Captain Cook's Apprentice

by Anthony Hill

  Don’t give way to thy fancies!

  There was another small opening in the reef. Lieutenant Hicks went ahead this time, and returned with news of a slight – but possible – chance.

  A light breeze sprang up. Ebb tide turned to flood, and Endeavour set her bows to the gap. The towboats showed the way, and the sweeps kept her steady astern as she approached the narrow channel, and was caught by the inflowing current. With a rush the ship was swept through, as if down a millrace, and came to anchor in nineteen fathoms of still, beryl-green waters inside the reef.

  Providential Channel, the Captain called it. And rightly so. Two days earlier Isaac and the entire ship’s company had cheered to get clear of the shoals. Now, they praised heaven they were back among them. Saved by the breadth of one wave.

  The ship moored for nearly twenty-four hours to repair the pinnace, to fish, and to let the nervous energies of all aboard recover. Then, for another four days, it was back to the old work: groping their way through a treacherous sea and the labyrinth of reefs and islets – one of which, many years later, would come to bear Isaac Manley’s name.

  They anchored every night. At the map table, the spider line on the Captain’s chart was growing longer, enclosing the shape of New Holland within its web, as the eastern seaboard narrowed towards that place the Dutchmen Jansz, Carstensz and Tasman had explored and named Carpentaria. Until, on the morning of 22 August, they saw that the mainland ended in a number of islands. Cook had reached the northern cape, which he named for the Duke of York. He had rediscovered Torres Strait for the Europeans.

  Later that afternoon Endeavour anchored off a small island at the entrance to a channel on the western side. It seemed to lead to the open sea and a route to Batavia in the East Indies. The Captain wanted to get there soon, for supplies were low and the ship was taking water again. But there was one thing more to do.

  Several Aborigines were seen on the beach as the longboat came in: most of them naked and armed with spears as the people of Botany Bay and Endeavour River. But one man carried a bow and arrows – like the warriors of the Pacific islands – which the voyagers had not seen here before. The natives didn’t oppose Cook, however, but disappeared into the scrub as he landed.

  The Endeavour men climbed a small hill to spy out the channel: Cook named this Endeavour Strait. Once satisfied, the Captain ran up the Union Jack; fired three musket volleys, answered by three from the ship; and took possession of the eastern coast of New Holland for King George by the name of . . .

  What would he call it? He did not of course consult the inhabitants about their name for this land, though in some ways it seemed to Cook the Aborigines were far happier than Europeans. They might appear ‘the most wretched people on Earth’ he wrote, but really they lived in tranquillity, where land and sea provided the necessities of life, and were wholly unacquainted with the superfluous luxuries so sought in Europe. Now he claimed their country for the King . . .

  The Captain tried several alternatives of his own, but crossed them out in his journal. New Zealand . . . New Holland . . . New Guinea . . . New Britain . . . were already on the maps. New Wales? Perhaps. But it didn’t sound quite right.

  After many weeks and much thought, Cook inserted ‘. . . by the name of New South Wales.’

  Much better. And thus another phrase of three short words, redolent with their later histories, entered the language.

  12

  DEAD MEN’S CLOTHES

  Java, August 1770 to February 1771

  Freed at last from the clutches of the reef, Endeavour plunged full of confidence into the open sea. Isaac stood with Young Nick on the foredeck, faces whooping to the wind, as the ship surged, rejoicing with deep, safe water beneath her.

  They were out of danger! They were going home! Just a short sail from Possession Island off Cape York to the shipyards at Batavia. A few repairs to Endeavour’s leaks. And then . . . what tales they’d tell of adventure in the far South Seas when they walked the streets of London again arrayed in robes of triumph!

  If only the boys had known they’d come wearing dead men’s clothes, for greater perils than the reef still lay ahead of them. If only their Captain knew how damaged his ship really was. Her keel torn; teredo worm in her timbers; two bottom planks almost sawn through by the coral. It was a wonder Endeavour hadn’t broken up beneath them already. But happy in their ignorance, the voyagers pitched into the Arafura Sea – and even detoured out of curiosity to see something of New Guinea.

