by Derek Wilson
Dangerous passages lay ahead and the Swallow was unreliable. Would Wallis abandon the present scheme in favour of a more prudent one?
No. It was vital the two ships stayed together ‘lest any accident befall either’.
Supposing the Swallow were to be anchored in a suitable cove and Carteret were to use the ship’s boats to lead Dolphin through the straits.
No. Wallis’ instructions were to keep his ships together.
Carteret would willingly come aboard the Dolphin as first lieutenant and make his knowledge of the South Sea available.
No. Wallis could not depart from his Admiralty instructions. Two ships were essential for voyages of exploration.
If Wallis would not sail a single ship across the Pacific, Carteret would. Perhaps the commander would prefer to return home with the Swallow while he went on in the Dolphin?
No!
The two ships limped from anchorage to anchorage. Sometimes Swallow led the way. Sometimes she had to be towed. Often she and Dolphin had to remain in harbour for days or weeks together. The end result was that the passage of the Straits, which Magellan had made in thirty-seven days and Drake in seventeen, took Wallis’s expedition 115 days. Then, to crown all, and despite his protestations about the necessity to proceed in tandem, Wallis did leave the consort behind. It happened on the night of 10–11 April when the ships were approaching Cape Pilar at the outlet to the Pacific. They were sailing before a favourable wind and the Swallow was in the lead. Soon after dark the Dolphin put on sail and passed her companion. By morning she had broken through the barrier of cross currents and variable winds at the Straits’ mouth and was standing out to sea with all sails set. About nine o’clock she disappeared over the western horizon and that was the last the men of the Swallow saw of her.
Such are the facts. The explanations of those facts given by the two captains differed widely. Wallis claimed that only weather conditions forced his reluctant separation from the consort:
. . . it falling little wind was obliged to make all the sail we could to get without the Strait’s Mouth. At 11 would have shortened sail for the Swallow, but could not, and was obliged to carry to clear the Isles of Direction the current setting us strong down upon them, and the wind westing. We soon after lost sight of the Swallow, and never saw or heard of her after. I would have gone back into the Straits but the weather coming on thick and dirty we were all of opinion that we had nothing to do but get an offing as soon as possible, for the sea raising fast and the weather greasy, that the ship could not weather Tierra del Fuego on one tack nor, the land off Cape Victory on the other unless we pressed her with sail before the sea rose to too great a height.21
Carteret, by contrast, was convinced that his superior had deserted him as soon as he had outlived his usefulness by bringing Dolphin within sight of the Pacific. His version of events on the fateful night portrays Wallis as doing everything possible to disembarrass himself of the sluggish sloop:
The Dolphin had all along before much outsailed us, but now as our bottom was grown much fouler, and hers by being coppered, kept always clean, we found now that she sailed faster with only topsails, with a reef in them, than the Swallow did with all the sails we could set. At 6 o’clock in the evening . . . the western entrance of the Straits fairly open, and the Great South Sea in sight. I had all the time before this, been made to keep ahead, but soon after it was dark, we observed the Dolphin, who was nearly abreast of us, set her foresail, by which she soon shot ahead of us, and before 9 o’clock (as she did not carry, nor during the whole night, did she show us any lights) we had quite lost sight of her. All this night, we had a fine light eastern breeze, of which we endeavoured to make the best use we possibly could, by carrying even our topgallant-studding sails, a conduct, which people who are acquainted with the sudden squalls, and the variableness of the winds, which reign, with so much violence in the Straits of Magellan, may be apt to censure, and think rather imprudent. . . but I always determined to keep up with the Dolphin, and to be as little hindrance in delaying of her, as possible . . . but notwithstanding all my endeavours, I could not keep up with her. . the next morning . . . about 7 o’clock we discovered the Dolphin, bearing W½N, but was so far ahead we could but just see her topsails, above the horizon; and we observed that she had likewise studding sails set; by which it is not to be wondered, that she should be at so great a distance from us; and by 9 o’clock she was entirely gone out of sight of us.22
Carteret tried to follow Dolphin but was driven back into the shelter of the Straits by contrary winds. It was another four days before he was able to break out into the open sea.
