James Cook's New World

by Lay, Graeme

  Utu—retribution in order to regain lost authority—was likely, Pickersgill reported to James, after he returned from a visit to a small island on the other side of the sound which his commander had named after him. There he had released a pair of pigs, a rooster and a hen, which they hoped might breed there in peace. While there Pickersgill had observed war canoes gathering on Arapawa, a neighbouring island. Sensing that tension was in the air, and with a feeling of foreboding, James ordered that those of the crew who had been encamped ashore return to the ship with all their belongings. He also ordered that one of his able seamen, Lee, be given 12 lashes by bosun’s mate Doyle for rifling and purloining the contents of the hut of a group of local Maoris. These possessions included goods which the natives had obtained legitimately through barter with the sailors.

  ‘If theft by the natives cannot be tolerated,’ James commented to Cooper following the lashing, ‘then far less can thieving be tolerated by one of our own.’ He also ensured that the Maoris whose goods had been stolen witnessed the punishment. They did, but flinched and covered their eyes as each stroke of the lash struck Lee’s back. Floggings disgusted them.

  With Resolution refitted and victualled, and the southern summer solstice less than one month away, it was time to leave the sound. After leaving a buried message for Furneaux on the foreshore at Ship Cove, and carving a sentence into the tree trunk above the burial place stating where to find it, they weighed anchor and set sail on 26 November. After emerging from the eastern end of Cook’s Strait, they turned north for Cape Palliser. Off the cape they fired the cannons every half-hour and scrutinised the brutal shoreline through their spyglasses for signs of the wreck of Adventure, or of any survivors of her foundering. Finding none, giving their consort up as lost, James ordered that Resolution proceed southward into the vast reaches of the South Pacific Ocean. Again the Resolutions were on their own, and there was not a man aboard who did not mourn the loss of their sister ship.

  Just five days after Resolution’s departure, Adventure at last succeeded in battling her way south into Cook’s Strait and, in another day, into Queen Charlotte Sound. As she doubled the steep, forested headland south of Ship Cove, the mood of anticipation of another reunion quickened around her decks. It had been weeks since the two vessels had been together off Tongatapu. Now, approaching Ship Cove, men scampered aloft to lower the topgallants and the helmsmen brought the ship around to larboard. In the lee of the headland the wind fell away to a zephyr, but Adventure glided on then slowly drifted into the cove. It was empty.

  They immediately wondered if Resolution had foundered on the coast near Cape Palliser. Had she been overcome by the sea and sunk during the violent storm? Or had she already come and gone? Any one of these possibilities rendered the officers and crew dejected. They gathered about the ship’s rails, staring disconsolately at the serene but vacant bay.

  Furneaux ordered the launch hoisted, then went ashore with Kempe and Burney. On the cove’s foreshore they saw clear signs of recent human activity: crushed undergrowth, fire sites, felled manuka, fish and shellfish remains. ‘These may well have been left by the natives,’ Kempe observed, kicking at the ashes of a fire site.

  Furneaux harrumphed in frustration. The same thought had occurred to him. Making their way a little further inland, they came to the stump of what had been a large beech tree. Burney pointed at the stump. Into the bark had been carved the words, LOOK UNDERNEATH.

  Burney dug into the place below the stump with his short sword, where there was recently excavated earth. Two feet down was a bottle, stoppered and sealed with wax. He handed it to Furneaux, who twisted the stopper. The note inside the bottle was in Cook’s distinctive hand. It read:

  AS CAPTAIN COOK HAD NOT THE LEAST HOPE OF MEETING CAPTAIN FURNEAUX HE WILL NOT TAKE UPON HIM TO NAME ANY PLACE FOR A RENDEZVOUS. HE HOWEVER THINKS OF SAILING TO EASTER ISLAND ABOUT THE LATTER END OF NEXT MARCH. IT IS PROBABLE THAT HE MAY GO TO OTAHEITE OR ONE OF THE SOCIETY ISLANDS, BUT THIS WILL DEPEND MUCH UPON THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT NOTHING OF ANY DEGREE OF CERTAINTY CAN BE DETERMINED UPON. 20 NOVEMBER, 1773

  As Furneaux stared at the note, he cursed with frustration. They had missed Resolution by less than a week.

