by Rob Mundle
It was 9 am when the English captain and the islander chief prepared to wade towards the boat, all the while shadowed by Terre’oboo’s followers, and it appears that a belief spread among the islanders that the king was being taken hostage, and that if he went to the ship he would be killed. It is suggested that on hearing this assumption being shouted towards him by his people, Terre’oboo became reluctant to go to Resolution. Cook, knowing he could not compel the king to join him, immediately abandoned his plan.
Simultaneously, hatred towards the visitors became increasingly apparent as the large chanting mob began to arm themselves with spears and rocks. Marine Molesworth Phillips, who was standing with Cook, observed the developments: ‘an artful Rascal of a Priest was singing & making a ceremonious offering of a coco Nut to the Captain and Terre’oboo to divert their attention from the Manoeuvres of the surrounding multitude.’
Escape to the ship was now paramount, but as Cook stepped into the shallow water and began making his way towards the pinnace, a man armed with a dagger and a rock came up behind him with the obvious intention of attacking him. Cook is said to have turned and fired one round of shot from his musket towards the man, who was protected from the pellets by the heavy matting he was wearing as clothing. This act enraged the islanders even more. They then began an all-out attack on the visitors.
Cook fired in self-defence once more, now with ball, and killed a man. He is then said to have shouted to his men: ‘Take to the boats!’ But confusion and mayhem were the by-products. What is known is that there were hand signals misunderstood between the men in the pinnace and others onshore as to what was occurring and what response was required. Samwell, the surgeon, described the horrid scene that followed:
An Indian came running behind him, stopping once or twice as he advanced, as if he was afraid that he [Cook] should turn round. Then, taking him unaware, he sprung to him, knocked him on the back of his head with a large club taken out of a fence, and instantly fled with the greatest precipitation. The blow made Captain Cook stagger two or three paces. He then fell on his hand and one knee and dropped his musket. As he was rising another Indian came running at him, and before he could recover himself from the fall, drew out an iron dagger he concealed under his feathered cloak and stuck it with all his force into the back of his neck, which made Captain Cook tumble into the water … [which was] about knee deep.
Here he was followed by a crowd of people who endeavoured to keep him under water, but struggling very strong with them he got his head up, and, looking towards the pinnace which was not above a boat hook’s length from him, waved his hands to them for assistance, which it seems … was not in their power to give.
A powerful blow to the head from another club-wielding islander ended James Cook’s life that day – 14 February 1779.
In an effort to protect their captain against the warlike islanders filling the beachfront, four marines – John Allen, Thomas Fatchett, Theophilus Hinks and James Thomas – had fired a volley of shots from their muskets. From that moment, they were defenceless. To reload the weapons would have taken around thirty seconds, time that the troopers simply did not have. All four were then speared and stoned to death by their assailants.
As if this dreadful scene wasn’t enough for the other Englishmen who had observed it, what followed Cook’s brutal slaughter was appalling. His body was dragged from the water and onto the rocky shore by a frenzied mob, who then carried out a heinous attack on the corpse.
As the first of the ships’ boats made a frantic dash from the shallows and out towards the two ships, anxious shouts to Captain Clerke alerted him to the fact that his commander had been murdered in the fracas. Now the most senior officer on the expedition, Clerke immediately took charge of the situation and went aboard Resolution. He directed Bligh, who had returned to his ship, and others to go to shore and defend the men there, and try to establish some level of authority. The moment they arrived at the beach, Bligh’s group came under a fusillade of rocks and spears, to which they returned fire with their muskets. According to witnesses, twenty-five natives were killed and fifteen wounded in the affray.
The bodies of the marines would never be recovered, but Clerke was determined to retrieve the captain’s remains. This message was duly conveyed to the island’s elders, including Terre’oboo.
