by Rob Mundle
Spectacular snow-capped peaks were a blunt reminder that winter was approaching, yet there was no sign of strong winter winds pushing in from the south-west. There were many calms, and this frequently resulted in Resolution being towed towards the open sea by the boats, or lying at anchor close to the coast. Such idle time was not wasted, of course: men went ashore either on hunting expeditions or to explore. One of these exploratory missions could have had calamitous consequences.
It came when the captain directed Lieutenant Pickersgill to take Förster and his son in the pinnace to see what they could find in a large inlet that appeared to carve its way inland. They were away for thirty-six hours, and during that time a brutal thunderstorm, packing howling winds, snow and hail, descended from the heavens. In Förster’s description, it was ‘as if all nature was hastening to a general catastrophe … our hearts sunk with apprehension lest the ship might be destroyed by the tempest or its concomitant ethereal fires [lightning], and ourselves left to perish in an unfrequented part of the world.’ Fortunately, men and ship survived. When a highly preferred south-easterly breeze wafted its way off the land on the morning of 11 May, Cook needed no encouragement to weigh anchor. Every man was ready to sail, and before long Resolution was surging north, aided by a powerful swell from the south-west. From there it was a relatively casual few days of sailing towards Cape Farewell and then into Cook Strait.
On 18 May, Resolution was ‘welcomed’ into Queen Charlotte Sound by a series of spiralling waterspouts, one of which caused some anxiety when it passed within 50 yards of the stern. The spouts soon dissipated, and not long afterwards came the sight and sound everyone had hoped for. As Cook recorded: ‘At Daylight in the Morn we were … at the entrance of Queen Charlotte Sound and soon after we discovered the Adventure in Ship Cove by the Signals she made …’
Those signals came in the form of cannon-fire, and almost immediately the booming sound of Resolution’s cannons were also echoing through the hills surrounding the cove. Simultaneously, great joy surged through the crew of Adventure. Having had no sign of their lead ship for fourteen weeks, they had become convinced that Resolution was lost, probably to the force of an immense Southern Ocean storm.
By six o’clock that evening, Resolution was riding safely at anchor in close proximity to Adventure, which had been in the cove for eleven days. Not long after all was made secure, Captain Furneaux climbed up the side of Resolution and stepped onto the deck, eager for discussions with his expedition commander.
Furneaux explained to Cook that, having given up all hope of re-establishing contact with Resolution, he had set a course for Van Diemen’s Land, and once there anchored in a well-sheltered bay, which he named Adventure Bay in honour of his ship. (Furneaux mistook the land surrounding this bay as being part of the Tasman Peninsula, when in fact he was on the eastern side of Bruny Island.) Adventure stayed there for five days, while his men gathered wood and collected water. With that done, he used the remaining time before they were due in Queen Charlotte Sound to explore the coast to the north. This led to him now being able to advise today that he was uncertain whether Van Diemen’s Land was an island or part of the east coast of New Holland. He explained that when Adventure reached what is today known as Banks Strait, off the north-east corner of Van Diemen’s Land, the water showed signs of shoaling, suggesting to him and his crew that they were entering a large bay. Their desire to continue with this exploration was curbed by the arrival of a strong wind from the south-east, a circumstance that threatened to make the coast a dangerous lee shore for Adventure. The captain therefore opted for the security of sea-room, considering it ‘more prudent to leave the Coast and steer for New Zealand’. He made what was a bold, but unsubstantiated, proclamation at this point: ‘it is my opinion that there are no Straits between New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land, but a very deep bay.’
Cook listened intently, in particular to Furneaux’s descriptions of the aboriginals he had seen around Adventure Bay and their lifestyle. The commander judged that they were little different from the indigenous people he had encountered while sailing north along the coast of New Holland in 1770. He could then reach only one conclusion, and thus abandoned his earlier thought about Van Diemen’s Land being an island. Later that day, when he retired to the great cabin to update his journal, he wrote that it was ‘highly probable that the whole is one continued land and that Van Diemen’s Land is a part of New Holland’.