  That afternoon he called a meeting of his officers in the Great Cabin. Their options were limited, he told them. They could attempt to pursue Resolution into the Southern Ocean, then make the sweep north to Easter Island for a possible rendezvous, or they could head for home. Chart spread out on the table before him, he placed his forefinger on the Le Maire Straits, the preferred passage leading to the South Atlantic, near the coccyx of South America. ‘As Captain Cook left no instructions as to what our movements should be, it is my intention that we head for home, via the Horn.’

  Burney’s brow ruckled. ‘Why the Horn, sir? Why not via Batavia and Cape Town?’

  Furneaux gave him a level look. ‘Because we are part of a mission of discovery, and there are no discoveries to be made in that direction. But we may encounter new lands east of the Horn.’ When the others looked doubtful, Furneaux added, ‘It’s what Captain Cook would have wanted.’

  Now there were nods of approval, tempered by the realities of what challenges still lay ahead of them. They had already been away for one and a half years; it would take at least another year before they reached England again via Cape Horn. Furneaux concluded, ‘When the provisioning is complete we will put to the southward from this island, and make use of the roaring forties to cross the Pacific Ocean from west to east. And we will claim any lands we may encounter along the way in the Southern Ocean, for our King.’

  As they prepared to leave New Zealand, the Adventures sensed that something had changed. There was hostility in the air. At night on the shore, thefts began to occur from the tents. Shadowy intruders were glimpsed through the darkness, and muskets were fired at the shadows. Some of astronomer Bayly’s tools were stolen, and later when he came upon a canoe containing the items which had been taken, the marines seized the canoe and its contents.

  What had happened to cause this sudden mistrust? Was it something to do with Resolution’s latest visit? On 15 December two seamen on night watch reported seeing a blazing meteor streak across the sky, and there were mutterings of unease below decks at this omen. Sentries were posted around the ship and the shore encampments. The seized canoe was returned to its owners, but they remained sullen. Their pride had been violated. And the fact that Adventure had missed Resolution by so short a time continued to gnaw at the crew’s morale.

  Amid this atmosphere of distrust, frustration and resentment, Furneaux did his best to remain calm. The refitting of the ship—the gales had caused serious damage to the sails and rigging—and its provisioning continued. On 17 December, he announced: ‘In order to prevent an outbreak of scurvy during the prolonged South Sea crossing, the cutter will be sent across to Grass Cove on Arapawa Island on the morrow, under the command of master’s mate Rowe, to gather supplies of wild greens. During the next stage of the voyage the dietary regime of anti-scorbutics will be strictly enforced.’ He looked around the table. ‘Any questions, gentlemen?’

  There were none. All were now anxious to be gone.

  The cutter left early the next day, with Rowe and nine men on board. By nightfall it had not returned. Furneaux and his officers became concerned—the party had been ordered to be back by late afternoon. The men had taken no tents or food supplies for sleeping over. When by the following morning the cutter still had not returned, anxieties deepened. On the quarterdeck, spyglass to his eye, Furneaux said to Burney, ‘Still no sight of them.’ He lowered his scope. ‘Take command of the launch and search the sound for them. Take a party of marines with you. And ensure they and the men are well armed.’

  Lieutenant Burney, the marines, Omai and the others were pulled along the shore of rugged, elongated Arapawa Island, eyes peeled for the missing cutter. They could see nothing of the boat or its crew. The weather was fine, the waters of the sound calm. The cutter coul
d not have foundered, so where was it?

  Later in England, Burney related to his sister Fanny that one of the things they remembered most vividly from that day was the fact that there was no birdsong. Normally the forested hillsides and coves of the sound were filled with the lilting chorus of tuis, bellbirds, huias, pigeons and saddlebacks, a resonance so lovely that it uplifted all who heard it. But on this morning there was no birdsong, only an eerie, unnatural silence hung in the air.

  The launch came to East Bay and they pulled close to the shore. To alert the cutter’s crew of their presence the marines began to fire muskets into the air, shattering the unfamiliar silence. Then, as they turned the launch into the channel separating Pickersgill and Arapawa Islands, they saw on a beach on the larger of the two islands a war canoe, guarded by two warriors. Seeing the launch approaching, the men ran quickly into the bush above the shore.

