The Secret Mission...

[khiemtran]

Back on-board the Endeavour now. We've made it to Tahiti and observed the transit of Venus and the commander has opened his sealed orders...



Instead of returning back around Cape Horn, we are to head west instead, to search for the Great Southern Land that scientists believe must exist somewhere in the South Pacific.

Not all of us have made it this far, sadly. Three sailors have drowned on the way, including one who became entangled in the anchor rope. To replace him, the commander pressed a crewman from an American ship at Madeira. The sailor, John Thurman, was born in New York, but happened to be a British subject, and so now he gets to serve the King on this great adventure.

Here's the winch which raises and lowers the anchor. You can see some of the anchor rope at the very right.



Let's take a closer look at those aboard now. There were ninety-four people on the Endeavour when she sailed. Besides the crew, the scientific party consisted of eleven people. First and foremost, there's Joseph Banks, the rich young naturalist and botanist who was a driving force in getting this mission approved. Just twenty-four years old and already a rising star in the scientific world. The Royal Society actually proposed that he should lead the mission, but the Navy refused and insisted a proper sailor be in command.



Along with Banks are his tutor, Daniel Solander, a doctor and naturalist from Sweden, and Herman Spöring, a Finnish naturalist who will serve as an assistant to Banks. There is also Charles Green, the astronomer who observed the transit of Venus, and two artists who will record whatever discoveries we make. There was a third artist, Alexander Buchan, but he sadly died of epilepsy while we were in Tahiti.

The scientific party also included four servants, but two of them, Thomas Richmond and George Dorlton, froze to death in South America while trying to return to the ship in a snow storm.

Here's a view of Banks' cabin, as big as the commander's own.



Next we have the ship's complement of marines. There were twelve in total, although one has already drowned himself after being accused of stealing and being "sent to Coventry" by his mates. They are responsible for guarding the powder room and ensuring the safety of the officers on-board the ship and for the safety of the entire crew while on land. To help protect us from boarding, the Endeavour has also been equipped with twelve swivel guns, one of which you can see here.



Blood has already been spilt on this voyage. In Tahiti, some of the natives attempted to steal a gun from a shore party and the young midshipman in command, Jonathan Munkhouse, just eighteen years old, ordered his men to open fire. Jonathan is the brother of the Ship's Surgeon, William Munkhouse.

Conditions are cramped on-board the ship, with over sixty men living on a single deck. John Thompson, the Scottish cook, manages to cook for all ninety-four people even though he only has one hand. Beside his firehearth are the workrooms of John Satterly, the Ship's Carpenter; John Gathray, the Boatswain; and John Ravenhill, the Sailmaker.

All of this gets us at last to the commander, Lieutenant James Cook. He is forty years of age, but this is his first command. He went to sea as a sailor in the merchant navy, as luck would have it in colliers, and after finally earning an offer to command his own ship, he then volunteered for the Royal Navy and had to start at the bottom again as an Able Seaman. He quickly made it up through the ranks again and distinguished himself during the Seven Years War as a navigator and cartographer.

It's little wonder he was chosen for this mission, and we'll need all his experience to make it through. We do have one other secret weapon though. A Polynesian navigator named Tupaia. He's only ever been to the islands of Eastern Polynesia, but he has ancestral lore that will guide us to the islands further west and beyond. He doesn't know about a Great Southern Land, but who knows what we might find ahead...

Click here for Part Three...

