James Cook’s Three Remarkable Voyages of Discovery in the Pacific

Rob Mundle is a sailor by background. He is also, the internationally recognised author of Fatal Storm – now published in six languages having sold over 200,000 copies. More recently he has published Bligh – Master Mariner, and Flinders, The Man Who Mapped Australia. On Wednesday 6 November, Rob Mundle addressed The Sydney Institute to discuss his latest book Cook: From Sailor to Legend, delving into discussion of and Captain James Cook’s enduring legacy and connections with Australia.

JAMES COOK’S THREE REMARKABLE VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY IN THE PACIFIC 

ROB MUNDLE

For me, it’s indeed a great honour to be with you tonight and it’s lovely to see that we’ve got a full house. Cook: From Sailor to Legend is my thirteenth book but until I wrote the first of this trilogy, which was Bligh: Master Mariner, I never saw myself as being an author or writer of Australian maritime history. But I am. And I have to say I’ve never been happier. I seem to have found a niche in life that’s been waiting for me to fill. And it’s a wonderful thing.

The link between Bligh, Flinders and Cook is that Bligh sailed with Cook, and Flinders sailed with Bligh. Flinders was also on Bligh’s second voyage to Tahiti, when he was commissioned to collect breadfruit for the West Indies. On Bligh’s first voyage to Tahiti there was a mutiny, deaths and many other problems. His second voyage was successful in delivering the breadfruit, but the slaves refused to eat it. So both those Bligh voyages, really, ended in failure.

I can thank publisher Helen Littleton for encouraging me into writing maritime history. And I’m so glad that she insisted – persisted, for that matter. I’d also like to acknowledge Paul Brunt, Emeritus curator of the State Library of NSW. Paul was an enormous help in guiding me through so much of this book and commenting on my copy and making sure that we were on course.

There were so many books about James Cook out there, I struggled at first to grasp where I might create a book that was a little bit different, something entertaining, something interesting, something beneficial. My research soon convinced me that I could achieve that, and come up with something different. I could write with emphasis on the seafaring side of the man’s life, while also recognising his remarkable achievements as an explorer. My life as a competitive sailor and a career journalist gave me what I needed.

My own family heritage is very much with the sea, and goes back to the era of square riggers. Until yesterday, I was led to believe that that heritage was firmly entrenched in New Zealand where Captain Joseph Mundle sailed square riggers from England to New Zealand, carrying migrants. But yesterday I discovered my family also had distinct ties with Sydney’s maritime history. On 25 April 1885 the Sydney Morning Herald carried a story about the square rigger Commodore Perry which had just sailed into Sydney from Liverpool carrying migrants. The story described the Commodore Perry as one of the largest and finest vessels to enter Sydney Harbour. The ship carried 312 passengers and a cargo that included 300 tonnes of coal and 2250 sacks of salt. Its captain was a G. Mundle who had his family on board with him. Captain George Mundle was my great-great-grandfather.

I’m a senior member of the Mundle family’s generation that hasn’t gone to sea to earn a living. But I have sailed a lot – starting out as a two-year-old in a plywood boat in the middle of the backyard at the family home in Cremorne, using a broomstick for a mast and a bed sheet for a sail. But I have also sailed around the world countless times.

And so to Cook. I can say that it’s quite possible that it was a wisp of wind, one that was barely discernible, that became the reason for us being here tonight. Or, more specifically, for the First Fleet to have arrived here and established the settlement just a short distance away in Sydney Cove. I’ll explain why. After Lieutenant Hicks had first sighted the coast of New Holland, Cook had sailed the Endeavour north, exploring the east coast of the newly discovered land. And, as we know, he discovered Botany Bay and other points along the coast.

If I asked any of you here, what was the most traumatic, the most dangerous, the most memorable moment of that voyage up the coast, I’m sure everyone would say it was when Cook ran aground on Endeavour Reef and the ship was almost lost. But I don’t believe that that was the most dangerous moment.

After repairing his ship over seven weeks on the banks of the Endeavour River, Cook realised the only way he could then find a safe passage to the north was to escape the dangers that were confronting his progress. These were ever increasing, large expanses of coral reefs lurking just below the surface of the waters he had to navigate. He had to find a way out through the reef, to get into the deep water, to find a gap somewhere in the outer barrier of the reef.

