by Anthony Hill
Rock. Called Toka-a-Taiau, it has been removed for navigation. A fine memorial at Gisborne, in the form of a Maori canoe prow, overlooks the site of these encounters.
Homeland. The first canoes carrying the Maori ancestors reached New Zealand around AD1000 from central Polynesia, which includes today’s Society, Marquesas, Cook and Austral Islands. The homeland is now generally known as Hawaiki. Banks spelt it Heawye, and the name Hawaii has the same origin. The island of Ra’iatea was also once known as Havai’i, Salmond (2004), p 37.
Maori. The first Maori settlers lived by fishing, gathering, cultivating sweet potato (kumara), and hunting the large ostrich-like moa bird that became extinct. The second phase of settlement from about 1350 was marked by more intense agriculture and fortified settlements (pa) especially in the North Island, reflecting greater population pressures and violent competition for resources. Bellwood, p 416. An online search for ‘Parkinson Maori’ will yield good results.
Maori boys. Banks, 10 October, gives their names as Taahourange, Koikerange and Maragooete, aged about eighteen, fifteen and ten.
Censure. Cook’s defence, 10 October.
Arse. Monkhouse, Journal, in Beaglehole, Journals, vol I, p 576.
Kidnappers. Cook et al., 15 October. I thank Paul Tapsell of the Auckland War Memorial Museum for his insights into the motives behind the seizure of Taiata, and also for the importance of Tupaia (symposium ‘Discovering Cook’s Collections’, National Museum of Australia, July 2006).
Whitianga. Author visit, May 2006, and Salmond (1991). The video Twelve Days, produced for the Mercury Bay District Historical Society, gives an interesting Maori and Pakeha perspective on Cook’s time at Whitianga. I climbed to the pa site on Whitianga rock. I thank Peter Johnston of the Ngati Hei people for his illuminating advice.
Shooting. Cook, 9 November.
Te Horeta. See Beaglehole, Life, p 206; Salmond (2004), pp 131–2, with painting.
CHAPTER 8
Kauri. Cook, 21 November. Bay of Islands. 30 November.
Terrors of shipwreck. Banks, 5 December.
De Surville. Jean de Surville (1717–70), commanded the St Jean Baptiste. Landed his damaged ship at Doubtless Bay on the west coast of New Zealand, but left after conflict with Maori. Drowned off Peru. Beaglehole, Life, p 211. See also www.history-nz.org.
Cannibal Bay. Cook named it ‘Ship’s Cove’, as it is still known. The name ‘Cannibal Bay’ appears in several log books and Parkinson, p 117. I had a magical day on the Sound with Peter and Takutai Beech, who told many tales from the past.
Topaa. Banks, 29 January 1770, gives his name; see also Salmond (2004), pp 145–6.
Human arm. Banks, 16 January, records the conversation. Topaa’s forearm. Cook, 17 January.
Heads. Banks, 20 January. Buys one. Banks, ‘Account of New Zealand’, Journal, 31 March.
Upper arm muscles. I thank Professor Adrian Horridge for this interesting detail. He got it from an old lady in New Guinea who apparently spoke from experience. In his later visits, Cook landed goats and South Seas hogs in New Zealand to provide meat. They thrived, and provided the Maori with an alternative source of protein to human flesh. Betty Rowe had some of their descendants at her sanctuary on Arapawa Island in Queen Charlotte Sound when I visited in 2006.
Cook Strait. Banks, 6 February. Possession. Cook, 31 January.
Portuguese. A probable sixteenth-century Portuguese or Spanish helmet has been found in Wellington Harbour. Peter Beech tells of the Rewharewha sickness, possibly measles, caught by Maori from the sailors of a ship which visited the Sound long before Cook, maybe one of Christopher de Mendonça’s fleet in the 1520s, see note in Chapter 9. Some say the spotty symptoms resembled the pattern found on pottery from this ship, others that it was like the flecked grain of the rewarewa tree. Many sailors are said to have been killed after trying to steal Maori women as their ship left. An epidemic of Rewharewha (coughing sickness) killed many Maori in the nineteenth century.
Cape Turnagain. Cook, 9 February.
Longitude. I commend Sobel’s book to all interested readers. By general agreement, the prime meridian from which longitude readings are made runs through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Visitors to John Harrison’s three sea clocks at the Royal Observatory are conscious of a great man. Cook’s chronometer, made by Larcum Kendall after Harrison, is displayed at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. The Nautical Almanac, first published in 1767 by the Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne, halved the time it took to work out a ‘lunar’ – but it only contained tables to the end of 1769. Those for 1770 and 1771 were not completed until after Endeavour left England. See Howse and Sanderson.