Two days after rendezvousing with Adventure, Cook decided to give the remaining sheep – a ram and a ewe – a new lease of life, onshore. In doing so, he employed the same hope he had embraced when releasing the geese in Dusky Sound. However, it was short-lived: ‘Last night the Ewe and Ram I had with so much care and trouble brought to this place, died, we did suppose that they were poisoned by eating of some poisonous plant, thus all my fine hopes of stocking this country with a breed of sheep were blasted in a moment …’
In the northern hemisphere, the winter months usually meant that Royal Navy sailors were granted shore leave while their ships were docked for repairs and maintenance, and Furneaux obviously believed this would apply for the men of Resolution and Adventure, who had been sailing in the most trying conditions since leaving home ten months earlier. Accordingly, while waiting in Queen Charlotte Sound for the anticipated arrival of Resolution, he had erected tents on the shore – some to accommodate the ailing members of his crew, many of whom were suffering the effects of scurvy. He also established vegetable gardens, with a view to harvesting crops during the coming months. Cook’s plan was vastly different, however. There was no time to waste. He wanted both ships back at sea as soon as possible.
The commander’s aim for the next stage of this voyage of discovery was built around his new belief that New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land were one. This meant that they no longer needed to sail to Van Diemen’s Land, as Cook had originally intended to do, to solve that particular geographical mystery. Instead, they would concentrate their search for the Great South Land – Terra Australis Incognita – in the South Pacific, to the east of New Zealand. He was convinced that there was no possibility of a continent existing in the region he had just navigated, between Cape Town and New Zealand, so the new challenge was to determine if such a landmass occupied a significant part of the South Pacific.
His intention, as he advised Furneaux, was to sail through the areas that he had not crossed during Endeavour’s circumnavigation. Despite it being winter, he would head south into the Roaring Forties once more, sailing between the latitudes of 41 degrees and 46 degrees south (the latitude of the southern tip of New Zealand) until reaching a point close to the longitude of Otaheite, but 1700 nautical miles south of it. If no land was sighted, then the course would change dramatically to the north – destination: Matavai Bay. There the ships could be reprovisioned and the men catch up on some eagerly anticipated shore leave among the ravishing coffee-skinned island beauties they had heard so much about. Cook could see no reason to continue on an easterly track towards Cape Horn while sailing in the Roaring Forties, because the direction and size of the Southern Ocean swells he’d experienced when rounding Cape Horn from east to west, with Endeavour, left him in no doubt that there was no continent to the west of the Horn.
It may be thought by some an extraordinary step in me to proceed on discoveries as far south as 46° in the very depth of Winter for it must be owned that this is a Season by no means favourable for discoveries. It nevertheless appeared to me necessary that something must be done in it, in order to lessen the work I am upon, lest I should not be able to finish the discovery of the Southern part of the South Pacific Ocean the ensuing Summer, besides if I should discover any land in my route to the East I shall be ready to begin with the Summer to explore it; setting aside all these considerations I have little to fear, having two good Ships well provided and healthy crews …
There was a rider attached to Cook’s plan: should no continent be found while en route to Tahiti, the two shi
ps would return to New Zealand ‘by the shortest route’, and once there, he would extend his search by sailing directly south, as deep as possible into the Southern Ocean. This would be the final part of the search in that particular region, and represent the completion of his orders relating to the search for the mythical continent in that part of the South Pacific and Southern Ocean.
Activities for each new day on board ship started at 4 am with the bosun rousing the required crewmen from their hammocks with a shout and the shrill tone of his whistle. On the morning of 7 June 1773, the call was for ‘All hands’. The crisp morning breeze was ideal for the departure of the two ships from the cove, so it was time for the crew to prepare for putting to sea.
At 7 am, when everything was in readiness, the captain called for the anchor to be weighed. The sound of the ratchets clacking away on the windlass, and the call for men to heave simultaneously on cables, halyards and lines, filled the morning air.