The atmosphere between the two sides remained volatile overnight, but by morning, while still tense, all signs of aggression from the natives had disappeared. The situation surrounding Cook’s death then went from macabre to ghoulish when an islander priest ventured out to Resolution on a canoe bearing a parcel, probably made from palm fronds, and covered in red and black feathers, which he delivered to Clerke. The latter opened it in his cabin – and was immediately confronted by part of Cook’s dismembered and burnt corpse. Hatred for the islanders was ignited among the sailors from that moment.
In response to taunting behaviour from a large group assembled on the beach, cannons blasted out from the ships, the thundering sound echoing across the bay. In no time, these islanders had been scattered by a salvo of 4-pounder balls, but not before many had been killed or wounded. Another bitter confrontation followed when a watering party from the ships went ashore and came under attack. The response from the Englishmen was immediate and without restraint. They shot dead almost every native who came within range, then razed the nearby village.
If it had been possible, Resolution and Discovery would have quit Kealakekua that day. But because so much equipment remained onshore, including Resolution’s damaged foremast, they were forced to stay for another six days.
On 19 February, there was another grisly twist when Clerke demanded that Cook’s missing remains be returned to the ship for burial. He stressed that there would be no peace until this occurred. The king sent a return message to Clerke, explaining that because Cook had been held in such high esteem by the islanders, his bones had been distributed to the most important chiefs. As a result, it would take some time to gather what remained of the captain.
Lieutenant James King, who had taken up the responsibility for continuing Cook’s journal, described in detail what followed. It had been arranged that the island’s chief priest, Koa, would personally carry out the handover. He also offered gifts of peace.
To show them that we accepted the peace, Captain Clerke went in the pinnace and desired me to go in the cutter, to bring him [the chief priest] and the presents as was desired. We refused landing which was not much insisted upon, [Koa] coming with great composure into the pinnace and he and several others came on board. He gave us a bundle wrapped very decently, and covered with a spotted cloak of black and white feathers, which we understood to be a mourning colour. On opening it we found the Captain’s hands, which were well known from a remarkable cut, the scalp, the skull, wanting thigh bones and arm bones. The hands only had flesh on them, & were cut in holes, and salt crammed in them; the leg bones, lower jaw, and feet which were all that remained & had escaped the fire …
In the evening of 22 February, Cook’s remains were placed in a shroud made from sail canvas and weighted with cannonballs, before being lowered over the side of Resolution. Then, as the shroud slipped beneath the surface of the sea that had been the great explorer’s realm for so long, a bell tolled and ten rounds of cannon-fire boomed forth at thirty-second intervals.
Clerke wrote of the moment: ‘I had the remains of Captain Cook committed to the deep, with all the attention and honour we could possibly pay it in this part of the world.’
EPILOGUE
Mourning the Master
It was a solemn departure from Kealakekua on 23 February 1779. After the anchors were weighed and sails set, Resolution and Discovery were eased slowly out of the bay on a gentle evening breeze. The crowd of islanders standing along the rugged and rocky shoreline, and the crew of both ships, were still grieving over what had occurred in those horrifying few minutes nine days earlier. Some of those onshore were wailing; the seamen were mourning
in silence. The only sound of any significance was the screeching of the sheaves in the pulley blocks, as the men hauled away in unison on the lines that needed tending to get the vessels underway. The occasional order shouted from the quarterdeck could also be heard by those onshore.
Clerke, the popular new commander of the expedition, was suffering in his own right through illness – consumption – but he remained determined to prosecute Cook’s plan to explore the Sandwich Islands, then return to the Arctic Circle during the approaching northern hemisphere summer. The search for the Northwest Passage would continue. It was not his intention to spend an excessive amount of time among the Sandwich Islands, however, for fear that news of the battle at Kealakekua, and Cook’s death, should precede their arrival and cause another confrontation.
By early March, that part of the expedition had been completed without mishap. The ships then headed north, away from the tropics and towards the Arctic Circle. Four weeks later, their decks were covered by a thick spread of snow, and icicles were hanging through the rigging like Christmas decorations.