Airy fabric. Banks, 10 March. Regret. 14 March.
Westward route. Cook, 31 March.
CHAPTER 9
Whistle. Falconer writes in 1769 of superstitious seamen being ‘afraid of the dreadful consequences of whistling in a storm’ (entry on midshipmen). Whistling is still prohibited on Her Majesty’s ships, as it can be confused with piped orders by the Bosun: the Bosun’s call. Many other vessels also frown on whistling as bad luck.
Point Hicks. The date is sometimes given as 20 April, to account for the modern International Date Line. Parkin offers a splendid narrative of Endeavour and its journey up the east coast of Australia.
East Coast. It is possible that other European navigators explored the east coast of Australia in the centuries before Cook. Trickett, among others, supported by some archaeological evidence, argues that it was charted by the Portuguese captain Christopher de Mendonça in 1522–23, but that his purloined maps were wrongly aligned by French cartographers working at Dieppe in the mid-sixteenth century. Mendonça may also have charted Australia’s west coast and much of the North Island of New Zealand. Knowledge of these maps was limited, and they tended to be overlooked by later explorers or ignored by other colonial powers. Some think Cook may have seen a Dieppe map in the British royal collection, but surely he would have said so! He credited the Dutch explorers with their earlier discoveries.
Many traditional cartographers, it should be said, strongly contest the Mendonça connection with the east coast of Australia, New Zealand, or the Dieppe maps, and offer alternative explanations for the few pieces of material evidence. The Spanish helmet, for example, might have fallen from a ship visiting Wellington Harbour in the nineteenth century.
Whatever the truth, it remains the case that, before Cook, few published maps showed an east coast of New Holland: after Cook they all did. And the modern histories of Australia and New Zealand still begin with Cook’s Endeavour voyage, the territorial claims he made for the British Crown, and their subsequent colonisation.
Station pointer. I thank the State Library of NSW for showing me the many Cook and Endeavour relics in the collection, including navigational instruments and the Captain’s Bible. It brings one into immediate contact with the voyagers.
Leadline. The line was marked as follows: 2 fathoms, two strips of leather; 3, three strips of leather; 5, a piece of white duck [material]; 7, red bunting; 10, leather with a hole; 13, blue serge; 15, white duck; 17, red bunting; 20, a piece of line with two knots, and so on. The depths between the marks were estimated as ‘deeps’.
Fathom. A fathom is 6 feet. Endeavour’s draught was about 14 feet, and she thus drew over two fathoms.
Isaac Smith. Born London 1752. Post-captain 1787, super-annuated Rear-Admiral 1807. He lived in London and at Merton Abbey with his cousin Elizabeth Cook, and died 1831. Mrs Cook died in 1835 at the age of ninety-four.
Gamay. Sometimes spelt Kamay, the Aboriginal name for Botany Bay. I thank Les Bursill of the Dharawal community, and Ron and Margaret Simpson, for their advice, friendship, and a memorable day on the Hacking River looking at Aboriginal Australia. See the website The Archaeology of the Dharawal People of NSW at www.lesbursill.com. Search also ‘Parkinson Aborigines’ and ‘Parkinson Endeavour’.
Punishment. Being made to stand in the rigging or at the masth
ead were common punishments for the boys and young gentlemen – short of being tied over a cannon and beaten with a cane or a cat-o-five-tails: ‘kissing the gunner’s daughter’.
James Magra. Born New York 1746, died 1806. Later changed his surname to Matra, joined the British diplomatic service, and in 1783 produced a pamphlet proposing a settlement in NSW. The Sydney suburb of Matraville is named after him.
Orton. Cook, 23 May 1770.
Reef. Parkin is excellent on the hazards of sailing the ‘chameleon sea’.
CHAPTER 10
Aground. Parkin provides an authoritative commentary on the events of 11–13 June.
Fothering. Parkinson gives the detail that the fothered sail was lowered over the bows and hauled aft by ropes until it was sucked into the leak.
Bower anchor. The small bower anchor was recovered in 1971, and is now on display at the fine James Cook Museum, Cooktown, with one of the cannons raised in 1969.
Sheathing. See Parkin, p 71, and commentary for 22–24 June.
Mangrove pod. Alan Gould in his poem ‘The Great Circle’ gives a lovely image of Endeavour on the river mud like a cast-up pod. Search ‘Parkinson Endeavour’ for a print of the scene after Parkinson’s drawing.