Within a few hours, Resolution and Adventure were sailing east out of Cook Strait, on their way to unravelling another mystery relating to the geography of planet Earth.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Return to Otaheite
To venture into the Southern Ocean in the depths of winter is something that even today’s mariners tend to avoid. So, to be there in a wooden sailing ship, at the mercy of full-blown storms and mountainous seas, icebergs and snow, was tempting fate in the extreme. But Cook had a job to do, and he was obviously confident that his men and ships had the ability to cope with the worst that nature could muster. Into the Southern Ocean they plunged, and within a matter of days the crews of both vessels were being put to the test, continually countering the widely varying extremes of wind and wave. They would set every conceivable sail when the wind was light, then reef and double-reef the sails, and finally strike the yards in the most punishing and life-threatening conditions.
On two occasions aboard Resolution, the force of waves on the near 60-square-foot rudder proved too much for the timoneer manning the wheel, who was desperately gripping its spokes while fighting the enormous pressure on the helm. His efforts were no match for the impact that came when a huge wave slammed into the rudder and took control of the steering mechanism, forcing the wheel into a rapid, uncontrolled gyration. As a consequence, the man steering was literally hurled over the top of the wheel and onto the deck on the opposite side, as if he were a rag doll.
Conditions remained challenging for much of the time while the ships sailed an easterly course along the latitudes of the Roaring Forties, yet the only drama of note involved one of the goats, which, like many other animals, were left to roam around the waist of the ship. Förster wrote on 9 July:
A very great & mountainous Swell from the South, which makes the Ship roll very much. In one of these deep rolls, a young goat born on board this Ship about the Tropics, had the misfortune to fall overboard from the booms where he went in order to come at the Hay in the Longboat. He swam at first hard, we brought to & hoisted a boat out; but he was drowned before they could take him up.
Four days later, the always expressive but often ostracised Förster recorded that it was one year since Resolution and Adventure had set sail from England. With a flourish of his quill, the naturalist wrote in his journal: ‘May providence continue to guard us against Misfortunes & Accidents, & procure me opportunities to describe & discover many useful things in these Seas & the Lands therein, for the benefit of mankind … and to the Satisfaction of the great & benevolent monarch, who ordered this expedition …’
For almost a month, the horizon ahead and abeam of the two ships had remained devoid of any sign of land, so on reaching his designated point to the south of Otaheite on 14 July, the captain directed for their course to be steered to the north-east as planned. This change meant that they would traverse the last remaining sector of the South Pacific that had not been the subject of exploration, and therefore either discover the mythical continent or eliminate this part of the world from the list of possible regions where the Great South Land might be found.
The decision to climb north towards the tropics came as a source of great relief to the crew of Adventure, in particular, as scurvy was beginning to take hold among the men. Yet any hope that the weather would become more benign was little other than fantasy. Both ships remained under considerable pressure from the elements, and as a result the men on watch were kept extremely busy. Cook’s journal offered further description of the efforts being undertaken to master the conditions:
First part fresh gales and gloomy weather. At 2pm single reefed the Top-sails and presently after the Clew of the fore top-sail gave way which obliged us to unbend the sail and bring another to the yard … At 8 double reefed the Top sails and handed [lowered] the Mizzen Top-sail, The gale kept increasing in such a manner as to bring us at 2 am to hand the Fore Top-sail and sometime after the Main Topsail and to strike Top gallant yards, the Fore Top-mast staysail being split we unbent it and bent another …
On 23 July, Adventure’s cook, Murduck Mahony, became the first man to lose his fight against scurvy. Furneaux recorded that Mahony had ‘been a long time bad’, and he was one of twenty-two on the ship’s sick list at this time, with most suffering from either scurvy or rheumatic complaints. ‘Capt Cook appointed Wm Chapman one of our Seamen, who is Aged & having lost the use of 2 of his fingers to be Cook of the Adventure’, added Furneaux.
