by Anthony Hill
But it was this world they most desired. More than anything. And Isaac begged a couple of days leave to go home to see his family. Which Mr Gore agreed.
Thus on Sunday morning, Isaac stowed his gifts into the sea chest. Lengths of tapa cloth and woven flax for Mamma, Louisa and Maria. Maori carving for Papa. A stone patu and whalebone club for John and Robert. A throwing stick and spearhead from New Holland. A greenstone pendant, shaped like Maui’s fishhook, that Te Horeta had given him. The blue leaf tattooed on his arm . . .
There was, of course, an empty space in the black velvet bag where Heimata’s pearl had been. But they would not know that at home: and Isaac felt no regret.
A seaman carried his chest up to the deck, and Young Nick helped him load it into a waiting ferryboat.
‘Fare ye well, Issy,’ he said. ‘It was a good sail.’
‘To be sure it was, Nick.’
‘Your family of landlubbers will hardly recognise you.’
Isaac laughed.
‘I’ll be back in a day or two. I’ll let you know.’
Nick held out a hand to steady him.
‘Careful as you get in the boat. Right foot first. We don’t want to lose our Midshipman now.’
‘Indeed not.’
‘We might even go voyaging together again one day, sir.’
‘Perhaps, Mr Young. Who can say?’
Isaac took his place on the thwart, and the ferryman cast off. The tide was running up river, and quickly it carried them past the wharves and shipping. Up beyond Greenwich – the elegant symmetry of the Seamen’s Hospital, and the Observatory high on its hill, where the Astronomer Royal was collating readings of the Transit of Venus, and awaiting the results from Cook and Mr Green.
Through Deptford and the dockyards, where Isaac had joined Endeavour three years before. ‘Now I have truly come full circle around the world,’ Isaac said to himself. But as they passed the hulls and figureheads of great ships swinging on their cables, he thought, ‘No, I have journeyed further than that.’
Further into the world – into a deeper understanding of himself and his fellow creatures – than the boy who’d been ferried down river ever dreamed. Carried by Endeavour to undiscovered places of the heart and intellect, in a voyage whose significance for the future world had only just been glimpsed. That was the truth of it.
And Isaac’s own journey didn’t end here. He’d berth awhile in home waters, like these ships at anchor, to refit and replenish. Then one day he’d slip his cable, and leave safe haven to embark on the questing sea again. For the world had much more to show.
Swiftly the flood bore their boat up stream. The boatman tried to engage him in conversation, but Isaac was lost in his own reveries.
‘They say what Endeavour’s been to Tahiti, where love be free,’ the man ventured. ‘Is that true?’
‘Yes.’
Isaac could see palm trees, and the waterfall, and Heimata rising lustrous from its depths.
‘And fearsome warriors.’
‘Aye.’
Isaac grabbing the yawl as Taiata ran for his life along the shore at Poverty Bay.
‘Cannibals?’
A boy’s smashed skull, still in its pickling jar.
‘And reefs far as ye can imagine.’
‘That too.’
Where death held out its hand across a valley the breadth of one wave. And was cheated. Though it caught them at Batavia.
‘And somefing called a kan-goo-roo they say . . . like a greyhound what ’ops . . . though I don’t believe it meself.’
‘It is so.’
The boatman sucked in his breath.
‘What marvels! They say every voyage is the first time for someone. But you really was the first.’
He drew on his oars.
‘All London’s talking about ’ee.’
Well, not quite at this moment. When they entered the city that Sunday morning, all London was going to church. Merchants and dowagers, shopkeepers, tradesmen and scrubbed-up apprentice boys . . . As they rowed past Wapping and the Tower, bells were pealing from steeples across town as if welcoming Isaac home.
By the Customs House and Billingsgate. Even now his family would be hurrying to Saint Giles-in-the-Fields to remember him in their prayers. How surprised they’d be to return to Hatton Garden, and find Isaac already there!
Past Dark House, and Lyons Quay, and into the shadow of London Bridge. Where, even through the chiming bells, Isaac could hear the cataract roar as tidal water rushed between the arches.
