The Life of Captain James Cook
XXIII — To New Albion
XXIII
To New Albion
The Sense of relief: perhaps it was also with a sense of release that Cook made north, the islands behind him. He had desperately wanted to reach them, but they had ceased to be an objective; had become, in fact, a sort of entanglement; and now, seventeen months out of Plymouth, with the run to New Albion ahead of him, and nothing as far as he knew in the way, he may at last have felt that the prospect was fair, that he was about to grapple with the real purpose of the voyage. He had enquired of his late hosts if they knew of any islands to the north or north-west: they did not. Nor had the Spanish galleons, passing and repassing the ocean between Acapulco and Manila for two hundred years, ever reported land in the middle of it. A vacant and wintry ocean, then, Cook expected, as he advanced into the northern hemisphere, a passage 'of considerable length both in distance and time', a part of which 'must be performed in the very depth of Winter when gales of Wind and bad Weather must be expected and may possibly occasion a Seperation'; so he wrote in giving Clerke his rendezvous. His own instructions were to be on the American coast, at latitude 65°, a degree and a half short of the Arctic Circle, in June. He had thus six months to get there, from 17° South to 65° North, with the complication that from 45° North, where he was to make his American landfall, the voyage must be a coastwise one; and, in spite of the maps, who knew what the coast would be like?
It would have been useless to try to sail a direct course to that American coast, against the prevailing easterly and north-easterly winds, and Cook's plan is clear enough, to steer north until he should strike the westerlies that drove the galleons home. Even as it was, he was pushed a few degrees to the west. For the first two weeks he did find an empty passage ahead, as he sailed not very far westward of the most southerly of the scattered small Line Islands, with Tongareva, the largest of the Northern Cook group, some 350 miles farther west still, though sea-birds indicated the presence of land; and he must have been almost within sight of flat sandy Starbuck as he passed it on the east. Clerke describes the plan adopted for getting ahead as quickly as possible, while still exercising a proper caution: 'By Cap t Cook's desire, as the Discovery is the fastest Sailing Vessell, I make all sail every morning at daybreak and run as far as I can ahead till Sunset, when I shorten to an easy Sail for the Resolution to come up; by this means we see a good part of the Sea's we cross during the Night.' 1 They crossed the equator in longitude 156°45′ West on the night of 22–23 December; and on the 24th, just after daybreak, were in sight of land to the north-east. It was the barren atoll that Cook called Christmas Island, the largest of all atolls in the area of land it provides. 2 There was anchorage on the lee side. All along the shore, so far as could be seen, broke a tremendous surf, though there was good fishing outside it, and it was not until next day that Bligh returned from a boat expedition with news of an opening through the reef—or rather a double opening, divided by a little islet—into the shallow lagoon. Cook therefore decided to land, and changed his anchorage; for he had a mind both to turtling and to observing an eclipse of the sun which was due on the 30th of the month. Christmas was duly celebrated.
1 11 December; Journals III, 256, n. 2.
2 The land of Christmas Island is 300,000 acres, though the land is not good for much. On the place of the island and its neighbours in pre-Cook Polynesian history see Peter Buck, Vikings of the Sunrise, chapter 11, and Kenneth P. Emory, Archaeology of the Pacific Equatorial Islands (Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 123, Honolulu, 1934)—for Christmas, pp. 17–24.
1 Journals III, 260.
2 ibid., 259.
Nebe
, and soon after more in the north, quite distinct from the first.The wind was light, and the ships came up with the land slowly. The following day a fresh breeze blew, right off the first heights seen, and Cook stood for those in the north; a short time later he saw a third piece of land in the north-east, again distinct; certainly here was a set of high islands. He was advancing towards one of his important discoveries, the Hawaiian group, that stretched in a line from north-west to south-east, and these were the three northern islands—the first Oahu, then Kauai, then Niihau. He was off the eastern end of the roughly circular Kauai on the afternoon of the 19th, wondering if this, like the so different Christmas Island, were uninhabited; but before long canoes put off from the shore and were about the ships; to general astonishment the people in them were talking a language clearly close to Tahitian, and intelligible. These too were at branch of that remarkable oceanic race! How, then, was it that at Raiatea there was no knowledge of further islands to the north? Cook did not ask himself that question; but evidently in the centuries there must have been a break of tradition. He had come to the apex of the 'Polynesian triangle'; and here the question he asked himself yet again was, 'How shall we account for this Nation spreading itself so far over this Vast ocean'—from New Zealand to these latest islands, from Easter Island to 'the Hebrides'? He does not recur to the castaways of Atiu, who had seemed to make clear a great deal; and indeed, they had little to contribute to the part of the problem now before him. He did not formulate the problem immediately; his eyes were on the land, as he coasted the south-east shore, with its gradual rise to the great hills and ridges, and on the people who ran from their villages to view the ship, while the canoes alongside traded freely their pigs and potatoes for nails. Another land of plenty this, just as the diet of turtle was coming to an end; the sad gentlemen of the departure from Raiatea did not foresee the day on which they would eat both turtle and fresh pork for their dinner. And within a day or two more their grog would be restored.
People ventured on board, rather nervously, but their surprise at what they saw did not deter them from attempting to take away anything portable. Cook made his usual orders on approaching unsophisticated islanders a little more stringent: 1 no women were to be allowed into the ships, there was to be no connection with them at all, no man with the 'foul disease' was to go out of the ships. Men would not be left on shore at night. He hoped for good effect, though like regulations had broken down at Tonga on his first visit; he knew how reckless were his men; his experience was now enough to make him rather melancholy. He had had conscientious surgeons, but 'It is also a doubt with me, that the most skilfull of the Faculty can tell whether every man who has had the veneral is so far cured as not to communicate it further, I think I could mention some instances to the contrary.' With such thoughts in his mind, but yet with no knowledge of how indignant Hawaiian women might be over a rebuff, he sent off Williamson in command of three armed boats, to look for a landing place, water and anchorage, while the ships stood off and on. It was 20 January. Williamson found what was needed; in doing so, at one spot where the excited people rushed into the sea to grasp at the boats and the oars, he lost his head and shot a man dead. In spite of his self-righteousness he did not tell Cook; and Cook, finding out later, after conducting himself as if nothing untoward had happened, was not pleased. The ships anchored off the village called Waimea, in the bay of that name. Cook immediately went ashore, where several hundred people were assembled on the beach; he was astonished again, the moment he landed, to see them all fall flat on their faces. He could not know that he was being received with the respect and submission paid to very few of the sons of men, to the half-divine Hawaiian 'kings' or ali'i'ai moku. When he got them to rise they brought the ceremonial plantain fronds and pigs and he gave them what he had in return, all was peace, the water proved excellent.
1 Journals III, 265–6. I say 'a little more stringent', going on his description of the measures he took, but he writes, 'It is no more than what I did when I first visited the Friendly Islands yet I afterwards found it did not succeed'; and he adverts to the recklessness there of the gunner of the Discovery, in spite of the expostulations of his companions.
This tedious struggle kept one or two things out of Cook's journal that he would normally have noticed. While the ship tacked off Kauai his quartermaster, Thomas Roberts, died of the dropsy that had plagued him from the first day of the voyage; and Sergeant Gibson of the marines, his captain's great admirer, laying himself down to sleep upon the gangway, 'a little in liquor' (reports King), fell overboard, and was rescued by means of the 'machine' that had been designed for just such a purpose—the ship having not much way on, fortunately for Sergeant Gibson. On the 29th Cook, with his mind on fresh water, resolved to try the west side of Niihau for a landing place. One was found, and the ships anchored on a convenient bank; but Gore, who landed, could find no supply. Nor could he do so next day, though he did get a load of yams and salt—most of which was lost in the surf. The surf was all too high, and increased: Cook was himself following Gore, but, fearful of not getting back again, returned to the ship. Gore had to be left on shore with twenty men for two nights and the day in between, a period of storm and heavy rain: there was no fear for their safety, but what about the safety of the islanders from disease? It was an appalling mischance. Thus, wrote Cook, 'the very thing happened that I had above all others wished to prevent.' 1
Sheltered water was found inside the south-east point of the island, and a man swam through the surf with a message to Gore to go there. Cook himself went to pick the party up. We have come to the first day of February. He took goats, pigs and seeds that he had intended for Kauai, and bestowed them on a person who seemed to have authority and received him with some ceremony. As he walked inland people ran from all directions, and these too prostrated themselves as he passed. The soil seemed poor, but nurtured the most sweet-smelling plants; the rain had filled a small stream where a few casks were replenished; he returned on board with the intention of landing again next day. Again misfortune descended: soon after sunset, in a heavy swell, his anchor started and the Resolution drove from the bank; it took a long time to get in a whole cable, secure the anchor, hoist up the launch alongside and make sail; so that at daybreak next morning the ship was three leagues to leeward of this last anchorage. Cook was not inclined to spend more time in regaining it. He signalled the Discovery to join him, and though the surf had gone down and everything was fair for a pleasant trade, there was nothing for Clerke to do but comply. They again stood away northward.
1 Journals III, 276.
2 For some remarks on its identification, see Journals III, 604, n. 4.
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The North Pacific
Admiration and ordinary interest were not all to be recorded: there was also matter for a little wonder and conjecture. Not merely were these people anxious to acquire nails, and generous in payment, but they had one or two bits of iron already, used for cutting tools. It followed that eighteenth-century Englishmen were not the first to visit the islands, thought some; were not these helmets a memory of sixteenth-century Spaniards? 3 Others since have been as much convinced, and have adduced a little speculative evidence. It is easily demolished. The pattern of helmets might equally have been derived from Periclean Greeks; Cook was no doubt correct in attributing the iron to its presence in drift-wood. He could not believe that ships had been there before: 'the very great surprise' the people showed at the sight of his, 'and their total ignorance of fire arms seemed to prove the contrary'. Spain, on the other hand, now that the discovery was made, might probably reap some benefit from it, as a way-station for her Pacific galleons. We can agree with Cook that his discovery was the first one. His prophecy was ill-founded. The Spanish showed no interest in Waimea Bay. The era of the galleons was drawing to an end.
1 Journals III, 280.
2 ibid., 281, n. 2. His name was Kaneoneo.
3 ibid., 285–6 for Cook's discussion; and 285, n. 4 for extracts from other journals, and some editorial remarks on the matter.
1 Clerke, 11 February, 21 February; Bayly, 1 March; ibid., 288, nn.
Nw
attall', 4 writes Cook. It is clear that this unpleasant weather does not put his predecessors out of his mind: he adverts to Martin de Aguilar and, on 22 March, when he wrongly thought he was in latitude 48°, to Juan de Fuca: 'It is in the very latitude we were now in where geographers have placed the pretended Strait of Juan de Fuca, but we saw nothing like it, nor is there the least probability that iver any such thing exhisted.' Night swallowed up a large strait before he could see it, providing a sort of subsidiary ironic comment on his own scepticism; for, wherever the real Juan de Fuca went and whatever he saw, here opens the passage that1 Journals III, 289.
2 ibid., 292.
3 ibid., 292, n. 4.
4 ibid., 294.
On the morning of the 29th, standing north-east after being well out to sea, he came in with the land again. It was now a land of high snow-crowned forest-covered mountains. On a stretch of the coast that he called Hope Bay—a reflection of his feelings rather than of its real trend—he saw two indentations out of several, and into the more southern of these he determined to go for water. There were inhabitants, whose canoes soon surrounded the ships; their faces were thickly painted, and they were clad in skins; they were eager to trade, and seemed a mild inoffensive people. The inlet, or sound, promised well. Cook decided quickly that it would do for more than merely watering the ships: what appeared to be a snug cove was found for a longer anchorage, and even before they were moored he ordered the sails to be unbent and the Resolution's foremast to be unrigged for repair. On the last day of the month they were moored securely head and stern to the shore, for a stay, as it proved, of four weeks. This anchorage, named then Ship Cove, and since then Resolution Cove, not good, but satisfactory enough for the time, is to be found at the seaward end of an island named (also since then) after Bligh, inside Nootka Sound, on the western side of Vancouver Island. It is not good because, though sheltered from the sea, it is directly exposed to violent south-easterly gales; this was discovered soon enough from the fallen and mutilated trees, as well as from the first gale that blew. There was an infinitely better harbour just inside the south-west point of the sound; but Cook, contemplating a brief stay only, was unwilling to spend more time than he had to in securing the ships. At least there would be no difficulty in wooding and watering.
Vancouver Island is built on vast proportions: no one approaching it from the sea, or even flying down its coast, would take it for an island—the scale of the hills behind hills is too great, the snowy mountains inland recede too far, the line of breakers is too long; the very clouds are almost too immense. The spruce and hemlock and cedar of the forest cover it, to within a few feet of the sea; the flat points reaching a short way into the ocean are covered; the islets off-shore are crowned with trees, like grave barbaric princesses pacing up the coast to some remote festival; trees spring, it seems, from each individual solid rock. The sides of the sound and of the minor inlets that run off it, north, east and south, fall precipitous to the water, with only here and there a naked narrow strip of land marching with it, or a larger ledge. Ship Cove is surprisingly small, its rocky beach perhaps fifty yards long, running back a few yards to where the moss and trees begin—trees of a second growth now, for Cook was not the last to set his axe to the forest, and drifted barkless trunks rub everywhere along the shores of the inlets. But there is the anchorage; there is the rock where the astronomers set up their instruments; there are the steeps that echoed the noise of axe and forge, and the wild cries of Indian companies as they paddled away in the gloom of evening. In this tempestuous and rainy place the explorer's mind might have gone back to the Dusky Sound of the second voyage, far in the south-west corner of the ocean, not altogether unlike though so different in its garment of trees; no doubt in this harbour there were sailors who thought with regret of the warm Polynesian bays, the yellow hibiscus on their sands, their benign and flower-decked girls. Yet the climate here was 'infanately milder' than it was in the same latitude on the east coast of America, in spite of the snow on the heights. Cook found all hands work to do.
