by Anthony Hill
He could not have known it then, but Cook would return to this place on each of his three voyages to the Pacific. It became his favourite anchorage: a beautiful, sheltered sound of grey-green islands and inlets, like the lochs of Scotland. Every morning Isaac was woken by bellbirds, korimako, their silver voices chiming across the water. Nature seeming at her most peaceful and benign . . .
Endeavour was hauled into the shallows and careened: her bottom scrubbed of barnacles and weed, and painted with pitch. With other crew gathering wood, water and celery grass, Cook and the gentlemen went off in the pinnace to visit a nearby cove. They hadn’t gone far when they saw a woman’s body floating in the water.
‘She’s been dead for several days,’ remarked Dr Solander.
‘Drowned, I’d say,’ agreed surgeon Monkhouse. ‘I see no other wounds on her.’
They left the corpse and rowed ashore, where a fire was burning and a Maori family were preparing their meal. The people ran into the woods as the pinnace beached; but Tupaia called, and all except a boy and an old man crept back to the camp.
A small South Sea dog was cooking in the earth oven, with food baskets close by. Casually looking into one of them, Mr Banks was astonished to find, among the fish and fern roots, two meat bones that were clearly a human arm – both roasted and the flesh picked pretty clean.
‘What are these?’ he exclaimed, through Tupaia.
‘A man.’
‘You’ve eaten him?’
‘Yes. Strangers from across the bay paddled by some days ago. We killed five, but two got away and drowned.’
‘We saw a dead woman floating off shore.’
‘No, not her. She was our relative, who died.’
‘Why didn’t you eat her?’
‘We don’t eat friends! Only enemies. It’s the worst insult we can give them.’
News of this grisly discovery caused horror when it was narrated on the mess deck – and also fascination, especially among the boys.
‘Why can’t we see a cannibal feast?’ complained Nick.
He was not denied for long.
Next morning, old Topaa came alongside. He was still in good humour; and having heard of the Pakeha’s interest in his people’s dietary habits, had brought along the cooked forearm of one of those killed a few days before.
Isaac and Nick leaned over the rail with the others, eyes and mouths hanging loose, as Topaa gnawed the bone.
‘That is a dreadful thing to do!’ cried Tupaia, shocked at his fellow Polynesian. While human sacrifice occurred at Tahiti, the victims were not actually eaten. ‘It’s horrible!’
‘No, no, it’s very good!’ And Topaa drew the arm through his mouth and smacked his lips at the morsel, as Isaac had sucked many a marrowbone.
‘But that can’t be a man! It’s a dog,’ Taiata teased.
‘Don’t be foolish, boy! Look!’
The old man handed the bone to a companion, held up his own forearm to the audience, and made a pantomime show of eating it.
‘See. It’s excellent eating. The soft upper arm muscles are best!’
Isaac felt ill. He’d heard enough. But it wasn’t sufficient for Banks, whose acquisitive mind always wanted more.
‘But how can we believe you?’ he had Tupaia ask. ‘Where are the heads?’
‘I don’t have any with me. Heads are precious.’
‘We’d like to see them.’
‘Very well. I will bring some heads to you.’
It was a few days before Topaa returned, for the cycle of death and revenge demanded constant vigilance. A woman in his canoe was cutting herself with shells and weeping for her husband, only recently consumed by enemies. And Topaa’s people were alert, the pa on its rock in readiness, in case the clan from across the bay came seeking vengeance for the man whose bones he’d just been chewing.
Still, there came a morning when Topaa climbed aboard with a basket, from which he took four freshly dried heads and displayed them to the hypnotic gaze of Endeavour’s crew. Three were tattooed adults. The fourth was a boy, only Isaac’s age, who’d been killed with a patu blow to his temple.
Isaac turned away at the sight of it, his mind beset with images of the fear this lad must have known before his death. Why such violence everywhere? Nick Young was much cooler, content to observe the way things are. So was the indefatigable Mr Banks, who no sooner saw the heads than he wanted to buy one.
‘Look . . . tapa cloth . . . paper . . . iron nails . . .’