  The coastal waters were shallow, however. The pinnace only made one brief landing: and then the gentlemen had to wade two hundred yards ashore. They had time, like Robinson Crusoe, to see a human footprint in the sand, and look at the coconuts, before they were attacked and chased back to the boat by armed warriors.

  They left New Guinea alone after that. Besides, the Dutch and Portuguese had already explored these parts, and after two years away almost everyone aboard Endeavour was yearning for home. Even Mr Banks started to calculate the distance to Old England and fame.

  So Cook set his course for Java, for men were also feeling the want of fresh food. They hooked a couple of sharks, which Henry Jeffs butchered and one-handed John Thompson turned into a stew. Everybody ate it with gusto – a far cry from those early days when old Ravenhill had warned against ‘man-eaters’ as vittles.

  ‘We’ve met real cannibals in New Zealand,’ Isaac whispered to Nick, and the whole mess table sniggered.

  Supplies remained a problem for the few who were sick. Tupaia, after so long on a ship’s diet, was constantly ill – and began to irritate everyone with his complaints and demands. He even abused Taiata, when the boy was himself suffering. Astronomer Green had long fought symptoms of scurvy, which he exacerbated by drinking more heavily than usual: but then, most of them did, overcome with fatigue or homesickness. Isaac more than once had to help a drunken Molineux into bed.

  ‘By the mark . . . shoal water. Eh, boy?’

  A hungover steersman one afternoon set the ship on a wrong tack and the sheet lines, which held the corners of the sails, went slack so that the canvas flapped uselessly about.

  ‘Look at ’im!’ Young Nick nudged Isaac in the ribs. ‘Letting the ship drift like that, three sheets in the wind, just like them boozy tars down below.’

  Nick was calling himself a ‘tar’ now, letting his hair grow long like the adult sailors, with a pigtail plaited and dabbed with tar to keep it in place. Isaac had a plait too – but without the tar. Mother wouldn’t have liked it.

  Endeavour passed Timor, but when the ship reached the small, fertile island of Savu, the temptation to go ashore could not be resisted. Lieutenant Gore was sent ahead, and returned with word of safe anchorage. The local chief or rajah was hospitable. He gave the gentlemen and officers a feast of pork and rice (with enough left over for Isaac and the other servants), and offered to sell them buffaloes if the Dutch Governor agreed.

  The Governor was willing – at a steep price. But when Sydney Parkinson innocently asked if any cloves or nutmegs grew on Savu, the Dutch became very defensive about ‘their’ spice islands and tried to stop trade altogether. Only when Captain Cook presented an old broadsword to the rajah, who began waving it at the native troops, did business resume: and Endeavour left Savu with nine buffaloes, a crate of fowls, and a stock of sweet palm wine syrup.

  Thus provisioned they ran with the trade winds, fragrant with cinnamon, until they reached the southern shores of Java. And just before sighting Java Head on 1 October, the Captain collected their logbooks and journals, and swore everyone to silence.

  ‘The right of our discoveries belongs to King George,’ he said. ‘But the Dutch are suspicious. If they hear we’ve been to New Zealand and New Holland, they might well make claims of their own, and detain us at Batavia longer than I wish.’

  ‘And those of us who were there with the Dolphin know that Batavia is not a place to stay a moment longer than necessary,’ remarked Dick Pickersgill.

&n
bsp; To which Molineux added, ‘The air is most unwholesome, and the people sickly with fever. The only way to survive is to lay in a plentiful store of arrack liquor.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Isaac.

  ‘Rather formidable native spirits, boyo,’ said Francis Wilkinson, ‘made from palm or rice wine.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ cheeked Young Nick. ‘More sheets in the wind.’

  ‘Aye, and we are mostly in the pink of good health,’ observed Cook. ‘I hope to repair Endeavour and leave as soon as possible. Meantime, say nowt to anybody.’

  They saw Princes Island, lying like a pulled tooth at the entrance to Sunda Strait. Before making the passage, a boat went ashore to get fresh coconuts for Tupaia and feed for the buffaloes. Endeavour was hailed by several Dutch ships. Zachary Hicks, who went aboard, was circumspect – saying only that they’d come ‘from Europe’. Yet he returned with much news of his own. ‘They tell me that Captain Carteret in the Swallow called at Batavia nigh two years ago!’ he exclaimed to cheers in the wardroom.