Some of the timbers supporting the fore topmast were decayed or sprung. This was remedied within a week, and Cook saw the ships putting to sea again, when it was found that the foremast head itself was damaged, the result of inadequate work in England, and that the mast would have to be taken out and repaired on shore. Meanwhile some of the lower standing rigging being decayed, and there now being time to put it in order, he ordered a new set of main rigging to be fitted and the best of the old to be converted to fore rigging. So far the weather had been fine, but on 8 April a tremendous storm blew across from the opposite side of the sound. In this storm the mizen mast, the only one with its topmast still aloft, gave way at the head; obviously it would have to be taken out too, and as soon as the main rigging was fixed this was done. It was so rotten that the head dropped off in the slings. This meant a whole new mast. A tree was cut and dragged to the shore, and as soon as the carpenters had finished the foremast they set to work on the mizen; they were well advanced when they found that their stick had been sprung in the felling, 'so that their labour was lost and we had a nother tree to get out of the wood which employed all hands half a day.' The new mast was finished and rigged by the 21st, when these hard-labouring men had to produce a new fore topmast.
1 Journals III, 479.
1 ibid., 1095. Our witness is not Cook but Samwell.
2 ibid., 302–3.
1 Cook passes over the watch incident, which we learn about from others. His small shot, says Bayly, 'wounded three or 4 men in their Backs & backsides—which made the whole party leave us rather apparently in an ill Humour with us.'—ibid., 307, n. 2. He may have consciously fallen back on the policy adopted by Clerke, in the face of 'industrious' and 'audacious' thievery: 'I ever made it a point to reconcile matters as well as I cou'd; determin'd, as our acquaintance was to be of so short a duration, sooner to put up with the loss of some trifles, than bring matters to a serious decision; this plan in short visits answers very good purposes; but had our business detain'd us here any durable term of time, I must have totally changed my scheme of Operations, or these Rogues wou'd have rifled the Ship.'—ibid., 1328–9.
1 Journals III, 323. The language of the Indians of northern Vancouver island is still known as Wakashan, though there are two very divergent dialects, Nootka on the west coast and Kwakiutl on the east; almost different tongues.
We were fond of such excursions, altho' the labour of them was very great, as, not only this kind of duty, was more agreeable than the humdrum routine on board the ships, but as it gave us an opportunity of viewing the different people & countries, and as another very principal consideration we were sure of having plenty to eat & drink, which was not always the case on board the Ship on our usual allowance. Capt. Cooke also on these occasions, would sometimes relax from his almost constant severity of disposition, & condescend now and then, to converse familiarly with us. But it was only for the time, as soon as we entered the ships, he became again the despot.
1
The midshipman does not stop at this bald statement: a higher strain, as not infrequently with him, was called for. He treads close behind Thomas Perry, that bard of the second voyage.
Oh Genius superior, in forming whom Nature
Had an eye to the moulding of a great navigator;
And tho' towards thy Mids thou wert not very nice,
Declaring thoudst have no more cats than catch mice—
'Not here do you come to see fashions or folly, but
To hold on the nippers and row in the jolly-boat'.
And tho' still thou wouldst send me, when by the wind steering,
To haul out the weather mizen topsail reef earing,
Yet not now I'll remember thy wholesome severity,
Or remember 'twas meant but to give me dexterity:
No! rather I'll think on that happier season,
When turned into thy Boat's crew without rhyme or reason,
1 Another of Trevenen's notes on the printed Voyage. It refers to the expedition round the sound, 20 April.
But proud of that office we went a marooning,
And pulling against tide, or before the wind spooning;
Sometimes a shooting, and sometimes surveying,
With pleasure, still watching, with pleasure obeying
Through gulf, creek and inlet our jolly boat forcing,
As if the old D— himself had been coursing;
Till pleased with our efforts thy features relax
And thou givst us thy game to take home on our backs.
Or again:
Sometimes more substantial tokens of favour
Than mere empty praises reward our endeavour,
And hunger excites us to use every effort,
While good beef and pudding more solidly pay for't.
Oh Nootka, thy shores can our labour attest
(For 30 long miles in a day are no jest)
When with Sol's earliest beams we launchd forth in thy sound,
Nor till he was setting had we compass'd it round.
Oh Day of hard labour! Oh Day of good living!
When Toote was seized with the humour of giving!
When he cloathd in good nature his looks of authority,
And shook from his eye brows their stern superiority.
1
'And sure Nootka Sound I shall never forget', affirms the hungry poet. It is hard to think that any of those ships' companies ever would.
1 The verses occur in the National Maritime Museum Ms of Penrose's memoir of Trevenen, pp. 470-I.
What name should he confer upon this useful inlet? With no great originality, he hit on King George's Sound. The native Indians, he gathered, called it 'Nookka' or 'Nootka'—which argues some misunderstanding, because that was no Indian word at all. Although he had a leaning for indigenous names, when they could be found out, he neglected this one. Nootka Sound was a decision of the gentlemen in England.