Danger. He could feel it as the boat began to catch in the swirl and eddy. He could see it churning in the foam on the other side.
‘What do you say, young sir?’ asked the ferryman. ‘Will you have some adventure and shoot the bridge with me?’
But this time Mr Midshipman Manley chose wisely.
‘No,’ Isaac said. ‘Pull over to the stairs, if you please. I’ll walk around the bridge, and meet you on the other side.’
He had no need to do anything else.
AFTERWARDS.
ADMIRAL ISAAC
December 1771 to October 1837
James Cook was as good as his word. A few weeks after Endeavour returned, he wrote to Secretary Stephens requesting the Admiralty confirm the promotions he’d made, and advancing the names of those who had performed well. Of his two younger officers the Captain wrote, ‘Mr Isaac Smith and Mr Isaac Manley, both too young for preferment, yet their behaviour merits the best recommendation . . .’
Isaac Smith had already become a Master’s Mate after Robert Molineux died, and as such sailed on Resolution for Cook’s second voyage. And within a few days of that ship, another Whitby collier, being commissioned with Cook as its Commander, Isaac Manley was entered as Midshipman.
Yet he did not sail on her. The muster book shows Manley joined the crew on 3 December 1771, and was discharged on 8 April the following year, when he became a Midshipman on the guardship HMS Terrible at Spithead, off Portsmouth.
It is unclear why Isaac left Resolution: but the most likely explanation seems to be that Cook kept him on the pay books as an act of generosity, until such time as the young man got a permanent berth. Midshipmen didn’t get paid unless they belonged to a ship. As a second son, Isaac had to make his own way in the world. Perhaps his father felt he had a better chance of advancement and of earning prize money in the regular navy, than by undertaking a second voyage of exploration.
However that may be, Isaac Manley was not the only prospective member of Resolution’s company who failed to make the voyage. Joseph Banks also did not sail with her. When Endeavour returned, it was Mr Banks who got most of the popular attention; who received an Honorary Doctorate from Oxford University; who was presented first to the King; and who was spoken of as if it had been his expedition. Certainly Banks later presented Cook to King George, and the monarch in turn handed Cook his commission as Commander. But in the public mind Cook was at first rather ignored – though not by his mentors at the Admiralty, who knew where responsibility for success really lay.
Perhaps this wasn’t surprising, given that Endeavour’s voyage had largely been undertaken at the request of the Royal Society, Banks had put up a large sum of his own money, and the scientific results in so many fields – astronomy, geography, navigation and natural science – were truly breathtaking. It was among the most important voyages of exploration ever made.
Nearly forty islands had been discovered by Europeans. New Zealand and the east coast of New Holland had been mapped with remarkable accuracy, and gaps in the major habitable portions of the Earth filled in – apart from some Pacific islands, many of which Cook found in his later voyages. More than a thousand species of plants unknown in Europe were brought home, and seventeen thousand botanical specimens not seen in England. Animals, birds, fish and insects hitherto unheard of were introduced to the nascent science of zoology. Even the goat shared the fame: the celebrated Dr Johnson wrote a Latin verse in her honour for having twice ci
rcumnavigated the globe, and Mr Banks had it inscribed on nanny’s silver collar!
The collections of artefacts brought back by Banks and Cook from the South Seas, together with their detailed descriptions of native societies, laid the ground for the discipline of anthropology. The observations of the Transit of Venus at Tahiti were critical for astronomers. The wonder and beauty of South Seas culture was opened to popular, no less than refined, imagination.
Given all this it’s understandable that, when Banks announced he would go on the second voyage, some thought of it as his expedition. He proposed a party of seventeen scientists, artists and musicians, and demanded substantial modifications to the ship to accommodate them. The result was that Resolution became top heavy and threatened to capsize. The pilot refused to sail her down river. The Admiralty ordered the superstructure dismantled. And in a fit of temper – which he must have regretted for the rest of his life – Banks had his equipment taken off Resolution. He chartered another ship, and went to Iceland instead.
