the Antipodes

From London to the Antipodes

Journey

through

Polynesia

The French Polynesian atoll of Hao, lying in the remote waters of the eastern Tuamotu Archipelago, has achieved some notoriety in past decades as a support base for nuclear testing, and as the place of incarceration of the Rainbow Warrior bombers. In the early 19th Century, however, it was the focus of a pearling trade that was at the heart of Britain’s mercantile expansion into the South Pacific.

Science In a Sea of Commerce, a groundbreaking work of historical recla mation, highlights this chapter in the story of Polynesia.

Lovingly edited by Sydney academic David Branagan, it is the journal of a South Seas trading mission, kept by one of those remarkable men of science thrown up in the golden age of British exploration, Samuel Stutchbury - a figure who rose from humble origins to become the government geological surveyor of New South Wales.

Stutchbury’s journal of the voyage from London to the Antipodes, in a ship laden with passengers, a diving bell and large numbers of saxon sheep, is a miracle of precise detail and dispassionate obser vation.

Arrival in Sydney on December 18, 1825 provokes this rare outburst of opin ion from the official voyage naturalist; “The hands returned on board at Sam in a state of intoxication, when they behaved in a most disgraceful manner; in fact the behaviour of these men has been the most unbecoming it is possible to conceive dur ing the whole of the passage.”

But most of the jottings of the 27-year old scientist are sternly focused on the world unfolding beyond the ship’s deck and not the least of the charms of this vol ume is its inclusion of the many sketches with which Stutchbury enlivened his account: bird-portraits, cross-sections of a

By Nicolas Rothwell

Portugese man-of-war, views of reefs and coastlines. Stutchbury’s intellectual bent was clearly empirical. There was nothing he felt unwilling to describe - the lan guages of the Pacific, the behaviour of the Polynesians, weather patterns, wildlife and landforms.

As the route of the pearling venture took Stutchbury through much of Polynesia, including New Zealand, the Society Islands, and even far-off Rapa, before cruising the Tuamotus, and remaining on station at Hao for three months, the journal is full of suggestive and intriguing details - providing a snap shot of the activities of missionaries and traders in an epoch when changes were sweeping through the islands. Canoe making, the ceremonies at the marae, the construction of the early churches, the doings of the royal house of Tahiti - all are touched on in Stutchbury’s precise fashion.

Perhaps most important is the correc tive emphasis this book sheds on the opening up of the ocean. It gives us a Pacific teeming with enterprise: whalers, missionaries and beachcombers fill its pages.

As the title suggests, discovery and trading went hand in hand.

Stutchbury’s notes and speculations were the product of a venture bankrolled by City of London and Sydney financiers and the prevailing tone is very much one of unfettered, detached, not to say critical,

enquiry.

Stutchbury’s youthful journals would

be of interest even had their author not

gone on to become one of the founding fathers of Australian geology. It is an almost unique record of the pearling activities of the time, and of a pioneering

commercial exchange between Europeans

and Tuamotu islanders - indeed this was probably the most extensive and impor tant early contact between these two cul tures.

There is a certain formal sheen to other, better-known journals of Pacific voyages.

Stutchbury, who was not writing for eventual publication and was on board a no-nonsense commercial vessel, gives a distinctly unsentimental portrait of the

region.

He was obviously a man of clarity and principle. In his later Australian career, according to Dr Branagan, he underwent “the trials and triumphs of a skilled scien tist in a long and lonely task”.

“His skills were not appreciated by those in authority in the colony and he suffered jealousy and opposition through out much of his stay.”

On his death in Britain, some 33 years after his Pacific adventuring, Stutchbury’s obituarist wrote that “his scientific attain ments were of unusually high order ... in private life he was much beloved for his excellent social qualities, for his cultivat ed powers of conversation, and his pos session of the personal modesty which is always found to accompany true genius.”

Science In a Sea of Commerce stands not merely as a record of the 19th Century enterprise of knowledge. It is also, in some sense, a tribute to Stutchbury, and there is a personal note shining through the dispassionate lines of its introduction; “It is about 20 years since I embarked on preparing the journal for publication,” writes Branagan.

“Many matters conspired to prevent completion ... unravelling the strands of this manuscript has involved considerable time, and has required work in New Zealand, Australia and Britain. In looking through the extensive lists of those who have helped me I am saddened that so many have died, while others have long retired, and institutions have ceased to exist, or have changed their names or functions, or have amalgamated.”

The Pacific, and the broader world,

have changed.

This dream, though, has at last seen the light of day. The book is rather touch ingly dedicated to “The early scientific explorers of the Pacific”.

It deserves to be widely read and

appreciated. ■

Science in a Sea of Commerce - the jour nal of Samuel Stutchbury edited by David Branagan. Published 1996 by DB Books, 83 Minimbah Rd, Northbridge, NSW 2063.

Australia. $A44.00