But Topaa was not interested. ‘The heads are my treasures, and not for sale.’
Banks had Jim Roberts fetch some clothes.
‘I will give you a flannel vest . . . silk stockings . . . my second-best waistcoat . . .’
Topaa was unmoved.
‘I do not want these things . . . but what is that?’
‘A pair of my white linen under-drawers.’
‘What do you do with them?’
‘I wear them beneath my breeches, next to the skin.’
‘I will exchange the boy’s head for your under-drawers.’
‘His skull is broken from the patu blow.’
‘That is why I will trade it – yes, or no?’
Mr Banks handed over his drawers. Even then, Topaa was reluctant to part with the skull, until it was clear he’d otherwise have to return the garment. So he went back to his pa the richer for possessing some English underwear. Joseph Banks had the boy’s head carried to his cabin.
Isaac lay awake through the night, much troubled by the murdered lad whose head was preserved aboard Endeavour in a pickling jar among the thousands of fish, beetles, plants, animals and interesting rocks collected as so many scientific specimens.
Proof of cannibalism introduced a new element of tension among Endeavour’s crew. Some became quite jumpy. Mr Molineux, out fishing with his petty officers, fired on two canoes which appeared when he trespassed too close to Motuara – wounding several Maori, and perhaps even killing one man.
‘I thought we might have been under attack,’ the Master explained, not very convincingly.
But fears of dismemberment didn’t inhibit other men’s morbid curiosity, and Topaa’s people willingly traded human bones for ribbons and beads, though Isaac declined a souvenir. Indeed, the Iwi were friendly and hospitable throughout Endeavour’s visit, and Cook made his own expeditions without any concerns for his personal safety.
It was on such a day that he climbed a tall hill with just one companion. And looking seawards, he saw what seemed to be a strait flowing from the eastern ocean to the west coast. Was the ‘continent’ of New Zealand, then, an island? The Captain looked again on this strait, which was to bear his name, from another mount a few days later. He built a stone cairn, containing some musket balls and lead pellets, to tell other Europeans he’d been there first.
To reinforce his credentials, Cook had the carpenter, John Satterley, make two posts carved with Endeavour’s name and the date. The first was set up with a Union Jack on the beach at the watering cove; the other, he took across to Motuara, and sought Topaa’s permission to erect it on the highest point of the island.
The old ariki readily agreed and promised never to pull the sign down. In return for which, he and his senior men were given silver threepences struck with the king’s head, and some iron spikes marked with the government’s broad arrow.
They went up to the summit together for the ceremony. The sign-post was erected; the flag raised; the adjacent lands claimed for King George; the sound named for Queen Charlotte; and their Majesties’ health was drunk with a bottle of wine. The empty bottle was given to Topaa, who kept it as another treasure. And he confirmed what Captain Cook had begun to suspect.
‘Yes, Toote, there are three whenuas – three lands. Two, on this side of the water, you can sail around in maybe four days.’
‘What do you call them?’ the Captain asked.
‘The largest is Te Wai Pounamu . . . Greenstone Waters, for here the Iwi come to collect pre
cious pounamu from the rivers to make adzes, axes, and adornments.’
‘And the island over there?’ Cook pointed across the strait.
‘We call that Te Ahi no Maui . . . Maui’s Fire . . . to honour the volcanoes.’
‘I have heard Tupaia speak of Maui – the god who fished New Zealand from the sea with his magic fish hook.’
‘That is so. The land on this side is sometimes called Maui’s Canoe. There are many stories . . . Has the priest told you of our ancestor, Kupe?’
‘Who brought the people in his great waka from the homeland.’
‘The same. This sound, which you have named for your Queen Harlotte, was made by Kupe. He was chasing a giant octopus across the ocean and caught it in the strait here. He speared it. And as the octopus lay thrashing in its death throes, his tentacles made all these deep bays and inlets. The octopus is still here. See . . . those two little islands at the entrance are his eyes.’
