The Pacific Read online

  DEDICATION

  I can only speculate at what Cook’s motives might have been when he

  embarked on his voyage because we don’t get much from his logs. I can

  only guess at his inner thoughts. But the fact he kept going back to the

  Pacific – he couldn’t stay away – shows he was completely taken by

  the place. In the end, it wasn’t just that he changed the Pacific . . . the

  Pacific also changed him. He became a man of the Pacific.

  *

  Most of the voices we hear on Pacific are indigenous, and for me that’s

  important. The other side has been told so often – it’s so familiar. The

  great Cook who comes along and plants a flag followed by all the

  benefits that come with European settlement. Law. Literacy.

  Technology. The wheel! We’ve heard it all before. But there’s a whole

  other side to the story many of us have never heard – largely because

  we haven’t been listening, and that’s the indigenous story of the

  Pacific. Hopefully, Pacific might help change this.

  – Sam Neill

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  FOREWORD

  AUTHOR NOTE

  PART ONE 1 PARADISE ON EARTH

  2 WE WEREN’T DISCOVERED

  3 PEACEFUL SEA

  PART TWO 4 LOST WORLDS

  5 KINDRED SPIRITS

  6 MORTAL REMAINS

  PART THREE 7 WELCOME TO COUNTRY

  8 LARGER THAN LIFE

  9 DANGEROUS SHORES

  PART FOUR 10 ENDS OF THE EARTH

  11 THWARTED AMBITIONS

  12 ON THE EDGE

  PART FIVE 13 CHASING RAINBOWS

  14 OFF THE RAILS

  15 GIVE AND TAKE

  PART SIX 16 CONTESTED TERRITORIES

  17 BEYOND THE MORTAL REALM

  18 APOTHEOSIS

  PHOTO SECTION

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  FURTHER READING

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  FOREWORD

  by Sam Neill

  When I was a boy there was a huge map on the classroom wall. It was a map of the world, and most of that map was coloured pink, which meant that it was British, the old British Empire. This was supposedly a very good thing, because it brought order, enlightenment and above all cricket to the darkest places of the world.

  Well. That was then. And of course now . . . I’m not sure of any of it.

  That map was in large part pink as a result of the three voyages of the great explorer James Cook, at least in the third of the planet we call the Pacific. Cook’s journeys, and the course of his reputation, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, fascinate me. Cook of course didn’t actually ‘discover’ anything – everywhere he went had been discovered by other people hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years before him, though this certainly didn’t deter the Europeans who followed in his wake. Which meant that most of the Pacific was eventually colonised, and thus our map, much of our corner of the world, was pink.

  But for me, this has been a journey of discovery; the result being this book, as written by Meaghan Wilson Anastasios, and TV series. More than that, I think they became a love letter to my part of the world. I am more grateful than ever for growing up here, for being part of this place. I love this vast blue hemisphere.

  Much of what we found on this voyage was new to me. For instance, I was not a little taken aback at the disparity of opinions on Cook: he is utterly loathed in some quarters, and yet adored in others. The project evolved, and became a story of an ocean as much as a story of people. It’s as much about the present as it is about history. It’s as much about me, I suppose, as it is about Cook – Cook being someone of enormous stature, and me . . . not particularly of any stature at all.

  It is 250 years since Cook first sailed into this immense ocean, since those first fateful encounters. So perhaps it was no coincidence that even while we were shooting the series, the impending commemorations meant increasing controversy. How should we remember Cook? What are we to make of his claiming these lands for the Crown? How responsible was Cook himself for the devastating consequences of his ‘discoveries’ for the peoples who had populated the Pacific for so long – the people who had actually discovered and settled in this ocean?

  And those original peoples – for all Cook’s magnificent achievements and his consummate seamanship – how extraordinary were they? My own family now is in part Māori, so I have a particular and personal interest in the Polynesian diaspora – their incredible navigational skills, their great knowledge of the Pacific, their survival. Cook’s arrival put that survival into immediate risk.