And that he did, just to the east of Lizard Island. Once outside, he knew he had to stay either in touch with the coast or be able sail along, or parallel to, the reef because his next object was to decide was there a gap or a pass between the tip of this unknown coast and New Guinea. He could not be sure that there was one all one.

About 48 hours after the Endeavour first entered deep water, it was riding a very nice breeze. Night was falling so he decided to turn back on a reciprocal course. He did not want to risk unknown waters. It was quite common then to sail all and come back at night. That way they knew they were in safe water. Off they would go again in daylight hours.

But suddenly his breeze evaporated. Almost immediately it became apparent that the current and a huge ocean swell was sending the ship and its ninety-plus crew towards a massive tsunami of white water. The water was thundering onto the reef just a couple of miles away. Despite his determined efforts to save his ship, by having all three of Endeavour’s small boats manned, and trying to tow the ship to safety. All was in vain. Anchoring was out of the question, plumbing the depths with a lead line revealed the bottom could not be found at 150 fathoms, or around 300 meters. That’s the height of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

This dire circumstance was not lost on Joseph Banks, the young naturalist representing the Royal Society, who was aboard Endeavour. Banks wrote, “Our case was truly desperate. … A speedy death was all we had to hope for and that from the vastness of the breakers, which must quickly dash our ship all to pieces, was scarce to be doubted. Other hopes we had none.”

Of the same situation Cook wrote;

It was six o’clock and we were not above 80 or 100 yards from the breakers. The same sea that washed the sides of the ship rose in a breaker prodigiously high. The very next time it did rise, so that between us and destruction was only a dismal valley, the breadth of one wave. We hardly had any hopes of saving the ship. Yet in this truly terrible situation, not one man ceased to do his utmost, and that with as much calmness as if no danger had been near. All the dangers we had previously escaped were little in comparison to being thrown upon this reef where the ship must be dashed pieces in a moment.

With certain annihilation just metres away, the only hope for salvation arrived. That was a gentle wisp of wind. Barely enough to get pressure into the sails. But it was and Endeavour moved a few boat lengths away from the edge of the reef. But then it died again. So, suddenly, here is a ship drifting back towards the reef once more.

Those on the corner deck, the lieutenants and so forth, were throwing crunched up pieces of paper into the water to confirm that they were heading back to the reef. It was still dark at the time. Then, suddenly, just when they were on the verge of being washed onto the reef, another puff came. This time it was enough to move them just a little bit further. They were incredibly fortunate because the wind came from an offshore direction and blew them away from the reef. Then, miraculously, the tide also changed. So Endeavour was safe. They were able to get the ship through a narrow channel an hour or so later and back inside the reef. Cook and his ship had been at death’s door. All they could do at that stage, obviously, was count their blessings.

It was Thursday 16 August when that twist of fate, that quirk of nature, in the form of that ever so gentle and unexpected puff of wind changed the course of history. Cook and his men were spared from the inevitable and fatal consequences of an horrendous shipwreck. One that would have possibly remained a maritime mystery forever. Cook would not have returned to England with any news of his two great discoveries at the time – the extent of New Zealand and the fact that it comprised two large Islands. Or the existence of the east coast of a “New Wales”. Which later, through an editing error in publishing, became New South Wales.

Think of the possible scenario had Endeavour’s crew been lost. With the British back home in England not knowing the existence of this coast, the scene would not have been set for the creation of the penal colony here in 1788. As a consequence, it could well have led to the French flag or some other flying high over this land today. And we might have all been speaking French.

Had Cook and his crew perished on the Great Barrier Reef at the time, the world would have been deprived of the man who would go on to become – as far as I’m concerned, and many others – the greatest navigator, cartographer and maritime explorer of all time. Only Magellan and Vasco da Gama can stand close to Cook. Over his three voyages of discovery, Cook redrew the world map and made discoveries like no other.

Cook’s first voyage of discovery started on 26August 1768. At that time, one third of the world’s surface had not been explored by the Europeans. This was essentially the area of the Pacific Ocean, some 63.8 million square miles. When he, died less than 11 years later in tragic and gruesome circumstances in Hawaii or the Sandwich Islands as they were then, Cook had criss-crossed the vast majority of that region, making remarkable discoveries and naming more than 300 landmarks across the Pacific. These ranged from South America to New Zealand and Australia, the Antarctic region to the Arctic region. And this, all the time searching for Terra Australis Incognito or the Great Southern Land.