We shall never know to what extent Carteret’s suspicions were justified. Both he and Wallis blamed the limitation of their subsequent success on the ‘desertion’ of the other. In fact, neither was probably altogether sorry about the separation. Wallis was no longer hampered by the ‘dull Swallow’ (as George Robertson, master of the Dolphin called her) and Carteret could, at last, be his own master.
Wallis’s ship was very soon in a desperate plight. The men ‘began to fall down very fast in colds and fevers, in consequence of the upper works being open and their clothes and beds continually wet’.23 The unnecessarily long sojourn in the dank and chilly atmosphere of the Straits, added to the normal debilitating effects of a long voyage, had weakened the crew, and Wallis, himself, suffered bouts of illness. Nor could he make for the shelter of some Chilean cove or offshore island. Violent storms threw the Dolphin out into the Pacific. For almost two months she bucketed her way through empty seas. Occasionally the masthead lookout had tantalising glimpses of islands which were inaccessible because the wind was wrong and the crew weak.
Then, on 6 June, land was sighted dead ahead:
The joy which everyone on board felt at the discovery can be conceived by those only who have experienced the danger, sickness and fatigue of such a voyage as we had performed.24
The hitherto untravelled WNW course had brought Dolphin to the undiscovered Tuamotu archipelago. Wallis now threaded his way cautiously westward through the labyrinth of reefs and islands, sending a boat ashore whenever possible to negotiate for food and water with the natives. The Englishmen received a mixed reception but were able to collect fresh water, coconuts and scurvy grass.
On 19 June the voyagers came upon a larger island, which proved to be their most important discovery. Since Wallis was confined to his bed he was obliged to send his second lieutenant, Tobias Furneaux, ashore to claim the land for his sovereign and to name it George III Island. But the title was not destined to stick; later visitors gave it an anglicised form of the name the local people used for their home – Tahiti. The natives of this populous island were wary of the white strangers in their big canoe. Naturally, they could not know the desires or intentions of the newcomers. The flotilla of craft which made its way out to the Dolphin indicated these doubts and hesitations very clearly: some boats were loaded with produce. Others bore a cargo of young women, who ‘made all the wanton gestures that can be conceived’. But a third of the fleet was loaded with stones. An initial attempt at long-distance parley failed. Dolphin was subjected to a hail of missiles. Other well-armed canoes quickly paddled out to the anchorage. The local chief came forth in his own impressive barge. Soon Wallis’s men reckoned they could count about 300 boats and 2000 men, rapidly closing on their ship. Wallis had no alternative but to order a salvo. One shot, more by luck than judgement, swamped the chief’s canoe. The Tahitians rapidly withdrew.
It took a few days for Wallis to persuade the islanders that he came in friendship but once they understood this, their eagerness to trade knew no bounds. They were desperate for iron, which they could turn into tools or, more likely, weapons and were willing to give anything in exchange for nails, pots and implements. Soon the visitors were living sumptuously on fruit, vegetables, and the meat of fowls and pigs. But it was not only food that the Polynesians had to offer. As had been noticed at the first encounter, many y
oung women (doubtless egged on by their seniors) were prepared to offer sexual favours in return for much-prized metal. The sailors, of course, entered readily into this commerce – too readily. Those who had no iron goods to offer took to stealing tools and prising nails from various parts of the ship. As a result there was a breakdown in discipline which almost led to mutiny. Wallis tried without success to track down the culprits. He became frustrated and angry and the men grew surly at repeated questioning. Worse was to follow. The insatiable sailors began defrauding their bedfellows by such tricks as paying them with lead cut to resemble nails. This threatened the good relations Wallis’s officers were carefully building up with the Tahitians. On the other hand, when culprits were caught and publicly punished, the whole crew felt humiliated and resentful. After about three weeks the situation was getting out of hand and Wallis seemed unable to bring it under control.