Interestingly, Charles Clerke sailed as Second Lieutenant on Resolution for Cook’s second voyage to the Antarctic, and again as Captain of the sister ship Discovery for the third voyage to find the North-West Passage around the top of North America. In fact, he took over command of the expedition after Cook’s murder at Hawaii in 1779. But following Clerke’s death from tuberculosis six months later, Lieutenant John Gore brought Resolution home and took over Cook’s offered position as Captain of the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich.
Gore had sailed to Iceland with Joseph Banks when he quit the Antarctic expedition – as did Nick Young. After which Nick disappears from the historical record, although a statue of the boy can be seen near the beach at Gisborne, New Zealand, looking out across Poverty Bay to the point which bears his nickname: Young Nick’s Head.
As for Isaac Manley, history shows he went on to prosper both in his naval career and in private life. Six months after joining HMS Terrible, he transferred as a Midshipman to HMS Thames of the Channel Service, patrolling home waters. Another eighteen months, and in 1774 Isaac sailed for the West Indies and the Jamaica Station on the Antelope – where, having served his time as a Midshipman and passing the examination, he was promoted as Lieutenant Manley to HMS Ostrich in May 1777.
That same month Isaac’s father wrote to Mrs Elizabeth Cook, ordering volumes of the Captain’s Resolution voyage, and giving news of his son in Jamaica. Isaac was starting to earn his fortune by taking part in the capture of eight enemy prize ships. In letters home, ‘he spoke with much acknowledgement of both yours and Captain Cook’s kindness to him, and desired to be remembered to you both.’ Proof of the bond that had grown between the families.
Isaac returned to England the next year, and spent twenty-one months ashore on half pay. But the rapid build-up of enlistments following the outbreak of the American War of Independence, saw him appointed to HMS Inflexible in 1780. A year later Isaac sailed for New York on the Lion – and in November 1781 he became Second Lieutenant on HMS Prince George, flagship of Rear Admiral Digby who had taken command of the America Station in the closing stages of the war.
It was an opportunity for a young Lieutenant to shine before the eyes of his superiors, and Isaac took advantage of it. In April 1782, Prince George was part of a combined fleet under Admiral Rodney that defeated the French at the Battle of the Saintes, in the Caribbean. A French fleet had been blockading the British army trapped at Yorktown, leading to the surrender of Lord Cornwallis (Isaac’s brother John was a Captain on his staff), and the end of the land war. Now the French ships tried to seize the British-held island of Jamaica, but were decisively beaten at the Saintes.
Isaac must have performed well, for in December he was promoted to Master and Commander and took over his first ship, HMS Britannia, based in New York. He held several brief commands of escort ships over the next year. As Captain of the Otter he read the proclamation of peace; and with the establishment of the United States of America, Isaac sailed for home in command of the sloop HMS Hound.
There followed nearly three years ashore on half pay. But Isaac was rising in the world, and in 1786 he was given command of the sloop HMS Fairy out of Falmouth, then Leith in Scotland. It was pretty mundane work – patrolling the northern coast, chasing smugglers, even pressing seamen from passing brigs – but he was lucky to get the appointment. With the end of hostilities, the navy had been reduced from one hundred and ten thousand to only eighteen thousand men. It’s a sign of Isaac’s ability – as well as, in that age of patronage, his family’s continuing influence with the Admiralty through Secretary Stephens – that he was offered the post at all.
And it wasn’t all routine. In late 1788, even as an infant colony was struggling to establish itself at Port Jackson in New South Wales, Fairy was ordered to join a British squadron sailing for the west coast of Africa. Beyond the peak of Tenerife, which Isaac knew from his Endeavour days, they protected the seas used by the slave ships carrying their human cargoes across the Atlantic to the West Indies. Shades of Tom Richmond and George Dorlton, indeed!
The Fairy even made a crossing to the familiar waters of the Caribbean. The logbook shows that Commander Manley ordered his share of floggings for insolence, misbehaviour and drunkenness (of which he seems to have been much less tolerant than Cook). Then Isaac was stricken with fever, and in June 1789 he discharged himself as captain, his place taken by the Lieutenant.
