The Naval Pioneers of Australia Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SIXTH-RATE, 1684. From Charnock's "History of Marine Architecture" [London, 1800]. _To face p_. 32.]

The modern bluejacket, superior in every respect, notwithstanding certain croakers, is infinitely better than his ancestors in the very quality which was their best; the modern sailor faces death soberly and decently in forms far more terrible than were ever dreamt of by his forefathers.

When the _Calliope_ steamed out of Apia Harbour in the hurricane of March, 1889, the youngest grimy coal-trimmer, whose sole duty it was to silently shovel coal, even though his last moment came to him while doing it, never once asked if the ship was making way. All hands in this department were on duty for sixteen hours, and during that time no sound was heard, save the ring of the shovels firing the boilers, nor was a question asked by any man as to the progress of the ship or the chances of life and death.

Compare this end-of-the-century story with that of the loss of the _Wager_, one of the ships of Anson's squadron; and compare the behaviour of the _Wager's_ castaways with that of the bluejackets who stood to attention on the deck of the _Victoria_ till the word was given to jump as the ship heeled over--recent instances quoted merely because they occur to the writers' minds, for there are any number of others. Such cases ill.u.s.trate forcibly this truth: we have, by careful training of the modern sailor, added to the traditional bravery of the cla.s.s a quality, not lacking, but never properly developed, in the old type, that is, the dignity of coolness and self-restraint, the perfect control of men in the supreme moments of excitement and death.

Dampier's men, from a very early stage in his voyage, were a trouble to him. Two only of them, he says, had ever crossed the line, and he was in continual fear of some sickness arising because they were too lazy to shift themselves, but would lie in their hammocks in wet clothes. Three months after the ship got to sea, when nearing Brazil, he tells us that

"the disorders in my ship made me think at present that Pernambuco would not be so fit a place for me, being told that ships ride there two or three leagues from the town, under the command of no forts; so that whenever I should have been ash.o.r.e it might have been easy for my discontented crew to have cut or slipt their cables, and have gone away from me, many of them discovering already an intention to return to England, and some of them declaring openly that they would go no further onwards than Brazil. I altered my course, therefore, and stood away from Bahio de todos los Santos, or the Bay of All Saints, where I hoped to have the governor's help, if need should require, for securing my ship from any such mutinous attempt, being forced to keep myself all the way upon my guard and to lie with my officers, such as I could trust, and with small arms, upon the quarterdeck, it scarce being safe for me to lie in my cabin, by reason of the discontents among my men."

Similar instances of the ill-discipline of the ship are given at intervals throughout Dampier's account of his voyage, and the commander and his officers were all on bad terms with each other, which, however, so far as can be judged now, was, in some degree, the fault of Dampier's uncertain temper.

The scientific results of the _Roebuck's_ voyage were, chiefly on these accounts, of no great importance, judged by the standard of such work to-day; but, with the state of nautical science at the time, not much was to be expected in the way of accurate surveying.

When Dampier set out to explore the coast of New Holland, what charts, what instruments, what scientific knowledge and equipment, had he for the work?

Dampier's time was distinctively an intermediate period. Little more than a century had elapsed since Gerard Mercator's chart was published, and Edward Wright had taught its true principles, and about half a century before the voyage of the _Roebuck_ such improvements as Gunter's application of logarithms to nautical calculations, middle lat.i.tude sailing, and the measurement of a degree on the meridian were introduced.

Hadley's quadrant came thirty years after Dampier, who must have used Davis' instrument, then about ninety years old. Davis' work on navigation, with Wright's chart showing the northern extremity of Australia, and Addison's _Arithmetical Navigation_ (1625) were, no doubt, text-books on board the _Roebuck_. Longitude by chronometer was to come half a century after Dampier was in his grave, and such charts as he possessed did little more than indicate the existence of Terra Australis. The Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch maps were not easy for Englishmen to procure, and all that Dampier has to say on the matter is:--

"But in the draught that I had of this coast, which was Tasman's, it was laid down in 19 degrees, and the sh.o.r.e is laid down as joining in one body or continent, with some openings appearing like rivers, and not like islands, as really they are.... This place, therefore, lies more northerly by 40 minutes than is laid down in Mr. Tasman's draught, and besides its being made a firm, continued land, only with some openings like the mouths of rivers, I found the soundings also different from what the line of his course shows them, and generally shallower than he makes them, which inclines me to think that he came not so near the sh.o.r.e as his line shows, and so had deeper soundings, and could not so well distinguish the islands. His meridian or difference of longitude from Sharks' Bay agrees well enough with my account, which is 232 leagues, though we differ in lat.i.tude. And, to confirm my conjecture that the line of his course is made too near the sh.o.r.e, at least not so far to the east of this place, the water is there so shallow that he could not come there so nigh."