... it was discovered that Francis Pinckney, one of the seamen, had drawn the cleats to which the main sheet was belayed, and, after stealing the spikes, thrown them over-board. Having secured the offender, I called all the people together upon the deck, and after taking some pains to explain his crime, with all its aggravations, I ordered that he should be whipped with nettles while he ran the gauntlet thrice round the deck: my rhetoric, however, had very little effect, for most of the crew being equally criminal with himself, he was handled so tenderly, that others were rather encouraged to repeat the offence by the hope of impunity, than deterred by the fear of punishment. To preserve the ship, therefore, from being pulled to pieces, and the price of refreshments from being raised so high as soon to exhaust our articles of trade, I ordered that no man, except the wooders and waterers, with their guard, should be permitted to go on shore.25
Wallis now decided to make haste to quit the island. A week later (27 July), having thoroughly overhauled the ship and filled her with all the water and fresh food she could hold, he gave the order to weigh anchor. Dolphin pulled away from the shore amidst manifestations of great distress from the natives. Their feelings were, no doubt, echoed by many aboard.
Wallis could well feel pleased with the progress of the expedition. He had added considerable information to the Pacific chart. Not by nature an explorer, he doubtless felt that he had done all his superiors required of him. Accordingly, he set course for the Marianas and the conventional route home. But, because the course he was following lay for the most part to the south of that followed by earlier expeditions, he was able to put several more island discoveries on the chart before he arrived at Tinian on 19 August. By this time most of his men had recovered and a month spent completing their recuperation and restocking the larder enabled him to leave with a healthy ship.
Batavia changed all that. Though Wallis kept his visit as short as possible, forty of his men went down with smallpox and dysentery. Many died. Others were unfit for duty on the Indian Ocean crossing. So the Dolphin was obliged to spend a month at Table Bay while the crew once more came up to strength. She finally reached the Downs on 18 May 1768 after a circumnavigation of one year and nine months.
When Wallis set foot on English soil Carteret was still in Celebes, having endured an eight-month Pacific crossing and become embroiled in an angry dispute with Dutch colonial officials. The points of interest about the Swallow’s laboured passage around the world concern the character of Carteret and his contribution to the exploration of the random scattering of Pacific islands.
He was already a bitter man when he left the Patagonian coast. He believed himself to be the victim of a conspiracy which had condemned him to cross the wide ocean with an unsuitable ship and an inadequate crew. He recorded in his journal that for some days his men fully expected to come upon the Dolphin searching for her consort but that he laboured under no such delusion. Yet, angry and frustrated though Carteret was, he never once thought of turning back. He was determined to show the Admiralty and Wallis and anyone else who despised the Swallow and her mariners that they could accomplish what supposedly ‘better’ ships and men could not. There was more of the committed explorer in Carteret than in either Byron or Wallis. Yet even he was to be frustrated by the prevailing winds of the South Sea and the need to seek out supplies of fresh food and water.
His first disappointment came at Juan Fernandez. He made straight for this delectable island from Cape Pilar with the intention of making a leisurely stay there to prepare his ship and crew for the Pacific crossing. For three weeks the little Swallow battled her way towards this haven through hideous seas which gave her a chance to reveal her more impressive qualities.
