The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. Richard Holmes
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river on the bank of which are placed full Water cask[s]. At every angle is mounted a swivel and two carraige guns pointed the two ways by which the Indians might attack us out of the woods. Our sentrys are also as well releived as they could be in the most regular fortification.’25
This security was regarded as important for good relations, and the fort may have been as much designed to keep the sailors in, as the Tahitians out. Cook enforced a basic naval discipline, which included having one able seaman flogged on the quarterdeck for threatening a Tahitian woman with an axe.26 Naturally there was a night curfew, but it was not very strictly observed, especially by the officers.
The constant theft of goods, especially of anything made of metal, regularly disrupted relations between the two communities. It was theft, too, that most clearly demonstrated the cruel gulf between the two civilisations. To the Europeans theft was a violation of legal ownership, an assault on private property and wealth. To the Tahitians it was a skilful affirmation of communal resources, an attempt to balance their self-evident poverty against overwhelming European superfluity. There was no source of metal anywhere on the island. The Tahitians’ hunting knives were made out of wood, their fish hooks out of mother-of-pearl, their cooking pots out of clay. The Europeans clanked and glittered with metal.
As Cook himself observed, the Endeavour was an enormous treasure trove of metal goods: from iron nails, hammers and carpenters’ tools to the most puzzling of watches, telescopes and scientific instruments. To the Tahitians it was wholly justifiable to redistribute such items. Banks, who had to keep a watchful eye on his scientific equipment, noticeably his dissection knives and his two solar microscopes, noted: ‘I do not know by what accident I have so long omitted to mention how much these people are given to theiving. I will make up for my neglect however today by saying that great and small Chiefs and common men all are firmly of opinion that if they can once get possession of any thing it immediately becomes their own.’27 ♣
Ruminating on these larger ethical questions did not allow Banks to ignore simple practical problems, like the ubiquitous flies: ‘The flies have been so troublesome ever since we have been ashore that we can scarce get any business done for them; they eat the painters colours off the paper as fast as they can be laid on, and if a fish is to be drawn there is more trouble in keeping them off it than in the drawing itself.’28 The men tried many expedients: fly swats, flytraps made of molasses, and even mosquito nets draped over Parkinson while he worked.
Much time was spent in bargaining for sexual favours. The basic currency was any kind of usable metal object: there was no need for gold or silver or trinkets. Among the able seamen the initial going rate was one ship’s nail for one ordinary fuck, but hyper-inflation soon set in. The Tahitians well understood a market economy. There was a run on anything metal that could be smuggled off the ship-cutlery, cleats, handles, cooking utensils, spare tools, but especially nails. It was said that the Endeavour’s carpenter soon operated an illegal monopoly on metal goods, and nails were leaving the ship by the sackful.
Later in June there was a crisis when one of the Endeavour’s crew stole a hundredweight bag of nails, and refused to reveal its whereabouts even after a flogging: ‘One of the theives was detected but only 7 nails were found upon him out of 100 Wht and he bore his punishment without impeaching any of his accomplices. This loss is of a very serious nature as these nails if circulated by the people among the Indians will much lessen the value of Iron, our staple commodity.’29
Cook disapproved of sexual bartering, and made attempts to regulate the trade in love-making-‘quite unsupported’, he later drily observed, by any of his officers. He remained philosophical, observing, not without humour, that there was a cautionary tale told about Captain Wallis’s ship the Dolphin: when leaving Polynesian waters two years previously, so many nails had been surreptitiously prised out of her timbers that she almost split apart in the next Pacific storm she encountered. It was only later that the full, disastrous medical consequences of this spontaneous sexual trade became apparent.
Yet Cook was already aware of the terrible risk and burden of spreading venereal disease, and wrote a long entry in his journal for 6 June 1769 reflecting on them. Certainly he had taken every precaution that his own crew were free from sexual infection when they arrived. They had been examined by Mr Monkhouse, the Endeavour’s surgeon, and they had in effect been in shipboard quarantine for eight months. But the Tahitian ‘Women were so very liberal with their favours’ that venereal disease had soon spread itself ‘to the greatest part of the Ship’s Company’. The Tahitians themselves called it ‘the British disease’, and Cook thought they were probably correct, though he wondered if it was already endemic, brought either by the French or by the Spanish. ‘However this is little satisfaction to them who must suffer by it in a very great degree and may in time spread itself over all the Islands of the South Seas, to the eternal reproach of those who first brought it among them.’30 ♣
Some crew members had moral scruples from the start. Young Sydney Parkinson noted disapprovingly in his journal: ‘Most of our ship’s company procured temporary wives amongst the Natives, with whom they occasionally cohabited; an indulgence which even many reputed virtuous Europeans allow themselves, in uncivilised parts of the world, with impunity. As if a change of place altered the moral turpitude of fornication: and what is a sin in Europe, is only a simple innocent gratification in America; which is to suppose that the obligation of chastity is local, and restricted only to particular parts of the globe.’31
Banks appeared to have no such scruples. He made a point of leaving the camp most nights and, as he put it, ‘sleeping alone in the woods’. He told himself, perhaps with the easiness of birth and privilege, that his intentions were as much botanical as amorous, and that no moral code was seriously infringed. After all, it was all research. Yet it is difficult to see him as a simple predator. He was clearly attractive to Tahitian women-robust, generous, good humoured-and it is striking how quickly he gained a footing (if that is the term) in Tahitian society generally.
He reached an important and lasting understanding with the Tahitian queen, Oborea. This included the pretty girl ‘with fire in her eyes’, who conveniently turned out to be one of the queen’s personal servants, Otheothea. But it was much more than a sexual agreement. Almost uniquely, Banks was welcomed into many hidden aspects of Tahitian life, including dining, dressing and religious rituals. It also brought him his most vital contact, with one of the Tahitian ‘priests’ or wise men, Tupia, who taught him the language and many of the island customs.
Characteristically, Banks was virtually the only member of the Endeavour who bothered to learn more than a very few words of Tahitian. His journal contains a basic vocabulary. The words fall into four main sections, which perhaps suggest his particular areas of interest: first, plants and animals (’breadfruit, dolphin, coconut, parroquet, shark’); then intimate parts of the human body (’breasts, nails, shoulders, buttocks, nipples’); then sky phenomena (’sun, moon, stars, comet, cloud’); and finally qualities (’good, bad, bitter, sweet, hungry’). There are also some verbs, including those for stealing, understanding, eating, and being angry or tired. But the list cannot be very complete, since there are no words for love, laughter, music or beauty-and it would be difficult to talk Tahitian without any of these.
Banks’s skill with language gave him a new role as the chief trading officer or ‘marketing man’ for the Endeavour. He established himself in a canoe drawn up on the shore outside Fort Venus, and every morning would negotiate for food and supplies. He was acutely aware of the shifting trading rates, noting on 11 May: ‘Cocoa nuts were brought down so plentifully this morn that by ½ past