During the first week of August, the expedition was somewhere in the region of the uninhabited Pitcairn Island, about 1200 miles south-east of Otaheite. This island was discovered in July 1767 by British sailor Captain Philip Carteret, who named it after fifteen-year-old midshipman Robert Pitcairn, the first of his crewmen to sight its coastline. Pitcairn became famous in 1789 after being chosen as a hideaway by the mutineers from HMS Bounty. Cook called for every effort from his lookouts to sight this small, remote and rugged outcrop. ‘[We] looked out for it but could see nothing excepting two Tropic birds,’ the captain noted, and with that he declared that there was no undiscovered continent in this part of the world: ‘No discovery of importance can be made, some few Islands is all that can be expected while I remain within the Tropical Seas.’
Adventure’s sick list had now grown to number thirty, all incapacitated by scurvy and deteriorating rapidly. With Furneaux struggling to find sufficient fit men to sail the ship, he turned to his commander for assistance. Both vessels were then brought to a near halt so that Adventure’s boats could be sent to Resolution to collect the thirteen men Cook offered to fill the void. The condition of the crew aboard the support ship caused Cook to decide that, instead of going directly to Matavai Bay, in the north of Otaheite, he should change course and head for a sheltered bay in the Tautira region, on the island’s south-east coast. This would allow the men to rest and get fresh food sooner, and hopefully recover. However, it turned out to be a decision that came close to bringing an end to the entire mission.
At sundown on 16 August, the jagged profile of Otaheite’s imposing mountains was there for all to see, about 8 leagues away. It was vital that a safe and steady approach be made to land there in daylight, in order to locate a passage through the fringing reef towards a safe anchorage. Around midnight, just before retiring for a few hours’ sleep, Cook issued specific instructions to the lieutenant on watch regarding the course and speed he wanted the ship to maintain overnight. Something went wrong, however – possibly because some of the men on watch nodded off. The captain recorded the sight that greeted him after he’d climbed the companionway ladder to the deck: ‘when I got up at break of day I found we were steering a wrong course and were not more than half a league from the reef which guards the South end of the Island …’
The circumstances could hardly have been more alarming. Cook shouted a terse order for an immediate change of course – to haul off to the north – but the cumbersome Resolution was slow to respond in what was only a very light breeze. In no time at all, the draught of air evaporated, and the ship
was left floating on a glassy sea just a short distance away from the reef.
Here was another classic example of the perilous life that early mariners faced on expeditions such as this. For better or worse, they were always in the hands of the elements, and through either human error (as was the case in this instance) or the vagaries of the weather, a ship could suddenly be finely balanced between annihilation and salvation.
Cook drew on every ounce of expertise he had amassed over his three decades at sea to devise a plan to save the ship. The immediate action was to hoist out the boats and have those aboard them attempt to tow Resolution away from the pending calamity. Adventure was caught in the same predicament, and likewise had little, if any, opportunity to escape. Most disturbingly, there was no sign of a breeze anywhere on the horizon which might help eliminate the threat, so it was only the efforts of the men towing that saw both vessels barely holding their ground – and that soon changed.
As an additional distraction, albeit one that came with all the right intentions, a small armada of canoes had arrived from the shore to welcome the visitors, and many of the natives insisted on clambering aboard Resolution. Cook later recalled the situation at this point:
… we came before an opening in the reef by which I hoped to enter with the Sloops as our situation became more and more dangerous, but when I examined the natives about it they told me that the Water was not deep … it however caused such an indraught of the Tide as was very near proving fatal to both the Sloops, the Resolution especially, for … they were carried by it towards the reef at a great rate; the moment I perceived this I ordered one of the Warping Machines [anchoring devices] which we had in readiness to be carried out with about 3 or 4 hundred fathoms of rope to it, this proved of no service to us … The horrors of shipwreck now stared us in the face, we were not more than two Cables length from the breakers and yet could find no bottom to anchor, the only means we had left us to save the Ships; we however dropped an anchor but before it took hold and brought us up, the Ship was in less than 3 fathom water … the Adventure anchored close to us on our starboard bow and happily did not touch …