by Anthony Hill
‘Isaac . . . Issy . . .’ The boy heard Young Nick’s voice through a feverish dream.
‘What is it?’ Isaac sought to rouse himself.
‘It’s Taiata. He’s got worse . . . he says he’s dyin’ . . .’
‘He can’t!’
‘Come and help me . . .’
Nick got Isaac to his feet, and the lads made their way to another tent. It had been raining again, but in the cool dawn there were a few hours respite from the steamy heat. Isaac’s aching body felt some relief – as if this would be a better day.
He would need his strength. For they found Taiata crying out in delirium, ‘Tupaia . . . master . . . save me . . .’ Just as he had done that day he’d been seized at Cape Kidnappers. Then, as now, the boy struggled for his life – floundering in a sea of memory, until he fell back exhausted into the arms of the astronomer, Charles Green.
The man had been close to the boy: had taught him English and even a little science during those long days at sea, when the other lads were about their duties. Now he sponged Taiata’s brow, and encouraged him to drink the medicine Young Nick held to his lips.
‘Laudanum . . . Mr Perry says it will do you good.’
‘Aye, and we’ll soon be out together on the beach again collecting coconuts, as we did at Tahiti. Remember . . .?’
The name conjured such visions of home. Taiata swallowed the opiate, as if the taste of it would carry him there; and for a moment Isaac saw his eyes dance as they had when playing his flute at a heiva.
‘Purea . . . Tutaha . . .’ More names on Taiata’s breath, before the light in his eyes faltered and he sank cold as morning ashes on the straw mattress.
Fever was followed by more chill spasms – and Mr Green, who had been up all night and felt his own ague returning, asked Isaac to hold Taiata for him. So were the sick attended by those in remission. And so Isaac sat during the torrid day: through the boy’s incoherence, and brief moments of lucidity talking in his native tongue . . . Te pohe nei au e tou mau hoa . . .
‘I am dying, my friends.’
‘No, Taiata! Look, here’s Nick with more laudanum. We’ll see Matavai Bay again . . . and the spangled lagoon.’ Yes, and in Isaac’s heart the hope of whole being rose again with remembrance of Heimata, radiant in pearl shell.
‘For you maybe, Tire. Not for me. I wanted to see the world with Tupaia, and tell them all at home. But I will not journey now beyond this place.’
Their tears fell together with the night, and the rain, and the veil on Taiata’s brief sum of years. For the boy died during the dark hours, as Isaac and Nick Young sat watch with him – and travelled with him, too, next day, to a cemetery where they buried prisoners on nearby Eadam Island.
Tupaia was distraught when told of Taiata’s death, for he loved the boy and felt responsible for his passing. The priest had refused all William Perry’s remedies; but now not even the scented winds brought any help for his sickness, or comfort for his sorrow. They made it worse, reminding Tupaia of all he had lost.
He lay in his tent weeping, ‘Taiata! We should never have left our islands with Toote. Oh, Taiata!’
Becoming weaker and more inconsolable, until he was beyond anyone’s help. Two days later Tupaia himself died, and was interred near the boy.
There was little time to mourn them, for others were also dying. Green farewelled Taiata, then buried his own servant, John Reynolds. Tim Reardon went, lamenting his native Cork. Even as the ship was finished and returned to Coopers Island, Cook himself went down with fever.
Here was disaster in the making, for what if the Captain should also succumb? Mr Banks sent what help he could, and Cook slowly recovered his health. It was intermittent, however, like all of them: a day or two of wellness, followed by periods of cold and terrible fever. Sometimes a mere dozen men were able to muster for duty, and the business of reloading the ship was painfully slow.
The only one who showed no symptoms of disease was old John Ravenhill, the sailmaker, who was almost perpetually drunk on arrack. Not that the others were especially sober; but they struggled to carry stores aboard, haggard as the walking dead they’d mocked among their fellow British tars. And the silent dead as well, for two more Endeavour men went to their graves.
It wasn’t until the second week of December that the ship was ready and they stood into Batavia to take on water and fresh supplies. The fourth pump still wasn’t working, and the Captain wanted it repaired before facing the lonely wastes of the Indian Ocean. That took another fortnight: and only on Christmas Day was Mr Cook able to take his leave of the Dutch Governor-General and Council.