  Burney ordered the launch beached. They disembarked and walked up to the canoes. In the bottom of one was a rowlock port from the cutter, a shoe and a chunk of meat. Burney picked up the shoe and turned it over. On its underside was inked the word ‘Woodhouse’. Robert Woodhouse was one of the midshipmen who had gone with the cutter. Peter Fannin, Adventure’s master, picked up the piece of meat and sniffed it. ‘Fresh,’ he declared. ‘Dogmeat, I should say.’ Burney nodded. But why had Woodhouse left his shoe in a native canoe?

  Further along the beach was a heap of flax food baskets. On the shore a little way up from the heap was a pit, surrounded by piles of freshly dug earth. Curious as to why the place had been abandoned, Burney, Fannin and the others cut the baskets open. From them came the aroma of freshly cooked food—chunks of earth-baked meat and fern root. Burney poked at the contents of one basket with his sword, then started. Amid the fern roots was a human hand. The others stared at the hand, which was a creamy shade. On the back of the hand the initials ‘T.H.’ in blue stood out against the whiteness. ‘Thomas Hill,’ said Fannin dully. ‘The letters were tattooed on his hand in Otaheite.’

  The crew of the launch turned away from the hideous sight. Some dropped to their knees on the sand. No one spoke. Able seaman Cravan, who had been Hill’s shipboard friend, began to sob. There had been ten men in the cutter; it seemed that all had been dismembered, cooked in the earth oven and packed into the baskets at their feet. Fury beginning to burn within him, Burney’s first reaction was to smash holes in the canoe. But he and the others were distracted by the sight of smoke coming from the island’s hills to the south.

  Hurrying back to their launch, they climbed aboard and Burney ordered it pulled south, around a promontory and into Grass Cove, the cutter’s original destination. The cove comprised a deep indentation in the western flank of Arapawa Island, sheltered by a pair of headlands. A fire was burning in the hills above the cove, and a crowd of natives was on the beach. Several canoes were anchored just off the beach. As the launch was pulled closer, the natives began to shout and beckon its crew ashore. More were calling out to them from the hill above the cove.

  Standing in the launch’s bow, smouldering with anger, Burney turned to the armed men. ‘Fire at them!’ he ordered. All brought their muskets to their shoulders and released a volley at the crowd. The taunting ceased, but none of the natives fell to the ground. ‘Reload and fire again!’ Burney yelled, and this time they took more careful aim before they fired. Several of the natives screamed, and they turned and retreated towards the bush. ‘Reload, then disembark!’ Burney ordered, his voice breaking with fear. ‘Fannin, stay with the launch.’

  They walked up onto the foreshore, muskets again primed, in time to see two large Maori men hobbling away to join their companions in the forest. The Englishmen now had the bay to themselves, although all looked warily towards the trees. On the beach were some bundles of celery, and the natives’ canoes were tethered to a broken oar from the cutter, jammed upright into the earth. This then, they realised, must have been the site of the attack on their men. In line formation, primed muskets pointing inland, they walked up to the rear of the bay. It was dusk now and the area was in shadow. But there was light enough to see what lay on the ground above the bay.

  Across a strip of level land were strewn dozens of organs and viscera: hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers, entrails. A pack of dogs was gnawing at the scattered organs. Several feet and a few heads lay among the intestines. One head was instantly recognisable, that of James Swilley, Furneaux’s Negro servant. Other body parts lay amid smoking embers. With a cry of fury, Burney ran at the dogs, swiping at them with his sword. Cringing, they ran off, one with a length of intestine dangling from its jaws. Then Burney turned and shouted to his men. ‘Destroy the canoes! Smash them!’

  Howling with rage, the men obeyed, picking up large rocks from the nearby headland and hurling them into the canoes, rupturing their hulls. Some of them sobbed and choked as they did so. Now they could hear shouts and a general commotion coming from the hill above, indicating that an attack was imminent. Burney called to Fannin, ‘Bring sailcloth up. Collect the remains.’ Turning to the marines, now in formation, he ordered, ‘Cover them!’ Several of the crew raced up and began to collect up the heads and other body parts from the massacre site, half closing their eyes against the horror of it all.

  They were now low on ammunition, and further fire would achieve little, so Burney ordered the men back onto the launch. Minutes later they hauled off and began their sorrowful return to the ship, the gruesome cargo in the bow of the boat.