  Of particular fascination to me are those initial awkward, often funny, sometimes tragic first encounters. As in so many parts of the world, the arrival of Europeans was at best a puzzle. They looked like dead people. They must have had eyes in the backs of their heads since they paddled backwards. The reception by the Māori and Australian Aboriginal people could not have been more different – in New Zealand they were met with curiosity, hostility and often generosity. In many of the encounters in Australia, by contrast, the Indigenous people either retreated into the bush, or carried on with their lives completely ignoring these intruders. It was as if they were invisible. In Tahiti, Alaska and Hawai‘i . . . that’s another story again.

  But here’s the thing about Cook, the navigator – he always knew where he was. And for good or bad, he drew that map. And that map changed history.

  It’s been a privilege, as well as an education, to sail in his wake.

  Here a disclaimer: I’m not a historian, I’m not a sailor, I’m not a navigator, I’m not an expert at anything much, I’m just a winemaking actor – but I am vitally interested, and I hope that you will be interested too. So follow me while I follow Cook. And just remember nothing is definitive, nothing is written in stone, make up your own mind, don’t take my word for it!

  There are many people to thank here. Essential Media’s Chris Hilton, Frame Up Film’s Owen Hughes, Foxtel History Channel’s Jim Buchan, Duane Hatherly and Richard Stomps, and Prime TV’s Annie Murray for their initial vision. The writers of the series – Owen Hughes, Sally Aitken and Meaghan Wilson Anastasios, who also wrote this book. Please feel free to criticise any inaccuracies as their fault! The excellent directors Kriv Stenders and Sally Aitken; our Executive Producer, David Alrich; our doughty crew – Jules O’Loughlin, Mark Broadbent, Glenn Fitzpatrick, Ziggy Golden, Eamonn Dimmitt; the researchers who made it possible, Kirrilly Brentnall and Johanna Gibson; archive researchers Crystal Khoupraseuth and Penny Jope, the producers who kept us all in line, Aline Jacques and Joe Weatherstone; Indigenous consultants Larissa Behrendt in Australia and Annabelle Lee in New Zealand; the editors of the TV series, Karryn de Cinque and Adrian Rostirolla; and those close to me – Ann Churchill Brown, Sophy Jones and Lauren Major.

  And above all, the many wonderful generous people we found from Alaska to Dusky Sound, from Cooktown to Hawai‘i and all between.

  AUTHOR NOTE

  ‘Captain Cook discovered Australia . . . New Zealand . . . Hawai‘i.’ To the original inhabitants of the Pacific, these are words that burn.

  ‘We were not discovered’ . . . it’s a sentiment expressed from one end of the Pacific to the other. It’s also the reason this book is structured as it is. Although half my surname may be Greek, it comes to me through marriage – my own family heritage can be traced to the moment the Angles met the Saxons. So when I embarked on this story, I knew that for me to speak for the indigenous Pacific experience would be plain wrong. While I feel qualified to relate the European side of the story, I wanted to
leave the indigenous perspectives in The Pacific: In the Wake of Captain Cook with Sam Neill in the words of the people who own the history. In those accounts, you’ll find contradictions and diverse opinions, as you’d expect of a gathering of intelligent individuals with strong opinions. One manifestation of this is that you’ll notice not all the contributors are listed in the publication with cultural identifiers or tribal affiliations. This has been done at their request and for many and varied reasons. The point is, in this book I’ve attempted to honour the wishes of the people who were generous enough to share their time and wisdom with the production and to pass on their stories in their own words – as is right.

  Another point that requires explanation is the use of the word ‘indigenous’. In this book, ‘Indigenous’ is capitalised when it is specifically referring to Aboriginal Australians. For other First Nations of the Pacific, ‘indigenous’ is used. However, it’s important to acknowledge that not all Aboriginal Australians choose to refer to themselves as ‘Indigenous’; an adjective that could be seen as implying a homogeneity they find derogatory and offensive.