Clerke noted in his journal that they were experiencing ‘very heavy snow & severe Frost, with fresh Gales & squally Weather’. He also mentioned how tough it was on the tars: ‘The poor fellows after broiling as they have lately done several Months on the Torrid Zone are now miserably pinched with the Cold.’ Some of the men felt the frigid temperature more than others, and the reason was simple enough: they had traded much of their clothing for favours from the honey-skinned maidens of Hawaii.
The captain decided that the only harbour on the eastern side of the Kamchatka Peninsula, Avacha Bay, would be their first destination. They would stop there and make final preparations for the passage through Bering Strait and into the ice-laden seas beyond. It was on 29 April, after the winter ice covering the wide, 15-mile-long bay had started to break up, that Resolution and Discovery commenced a slow and careful entry into this remote and sparsely populated Russian port.
Soon after their arrival, the governor of the region, a Major Behm, visited Resolution and established a strong rapport with Clerke. During their discussions, the captain learned that the major’s presence created an opportunity for news of Cook’s death to reach the Admiralty much sooner than would otherwise have been possible. Behm could arrange for a package to be transported almost 5000 miles across the Asian continent, to the British ambassador in St Petersburg, who could then forward it to London. It was estimated that this would take about six months, whereas Resolution would not be in home waters for more than a year. Lieutenant King wrote that another influence on Clerke’s decision was the danger of one or both ships encountering a disaster, as they ‘had a very hazardous part of the Voyage yet to go through’.
Behm’s offer led to Clerke addressing a letter to the Secretary of the Admiralty before the ships’ departure in June. It delivered the devastating news of Cook’s death, and confirmed that his wishes would be followed: the search for the Northwest Passage would continue that summer. The package for Behm contained that letter, Cook’s journal up to the time of his death, Clerke’s most recent journal, and a chart.
The Russian officer was honoured to be entrusted with such an important undertaking, and seven months later, Sir Philip Stephens received the well-travelled package in his high-ceilinged office in London’s Whitehall. When he read Clerke’s letter, his eyes absorbed the tragic words that would shock King and country: Britain’s legendary explorer, fifty-year-old Lieutenant James Cook, had been murdered by islanders in the Pacific.
It would most likely have been Stephens’ duty to then visit Cook’s wife at home, just 3 miles away, and share with her the crushing news of her husband’s demise. After having spent only four and a half of their sixteen years of marriage in each other’s company, a distraught Elizabeth Cook, at the age of thirty-eight, was a seafarer’s widow, like so many women of her era.
King George III is said to have shed tears on receiving the news. Sir Joseph Banks was advised of the death in a letter from Lord Sandwich, dated 10 January 1780. ‘Dear Sir,’ it read, ‘what is uppermost in our mind always must come out first, poor captain Cook is no more …’
The London Gazette published this announcement on 11 January:
Captain Clerke of His Majesty’s Sloop Resolution, in a letter to Mr Stephens, dated the 8th of June 1779, in the Harbour of St Peter and St Paul, Kamchatka, which was received yesterday, gives the melancholy account of the celebrated Captain Cook, late commander of that Sloop, with four of his private Marines having been killed on the 14th of February last at the island of O’Why’he, one of a group of new discovered Islands in the 22nd Degree of North Latitude, in an affray with a numerous and tumultuous Body of the Natives.
A subsequent obituary read:
This untimely and ever to be lamented Fate of so Intrepid, so able, and so intelligent a Sea-Officer, may justly be considered as an irreparable Loss to the Public, as well as to his Family, for in him were united every successful and amiable quality that could adorn his Profession; nor was his singular Modesty less conspicuous than his other Virtues. His successful Experiments to preserve the Healths of his Crews are well known, and his Discoveries will be an everlasting Honour to his Country.
Thousands of miles away to the east of their homeland, the crews of Resolution and Discovery remained determined to do what they could to honour their late commander, by finding the Northwest Passage. They sailed from Avacha Bay in mid June, under an enormous cloud of ash from the erupting Avachinsky volcano, which was just 20 miles to the north-east of their anchorage.