  That night the atmosphere in the Great Cabin was taut with anger. As Burney related in choking tones what had happened at Grass Cove, the blood drained from Furneaux’s cheeks and one hand gripped the other to control his tremors. Burney concluded: ‘I do not believe that the massacre was planned. I rather think that the party must have by some action of theirs offended the savages.’

  Crimson with fury, Kempe said, ‘Are you claiming the murder was justified, Burney?’

  ‘No, not in any way.’ He looked down at the table. ‘And we will never know what happened. But something must have sparked the inferno.’

  Shaking his head in disbelief, Kempe turned to Furneaux. ‘We must retaliate. Go there and bombard the savages from the ship with our cannons.’

  Furneaux made no reply for a few moments, then uttered, ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Furneaux looked him straight in the eye. ‘Though vengeance is tempting, think of the practicalities. We could not safely work the ship into the channel between the two islands. And even if we did so, that would place the vessel in peril.’

  Burney nodded despondently. ‘It’s true. We would be vastly outnumbered, and the savages could board us and take the ship.’

  Kempe ground his teeth. ‘So they are permitted to get away with murder?’

  Pressing his hands to his temples, Furneaux said in a low voice, ‘The safety of the ship is paramount, Kempe. I will not put her or the rest of the men at risk.’ His voice dropped lower. ‘But we will quit this place as soon as possible.’

  ‘Rowe, John, master’s mate. Woodhouse, Thomas, midshipman. Murphy, Francis, quartermaster. Facey, William, able seaman. Hill, Thomas, able seaman. Jones, Edward, boatswain. Bell, Michael, able seaman. Cavanagh, John, able seaman. Milton, Thomas, able seaman. Swilley, James, captain’s servant.’

  Furneaux intoned the roll of the dead from the quarterdeck. Adventure had been warped out into the deep water of the sound. A light rain was falling on its waters and the surrounding hills were drenched in a funereal mist. The sailcloth package containing the heads and other body parts, iron ballast bars attached to it, rested on the mid-deck railing, held there by Lieutenants Kempe and Burney. The rest of the crew stood about the decks, heads bowed. Several were weeping for their slain shipmates. John Rowe had been a relative of Furneaux’s.

  Moving closer to the quarterdeck rail, Furneaux read from his commander’s prayer book. ‘Unto Almighty God we commend the souls of our brothers departed, and we commit their remains t
o the deep, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the sea shall give up the dead, and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him shall be changed, and made like unto his glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.’

  He nodded to his lieutenants, who tilted up the sailcloth package then released it into the waters of the sound. There was a splash, followed by a deafening silence. Furneaux closed his prayer book and announced to the assembly below: ‘We will all sleep under arms tonight, in case of further attacks. Then we will weigh anchor at first light tomorrow, on a course for Cook’s Strait. After exiting the strait we will stand to the southward and make for the high latitudes of the southern ocean.’ He paused, then said dismissively, ‘Return to your duties.’

  Silently, heads still cast downwards, they drifted away. Although relieved to be quitting this cursed place, all knew that with the ship now short-manned, and with icy latitudes ahead, there was little to look forward to.

  Twenty

  ONCE AGAIN RESOLUTION WAS IN THE REALM of the ice mountains. They were high and spired, immobile and silent, soaring cathedrals whose congregations were the penguins who looked at the Resolutions with complete indifference as the ship sailed past their perches on the ice shelves. Petrels and albatrosses emerged from the mist to glide above the ship, and glistening seals ducked and dived alongside her. Although the daylight hours were long, the sun was obscured by mist and provided no warmth. In the freezing temperatures Resolution’s rigging became sheathed with ice, forcing the men to hold on to the ratlines when they went aloft as their frozen hands could not curve around the shrouds. Their jackets and trousers froze solid, so that they resembled bumbling knights in armour as they clambered about the deck and struggled amid the rigging. The tears that spilled uncontrollably from their eyes froze on their cheeks; the snot in their nostrils turned to hard lumps; the hairs of their beards were like thorns. The sails were as unyielding as iron and the rigging frost-burnt their fingers. Hands became bloodied, and the blood quickly froze. Fingernails were torn out as they hauled icicled lines through the blocks. Gloves were useless, as the men needed to ‘feel’ the canvas in order to work it properly. The helmsmen made use of mittens, but no one else did.