  The Swallow had sailed in company with Captain Wallis and the Dolphin in ’66; but the ships had become separated off Cape Horn, and Swallow was feared lost. Now, the Dolphin men who knew her – Molineux, Gore, Pickersgill and Wilkinson – celebrated to think she’d survived.

  ‘Why, she might have reached home!’ cried Robert Molineux. ‘Come Isaac, bring another bottle to drink her health!’

  Swallow did get safely home, six months after Endeavour left England. And Mr Hicks brought other news. The American colonists were refusing to pay their taxes, and King George was proposing to send a force to suppress the rebels. It was the first time that Isaac – or any of them – got wind of the conflict in which, years later, he would serve as a Lieutenant and be promoted to command his own ship.

  Endeavour spent the best part of a week making her way along the north Java coast, until she came to anchor in Batavia roads – the city’s outer harbour – on 10 October. Where they discovered it was actually 11 October.

  ‘Why the difference?’ Isaac wondered.

  ‘We forgot,’ explained Mr Molineux. ‘Sailing westward around the world we gained an extra day.’

  After paying his respects to the Governor-General, Cook sought leave to have Endeavour properly heaved down in dry dock.

  The Dutch were everything the Portuguese authorities at Rio were not. Permission was readily given to repair the ship in the yards at Onrust Island across the bay. Fresh supplies were sent aboard, including a cask of arrack. It went down a treat as Molineux foretold, and they later took on a hundred and fifty gallons more.

  The Indies were heading into the rainy season, and as a precaution Cook had the crew attach a lightning chain to the masthead. It was as well he did, for an electrical flash split the topmast of a Dutch ship, and one night Endeavour was shaken by a thunderbolt. Isaac later came to see it as a premonition – a warning of what was to happen: though at the time Batavia seemed to promise all they wanted.

  A vessel was about to sail for Holland, so Cook wrote a brief letter to Secretary Stephens, informing of their safe arrival. Also at anchor were three British ships, and his crew had much joy drinking with their fellow jack tars again.

  It was impossible not to say something over the arrack of the Venuses at Tahiti or the terrors of the reef. But what struck Isaac and all Endeavour men was the pallid, spectral look of the sailors – and of every other European they saw at Batavia.

  ‘Look at us, hale and bonny after two years at sea!’ Nick jeered. ‘But you’re as thin and white as ghosts, like dead men waiting for your shrouds.’

  ‘Fever,’ they replied in mournful voices. ‘The ague. This place be rife with it, mates. Stay here too long, and ye’ll be haunted by it y’rselves.’

  It seemed nonsense to Nick and young Isaac. True, the night breeze carried foul smells and mosquitoes from mangrove swamps along the coast. But apart from Mr Green, Lieutenant Hicks was the only crewman who ailed, and he was allowed to take quarters in Batavia. Mr Banks and Dr Solander also took lodgings with their servants, and soon sent for Tupaia and Taiata to join them.

  The Tahitians revelled in their first experience of a town. They wandered amazed among crowds on paved streets beside broad canals, staring at fine churches, mosques and pagodas. Taiata trotted with delight beside small horse-drawn carriages, stopping outside rich shops and houses. People riding animals! Never had the boy imagined it! He stood marvelling with Tupaia at the fortress guarding the entrance to the canal. No marae was ever built like this!

  Such a variety of people and costumes! Wealthy Europeans in velvet brocades and full powdered wigs. Chinese merchants, clothed in white taffeta. Javanese artisans and Malay slaves in sarongs and coloured cotton shirts. Tupaia insisted that he, too, appear in proper Tahitian dress, and a length of tapa cloth was sent ashore from Endeavour.

  Thus attired, Tupaia was walking with Mr Banks one day when he was stopped by a man who came running from his house to ask the priest if he’d not been in Batavia before.

  ‘No, sir, he has not,’ Banks replied. ‘Why so odd a question?’

  It turned out that, some eighteen months earlier, the French commander de Bougainville had been in Batavia with his two ships. On board was a Tahitian man, Aotourou, who appeared very similar to Tupaia.