. . . about 5 o’clock, the wind all of a sudden shifted from NW, to SW, and for the space of about an hour, it blew, I think stronger than ever I had seen it at sea. This wind made that the ship come up with her head, right against this great and mighty sea, which the NW wind had raised. It was now, I thought all our masts would have been carried away, and at that instant, I would willingly have compounded with the loss of the topmasts, (to have insured the lower ones) to have eased the ship, which I was much afraid would have foundered, for at every pitch she made, against this terrible high sea, it was with the end of her bowsprit under water, over which (and the forecastle) these mighty great seas broke in as far aft, as the main mast, and as if it had been over a rock; so that we were quite under water, and had not the ship been an extraordinary good sea boat (which was the only good quality she had) she could never have outlived this storm ... it was really wonderful, how well this little vessel rose and cleared herself, from these high mountainous seas, which broke so furiously, occasioned by the sudden shifting of the wind, from one quarter of the compass to the other, without ceasing blowing with the same violence, that no canvas could withstand its force. Notwithstanding this was a fair wind, yet I did not dare to put the ship before the wind, for to make use of it; for if in wearing, any of those raging mountainous seas had broke on her side, it unavoidably would have carried all away before it and would probably have been of the most fatal consequence.26
Having survived such appalling conditions Carteret and his men thankfully reached Juan Fernandez on 10 May. But relief turned to frustration as they approached the main anchorage of Cumberland Bay:
I was not a little surprised to observe a great number of men all about the beach, with a house and four pieces of cannon over the waterside with two large boats lying off of it, a fort about two or three hundred yards up on the rising of the hill and on which they hoisted Spanish colours . . .27
Unknown to any of her European neighbours, Spain, alarmed by news that Anson had projected an English colony on Juan Fernandez, had settled the island in 1749. Despite the expense and the almost complete destruction of the settlement by earth-quake in 1751, the Spaniards had been driven by English activity in the Falklands and the Pacific to maintain a garrison. It now proved its worth, for Carteret was forced to retreat and make for the only other port of call, the rocky island of Más Afuera. Here he fared little better than on the previous occasion when he had stopped there with Byron. There was no safe anchorage and getting watering parties ashore through squalls and breakers was hazardous. Three naked sailors had a particularly uncomfortable time. They were stranded on a tiny beach when their boat was forced to withdraw by a sudden storm. With no shelter of any kind they survived the night by taking it in turns to lie on top of each other. Next morning, because there was no way to reach the main camp by land, they had to swim out through the surf, risking rocks and sharks, in order to reach their companions who had a tent and could share their clothes with them. Carteret regarded it as a miracle that he lost no men or boats during the two weeks he spent at Más Afuera. Storms were severe and intermittent, blowing up with great suddenness and every trip ashore was fraught with danger. When, on 31 May, the Swallow weighed anchor she had still only replenished some of her water casks. Apart from a few birds and fish, this was all the succour she obtained from Más Afuera.
Carteret hoped to strike out westwards and cross the ocean
in a more southerly latitude than any captain had attempted before. But this was no more possible for him than it had been for his predecessors. The prevailing winds simply did not allow of an east-west crossing between Chile and New Zealand. Carteret was forced to sail northwards in search of the trade winds. He found them just south of the tropics, and, turning westward followed a course which was at times more than five hundred miles to the south of that followed by Wallis. This proved to be another misfortune. In conscientiously attempting to chart unknown regions Carteret missed Tahiti and other islands where he could have gained refreshment. He discovered lonely Pitcairn and described it with some justification as ‘scarce better than a large rock in the ocean’.28 (He never knew that his description of this forested isle far distant from any inhabited land would commend it to Fletcher Christian and the Bounty mutineers twenty-three years later, when they were looking for somewhere to hide.) Swallow encountered some of the outlying, barren islets of the Tuamotu archipelago but her crew found no evidence of a continent or even some of the islands marked on earlier charts.
After six weeks, Carteret had to bow to necessity:
The ship’s company growing sickly, the scurvy making great progress among them, and seeing that in spite of all endeavours we could not keep in any high south latitude . . . that, from the badness of the weather, variableness of the winds and ill sailing of the ship, I advanced and made but slow progress on the voyage, it was now absolutely necessary to fix on some determined point for the future safety of the ship and crew ... in consequence of the above said reason and circumstances, I bore away to the northward and got into the strong trade wind, keeping in such track as I was made by the charts to hope I should meet with some island from which I flattered myself I should procure some refreshments.29