So ill was he that it was a year before Isaac returned to England . . . ‘Being at the time in so indifferent a State of Health that it was utterly impossible for me to do the duty of the ship,’ he wrote to Stephens. The Admiralty must have understood, for on 22 November 1790 Isaac was promoted to the substantive rank of Post-Captain, and immediately went on half pay. Upon recovery, he wrote saying he was ready for service; but apart from some months raising troops in Oxfordshire after the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, Captain Manley was not given another command.
It was an adequate career – but hardly a glorious one, given his magnificent start with Captain Cook and Endeavour. Yet fortune continued to smile on Isaac. Three months after becoming Post-Captain at the age of thirty-six, he married an heiress, Frances Pole, and they bought the estate of Braziers near the village of Checkendon in Oxfordshire. The house was remodelled and a front wing added in the Strawberry Hill gothic style: a lovely, late eighteenth century confection of battlements, arched doors and windows, overlooking the park and farmland.
Braziers is still standing, like a little fairy castle. It now belongs to a community, and visiting the house that Isaac built you have the impression it must have been a happy place for the family who grew up in it. There were two children: a daughter Ann (after Isaac’s mother), and a son John Shawe (both family names) born in 1794. He matriculated from Oxford and studied law at Lincoln’s Inn; but for much of his life lived as a gentleman on the family lands in Staffordshire, the father of Isaac’s five grandsons, and built a mansion of his own called Manley Hall.
It was to Isaac’s good fortune that his elder brother John died in 1799 without children. So, when his father died two years later, Isaac inherited the bulk of the estate: properties in London, near Litchfield, and in Cheshire, with gold and silver plate. His unmarried sisters came to live at Braziers, and Captain Manley prospered as a landed gentleman. At a large ceremony in 1810, Oxford University conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Civil Laws on Rear Admiral Manley, as he had become.
For Isaac was also blessed with a long life. In those days, a Post-Captain on half pay continued to be promoted according to seniority. In 1790 there were some four hundred and thirty officers above Isaac on the Navy List. As one man died, so Isaac advanced up the ranks. And as he kept on living through the years of war with France and Napoleon, he rose to be appointed Rear Admiral in 1809; Vice Admiral of the Blue in 1814, of the White in 1820, of the Red in 1821; and in 1830 he was appointed Admiral of the White, all the time continuing to draw the appropriate half pay.
In January 1837, Isaac became an Admiral of the Red, with only fourteen officers more senior to him.
Yet life was drawing to a close. In March he turned eighty-two. In July his wife Frances died, two years older than him. And as he sat at Braziers, telling the story of the Endeavour voyage to his grandsons for one more time, Isaac knew there would soon be no one to tell it again. He was the last of those still alive who could remember.
His namesake, Admiral Isaac Smith, had died in 1831. The Captain’s widow, Elizabeth Cook, who almost outlived them all, passed on in 1835 at ninety-four, having burnt her husband’s letters. Given his regard for Mrs Cook’s kindness to him as a youth, it is likely that Isaac stayed in contact with the Captain’s widow throughout their long lives. With Elizabeth’s death, there was nobody left now from Endeavour days but Isaac Manley . . .
Such a long time ago . . . So much had happened since then. Wars and revolutions. Change and reform. The boy, who learned to sail with Captain Cook, had lived to see the first steamships cross the Atlantic. British colonies and new civilisations had been planted in those lands of the magical South Seas that Isaac had been among the first Europeans to see . . .
Aye, and could see them still in the embers of his fire and the piquant memories of wood smoke. Heimata, crowned with flowers, coming to him through the palm grove with gifts of coconut milk.
Tire . . . Tire . . .
The boy Te Horeta, standing proud on the high rock of the pa at Whitianga.
I will be a great warrior myself when I grow up.
And as the fair green promise of a new adventure rose on the sea’s horizon, Isaac could still hear Nick Young calling to him from the very masthead of His Majesty’s Bark Endeavour.
Land! Land ho!
On 17 October 1837, Admiral Isaac George Manley himself died. And the first thing that was said of him on the memorial at Checkendon Church, and in his obituary published in the Gentleman’s Magazine, were these words about the greatest event of Isaac’s life: