greed

Ocean

Endless ocean, bottomless greed

By Ian Williams

For three hundred years, the Pacific Ocean was the equivalent of Outer Space for European explorers. They launched across its vast expanses with a nagging suspicion that there might be no end to it. The first recorded crossing was of course by the Portuguese nobleman Ferdinand Magellan who sailed around the world, traversing the Ocean in 1521 on behalf of the King of Spain.

While he was the first to circumnavigate the globe, many Pacific islanders had crossed the same stretches of ocean with out any chroniclers to record their achievement. However, that should not detract from the heroism of Magellan and his men. Plagued with scurvy, the ships

rats provided one of the few sources of fresh food, while the water was foul green smelling swill. Scurvy killed nineteen crewmen and weakened the rest, while the leather rigging straps were boiled to be eaten.

However their heroic deed, was as Frank Sherry’s book records, undertaken for far from heroic motives. What impelled men to take such risks and make such sacrifices was an almost palpable appetite for gold. Pacific Passions recounts how the whole world had become part of the European economic and political system. Magellan’s voyage was intended to stave off the impending bankruptcy of the Spain, and to by-pass their Portuguese rivals. Spain was using its American treasures to fight bitter wars in Europe, particularly in Holland.

Other fortune hunters set off looking for Japan and China. Later they were look ing for the huge continent they assumed must be in the South. In the early stages, curiosity was a minor factor in comparison with greed. The French Dutch and British knew that the ocean contained treasures.

And they knew where it was - in the holds of Spanish ships. Buccaneers patri otically looted them.

Later the Frencth and British mounted purely scientific (expeditions like James Cook’s and Louis Antoine de Bougainville's, butt even they were under commission to Hook for commercial advantage. Cook’ss voyage started off to observe the transiit of Venus across the Sun - but he was also told to watch out for Bougainville amd see if, in passing he could find and claiim the southern conti nent. History records of course that he found a southern continent. Even if it was not as big as tthey had hoped for, Australia was no tiiny atoll.

The struggles fo>r supremacy in Europe were reflected in tlhe waves of Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutdfi, British, French and even Russians wfho descended on the Pacific as their poliitical and economic for tunes ebbed and fllowed. While they each seized whatever rraajor prizes they could, like Indonesia and! the Philippines most of blood letting was of each other. Most of the islands were blessed with a total absence of mineral wealth and thus pre served from occupation, if not from occasional raids. And even then, technol ogy did not always triumph, with the Solomon’s martial traditions proving too much for many explorers. Isolated, the smaller islands were also mostly spared the joys of the Spanish Inquisition.

While Sherry’s pangram of heroes, buccaneers, pirates, scientists and traders has its own interest, one wishes that he had devoted more space to the islanders the explorers met. It is clear that there was total mutual incomprehension. The sailors may as well have been aliens in flying saucers for the peoples they met.

The Europeans’ eccentric habits, their sense of property rights, their assumption of superiority, their sexual inhibitions, all represented a mystery to their often

involuntary hosts.

Pacific Passions does not set out to be anything but Eurocentric. That’s where the explorers came from after all.

Nonetheless, it is a gripping story of major events, matching the glory details of the explorer’s exploits to the broad sweep of history. And as such it is an excellent background to the present political and ethnic shape of the Pacific, formed as it was by these intruders and only now being returned to its original inhabitants. ■