Kangaroo. Cook and Banks spelt it kanguru, I used gangurru from today’s Guggu Yimithirr spelling. Gore shot his first specimen on 14 July. Paintings based on the skin and also a dingo brought back by Banks were done by George Stubbs. Search ‘Stubbs kangaroo’ and ‘Stubbs dingo’.
Turtle hunt. Cook says only that a boathook was used. I thank Trevor Nicholson and Sam Dibella of Cooktown for their advice on how it may have been done.
CHAPTER 11
Bama. I acknowledge the written statements by Eric Deeral displayed at the James Cook Museum, giving a Guggu Yimithirr perspective on Endeavour’s time at the river. I have drawn upon them in my version of the story. Margie Callaghan also gave much assistance.
Yir-ke. I have used the spelling given by Beaglehole, Journals, vol I. Banks and others note a number of expressions used by the Aborigines to denote surprise, including ‘charco’. See Brunton (ed.), p 64. Hicks calls the river ‘Charco Harbour’.
Sharing code. I acknowledge helpful conversations with Roy McIvor, Willie Gordon, Helena Loncaric and other members of the Hopevale and Cooktown communities for an Aboriginal perspective on the sharing code and the incident with the turtles.
Ngamu Yarrbarigo. Eric Deeral gives the name of the elder.
Reconciliation. Cook, 19 July.
Pickersgill. I assume he went to the opening, still called Cook’s Passage, as none of the journals say which Mate it was. See Robson p 178.
Quit this coast. Cook, 13 August.
Sweeps. Once again, see Parkin’s detailed commentary on the events of 16–17 August.
Readings. Ibid p 414.
Manley Island. Named much later for Isaac. It is among the small Cockburn Islands off Cape Grenville in Far North Queensland.
Torres. Cook does not name the Portuguese navigator in his journal. Nor does Cook mention his rival Dalrymple (see note in Interlude), on whose chart Torres’s 1606 track south of New Guinea appears. Banks had a copy of Dalrymple’s map on Endeavour.
Bearings. It is extraordinary how close to the true position the latitude and longitude given by Cook was; see the historical notes in this book.
New Britain. An island off the north-east coast of New Guinea, named Nova Britannia by Dampier in 1700. Cook named the southeastern archipelago New Caledonia (the Latin name for Scotland) in 1774.
New South Wales. Cook’s first names are illegible. He called it ‘New Wales’ for quite some time. Beaglehole, Life, p 249, notes that ‘South’ was added after a copy of the Journal was sent to the Admiralty from Batavia in October.
CHAPTER 12
Swallow. The sloop HMS Swallow reached England in May 1769.
Date. In July 1769 Cook crossed what is now the International Date Line east of New Zealand, but did not adjust his tally of the days.
Batavia. Parkinson gives an excellent description of Batavia. Search ‘Dutch Batavia’ online for images of the old city and shipping, also the Trove pictures archive at the National Library of Australia.
Bougainville. Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1729–1811) led the first successful French circumnavigation of the globe. He was in Tahiti early in 1768, and Batavia later that year. The island of Bougainville and the tropical plant bougainvillea are named after him. The Tahitian who sailed with him, Aotourou, was feted in Paris, stimulating European ideas of the ‘noble savage’, Salmond (2004), p 53. See also the historical notes to this book.
Malaria. The term literally means ‘bad air’. It was not until 1898 that Sir Ronald Ross proved the disease was spread by female Anopheles mosquitos. In his paper on malaria in Batavia in the eighteenth century, van der Brug suggests fish ponds were the most likely breeding grounds, but stagnant canals and the mangrove swamps also contributed. The figures quoted are from van der Brug. Banks gives a graphic account of the filth dredged from the canals.
Cinchona. Banks, 13 November. From the 1640s, bark of the Peruvian tree had been known in Europe as effective against malaria or ‘ague’. The active ingredient, quinine, was finally extracted in 1820. Cinchona trees were not grown in Java until the 1850s.
Nick Young. Remustered as Perry’s servant on 6 November 1770.
Laudanum. Tincture (weak solution) of opium, used to relieve pain and diahorrea since the seventeenth century. Its addictive properties were recognised in the nineteenth century.
Taiata. His death is based on Parkinson. I thank Tehani Fiedler-Valenta of Tahiti Tourisme Australie for the translation. Search ‘Parkinson Taiata’ online for a lovely print of the boy in native dress playing his nose flute, after Parkinson’s drawing. The site also shows Tupaia’s painting of a Maori presenting a lobster to either Banks or Cook.