Land and sea can be read in all kinds of ways. And those who claim to discover new countries are never the first to find them. The Polynesians were settling the Pacific when Englishmen were still shore-bound in wicker coracles. Tasman came to New Zealand before Cook. And before that . . . Topaa hinted at Portuguese or Spanish ships whose crews had perished in this very sound.
Unseasonable weather kept Endeavour harboured longer than Cook intended. It wasn’t until 5 February that they warped into the strait, and ran eastward to the Pacific Ocean. The Captain was content that New Zealand was indeed several islands, but his officers demurred.
‘The continent might extend south-east, suh, from that point we named Cape Turnagain,’ observed Lieutenant Gore.
‘But I estimate it’s only forty leagues to our north,’ replied Cook.
‘It is possible, sir,’ Zachary Hicks added his objection.
‘Very well, gentlemen. Never let it be said I failed to resolve such an important question. We’ll take advantage of a shift in the wind and set our course northward, if you please.’
Two days later they saw a familiar landmark.
‘Cape Turnagain,’ said the Captain on his quarterdeck, viewing the land through his spyglass. ‘Are you satisfied gentlemen?’
‘Aye, sir. We are.’
Having thus circumnavigated the north island, the ship bore about; and passing the entrance to Cook Strait again, they headed south to explore the island of which Topaa had spoken. But the Captain had misunderstood him, because it took much longer than four days to sail around it. In fact they were at sea for three weeks, and still the eastern seaboard extended off the starboard bow.
The country here lifted into high mountains topped with snow; and judging by the fewer smokes seen ashore, it seemed to Issac less populated than the warmer north. The coast was broken into many bays, but they made no landings. And however careful the Captain was with his charting, some things he mistook altogether. An ‘island’ he named after Joseph Banks turned out to be a peninsula – as a ‘promontory’ was later discovered to be an island. While Cook got the longitude of North Cape almost exact, he was nearly half a degree out in his reading of the south island.
But for this, the Captain and astronomer Green could not be entirely blamed. Endeavour was hit by gales that blew her from sight of land for days on end, and the observations needed to fix longitude were difficult enough at the best of times, let alone on a storm-blown deck.
If this was true for a master navigator like Cook, how much more so for a lad such as Isaac! He was becoming better at reading the sun with his sextant at midday to establish latitude. But longitude . . . that involved taking ‘lunars’ and understanding the great clock of the heavens. You had to measure the angle between the moon and sun by day, or between the moon and certain known stars at night. You then had to calculate what that angle would be if observed at the same time from Greenwich. The difference between the two gave your longitude east or west of the prime meridian.
The mathematics were horrible! Many a time did young Master Manley wish he’d taken more notice of his tutor in the schoolroom. To be sure, the Astronomer Royal had published tables to help until the end of 1769. After that, each calculation could take four hours to complete; and as he sat agonising over his logarithms in the mess, Isaac wondered if he’d ever understand them.
Some days he appeared to be just off the coast of South America – and on others, near Tahiti: but that may have been wishful thinking. At such times Isaac would unwrap Heimata’s pearl and, holding it to the lantern, fancy he could see her face in its soft translucence – until Nick Young came and bumped his elbow, laughed, and told him to get on with his sums!
As it happened, the answer to the longitude problem had already been found. The Yorkshireman John Harrison had invented his chronometer: not much larger than a pocket watch, and able to keep almost perfect time, even in the roughest weather. You can take a reading anywhere on the globe and know exactly what the time is at Greenwich. Every hour’s difference is fifteen degrees of longitude.
There was no chronometer on Endeavour, for the astronomers were still insisting on ‘lunars’. Cook didn’t have a chronometer until his next voyage – on Resolution. But its accuracy proved its worth to the world. ‘Our trusty friend,’ Cook called it. And so it became: the seaman’s dearest companion. As for Endeavour . . . the wonder is not that Cook was slightly wrong about New Zealand’s position, but that he was so very nearly correct.
The land continued to fall away southwards, and the few on board who still believed they’d found a continent – among whom was Mr Banks – took heart. They even celebrated a birthday by having Isaac serve them dog pie, a fair indication of how far their minds and stomachs had travelled since leaving Plymouth.