  Meaghan Wilson Anastasios

  PART ONE

  ONE

  PARADISE ON EARTH

  As restrained as he was in his logbooks, Cook did describe

  places like Tahiti as being particularly beautiful. How

  could he not? The world is full of beautiful places but

  there’s nowhere quite like the Pacific.

  SAM NEILL

  The Tahitians would have caught a whiff of them on the breeze before they saw them: ninety-four men jammed into a timber sailing vessel in the tropics. Although the captain of the Endeavour was as diligent as he could be about his crew’s health and general sanitation, hot baths and bars of soap were few and far between on the high seas. Based solely upon the new arrivals’ questionable personal hygiene, the Tahitians would have been justified in repelling the Endeavour and her crew from their shores.

  JOSIANE TEAMOTUAITAU PhD, Historian

  When the Endeavour arrived here, and the men on the ship saw those people on the beach who were not too dark but just the right colour, and they were clean, and always wearing scented flowers . . . the sailors were impressed because our people would bathe twice a day and they had all their teeth, which was not the case on board. So, of course, who wouldn’t have been attracted?

  The locals standing on the soft sands of Matavai Bay and watching the approach of the British ship were fastidious about cleanliness. They washed themselves at least two times a day in a freshwater river near Point Venus, removed the hair from their armpits, dressed their silken tresses with snow-white blossoms, and anointed their skin with an intoxicating blend of coconut oil infused with tiare flowers known as mono’i.

  SAM NEILL

  Everyone living on the island was like a god to the men on the Endeavour – they were muscular and beautiful. I don’t know why they put up with these miserable little buggers from the East End . . . Why would you? But I suppose it was a matter of mutual curiosity. And so, the first thing that happened when the ship arrived was that sailors did what sailors do. It must have absolutely blown their minds.

  When the excited and malodorous crew of the Endeavour arrived on 13 April 1769, led by Captain James Cook, they received a warm welcome complete with a full array of sexual favours. One can only ask: why?

  MOETAI BROTHERSON, Mā’ohi Tribe, French MP

  You have to put yourself in Polynesian shoes of the time. I can just imagine their curiosity. Those new weapons. The language and the maps. All the written things that we didn’t have. It must have been very exciting for the Polynesians, because we are curious people by nature. I’m sure our ancestors were looking at everything these strange, pale men had.

  The cause of the sailors’ erotically charged reception can be laid firmly at the prow of the two European voyages that had found their way to Tahiti prior to Cook. In 1767, Samuel Wallis had arrived aboard the Dolphin and named Tahiti ‘King George’s Island’; and the two ships of French navigator Louis Antoine de Bougainville, the Boudeuse and the Étoile, had dropped anchor in 1768.

  It hadn’t taken long for the Tahitians to work out that the new arrivals could be useful.

  JOSIANE TEAMOTUAITAU PhD

  Tahitians are very pragmatic. We evolve and manage and try to cope with what is given to us. When Cook and the other Europeans arrived on the island they tried to make the best of it. They knew they couldn’t fight guns. So this trade began: these exchanges, these friendships.

  There was one thing in particular the Tahitians knew they could get from the Europeans: metal. The Tahitians had been introduced to the wonders of metallurgy after salvaging parts from a European wreck that had foundered on a nearby island in 1722. To a people who worked architectural and nautical miracles with tools made of coral, stone, wood and (usually human) bone, the potential of metal was immediately apparent.

  When the Dolphin turned up in 1767, it dawned on the Tahitians they had something the unwillingly abstinent sailors would happily exchange for iron: sex. And so a febrile and enthusiastic trade ensued. As one of the sailors on board put it, ‘The women were far from being coy. For when a man found a girl to his mind, which he might easily do amongst so many, there was not much ceremony on either side.’ So eager were Wallis’s men that they absconded with the iron nails used to hold their hammocks in place below deck. It must have made for an uncomfortable trip home for those sailors silly enough to dismantle their sleeping quarters.

