They were three weeks out of Cape Town, on the final voyage home, when Cook came up to Isaac once again, as he sat on the milking stool they’d bought in Batavia to replace the one that had been thrown overboard.
Cook reached over and scratched the Goat’s ears. She butted his hand gently, to show her pleasure, then stilled to let the stroking continue.
Cook smiled. ‘I think she has done her duty now, don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Isaac, wondering exactly what the captain meant.
‘You can stop milking her, Manley. Just ease off over a few days. The less you milk her the less she’ll give.’
Isaac looked at the tired Goat. He’d hardly noticed how sparse her coat was now. Amid their pain and exhaustion it had just seemed natural that the Goat would get weaker too. Even her eyes looked dull.
Yes, she had done her duty. Now it was time for her to rest as well.
Saint Helena was behind them. It was slow going on the cold grey ocean. The sails kept splitting and the rigging broke too.
The Endeavour was as overtaxed as her crew. They were almost home when the Endeavour met another ship from England that stopped to pass on news.
None of the dispatches sent from Batavia had reached England! In fact the newspapers had declared the Endeavour lost at sea.
Isaac stared out at the pale blue sky—so much softer than the tropical skies they’d left. Somewhere out there his mother would be grieving, his father, brothers and sisters too. Did they think he was dead, or were they still waiting, hoping that by some miracle he’d survived, had been cast away, hoping for rescue in some unknown land?
There was no way he could tell them he was safe. No way any of the crew could get a message back to England. They simply had to wait till they reached shore.
And so there was no one to meet him when the Endeavour slipped into port at Dover and dropped anchor, almost three years after she had left.
Some of the crew were to stay aboard. But Midshipman Manley for once was one of the first to be given leave, so that his parents would know as soon as possible that their son was alive.
Isaac sat in the ship’s boat, waiting for the others to come down the ladder. There was no way he could describe how he’d felt as he saw the white cliffs drawing closer. They had sailed around the world in their fragile wooden ship, through storms and coral reefs, along strange coasts, through triumph and tragedy.
They had mapped places no European had ever seen, bringing home charts that men would follow for hundreds of years.
Isaac had found closer friendship on that small ship than he had ever known, and lost it too.
There was so much to tell his family—his promotions, the lands they’d seen. In another two years he’d sit his examinations for the rank of lieutenant. No more scrubbing, no more milking the Goat…
The Goat! He had seen almost nothing of her these last few weeks. Since his promotion another sailor had been detailed to feed her and clean up after her, especially now she was no longer milked.
What would happen to her? All at once he knew he couldn’t bear the thought that she might end her days tethered, forgotten, in some corner of the dockyard. Or even worse, slaughtered for a few tough goat stews.
Perhaps I could buy her? he thought. How did you go about buying a navy goat? The master might know. She could come home with me, Isaac decided. Live in a field of flowers and never need to be milked again. Surely his parents would be happy to look after the Goat who had saved his life?
‘Excuse me, forgotten something.’ Isaac made his way back to the ladder, leaving his bag behind, and climbed up onto the deck.
And then he stopped. The captain was there. Lieutenant Cook was talking to one of the Admiralty officials who had come aboard that morning, all grand in white wig and satin waistcoat.
‘The Goat?’ the captain was saying. ‘All the crew aboard my ship have done their duty, sir. And the Goat is no exception.’ Cook smiled. ‘The Goat will come with me. I trust the Admiralty will have no objections.’
‘Not at all,’ said the man from the Admiralty politely. ‘After a voyage like this—’ the man permitted himself a small cough of admiration. ‘—I’m sure Their Lordships will be pleased to present you with far more thanks than just a goat.’
‘There is a field at home,’ said Cook, and Isaac wondered if the man from the Admiralty could hear the love and longing in the captain’s voice as well. ‘It’s sheltered from the winds, and green even in midsummer. And there are flowers…she can be a pet for my wife and children.’
Isaac smiled at the thought of the Goat as anyone’s pet.
But perhaps, he thought, the captain knows her even better than me. How many watches had Cook spent up on the quarterdeck, with the Goat for company, while I have only visited the quarterdeck twice a day?
For the first time Isaac realised that she was Cook’s Goat, far more than his. Maybe the captain was right. Maybe after all her voyaging the Goat could finally relax, and be petted by the children.
Even as he thought this, Cook crossed over to the Goat again and scratched her satin ears.
‘Come on, girl,’ he said, his Yorkshire accent strong once more. ‘It’s time that we went home.’
EPILOGUE
The Goat
The grass was green, and studded with flowers. It tasted better than any grass she’d ever known, sweeter even than the pasture of New Zealand, softer than the grass of Tierra del Fuego, lusher than the greenery of Tahiti, finer than the wiry tussocks of New Holland.
The Goat was happy. She missed her Boy of course. But there were children here to make a fuss of her, and a woman too, with a sweet voice and laughter. Every day they brought the Goat carrots or apples, or a slice of bread and jam. The jam made her teeth ache, but she ate it anyway, and allowed the children to rub her behind the ears, where she liked it best.