They’d arrived so well and hearty! Now, as Endeavour weighed, she was leaving like a hospital ship. Seven of her company had died at Batavia – and nineteen new men were signed on to replace them and those lost earlier in the voyage.
Another one went before they departed. Still brooding on the unresolved challenge to his authority six months earlier, Captain Cook offered a reward of fifteen guineas to anyone who could prove who’d cut the ears of his clerk, Richard Orton – and fifteen gallons of arrack if anyone could show who’d cut his clothes. The reward was never claimed; but on Christmas Day Pat Saunders took advantage of a shore boat and deserted, never to be heard of again. Most men took that as an admission.
Mr Banks also hired another servant, for Jim Roberts and Peter Briscoe were still sick, and he was missing Tupaia. Still, the Tahitian’s death brought him some consolations. The finest dog skin cloaks from New Zealand, the most important carved and pounamu treasures the Maori had given to the priest of Oro, now entered Banks’s own collection – eventually to adorn museums throughout Britain.
For the rest, as Endeavour made her way along the Java coast, sad little auctions were held on deck as crew bid for the dead men’s clothes and personal effects. It was a way of raising money for the families of the deceased.
‘What’ll ye gi’ me, mates, for Tim Reardon’s red neckerchief?’
‘Fourpence,’ from Nick Young, who’d long admired it.
‘And Johnny Woodworth’s sea knife, good as new.’
‘A shilling.’ Isaac bid high, to replace the knife he’d given Heimata.
‘One shilling and threepence!’ from the back.
‘One and sixpence, then.’
‘’Tis your’n, Master Manley.’
‘A nice pair o’ canvas britches . . . and two shoe buckles, belonged to young John Reynolds . . .’
The pathetic little sums were entered in the dead men’s pay books.
So they went, Isaac thinking his lot unhappy enough as the year turned. But it was only a rehearsal for what was to follow. His health grew worse, as did the health of them all. Dr Solander even saw mosquitoes breeding in the drinking water of the scuttlebutt on deck, though he did not realise the significance. So many were sick, it took Endeavour a week to get through Sunda Strait and anchor off Princes Island, for the Captain wanted to load more water before the long voyage to Cape Town.
It’s unclear why he stopped there. He’d been warned the water was bad, though good on the Java side. Yet the ship stayed at the island for nine days. And every morning Cook gave his weakened shore crew their orders: ‘You must take particular care to avoid brackish water near t’ coast, and fill your casks from higher up t’ stream.’
Whenever Isaac told the story in after years, he always said, ‘We did try. I know we did.’ Whether the blame for what was to happen lay at Princes Island, or with foul water taken aboard from the sewers of Batavia, no one ever knew. Yet Isaac’s heart broke anew with the thought of it.
Endeavour left Java Head on 16 January 1771, carrying dysentery – the bloody flux – as an extra passenger.
The symptoms showed themselves within a few days of putting to sea. Fever. Vomiting. Agonising pain. Diarrhoea running crimson with blood.
Isaac was stricken. Seized with a burning in his gut he doubled over, feeling as if his bowels had been ripped from him. He struggled down to
his hammock, and lay in his own mess. Stinking, helpless, expecting any moment to die.
‘Nick . . .’ he whispered, as his friend came by with laudanum, and a wet cloth to sponge him. ‘Nick, I want . . .’
‘Don’t distress yourself, Issy . . . The medicine helps . . .’
‘In my sea chest . . . under the shirts . . . a small black bag . . . give it to me . . .’
‘Later, Issy. There’s a lot for Mr Perry to attend. Let me clean you up a bit.’
‘Now, Nick. Please . . .’
So Nick brought Isaac his little bag of treasures. The boy lay clutching it, as Nick wiped him. He was frightened and barely conscious – yet found some comfort in sensing his mother’s locket and Heimata’s dark pearl beside him.
The people he loved were there. He could feel them, enclosed in velvet. Safe. Present. And gradually through his darkness, Isaac glimpsed a small candleglow of will to see them again. He was young. And strong. He would survive.