Cook claimed many many firsts, including being the first explorer to sail beyond both the Antarctic and Arctic circles. He was the first man to circumnavigate the world in opposite directions. He sailed more than 200,000 nautical miles, over three incredible voyages. That’s the equivalent of from here to the moon. That puts it into perspective.

He was born on 17October 1728, and was the son of a farm worker in Marton-in-Cleveland, in from the coast of Yorkshire. If you look at his upbringing, Cook was born in a hut with a mud floor, no facilities inside, and probably no walls. He was destined to be a farmer. But his father took a job at a nearby property, managing the farm. In doing so, the squire who owned the farm took a distinct liking to young Cook. So much so that he paid for his education.

When Cook came to leave school at 12, it was very obvious to the squire that this young lad really did have an ability with numbers and with letters. So, soon after he had begun work with his father on the farm, the squire got the lad a job in a store in Staithes on the coast, 20-25 miles to the east. It was a grocer’s store which, in those days, was a store that sold goods by the gross. So Cook trained to become a shopkeeper. But, after a while, he became intrigued by the sea.

The store was on the waterfront. Cook was fascinated by the sailors, their stories, the feeling of the sea. And legend has it that the moment Cook decided to pursue a completely different career came on a day when a well-weathered sailor strolled into the store and used a South Seas Company one shilling piece to pay for a purchase. Young James is said to have looked at it as if it was an omen guiding him to his future. The thought of the South Seas conjured up for him up a thousand stories about distant plans. The die was cast. Within a year of arriving in Staithes, Cook had moved to a Whitby ten miles south where he signed on to become an apprentice on coastal colliers carrying coal up and down the coast, obviously under sail.

Cook did that for a decade. Then he was offered the role of master of a collier. But he decided that that wasn’t his future. He’d done enough, he’d learnt enough there. If he wanted more adventure, he could become a merchant sailor and cross the Atlantic or sail to the West Indies. But he wanted to join the Navy, to go beyond. He wanted excitement.

Cook joined the Navy at 26. He had to start life on the lower deck with all the riff-raff, some of the most undesirable. He accepted that. His first ship was the HMS Eagle and later he went abroad the Pembroke. Aboard the Eagle he got to see battle off the coast of France at the start of the seven-year war. On the HMS Pembroke he saw more battles with the siege of Louisburg and the siege of Quebec. He became recognised for his ability as a cartographer and a navigator. Particularly in the St Lawrence River where he found the channels that ships used to make their way up the river up the river, more than 100 miles to Quebec to take on the French.

After the war, Cook returned to Newfoundland as a surveyor and cartographer. He had met Samuel Holland, the great Royal Navy cartographer, after the siege of Louisburg. Holland who was land based and surveying much of North America. Cook became intrigued by his work. They struck up a friendship and Holland passed on much of his knowledge of surveying.

During this time, he married Elizabeth Bass. She was 14 years his junior. Little is known of their relationship as, on his death, his wife disposed of every communication the two of them had between each other. We do know that they had six children. And that, nine months after every Cook homecoming, another Cook child was born.

The Royal Society knew that a transit of Venus was expected in June 1769. It would be 120 years before the next one. A transit of Venus represented the opportunity to more accurately calculate the distance of the planets from the sun. This information was vital to navigation. At the time, navigators couldn’t calculate longitude accurately, and it had led to disasters on the high seas. If they could observe the transit of Venus, it would provide the information to help calculate longitude accurately.

The Royal Society in collaboration with the Royal Navy chose Cook to lead the voyage to observe the transit of Venus, sailing in the HM Bark Endeavour. They chose the Endeavour because of the shape of the vessel. She was round, fat, and had a very bold hull to carry coal.  Cook also realised that, in going into unknown waters with a vessel that shape, if the vessel did run aground it would get a lot of buoyancy from the rising tide. Her long, wide flat hull would help lift her off the bottom and escape any dramas.

They left in August 1768, destined for Tahiti. Cook also had a set of secret instructions. These were to go in search of the Great Southern Land, the Terra Australis Incognita. The observations of the transit of Venus were remarkably successful. Then Cook set off on his secret mission. The theory at the time held that there was a huge landmass somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. There had to be, according to the theory, just to counter the weight of the land in the Northern Hemisphere. That was the theory in the middle of the eighteenth century.