But then the coast trended west; and sailing wide to avoid dangerous rocks, Endeavour rounded the southern point of land and, as March gathered apace, turned her head to the north.
‘It’s the total demolition of my airy fabric called continent,’ Joseph Banks admitted. ‘New Zealand is undoubtedly two large islands.’
‘I shouldn’t be too dismayed.’ The Captain, born the son of a farmhand, sought to console the gentleman he now counted as a friend. ‘A continent might well exist: but if so, ’twould be so far south as to be near Antarctic regions and uninhabitable by mankind.’
Time was to prove him correct in this, too. For certainly the heavy south-west swell spoke of no great landmass nearby, and with favouring winds behind her Endeavour made steady progress up the west coast. But this very fact led to some strain in the friendship between Cook and Banks.
Huge alpine peaks rose from the sea, covered with snow and glaciers, carving the land into fiords, like Norway.
‘So wild and romantic!’ exclaimed Sydney Parkinson, drawing pencil in hand. His mentor, Joseph Banks, agreed, and desperately wanted to sail into one of these fiords to explore for minerals. The Captain refused.
‘I understand your desire, Mr Banks. Yet once into such land-locked sounds, the prevailing southerlies could take us a month to get out again.’
‘I’ve put up five thousand pounds to pay for this expedition.’
‘That’s so. And it’s my duty to get you safe home again.’
‘Who knows what valuable discoveries we may be passing? I insist!’
‘Nay sir, you may not insist. I am the Captain of this ship, and I will decide.’
‘But . . .’
‘We will continue our present course.’
For the Captain’s mind was beginning to turn to other objectives, which he was not quite ready to reveal. And he could not countenance another month’s delay.
Even so, it took a fortnight of foul winds and fog before the ship passed through the western entrance of Cook Strait again to complete her circumnavigation of the south island. They didn’t return to Cannibal Bay, but anchored outside the Sound not far from what Tasman had graphically called ‘Murderer’s Bay’ on his chart. With Endeavour’s crew ashore, to wood and water, and gather greenstuff, the
Captain called his officers into the Great Cabin, Isaac pouring the wine, to discuss the matter that exercised his thought.
‘We’ve been away from England for more than eighteen months, gentlemen, and I believe the principal aims of this voyage have been accomplished. It’s time to think about heading for home. The question is, by which route?’
‘What are your views, sir?’ asked Zachary Hicks. His own consumptive coughing was becoming rather worse, and he was in no hurry to return to cold, clammy England.
‘Well, my preference would be to return across the Pacific to Cape Horn at a high latitude, to see if a continent really does exist further to the south.’
‘But we’re heading into winter,’ said Molineux. ‘Endeavour is a tough little ship, but her sails and timbers are in no condition to withstand such a stormy passage at this time of year.’
‘Quite so, Robert. That is our problem.’
‘The simplest thing would be to sail south below Van Diemen’s Land,’ said Lieutenant Gore, ‘and make directly for Africa and the Cape of Good Hope.’
‘The same objections apply,’ Molineux reminded them. ‘Besides, the Dutch and Portuguese have explored those waters, and we can make no new discoveries there.’
‘Whereas if we were to head west,’ added Cook, ‘we must eventually fall in with the east coast of New Holland.’
‘The other coasts of that country have largely been mapped,’ remarked Hicks, his enthusiasm beginning to rise. ‘But the eastern coast is a still an empty gap on our charts. No European’s been there, so far as I know, since Tasman.’
‘Such a course would enable us to fill in that blank space,’ said Cook. ‘Not a great discovery, I know, but of some service to navigation and human knowledge.’
‘We could follow the coastline north as far as it goes – perhaps even to New Guinea,’ observed John Gore with some excitement. ‘And return to England by way of the Dutch East Indies.’
‘Precisely. My own thinking, exactly.’
So it was agreed. Mr Banks was happy again. On the last day of March 1770, Endeavour weighed anchor and turned westward. Isaac climbed the shrouds with Nick and Taiata, the boys staring at the green shores of New Zealand until Cape Farewell vanished into the haze.