That the narrative of Tasman's voyage was at [Sidenote: 1638-1697]

that time in existence there is little doubt, and an outline of the coasts visited by him was given in an atlas presented to Charles II. of England, in 1660, by Klencke, of Amsterdam, and now in the British Museum. Major also found in the British Museum copies of charts and a quant.i.ty of MS.

describing Tasman's 1644 voyage, which, there is reason to believe, were made from Tasman's originals by one Captain Bowrey in 1688, who had spent fourteen years before that date trading in the Dutch East Indies. These doc.u.ments are all that have been found, and a diligent search of geographers still leaves undiscovered Tasman's original narrative. The 1688 copies were probably known to Dampier when he sailed in the _Roebuck_, and he was, likely enough, supplied with specially made duplicates by the naval authorities. In 1697 a translation of a French book was published in England by John Dunton, of the Poultry, London, with the t.i.tle _A New Discovery of Terra Incognita Australis, or the Southern World, by James Sadeur, a Frenchman._ The Frenchman told a story of thirty-five years' adventures in New Holland; but his tale was a lie from beginning to end. Coming so close to the date of Dampier's voyage, it is worth noting that he does not allude to the book, and so probably, notwithstanding the little knowledge Englishmen then had of the southern continent, Dampier was shrewd enough to detect the imposture.

The _Roebuck_ struck soundings on the night of August 1st, 1699, upon the northern part of the Abrolhos. Dampier then cautiously ran northward, keeping the land in sight until he anch.o.r.ed in Dirk Hartog's Road, in a sound which he named Sharks' Bay, for the reason that his men caught and ate, among other things, many sharks, including one eleven feet long, and says Dampier, "Our men eat them very savorilly." He gives us, too, a description of the kangaroo, the first introduction of that animal to civilization. Says the navigator, "The land animals that we saw here were only a sort of rac.o.o.ns, different from those of the West Indies, chiefly as to their legs; for these have very short fore legs, but go jumping upon them as the others do, and, like them, are very good meat."

Sharks' Bay is in what is now called the Gascoyne division of West Australia, after the river of that name. Its chief town is Carnarvon, situated at the mouth of the river. Wool-growing [Sidenote: 1699]

is the princ.i.p.al industry, and the population is about 800.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPTAIN WILLIAM DAMPIER, R.N. From the picture in the National Portrait Gallery painted by Thomas Murray.] _To face p_. 38.

Dampier stayed eight days in the bay, then ran northward along the coast, discovering the archipelago named after him, and himself naming Rosemary Island, which lies off the coast close to Roeburne, the chief town of the north province of the colony. From here he continued his course north till he reached Roebuck Bay, a few leagues to the south of the scene of his first visit, and where is now the town of Broome. The Eastern Extension Telegraph Cable Company's alternative cable from Banjoew.a.n.gi comes in here, and the town has additional importance as being the harbour for a large pearling fleet.

Dampier left here on September 5th, intending again to land further north, but he abandoned the idea and directed his course for Timor. After he left Timor he called at New Guinea, discovered and named New Britain, now a German colonial possession, spent some weeks upon the New Guinea coast, and then returned to Timor, whence he began his voyage home. Off Ascension the _Roebuck_ sprang a leak and foundered. Her company, who with difficulty saved their lives, landed upon Ascension, where they remained till they were rescued and brought to England in the _Canterbury_, East Indiaman.

During his stay on the coast of New Guinea Dampier, besides those discoveries already enumerated, made others, and the frequent appearance of his name on a modern chart of this coast still commemorates them.

Of Dampier's personality his writings give us little insight. As a good writer should, he keeps his private affairs out of his book, but how much we should have been interested in knowing something of the man's sh.o.r.e life! Mr. Clark Russell in his admirable sketch of Dampier, for example, takes it for granted that he never married, at any rate during his sea career. Dampier himself tells us he was married, and gives us a very good idea of when, but he so seldom, after once getting to work upon his narrative, gives us a glimpse of himself that it is easily understood how Mr. Russell came to miss that pa.s.sage in the _Voyage round the World_ in which the old sailor tells us how in 1687 he named an island the Duke of Grafton's Isle "as soon as we all landed on it, having married my wife out of the d.u.c.h.ess's family and leaving her at Arlington House at my going abroad."

He was, perhaps, not a great man, though a good sailor, who had certain qualities which placed him above his fellows. We imagine somehow that his expressed pious dislike for buccaneering was not altogether the cause of his abandoning the life, and that when he set out upon his career as an explorer the search for a land where gold could be easily got without fighting for it was his main motive. He himself tells us so, but we think that he might have been a greater man if his mind had been capable of a little higher aim than the easy getting of riches. The obscurity of his end is not remarkable when one considers how little was then thought of the value of his discoveries. It took many years for Cook's survey of New Holland to bring forth fruits.