Tupaia. ‘He was a Shrewd Sensible, Ingenious Man,’ wrote Cook on 26 December, ‘but proud and obstinate which often made his situation on board both disagreeable to himself and those about him, and tended much to promote the deceases which put a period to his life.’ Search ‘Tupaia Tahiti’ for paintings by Taiata, including one of canoes and a longhouse.
Ravenhill. Cook, 26 December.
Dead men’s clothes. Chris Donnithorne says that even until recently the clothes were sometimes sold several times over to raise more money. Ordinary seamen couldn’t bid for officers’ uniforms ‘above their wear’ or spend more than was due to them on the pay book. The Purser got 5 per cent of the sum raised for handling the transaction. Regulations, 1790 ed., Part II.
Princes Island. Both Cook and Banks note the warnings about the brackish water.
Green. Cook’s comment, 29 January, that Green’s manner of living ‘greatly promoted the disorders [. . .] which put a period to his life,’ is similar to his remark about Tupaia. Censoriousness of his dead is one of the Captain’s less admirable traits.
Calamitous situation. Cook, 31 January.
Promotion. Muster roll shows Isaac became a Midshipman 5 February 1771 (Adm 36/8569).
CHAPTER 13
Rossiter. Cook, 21 February. Gripes. 15 March.
Midshipmen. See Elliot for a young midshipman’s account of how Cook trained him.
Log line. A knot tied at every seven fathoms is based on the length of a nautical mile converted to feet per second. The number of knots passing over the stern in thirty seconds (later twenty-eight seconds) as measured by the sand glass give the ship’s approximate speed, not the distance travelled. Thus, three knots are equivalent to three nautical miles per hour. A nautical mile is one second of arc on the sextant at the equator, and is 1.15 times longer than a land mile.
Natal. Cook, 5 March.
Cape Town. Banks gives an excellent description of life at Cape Town in 1771.
Water. Cook, 15 March, notes ships from Batavia all had flux yet none had taken on water at Prince’s Island. Many arrived in a worse state than Endeav
our.
Molineux. Cook, 16 April. The details of the Master’s decline are imagined.
Pickersgill. Cook admired his seamanship and appointed him Third Lieutenant on the first Resolution voyage. He commanded the Lyon sent to the east coast of Canada to meet Resolution should Cook have found the North-West Passage during his third voyage. Pickersgill’s leadership was questioned and he was court-martialled on his return. He drowned when he fell into the Thames while boarding a ship in 1779. He was described as a good officer, but (like his friend Molineux) ‘liking ye Grog’. See article by Ian Boreham in Robson p 178.
Circumnavigation. Endeavour crossed longitude 0 degrees on 29 April.
Swallow. See Captain’s logs (Adm 51/956 and Adm 51/4562).
Hicks. After Hicks died, John Gore became Second Lieutenant and Charles Clerke Third Lieutenant. Both sailed with Cook on his third voyage, and both commanded the Resolution after his murder at Hawaii in 1779. Clerke was Captain until his death from tuberculosis off Petropavlovsk, Siberia, and Gore brought the ship home.
Whaler. Cook, 19 June. Weather stays. 22 June. Bets. 7 July.
Nick Young. Banks, 10 July.
Woolwich. Parkinson.
AFTERWARDS
Cook letter. 8 August 1771, Beaglehole, Journals, vol 1, p 736 (Adm 1/1609).
Isaac on Resolution. Beaglehole, Journals, vol 2, p 874 (muster roll Adm 36/7672).
Endeavour results. See Beaglehole, Life, p 273. Robson, p 45, says about thirty thousand botanical specimens returned in Endeavour, and one hundred and ten new genera and thirteen hundred new species had been identified. Approximately fifty thousand specimens were brought back altogether, including ethnographic, zoological, geological and marine examples.
Goat. It apparently went to Cook’s house at Mile End, London. Dr Johnson’s Latin verse in translation reads: ‘The globe twice circled, this the Goat, the second to the nurse of Jove, is thus rewarded for her never-failing milk.’ Beaglehole, Life, p 291.
Resolution. Cook sailed Resolution as Commander on his second circumnavigation (1772–75) with HMS Adventure; and again as Post-Captain on a third Pacific voyage (1777–80) with HMS Discovery, during which Cook was murdered at Hawaii, 14 February 1779.