But mostly she just remembered.
There was a lot to remember. In her short life she’d seen more than almost any other creature on the planet. She’d been around the whole world twice. Few sailors had seen as much as she had. The blue seas of the Pacific and the bluer mountains of New Holland, the palm trees of Tahiti. The kids she’d lost, the hands that had milked her…
But she still missed her Boy. Of all the hands she’d known, his had been the surest and gentlest. She had felt safe when the Boy was near.
So now, when she heard his voice, she almost thought it was a dream.
‘Hey, girl. Remember me?’
‘Eeegh?’ she called uncertainly, and heard his voice reply: ‘Eeegh!’
He was standing at the fence. She walked over to him, and bent her head so he could scratch her ears.
But she’d been mistaken, she realised. This wasn’t a boy. This was a man, in a bright uniform. But he still had the Boy’s smell. And his hands still felt the same. Sure hands.
The Boy had looked after a lonely goat. The man would care for all the men and ships in his command.
Was it a dream? It didn’t matter. The Goat nibbled at the apple he held out to her, and was content.
POSTSCRIPT
Even though the newly promoted Captain James Cook had arranged for the Goat to be sent to his farm and cared for by his family, the Lords of the Admiralty also signed a warrant, giving the Goat the privileges of an in-pensioner of Greenwich Hospital. This was the first and only time such an honour had ever been given to an animal.
The Royal College also awarded her a silver collar, with a poem by the famous Dr Johnson inscribed on it in Latin:
Perpetua ambita bis terra praemia lactis
Haec habet altrici Capra secunda Jovis.
This translates as:
In fame scarce second to the nurse of Jove,
This Goat, who twice the world had traversed round,
Deserving both her master’s care and love,
Ease and perpetual pasture now has found.
The Goat died the year after the voyage, in April 1772, only two days aft
er Parliament voted to award her a State pension from the Admiralty.
After sailing with Cook, Isaac Manley was promoted to lieutenant in 1777, commander in 1782, and captain in 1790. In 1809 he became a rear admiral, a vice admiral in 1814 (he was made a doctor of law at Oxford University in that year too) and a full admiral in 1830—a high-ranking naval officer, in command not just of a ship, but of a fleet or a navy.
NOTES ON THE TEXT
HM Bark Endeavour was away from England for almost three years and a lot more happened than I can put into this book—especially the adventures in New Zealand, which deserve a book of their own. But this book is mostly the story of a goat. I’ve concentrated on the adventures of which she was part.
This book is fact mixed with fiction. The details about the ship, HM Bark Endeavour, those who sailed on her and where she went are facts. But no one recorded who said what to whom.
The Goat existed too, but there is no record of who looked after her on board. I have assumed it may have been Isaac Manley, the youngest crew member on board, especially as he seemed a responsible lad who had grown up in farming country. Certainly he must have done something to bring him to the officers’ attention. Isaac rose swiftly in rank and obviously was extraordinarily capable. At the end of the voyage Cook was to say of Isaac that although he and Isaac Smith were ‘too young for preferment [promotion] yet their behaviour merits the best recommendation’.
For me one of the most fascinating things about the Goat’s story is the light it sheds on the way people lived on ships in those days. In movies the officers are dressed in neat uniforms, and the decks are clean and bare. But in reality, sailors usually only wore uniform on shore (most sailors wore clothes made of old sails), and the decks and even the ship’s boats were full of animals. The decks had to be scrubbed often or they got pretty smelly! Movies just don’t give any idea how crowded everything was, and how little privacy everyone had. Without a good captain, conditions on board ship were unbearable.
There is no record of exactly where the Goat was kept on the Endeavour, but there are hints that it may have been on the quarterdeck where the crew couldn’t steal her milk. A goat, probably the Goat, was certainly on the quarterdeck of the Dolphin. Cook must also have seen enough of her to want to take her home with him at the end of the voyage.
The Goat
The Goat was presumably an English milking (milch) goat. The English milking goat breed is now extinct, though there are some feral goats on Arapawa Island in the Marlborough Sound off New Zealand that might be descendants of goats left there by Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific in the Resolution.
The Arapawa goats were left on Arapawa Island to breed as a future source of food and milk by explorers. Cook also left pigs at Endeavour River as a source of food for other ships that might visit. These are now a major feral pest. He also left pigs in Tasmania when he visited there on his second voyage, and almost left goats there too, but decided the local people would eat them. Luckily they probably did eat the pigs, or Tasmania would have had a much bigger feral pig problem today.
The Arapawa goats have been sent to sanctuaries and wildlife parks in New Zealand and overseas. They’re pretty goats, small and colourful with brown and black patchwork. The newborn kids only weigh about one kilogram. Does only breed every other year unless they lose their kids—this may be one reason why the Goat gave milk for so long.
For how long can a goat give milk?
Goats rarely give milk for more than a year. But by all accounts the Goat gave milk for three years—throughout the entire voyage.