Initially, the ships’ progress was slowed due to it being too early in the season for the majority of ice to have melted. Three weeks later, after averaging less than 3 knots during that period, the ships cruised through Bering Strait – only to be confronted by large clusters of drift ice. In a bid to find a way around this obstacle, Clerke took up a course to the north-east, towards the coast of North America, crossing 70 degrees north latitude on the way. This path was also dogged by huge ice floes, so much so that on 19 July, Clerke was forced to turn back. He explained why: ‘this Sea is now so Choked with Ice that a passage I fear is totally out of the question.’ They were then only a few miles south of the point that Cook had reached with Resolution the previous summer.
Clerke’s health continued to decline. By early August he was confined to his cabin, and, on accepting that death could come at any time, he advised his officers of the new chain of command. John Gore, the American-born seafarer who had already completed two circumnavigations, would become the new expedition commander, and captain of Resolution. Lieutenant King was appointed captain of Discovery, and 24-year-old Lieutenant Bligh became the full-time navigator for the remainder of the voyage. On 15 August, Clerke accepted he could no longer capably captain the ship, so he relinquished his command to Gore. A week later, Charles Clerke, aged thirty-eight, passed away.
The mission continued under the new regime, only to be beaten by impenetrable walls of ice no matter where they searched. Eventually, they gave up all hope of success, and with another winter approaching, Gore accepted that it was time to head home. Had the Northwest Passage been discovered during this expedition, then Resolution and Discovery would have needed to sail less than 5000 nautical miles to be back in English waters. Instead, they had to endure a fourteen-month, 18,000-nautical-mile passage – three-quarters of the way around the world – back to England, via the coast of Siberia, Japan and the Cape of Good Hope. The two ships anchored off The Nore on 4 October 1780, four years and three months after they had set sail from Plymouth. It would be another 125 years before the Northwest Passage was discovered and navigated by Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen.
With news of Cook’s death having preceded the arrival of the ships by some ten months, the homecoming was a sombre affair. There were no celebrations, and no bounty to be shared by the crews as their search for the passage had not borne results.
At this time, Eli
zabeth Cook continued to live at the family home in Mile End, tending her youngest child, four-year-old Hugh. Sadly, having endured the deaths of three infant children while her husband was away on the high seas, and after then suffering the loss of the great man himself, tragedy would continue to haunt her life. The Cooks’ two eldest sons, James and Nathaniel, aged seventeen and fifteen respectively in October 1780, had proudly followed their father into the Royal Navy and both would mature into active service. In the same month as Resolution and Discovery’s muted return, Nathaniel was serving as a midshipman aboard HMS Thunderer when she foundered with the loss of all hands. In what was described as the greatest of all hurricanes ever to hit the West Indies, it claimed 20,000 lives and sank nearly fifty ships, primarily British and French ships of war.
In 1784, there was a heart-warming moment for Elizabeth when she was shown the proposed design for a medal that would be struck in honour of her husband. This tribute had been initiated by Banks, as president of the Royal Society since 1778. Deeply touched by the gesture, Elizabeth wrote to him: ‘My greatest pleasure now remaining is in my sons, who, I hope, will ever strive to copy after so good an example, and, animated by the honours bestowed on their Father’s memory, be ambitious of attaining by their own merits your notice and approbation.’
Thirteen years later, there was more heartbreak for the widow. Hugh, then a student in residence at Christ’s College in Cambridge, fell victim to scarlet fever and died four days before Christmas 1793.
This was the most dreadful period in Elizabeth Cook’s life. Just five weeks after Hugh’s death, she learned that her only surviving child, thirty-year-old James, who had recently been promoted to the position of commander in the Royal Navy, had perished in a tragic accident on the Solent. He was aboard a small navy boat sailing from Poole to Portsmouth, so he could take up the command of HMS Spitfire, when it was apparently overwhelmed by bad weather. His body was found washed ashore on the Isle of Wight, stripped of all valuables and with a wound to his head. The wreck of the boat was nearby, but no other members of the crew were ever found.