In his third volume, written after his return from Ascension, he says:--

"It has always been the fate of those who have made new discoveries to be disesteemed and slightly spoken of by such as either have had no true relish and value for the things themselves that are discovered, or have had some prejudice against the persons by whom the discoveries were made. It would be vain, therefore, and unreasonable in me to expect to escape the censure of all, or to hope for better treatment than far worthier persons have met with before me. But this satisfaction I am sure of having, that the things themselves in the discovery of which I have been employed are most worthy of our diligent search and inquiry, being the various and wonderful works of G.o.d in different parts of the world; and, however unfit a person I may be in other respects to have undertaken this task, yet, at least, I have given a faithful account, and have found some things undiscovered by any before, and which may at least be some a.s.sistance and direction to better qualified persons who shall come after me."

This is a very fair summary of his work, and in his dedication of his book to the Earl of Pembroke he says truly enough:--

"The world is apt to judge of everything by its success; and whoever has ill-fortune will hardly be allowed a good name. This, my lord, was my unhappiness in my late expedition in the _Roebuck_, which foundered through perfect age near the island of Ascension. I suffered extremely in my reputation by that misfortune, though I comfort myself with the thoughts that my enemies could not charge any neglect upon me."

Upon his return from the _Roebuck_ voyage his next exploit was the command of a privateering expedition consisting of the _St. George_ and the _Cinque Ports_, equipped by a company to cruise [Sidenote: 1715]

against the Spaniards in the South Seas. He sailed upon this voyage in April, 1703, first having the honour of a presentation by the Lord High Admiral to the new Queen (Anne). It is well known that the voyage was a failure, and how Dampier, in command of the _St. George_, quarrelled with Funnel, in command of the _Cinque Ports_. After this voyage he began his downward career, and the next heard of him is when he sailed as pilot on the well-known Woodes Rogers expedition, returning in 1711 a very small sharer in booty to the value of about 150,000.

It was on this voyage that Alexander Selkirk was found upon Juan Fernandez, and Woodes Rogers learned from his pilot, Captain Dampier, how the man had been left upon the island more than four years before from the _Cinque Ports_, and that Selkirk was the best man in her, and so Rogers took him on board his ship.

This, so far as written story goes, is the last of Dampier, and nothing is known of how he spent his declining days. The discovery of his will proves that he died in Coleman Street, St. Stephen's, London, some time in 1715.

The will does not mention the value of his property, but he could not have died rich, and was probably not only poor, but, to judge by the fact of his death not having been recorded by his contemporaries, must have been almost, so far as the great folks who once patronized him were concerned, friendless.

CHAPTER III. [Sidenote: 1755]

CAPTAIN COOK, THE DISCOVERER.

From Dr. Hawkesworth's pedantic volumes to Sir Walter Besant's delightful sketch, there are any number of versions of the story of Cook's life and work. Let us a.s.sume that everyone knows how James Cook, son of a superior farm labourer in Yorkshire, at thirteen years of age apprenticed to a fishing village shopkeeper, ran away to sea in a Whitby collier, and presently got himself properly apprenticed to her owners, two Quaker brothers named Walker, and how at twenty-seven years of age, when he had become mate of a small merchantman, he determined to antic.i.p.ate the hot press of May, 1755, and so at Wapping volunteered as A.B. on board His Majesty's ship _Eagle_.

His knowledge of navigation and his good conduct led to such recognition that when he was under thirty he was appointed master of the _Mercury_.

His surveying work on the St. Lawrence at the siege of Quebec was so carried out that the Admiralty saw in him one of the most promising officers in the service; and Sir Hugh Palliser, one of the first men to "discover" Cook, was from this time, his best friend, giving him, in 1764, an appointment as marine surveyor of Newfoundland, where Palliser was governor. Cook was then a good seaman and a clever navigator, but there is no doubt his special talents were by this particular service afforded an opportunity for full development, and so he became the best scientific man in the navy. In 1769 it was determined to send an expedition to the Pacific to observe the transit of Venus. Cook had just returned from Newfoundland, and he was appointed to the command.

Seventy years had elapsed since Dampier's voyage in the _Roebuck_.

Meanwhile what had the English done in the way of South Sea exploration?

What was the navy like at this time, a year before Nelson, a youngster of twelve, first went to sea?

There are books enough in print to reply to these questions; but with how much more interest could they be answered if the [Sidenote: 1769]

newspaper press, with its interviewers and its photo-reproductions, had been then what it is now. To put life into the skeleton histories, to give us sea life as it was and sailors as they were, we have to trust mostly to the novelists, who, except in rare instances, draw untrustworthy exaggerations.