And in truth, as time passed the lad did begin to recover. He was able to keep down water. It was the likely cause of their ailment . . . but you had to drink! Isaac sipped a little broth that Nick brought him in a mug, and ate a slice of beef, without his bowels splitting. Slowly the nausea eased, his head cleared, sensation returned to his limbs. At long last Isaac could crawl up on deck to wash himself again with seawater, and buy clean clothes from the slops store.
He even borrowed Mr Molineux’s old razor to shave himself. For at fifteen, a downy beard and stubble had grown during his illness; and it was time to begin a man’s ritual.
Others also had the will to live. But that didn’t save them. One by one they began to die. Corporal Truslove of the marines was the first, on 24 January – ‘a man much esteemed by everyone,’ the Captain said, as he read the burial service.
High or low alike, they were not spared. The next day Herman Spöring died, an assistant naturalist in Mr Banks’s party. Two days later Sydney Parkinson went to his maker, bequeathing to posterity his artist’s record of the voyage and the first beautifully accurate paintings of botanical species unknown in Europe.
Hard liquor didn’t preserve old Jack Ravenhill in the end, or the astronomer, Charles Green. Bloody flux killed them both. Cook admired Green’s skill, but sniffed like a Quaker at his boozing and erratic way of life – which seemed to promote his disorders, in the Captain’s view! As if getting dysentery was the man’s fault!
For the disease was quite undiscriminating. Drunk or sober. Virtue or vice. Some lived. Some didn’t. By the end of the month six more seamen died, among them the one-handed cook, John Thompson, and Archie Wolf who’d been flogged at Tahiti for stealing spike nails to buy love – and never told on the others.
‘A calamitous situation!’ cried the Captain, as well he might. Sometimes they could muster barely enough hands to tend the sails. Watches were reduced to only four men; and those who were well enough shared every duty.
Isaac went aloft with the call. He served his trick at the wheel, and stood to his lines as Endeavour hauled herself seaward. Below, on a putrid mess deck, he became by turn cook and nurse, patient and orderly. They scrubbed the ship with vinegar, and tried to sweeten her water with lime. To no avail. The muster of the dead went on . . .
Dan Roberts, the gunner’s servant. John Thurman, press-ganged at Madeira, flogged at Rio and Tahiti, and now never to see home again. John Gathrey, the Boatswain. Midshipman John Bootie, who once called Nick Young ‘a son of a bitch’, comforted in his last hours by the self-same lad.
We therefore commit his body to the deep . . . Cook reading his Bible. And always the same grieving auctions of dead men’s clothes.
‘Sam Moody’s blue jacket, mates, what’s it worth . . .?’
‘A straw hat Frankie Haite got at Rio . . .’
Isaac bid his small shillings and sixpences. Then on the fifth day of February he was called to the Great Cabin. Cook was there, with his Lieutenants and the Master, each as wasted as the other. Molineux in particular had been very ill, and taken to drinking even more heavily.
‘You sent for me, Captain.’
‘Mr Manley, I don’t have to tell you our plight. So many dead . . . and more to come, I fear. Mr Bootie died yesterday. I doubt Mr Monkhouse will recover. We need another Midshipman, and Mr Molineux speaks highly of you.’
‘Aye, sir, I do,’ said Molineux, unsteady in his voice, but managing. ‘I told him to learn his ship. He has been a good pupil. And . . . he has looked after me well.’
‘The young gentleman’s mathematics are still weak. Nevertheless,’ the Captain smiled thinly behind his table, ‘I can help him there. I remember telling you on your first day aboard to show willing and jump to thee orders. You have done that, Isaac. I am pleased with you. Do you accept the promotion?’
‘Captain, with all my heart!’ A heart that was bursting.
‘Let it be recorded. Now, Mr Manley, on the quarterdeck if you please. We have a ship to steer for Africa.’
The Captain was right about Jon Monkhouse. The young man, who had saved them on the reef, now joined his brother, the surgeon, on the ledger of those who would not come home. The same muster book enrolled Isaac in his stead. And it showed that Mr Manley spent the very large sum of fifteen pounds eighteen shillings and sixpence from his wages buying the deceased Midshipmen’s uniforms . . .