  Comfort was one thing, but seaworthiness was another altogether. When the Dolphin’s amorous crew began to pry the nails out of the ship’s hull to continue their exploration of Tahiti’s garden of earthly delights, things took a more serious turn. Shipwreck, piracy, mutiny and foundering at sea were all well-documented means of losing one’s vessel – but sabotage by a randy crew didn’t appear in the shipmaster’s manual. Even the threat of a flogging wasn’t enough to deter them, and as the Tahitian women began to up the ante, demanding longer nails – not in a metaphorical sense . . . they literally wanted longer nails – in exchange for a sexual encounter, the Dolphin was in serious danger of collapsing into a pile of floating planks.

  Cook had been apprised of these perils before he set sail from Plymouth on 25 August 1768. So as the Endeavour dropped anchor in Matavai Bay and the Tahitians surrounded the boat calling out ‘taio’ – ‘friend’, Cook knew that most of the men on board had more than friendship in mind. To discourage his crew – or ‘The People’, as he called them – from dismantling his ship, he had set in place a severe regime of punishment for any man caught trading necessities for sexual favours.

  CAPTAIN JAMES COOK

  Endeavour by every fair means to cultivate a friendship with the natives and to treat them with all imaginable humanity . . . No sort of iron, or anything that is made of iron, or any sort of cloth or other useful necessary articles are to be given in exchange for anything but provisions.

  He had the best of intentions. But it was a lost cause.

  Cook was prone to wishful thinking. A fair to middling state of optimism must have featured fairly high on his list of personal attributes, considering the monumental challenges he would go on to confront and the milestones he achieved in a stellar naval career. Not that you’d guess it from his journal: more often than not, Cook’s phlegmatic entries from his first voyage reveal more about his personality through what he doesn’t tell us than what he does.

  SAM NEILL

  Cook left a lot of stuff for historians – logs, journals, charts and sketches – but the man is still hard to read. He was the consummate professional. He didn’t write about his hopes, his fears, his loves or ambitions. He just recorded his actions, those of the crew and the progress of his ship.

  Cook was disciplined, focused and temperate. At over six feet in height, he had a dark complexion and was strong featured and generally regarded as a bit of a looker. But a poet, he was not.

  For a vi
vid description of the effect of the Tahitian welcome upon a ship full of sexually frustrated European sailors we must look, perhaps not surprisingly, to a Frenchman. The navigator Bougainville, who had arrived on the island with his two ships in 1768, wrote in lyrical terms about the irresistible temptations laid at the French sailors’ feet.

  LOUIS ANTOINE DE BOUGAINVILLE (1729–1811),

  French Admiral and Explorer

  I ask you, how was one to keep four hundred young French sailors, who hadn’t seen women in six months, at their work in the midst of such a spectacle? Despite all the precautions which we took, a young girl got on board and came onto the forecastle and stood by one of the hatchways which are over the capstan. The girl negligently let fall her robe and stood for all to see, as Venus stood forth before the Phrygian shepherd; and she had the celestial shape of Venus . . . We managed to restrain these bedevilled men, however, but it was no less difficult to control oneself.

  The men who arrived on Tahiti on board the Endeavour were no different, regardless of their commander’s most fervent wishes. Part of the problem was that they already knew what to expect.

  Of all the peddlers in tall tales, seamen would have to rank as the most creative. Embedded in Cook’s crew were five men with firsthand experience of what the Endeavour’s sailors had to look forward to when they arrived on Tahiti’s palm-fringed beaches. John Gore, Charles Clerke, Richard Pickersgill, Francis Wilkinson and Francis Haite had all visited the South Pacific on earlier voyages of exploration. The salty tales recounted on the excruciatingly long journey would have been fuelled by the prodigious amount of alcohol on tap – with 4500 litres of beer, 6000 litres of spirits and 11,500 litres of wine on board, the Endeavour’s circumnavigation of the globe was as much booze cruise as it was voyage of exploration.