SAILING WITH CAPTAIN COOK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 796, 22 October 1954, Page 7

SAILING WITH CAPTAIN COOK

HERE is probably no more exciting story of Pacific adventure than that told in the journals of Captain James Cook, New Zealand’s first circumnavigator and the greatest ocean explorer the world has known. Cook's historic first voyage in H.M.S. Endeavour began in 1768, and the ships of his third expedition returned home in 1780, leaving the famous navigator’s body behind in the Hawaiian Islands, where he had been assassinated by the natives. During those 12 years the Pacific Ocean changed from a vast blank space on the map to an accurately charted region. Cook’s story of what happened in those years is best told in his own words, and a selection from his journals has been prepared for broadcasting by C. R. H. Taylor, head of the Turnbull Library and a notable expert on the Pacific and Cook himself. Eight dramatised readings have been nrepared for broadcast, starting from>2YC at 9.5 p.m. on Saturday, October 30. "The selectidns have been made mainly for their importance and interest to New Zealand listeners,’ Mr. Taylor said when discussine the programmes with The Listener last week. "In the main, I have relied on direct excerpts from Cook’s journals, though to describe his death I drew upon the narrative of Captain King, a member of the last expedition and Captain of the Adventure on its final les home." The part of Cook is taken in the readings by Briton Chadwick, and that of King by Patrick Smythe. The narrator is Brian Meads. "Wherever necessary I introduced brief explanations of the text," Mr. Taylor said. "I made a point, for instance, of including an introductory passage detailing the life of a sailor of the time-the kind of food he ate on board, the conditions he lived under, and so on. I believe, though, I haven’t seen it specifically claimed, that the crew was pressed on the first voyage. It was a common practice at the time for crews on such long voyai™s to be nocerad into service. ;

"There is also a note on the ships themselves, and there is an interesting story in this connection. There is a legend that Cook’s ship, the bark Endeavour, was later wrecked on the New Zealand coast. But the ship of that name which was wrecked in Dusky Sound in 1795 was a whaling and sealing vessel, not Cook’s ship. It was known as Bampton’s Endeavour, after the master, W. W. Bampton, and we

actually have in the Turnbull Library a violin made from the wood of this ship-but it is Bampton’s Endeavour, not Cook's. There was also a third ship of the same name, a brig, which was launched in 1815. Cook’s Endeavour was sold by the Admiralty in 1775 for £645 and went back to its old trade of coalcarrying. It was used as a collier in the North Sea for a number of years and then sold to a.French dealer in whale oil who renamed it La Liberté. On its

first trip to Newport, Rhode Island, to pick up a load of American whale oil, it ran aground, and a number of relics of it are still in existence in that city. "I drew on Wharton’s edition of Cook’s journal for the all-important first voyage, and on Hawkesworth’s edition of the Voyages for the second and third voyages. I have given much more attention to the -first voyage than to the other two, because it was on this occasion that Cook went right around the coast of New Zealand. But I have chosen characteristic and dramatic passages from the second and third voyages, and I made a point of following him into the highest latitude that he reached in the Antarctic. "Another interesting point that arose when I was preparing the selection for broadcasting is the question of Nicholas Young, or "Young Nick," as he was called, who first sighted New Zealand on October 6, 1769, at the point known as Young Nick’s Head, near Gisborne. Young isn’t mentioned in Wharton's account as a member of the crew when the ship left England. But he was entered on the ship’s roll by Cook in May, 1769, when the expedition was near Tahiti. The theory is that he was brought on board at the request of his family, as the personal servant of William Perry, surgeon’s mate. Cook may not have known of his existence until the time he was entered on the roll." The Endeavour, a former collier of 370 tons, was despatched in the summer of 1768 by the British Government, at the request of the Royal Society, to take observations at Tahiti of the transit of Venus which would take place in June of the following year. She was victualled for 18 months and fully armed. Her complement consisted of 85 persons, including Charles Green, astronomer, Joseph Banks, a student of science and gentleman of large private fortune, Dr. Solander, a botanist and librarian in the British Museum, and Lieutenant Hicks. After observing the transit, Cook proceeded to New Zealand, and stayed on the coast from October 1769, to April 1, 1770, when he departed for Australia. During this time he charted the coast with remarkable accuracy, considering the primitive instruments then in use, and made many contacts with the Maoris.