A royal blue frock coat, with white lining and cuffs, detachable velvet collar, and brass buttons. Two pairs of white breeches. Silk stockings. An embroidered waistcoat. And a proper naval three-cornered hat with gold trim.
Dead men’s clothes, indeed.
13
MR MIDSHIPMAN MANLEY
To Cape Town and England, February to July 1771
For five more weeks Endeavour bore like a coffin ship across the Indian Ocean, her track on the chart marked with crosses as if for those who died. The carpenter, John Satterley. Henry Jeffs, the butcher. A young marine. More seamen . . .
If nothing else, a burial service at least gave Mr Midshipman Manley an opportunity to appear in his complete new uniform. That, and the occasional flogging.
Overcome with alcohol and fear one evening, the marine drummer, Tom Rossiter, started beating up the sick in their hammocks. ‘’Tis thy fault!’ he shouted. ‘Thee brought the bloody flux on this ship!’ When the watch tried to stop him, Tom fought until he was subdued and put in irons.
Next morning, as Isaac stood on the quarterdeck in his frock coat and cocked hat, among those officers well enough to attend, Tom was given twelve bloody lashes. His outbreak was a symptom of the dread that hung over all of them, for no one knew who’d be next to die. Squalidly. Horribly.
As Isaac came on watch one day, a seaman was seized by a pain in the guts and began screaming, ‘The gripes have got me! I’ll die. I’ll die!’ He collapsed hysterically and was carried below. In time, he began to recover, as did many of those who, like Isaac, survived the first awful bout.
It was a long business, however. More than once Isaac was brought low by recurring sickness; and even when things improved as Endeavour found the cooler trade winds, often a mere dozen hands were able to work the sails.
At such times the Midshipman’s blue coat was laid aside, and Isaac climbed aloft to help brace the yards or set the canvas as the Captain ordered. Cook expected it. And far from lowering Isaac’s standing in the eyes of the topmen, his willingness to work alongside them actually increased it.
‘Tha’ll know what orders mean, lad, when day comes t’ give ’em y’rself.’
Even so, Isaac was now a petty officer, and this meant all kinds of shifts in his status. He had his sea chest carried from the low berth amidships to the slightly less cramped quarters for’ard he shared with the other Midshipmen, James Magra and the Captain’s young relative, Isaac Smith. He slept in a cot: slung like a hammock, but the sides stretched with timber to make it more like a bed.
‘Goodbye, Issy,’ said Young Nick, for the two had been friends from the start. �
��Don’t let fings change too much between us.’
‘’Course not.’
But of course they did. Rank mattered. It was Isaac who dined in the wardroom, and Nick who waited on him with the Master’s new lad, Dick Hill, and the other servants.
It was Isaac who took his turn as an officer of the watch. Who did the rounds of the sleeping ship with his lantern at night: treading softly through the numinous shadows, concerned to know that all was safe with Endeavour as she rode in his care.
As a Midshipman, Isaac had charge when the logline was streamed on the hour. The weighted ‘chip’, on a line knotted at every seven fathoms, was trailed over the stern, and the number of knots running out from the spool was counted as the sand ran through a half-minute glass.
Three . . . four . . . five knots, sir . . .
Isaac would note it in the logbook. ‘Dead reckoning’, as they called it, was a rough way of measuring the ship’s speed and of estimating the distance sailed, allowing for the currents. But it was also liable to considerable error.
Not long after his sixteenth birthday in early March, Isaac was on deck one evening when he thought he saw land to the northward. Africa! He pointed it out to several others, but when the Captain was informed, he dismissed it.
‘I believe you were mistaken, Mr Manley. You probably saw a cloudbank. The log shows we’re a hundred leagues from landfall – forty corrected by lunar observation.’
Dawn showed it was Cook who was mistaken. The coast of Natal was a mere two leagues off, and a steady wind was blowing Endeavour straight onto the rocks. They tacked about; yet Isaac was not alone in wondering what would have happened had it still been dark.
Thereafter, the Captain stood well out as they followed Africa down to the Cape and rounded it. At noon on 14 March the officers were taking their midday readings off Cape Town, the flat top of Table Mountain spread before them. Latitude and longitude were almost exact. Even Isaac was surprised at his accuracy.