beauty, which Cook christened with the logical title ‘Bay of Islands’. No sooner had she anchored off the island of Motuarohia, however, than she was surrounded by an exceptionally large fleet of canoes.
In his usual manner, the captain made every effort to confirm his peaceful intentions. After inviting some of the Maoris to join him aboard the ship so they could be presented with gifts, he was alerted to the fact that others, still in their canoes, were trying to steal the anchor buoy. Their efforts were soon curtailed after muskets and cannons were fired their way. Following this incident, Cook decided that it would be prudent to move the ship farther offshore. Cook, Banks and Solander were then rowed ashore ‘in the Pinnace and Yawl, manned and Armed’, still hoping to engage the local people in friendly discussion – yet their reception was far from that.
From the moment they stepped onto the sand, the visitors were surrounded by hundreds of agitated Maoris. Some immediately took up their glazed-eye war dance, while others tried to seize the boats that had brought these foreigners ashore. Realising that an extremely dangerous confrontation could develop at any moment, Cook had Hickes fire his musket over their heads, but it had little effect. By now, the threat had escalated into a situation in which the shore party fully expected to be attacked; worse than that, along with the few hundred Maoris on the beach, hundreds more were seen lining the hills around the cove. As before, musket-fire into the air proved no deterrent, and it wasn’t until Endeavour – from about three-quarters of a mile away – blasted cannonballs over the heads of the aggressors that they scattered in every direction.
‘In this Skirmish only one or two of them was Hurt with small Shot,’ Cook recalled in his journal, ‘for I avoided killing any one of them as much as Possible, and for that reason withheld our people from firing.’ The tactic worked, because later that day, when he met with a group of the Maoris, he found them to be ‘meek as lambs’.
After departing from this large, picturesque bay on 5 December, Endeavour sailed slowly into the night on a gentle breeze – but the casual nature of the scene soon turned to one of concern when the wind went calm. It became apparent that Endeavour was entering a danger zone: she was being carried by a fast-running current towards a nearby rocky island. The captain ordered that the boats be put over the side and launched as quickly as possible, so they could try to tow the ship away from threat. This effort, coupled with the benefit of a soft southerly breeze, which appeared unannounced, combined to save the day.
About an hour later, though, when the man in the chains swinging the lead was reporting the water depth to be 17 fathoms, a sudden, unexpected thump reverberated through the ship. There was a look of shock on everyone’s face: Endeavour had struck an isolated submerged rock less than 5 fathoms below the surface! Good fortune was with them again, as the contact proved to be a glancing blow: the ship slid back into deep water. Men had already darted down the companionway ladders and into the bilge to see if the hull had been breached. They returned to the quarterdeck with the news that all was well. The hull remained sound.
Rather than there being a let-up from such anxious moments, the crew then experienced a tormenting two weeks of sailing as Endeavour battled adverse headwinds and fierce gales. It was enough to test the mettle of any seafarer, but Cook, as frustrated as he was, pressed on. It took ten days to slog just 100 nautical miles upwind to the north-west – but there was worse to come. On 18 December the ship had ‘not gained one Inch to windward in this last 24 hours’, the captain reported. The only cause for encouragement came via the few canoes that ventured offshore, despite the conditions, to observe this incomprehensible vessel. When they came within hailing distance, their Maori crews provided some welcome news: only a few miles further to the north-west, the coast turned westwards, and once there the pain that came with this upwind sailing should come to an end.
A day later, Endeavour was rounding that much-desired corner of land, and accordingly Cook declared: ‘The Point of Land … I have called North Cape, judging it to be the Northernmost Extremity of this Country …’
Unfortunately, though, there was no reprieve from the weather. Conditions remained nothing short of atrocious, and as a result, the busiest men on the ship were the sail-makers, plying needle and thread to patch and repair torn and tattered wet sails that had proved to be no match for the howling winds. But, as demanding as that task might have been, it was the men aloft near the masthead, the lookouts, who suffered most. Biting wind and rain speared through their clothing while they clung desperately to the rigging each time the mast lurched into a wild gyration, arcing through
the air in response to the impact that a gigantic wave, or a savage gust of wind, delivered to the ship. These crewmen were forever peering through the wind-driven rain, hoping beyond hope that any threatening outline of land, or breaking surf indicating the presence of a reef, would emerge through the dim and murky curtain that was the limit of their vision, and allow them to take evasive action.
Before long, Cook had had enough: he decided it best to abandon their westerly course and head north-west, away from land. The move eased the pressure on the crew for just twenty-four hours, until the lookouts hailed that they could see Three Kings Islands, located 30 nautical miles to the north-west of Cape Maria Van Diemen. Tasman had discovered and named these features when cruising north along the west coast of New Zealand 126 years earlier, before he’d headed off into the Pacific.
It was not until Christmas Eve that the storms finally parted company with Endeavour and her weather-weary crew. Banks subsequently reported on the various stages of that year’s Christmas celebrations, from preparation through consumption to aftermath:
Land in sight, an Island or rather several small ones most probably 3 Kings. Calm most of the Day: myself in a boat shooting in which I had good success, killing chiefly several Gannets or Solan Geese. As it was the humour of the ship to keep Christmas in the old fashioned way it was resolved of them to make a Goose pie for tomorrow’s dinner.
Christmas day: Our Goose pie was eat with great approbation and in the Evening all hands were as Drunk as our forefathers used to be upon the like occasion.
December 26: This morn all heads ached with yesterday’s debauch.
The last thing that everyone aboard Endeavour would have expected to see at this time was another ship – but it almost happened.
While the Englishmen were enjoying their Christmas Day festivities, just 100 nautical miles south-east of their position, a 650-ton French 36-gunner, St Jean Baptiste, was at anchor. Her presence resulted from the ship’s captain, Jean-François-Marie de Surville, a merchant seafarer, wanting to find a ‘rich land’ that the British had reportedly discovered in the South Pacific – undoubtedly Otaheite. After de Surville had departed from India and sailed to the east, scurvy became rampant among his crew, so, using Tasman’s charts, he opted to head towards New Zealand, where his men might be able to recuperate. In December 1769, St Jean Baptiste made landfall on the northern part of New Zealand’s west coast; by Christmas, after sailing west to east around North Cape, the French ship had anchored at Doubtless Bay, 30 miles north of the Bay of Islands. In doing so, the Frenchmen traversed the same waters that Endeavour was sailing at the time. Despite de Surville’s efforts, his men continued to die, so he decided to sail directly to Peru in the hope that medical assistance could be found there.