Cook left Tahiti, and made his way far into the Southern ocean. He found no lane and the and weather turned very bad. He headed for warmer latitudes and aiming  for the point where Tasman gave his latitude and longitude for the west coast of New Zealand. There was a theory that New Zealand might have been part of the Great Southern Land. Also, that it might have extended far into the Southern Ocean joining South America somewhere near Staten Island (Cape Horn). That’s why Tasman called it the Staten Landt when he first discovered it.

Cook found land – the north island of New Zealand. He then circumnavigated New Zealand and proved it was two islands. He had bad encounters with Maoris and Cook became increasingly concerned when it became apparent that some were cannibals. On one occasion, with two Maoris on the board, a group of Maoris had paddled out to them in canoes. The English tried to hail them over so they could give them gifts and extend friendship. They wouldn’t come anywhere near the boat. It wasn’t until the two Maoris on board convinced those in the canoe that white people didn’t eat men that the onlookers came to the vessel. Other evidence of cannibalism was also recorded.

It was a dangerous voyage around New Zealand. But Cook managed, sailor that he was, to avoid drama, accidents, or running aground. His sailing skills and navigational skills and a second sense made him remarkable. Sailing around the southern tip of New Zealand was an extremely rough voyage. For all that, Cook and his crew completed the circumnavigation of New Zealand. From there, they entered what would become known as Cook Strait and in Ship Cove they replenished and repaired the ship. Then Cook set off for Van Diemen’s land. He knew that Tasman had left the coast there.

It was a typical Tasman Sea storm, as in the Sydney to Hobart races, that blew Cook off course so that he sailed to the west of the point where Tasman had been on the coast of Tasmania. Cook discovered Bass Strait. He then sited the south eastern coast of the mainland of Australia. This he named Point Hicks. – without the “e”- and then they sailed up the east coast of Australia.

Now we know he went to Botany Bay, which he saw as being a great place to establish a colony. He sailed past Sydney but noted the harbour. Again, you’ve got to wonder, had he sailed into Sydney Harbour and seen it, might the English have come even sooner to Australia when they realised what a great harbour it was. Cook noted Broken Bay to be a possible site for a port, and continued north. What intrigued Cook was the difference between the natives in New Zealand and the Aborigines he encountered in Terra Australis. The Maoris were persistent and approached him with curiosity. They either harassed or tried to befriend the white intruders. The Aborigines showed no interest whatsoever. Only occasionally they showed aggression, as they did in Botany Bay. Most of the time they’d come down to the beach, look at the strange object going past on the water, then turn and walk back into the bush as though nothing had happened. Cook found that quite intriguing.

Cook returned to England. He had survived. He reported on his findings. This led to a second voyage to look for the Great Southern Land. In England Cook’s voyage was heralded greatly by the press and the public at large. No one had ever discovered so much. Joseph Banks found himself on a wave of success to such an extent that he overshadowed Cook and it became for a time known as Banks’ voyage. So much so that Banks assumed that he would lead the next voyage.

I cannot go into a story that followed but for a time Banks organised to have a ship built to accommodate him and a number of friends. It was not to be. Cook would lead a second voyage in the Resolution which set off in 1772 and went so far towards the Antarctic they were lucky to leave the chilly waters before being locked in by ice. They had sailed as far south as 77 degrees latitude. All that without clothing for the climate or equipment on board for the conditions. The sails were freezing above them. They had to lift the ship into the wind so the sails shook out with ice cascading onto the deck like broken glass. Cook went three times into the Antarctic circle.

On his third voyage, leaving England in 1776, he went in search of the Northeast passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He had decided to accept the third voyage after not being content to stay on land in a management job at the Navy’s Greenwich hospital. As the ship entered the extremes of the Arctic circle, Cook faced 20 foot high stretches of ice, rom horizon to horizon. He could not get through it. So he returned to warmer waters, waiting for winter to pass. He’d already discovered the Sandwich islands so decided to go there. No one but Cook could understand why. He may have wanted to explore more of the Hawaiian islands. And he had been treated like a god in the Sandwich islands on his first voyage.

But, with his return, came a very different welcome. The islanders were in lean times. They started stealing goods, and attacking the sailors. Cook went to the chief’s hut and asked to have a dialogue. He was surrounded as he spoke to the chief by agitated islanders., so he tried to keep talking while he moved back towards his ship. The islanders assumed that he was trying to kidnap their chief. And they speared him leaving him dead. A tragedy, and the loss of a great man of nautical and world history.