For a while I assumed that she’d been mated again during the voyage. But there is no record in any of the logs or diaries on board, or loading bills for the various ports the Endeavour visited, of any other goats—sheep, hens, cattle, pigs, but not goats. And so much was made of the Goat at the end of the voyage that finally I accepted that this goat had given milk for an amazing three years.
Goats—and sheep and cows—with ovarian tumours or other problems can give milk for extraordinarily long periods. So we just have to assume that this goat did too—and that was one of the reasons why she was regarded as such an incredible animal.
But it also shows, that so much was happening on board the Endeavour that no one ever mentioned. There’s no mention of the sheep, for example, until the ship needed their dung to save it. Cook was so fanatical about the ship’s cleanliness that there’s no way they’d just have filthy dung down in the hold from a cargo months before. There must have been live sheep. There’s no mention of the pig farrowing till her piglet was burned at Endeavour River in the grass fire.
There’s no mention either of many of the things the crew would have taken for granted—the crew may be suffering from near starvation and scurvy, but the officers and ‘gentlemen’ would still have been eating their dried fruit, plum puddings, good wines and other luxuries—and no one would have thought it strange. That was just the way their world was organised—the rich had luxuries, the poor went without even basic necessities.
The animals on board ships were rarely mentioned—but everyone of the time would have known that they were there.
The kids
There is no mention that the Goat had kids, or that her kids were brought on board. But I assumed that the Goat would have to have given birth to kids shortly before the Endeavour sailed, so it would make sense that her kids came with her, to be eaten as soon as the fresh meat ran out.
Isaac
Isaac George Manley was born in 1756 at Manley Hall in Exeter, England. He married Frances Pole and they had two children, Ann Frances and John Shaw Manley, who followed his father into the navy.
Isaac bought Brazier’s Park outside Checkendon in Oxfordshire and he died there on 29th July, 1837—by which time he was the last surviving member of the Endeavour’s crew. Manley Island off the south Queensland coast is named after him.
There seems to be no record of when Isaac was promoted to master’s mate from master’s servant. The position of servant wasn’t really a rank; it just described what he did on board. However master’s mate is the beginning of climbing the rank ladder. I have assumed that when master’s mate Alexander Weir was killed at Madeira, Isaac Manley took his place.
James Cook
James Cook was not a gentleman. He was the son of a farm labourer.
Usually a labourer’s son wouldn’t have had enough education to become an officer, even in the navy. Young James did occasional jobs, like taking horses to water and running errands for Mr Walker, the richest farmer in the Marton district, where James was born. In return, Mr Walker’s daughter Mary taught James his alphabet and how to read.
When Cook was eight years old, his father was made a bailiff on a farm near Great Ayton. The position came with a cottage and was much more secure than his previous work as a day labourer. The land owner paid for James to go to school where he learned to write and studied arithmetic. He was said to have been particularly good at arithmetic, which he needed when he was in the navy and studying navigation and astronomy for his officer’s exams.
Cook left school at twelve, to become apprenticed to a haberdasher—a shopkeeper who sold clothes and fabric. But Cook must have hated it, as he left that apprenticeship and instead apprenticed himself for seven years to John and Henry Walker, of Whitby, Yorkshire. They were Quaker shipowners, who owned two ships that carried coal.
Cook rose to be mate on the colliers. He had been offered the captaincy of a collier when war broke out in 1755 between England and France.
Men all along the coast were being pressed—forced to become sailors in the navy. Cook hid from the press gangs at first, but then realised that he had little chance of escaping them—sailors on commercial ships were too valuable to the navy to be ignored. So he decided to enlist. That way at least he could choose the ship and captain he’d serve with. Maybe he also realised that even though he’d have to enlist as a common seaman, he’d have good chances of being promoted in w
artime.
Cook was lucky: he entered the navy at just the right time and his abilities were recognised. Captain (afterward Sir) Hugh Palliser soon took command of the ship on which Cook was serving and was very impressed by the hardworking clever seaman. From then on Palliser helped Cook’s career as much as he could. In those days even a man as able and diligent as James Cook wouldn’t have been able to rise very far in the navy without an influential patron.
James Cook was promoted quickly and by 1757, he held the important position of master on a warship. However, master was a non-commissioned position. To become an officer and have any chance of commanding your own vessel you needed a commission, and for that you needed money or influence. Cook had shown that he was a brilliant surveyor in the campaigns against the French in Canada. But it still took many people by surprise when he was given command of the Endeavour and was promoted to lieutenant by the granting of a commission from the Admiralty.
‘Captain’ Cook?
The idea of ‘commissioned officer’ comes from medieval times, when the king would give someone in the nobility or gentry the ‘king’s commission’ to command in battle.
Cook was a commissioned officer. He was also captain of the ship, even though on his first voyage to the Pacific he only had the rank of first lieutenant.
Navy Ranks
The Royal Navy was one of the few organisations in England in the 1760s in which someone who hadn’t been born a ‘gentleman’ could rise in the ranks till they became an officer—usually a rank reserved only for gentlemen.
The Animal Stars Collection Page 28