Voyages of discovery

Books

Captain Cook and the Exploration of the Pacific, by Lynne Witney, William Morrow and Co., 512 Pages, index, $19.95.

Reviewed by Beatrice Levin IN the Spring of 1768, the Royal Soci

ety (England’s prestigious association

of scientists) planned an exposition to take astronomers to the South Pacific to observe a rare phenomenon, the passage of Venus across the sun’s surface. In 1768, the Pacific was of major interest because the English had established sup remacy at sea and secured control over most of North America. England would sponsor the voyage to observe the “tran sit of Venus” and to continue across the Pacific to chart lands still unknown to

Europeans.

Two official observers of the voyage would be Charles Green, a 32-year-old astronomer, and James Cook, a 45-year old non-commissioned naval officer who had devoted the past five years charting the Newfoundland coast. Cook had en tered the Navy as a common seaman at 26. A self-taught astronomer, he served in several ships and worked his way from seaman to master. The man re sponsible for navigating the ship, Cook had the highest non-commissioned rank in the British navy.

European explorers had sailed to search for new lands for nearly three hundred years, primarily after riches.

These voyages revolutionised European concepts of world geography in the dis covery of North and South America, and the coasts of Asia and Africa.

Cook’s special skills at navigation and mapmaking would be invaluable on the Endeavour, a 368-ton, 106-foot-long ves sel, square, slow, well suited for an arduous voyage. Two artists, among the scientific team, would draw specimens that the naturalists collected. The En deavour was provided with almost 35,000 pounds of bread, 2500 pounds of raisins, and among many other items, 40 bushels of malt and 7860 pounds of sauerkraut. The sauerkraut and malt were an experiment in hopes of prevent ing scurvy, the most common shipboard disease, caused by a deficiency of Vita min C.

On April 4, 1769, the Englishmen had their first glimpse of land in two months.

The Endeavour had reached Tahiti, where coconut and breadfruit trees, lush flowers and a profusion of plants grew everywhere. The author, Lynne Whithey, says the sight conjured up “vi sions of paradise” as well as visions of dominion. Tahiti, an Englishman wrote, “was the truest vision of an arcadia of which we were going to be kings . . .”

Of Cook, one of his officers, John Elliott, wrote: “He was Brave, uncom monly cool, Humane, and Patient. He would land alone unarm’d lay aside his Arms, sit . . . and throw Beads, Knives, and other little presents . . . ’til he gained their friendship.”

Cook used scientific techniques. He re turned to Europe with remarkably accu rate maps, specimens and drawings of native flora and fauna. He brought back descriptions of natives, and even a few of the people themselves.

Captain James Cook, commanding three round-the-world voyages within 10 years, sailed the Pacific from Antarctica to the Bering Sea, from the California coast to Australia. Cook discovered the

Hawaiian Islands, circumnavigated New Zealand, charted much of the Canadian and Alaskan coastlines, sailed close to Antarctica until locked in by ice, and re corded many islands earlier sighted by

explorers.

Watching a young Tahitian girl under going her first tattoo operation, an offic er recorded that these beautiful people did not have elaborate ornaments, but preferred to decorate their bodies with designs made by injecting a black dye under the skin. Exceptionally painful,

the process required repeated injections

with a wooden or shell comb lined with sharply pointed teeth. Many islanders spotted tattooes all over their buttocks, thighs and other parts of their bodies.

Some of the sailors, while in Tahiti, sub mitted to having tattoos, taking home a souvenir and inaugurating a custom that lasted generations among seafaring men.

The English failed to understand how much religion meant to the Tahitians.

The Tahitians had a hierarchy of gods

and spirits, and believed that everything, people, plants, animals, even inanimate objects, had a kind of spiritual aura cal led mana, that flowed from the gods.

The good relations that Cook always tried to foster with natives the Euro pean and the Polynesian, Maori, Melane sian, Australian aborigine, Eskimo, Cana dian Indian, Patagonian rested on a respect for human values, never on the false acceptance of any form of the su pernatural, the godlike, or one people

being superior to another.

At Christmas Island, (a turtle hunter’s paradise), the Englishmen were asto nished to find these people resembling the Tahitians and speaking a language remarkably similar to the Tahitian.

Historian Lynne Withey points out

that Cook was not always a model com mander but was often hot-tempered and severe with his crew and natives. His harshness on the third voyage may have been responsible for his murder.

The effects of the voyages of Captain James Cook were far-reaching both for the Pacific and for Europe. Those who followed Cook, William Bligh and George Vancouver were deeply influ enced by Cook’s methods and carried on his work into the closing years of the century. Struck by how much Tahiti and Hawaii changed in the few years be tween Cook’s voyages and their own, Bligh and Vancouver observed the de cline of population and the islanders in creasing dependence on European pro ducts. Interisland warfare became more common and more deadly with the use of European weapons and ships.

So much European attention was fo cused on certain Hawaiian chiefs, TW Tynah/ Pomare in Tahiti and Kame hameha in Hawaii that they achieved a degree of influence and prestige that played on their ambitions and encour aged them to extend their influence far

beyond what traditional Polynesian poli

tical structures permitted.

The advantages that Pomare and Kamehameha had over rivals through these foreign contacts led to political power that would have been impossible without such aid.

Missionaries and traders encouraged chiefs to embrace western religious be liefs and European forms of law in pre ference to ancient native traditions.

Tahiti, the Tonga, Society and Hawaiian Islands had the most complex social organisation in Polynesia, strong native leaders resistant to domination by outsid ers and intelligent enough to use fore igners for their own needs. Later, Eng land, France and the United States re quired the cooperation of native leaders to impose rule over the islands.

The opening of the Pacific brought change to Europeans as well as to the Pacific. D