Comments

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Cool; I didn't know very much about this in advance. Looking forward to finding out what happens next.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I want to know how John the Cook, John the Sailmaker, John the Carpenter and John the Boatswain all came to hold key positions on the same ship. If I wrote a story about a German ship where everyone was called Hans, people would say unkind things about me.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Regarding naming children in France (from Wikipedia because I wasn't sure of the exact date that parents were given "free choice"): There are no legal a priori constraints on the choice of names nowadays, but this has not always been the case. The choice of given names, originally limited only by the tradition of naming children after a small number of popular saints, was restricted by law at the end of the 18th century. Officially, only names figuring on a calendar, or names of illustrious Frenchmen/women of the past, could be accepted.[3] Much later, actually in 1966, a new law permitted a limited number of mythological, regional or foreign names, substantives (Olive, Violette), diminutives, and alternative spellings. Only in 1993 were French parents given the freedom to name their child without any constraint whatsoever.[4] However, if the birth registrar thinks that the chosen names (alone or in association with the last name) may be detrimental to the child's interests, or to the right of other families to protect their own family name, the registrar may refer the matter to the local prosecutor, who may choose to refer the matter to the local court. The court may then refuse the chosen names. Such refusals are rare and mostly concern given names that may expose the child to mockery.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

That's interesting! I knew about the tradition of taking saints' names but I didn't know how it had changed since.

[eglantine-br.livejournal.com]

Ridiculous numbers of men were named John. Like, a quarter of the men. If you throw in a few other names like Thomas and William it accounts for nearly all the men!

I did not know that Captain Cook came up the hard way.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

His father was a farm labourer and his first apprenticeship was as a shop boy. After that didn't work out, he got an introduction via the shop owner to some prominent ship owners in Whitby (the same town where the Endeavour was built) and took on a life at sea.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

That galley looks cool ( I especially like the presence of the buckets at the ends of the tables); so much bigger than I usually picture a galley being.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

That's not just the galley - that's where they slept and kept their belongings. It would have been busy, crowded and noisy most of the time, and yet since the men slept by watches, there would have also been people trying to sleep throughout the day and night. At least each watch had a separate section of the deck, so the sleeping watch wouldn't get as disturbed by the others.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

John Ravenhill, the Sailmaker. I want a story about him. With that name and profession, he ought to have a good one.

How did there happen to be a Polynesian navigator with them? And from whom had they heard of the the Great Southern Land?

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Tupaia's story would fill an epic of its own. We found him in Tahiti, but he was originally an exile from Ra'iatea. In Tahiti, he had worked his way up through society to the position of arioi, which is something like a high priest. He has a wealth of local knowledge, but, just as importantly, he has a burning curiousity. From the time of his grandfather, the domain known and visited by the Raiateans has shrunk and shrunk, so the distant islands of the Pacific are now just ancestral memories. Yet here is a chance, on a miraculous foreign vessel that can reach any point on the planet, to see the places that his father and grandfather told him about. He joined the ship's crew as a supernumerary, no doubt knowing that it may be a long time before he ever makes it home (if he makes it home at all), and yet if he does survive, he'll see places that none of his people have ever seen before.

As for the Great Southern Land, its existance has long been postulated since the days of Aristotle and Ptolemy. Modern scientists as distinguished as Alexander Darymple and Gerardus Mercator have argued that it must be there as a counterweight to the lands of the northern hemisphere. There are also stories and travellers tales of a land of fabulous wealth south of Java - although this will prove to be a mistake and the stories were probably originally referring to Thailand.

The big question is just where the Great Southern Land lies. We know that Africa ends at the Cape of Good Hope and that the seas are wild the further south you go from there. Likewise, from the tip of South America at Cape Horn, there doesn't seem to be any land in sight. The Dutch have found stretches of coastline south of the East Indies, but nothing that met their dreams of a new land filled with gold. We're going to search where no-one has looked yet - at the bottom of the South Pacific, to see if that's where the land termed terra australis incognita really lies.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is fascinating! May I ask, are you reading on this subject now? If so, can you share the titles? Is there a biography of Tupaia? Maybe just his Wikipedia entry is interesting--what a cool guy!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I'm using wikipedia and some other on-line resources, plus the printed guide we got from the National Maritime Museum when we toured the Endeavour replica (where most of the photos are from).

For Tupaia, this book (http://www.oldsaltblog.com/2010/05/tupaia-captain-cooks-polynesian-navigator-a-new-book-by-joan-druett/) also looks interesting, although be warned that even the link contains spoilers for what's coming next.