  ‘I mistook your Indian for him, sir,’ the Dutchman responded. ‘I do apologise.’

  At least it explained the mystery of the strange ships that had visited Tahiti before Cook. And it gave the Captain something else to think about as he wrote a longer report for the Admiralty, to be sent with a copy of his charts and journal by the next ship to Europe. The French were busy in the Pacific, too! Their Lordships would be most interested.

  Cook was modest enough about his own achievements. Altho’ the discoveries made in this Voyage are not great . . . Their Lordships’ heads must have been spinning when they looked at his work for the first time. Yes, and read that no one, other than Forby Sutherland, had died of sickness during the voyage. In that, however, James Cook spoke too soon.

  They had to wait two weeks before bringing Endeavour alongside the Coopers Island wharf. Stores were unloaded; tents pitched for the crew; topmasts and rigging taken down. There were further delays before the ship moved to the careening yards at Onrust. Still . . . all seemed well.

  But Batavia deserved her reputation as one of the unhealthiest places in the East. The Dutch may have built the town with pristine memories of Holland, yet into its canals the citizens poured all their filth. Human excrement, garbage, offal, even dead animals were tipped into waterways which became like cesspits, choked with silt. They constantly had to be dredged, and the black, oozing muck was piled in heaps to dry, before being carted off.

  The stench in the monsoonal heat was appalling. It hung over Batavia like a sickening vapour – a miasma – that everyone thought was the cause of disease. Mosquitoes swarmed in stagnant backwaters, attacking soft human flesh by night.

  Malarial fever quickly spread. Every year, some three thousand people died of it – mainly Europeans who had no immunity, half of them within twelve months of their arrival.

  No wonder they had a spectral look. And no wonder that, within a fortnight, Endeavour men also began to sicken.

  Dr Monkhouse, at his quarters in town, was the first to suffer. Then Taiata and Tupaia became ill: seized with a sudden shaking cold, followed by violent sweating that lasted for hours. They seemed to improve for a day or two. But the fever returned, and Tupaia pleaded to be taken back to the ship.

  ‘I do not think a town is good for Tahitian people,’ he said. ‘We need to breathe fresh winds blowing off the sea.’

  So Joseph Banks took them out to Cooper’s Island, and pitched a tent near the Endeavour crew. Tupaia seemed happier, as if he could sense faint perfumes borne from Ra’iatea to the east. Better in mind but not in body, for fever recurred to grip him and Taiata, as it did young Isaac Manley.

  He was in the tent, writing
a letter home. ‘Dear Mamma and Papa, I trust this finds you well as it leaves me . . .’ But Isaac hadn’t got far when he realised that he wasn’t very well at all. His head began to throb. The lines on the page blurred, the ink turned into dark pools, and his words lost all meaning.

  He was cramped, and every limb felt as if it had turned to lead. Isaac lay in his hammock for days, alternately shivering and burning. His letter had fallen to the ground and was trampled into the mud, unfinished and forgotten, until at last it blew into the sea and was lost.

  Isaac wasn’t alone. Almost every voyager was struck by malaria. Even Mr Banks was seized with such pain at his lodgings he could barely crawl downstairs.

  His people were bled by physicians, trying to rid the body of malignant humours: purged with strong emetics, and their skin blistered with a hot glass. Banks was fortunate to have with him some bark of the South American cinchona tree, known as a remedy for the ague, when drunk as an infusion like tea. Others were not so lucky. Dr Monkhouse grew worse: and even as Endeavour was taken to Onrust in early November, the ship’s surgeon died and was buried at Batavia.

  He was succeeded by his assistant, William Perry, only in his early twenties, and barely able to cope with the number of sick. Nick Young was appointed his servant – the lad’s first proper job on Endeavour’s muster book. Apprentice to the doctor. In truth, with nearly all her crew ill, those between bouts of fever did what they could to nurse their fellows. Some days there were not twenty men fit for duty. And when the full extent of the damage to the ship’s keel was revealed, the Captain was glad to let the skilled Onrust workmen do the repairs. His own crew were just too sick . . .