No doubt there are families who have, so to speak, specialized their traditions for generations; and a naval family's traditions for the last two centuries would make a most entertaining book. Suppose, for instance, there were living at Portsmouth a man whose family for generations had prided itself on some one of its members having shaken hands with all the great sailors who at some time or other in their careers must have sailed from Spithead. This man could tell us how his father had actually shaken hands with Nelson.

There died in February, 1898, in Melbourne, Australia, Lieutenant Pascoe, son of Nelson's flag-lieutenant at Trafalgar, so that the first proposition is established. Now Nelson's Pascoe could easily have been patted on the head by Cook, and the father of any of Cook's men could easily have sailed with Dampier. Looked at in this way, it does not seem difficult to span the gulfs between each of these naval epochs, and if one compares Dampier's _Roebuck_ and her crew with Cook's _Endeavour_ and her crew and with the ships and seamen of Nelson's time, it still seems easy enough; but between us and them steam and iron have come, and we are as far apart from those others as the Martians are from us.

At the time when Cook started on his voyage England had for several years been engaged in, and was almost constantly at, naval war. From the French and Spanish prizes we got many valuable hints in the designing of ships, and our builders improved upon them with the best workmanship and materials in the world, so that the warships of Cook's time differed little from, and in many cases were, the hulks which, until very recent years, lay in our naval seaports. It ought not to be necessary to remind readers that Nelson's _Victory_, still afloat in Portsmouth harbour, was launched in 1765.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPTAIN JAMES COOK, R.N. From picture in the National Portrait Gallery, painted by John Webber, K.A. _To face p._ 48.]

The sailors were for the most part pressed men, but there was a notable difference between them and the seamen of Dampier's time. They were, and remained for long after, wild, improvident, overgrown children such as the nautical novelists who wrote a few years later [Sidenote: 1769]

have pictured them; but the lawless rascals who manned king's ships or were pirates by turns, as fortune provided, were rapidly dying out, and veterans of the Spanish main were mostly to be found spending the evening of their days spinning yarns of treasure islands to the yokels of the village alehouse.

One of the causes which led to this improvement in the cla.s.s of seamen was the disgraceful behaviour of the crew of the _Wager_, a ship of Anson's squadron, when she was lost off the Horn in 1740. A good deal of the trouble was owing to the then state of the law, by which the pay of and control over a ship's company ceased upon her wreck. The law was so amended as to enlist seamen until regularly discharged from the service by the captain of the ship under the orders of the Admiralty.

The food of sailors and the accommodation provided for them were little, if any, better than these things had been fifty years before--for the matter of that than they remained for fifty years later, and to the shame of those responsible, than the food still is in many merchant ships, for even now occasionally we hear of cases of scurvy on shipboard--a disease which Cook, over 120 years ago, avoided, though voyaging in such a manner as nowadays is unknown.

But the most important change that had come to the sea service was in the methods of finding a ship's position at sea. Hadley's s.e.xtant was in use in 1731, Harrison's chronometer in 1762, and five years later the first number of the _Nautical Almanac_ was published, so that when Cook sailed longitude was no longer found by rule of thumb, and the great navigator, more than any other man, was able to and did, prove the value of these discoveries.

In 1764 Byron, who had been a midshipman on the _Wager_, sailed as commodore of an expedition consisting of two ships, the _Dolphin_ and the _Tamar_, to make discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere. This voyage of discovery was the first English scientific expedition since that of the _Roebuck_. Byron returned in 1766 without touching at New Holland, his princ.i.p.al discovery being the Falkland Islands. Three months after his return another expedition sailed under the command of Wallis in the _Dolphin_, and with Carteret in the _Swallow_. The voyage resulted in many minor discoveries, but will be chiefly remembered for that of Tahiti and the story of Wallis' stay there. The _Dolphin_ [Sidenote: 1766-1769]

reached England in May, 1768. The two vessels had previously separated in Magellan Straits; and the _Swallow_, pursuing a different course to that taken by the _Dolphin_, made many discoveries, including Pitcairn Island; the Sandwich Group; and several islands in the neighbourhood of New Guinea, New Ireland and the Admiralty Islands. The _Swallow_ reached England six months after Cook sailed. The _Dolphin's_ return so long before her consort alarmed the Admiralty for the safety of the _Swallow_, and Carteret on his way home, falling in with the French scientific expedition under Bougainville, who himself had been exploring in the Pacific, was informed that two vessels had been sent out to search for him and his men, who, it was thought, might be cast away in the Straits of Magellan.

Dampier's voyage was made solely for discovery purposes; Anson, who forty years later went into the South Seas and so near to Australia as the Philippines, had gone out to fight; Byron, Wallis, and Carteret, who immediately preceded Cook, had sailed to discover and chart new countries; but Cook, who made the greatest discovery and did more important charting than all of them put together, sailed in the _Endeavour_ for the purpose of making certain astronomical observations, and exploration was only a secondary object of the voyage. Wallis' return determined the spot where the observations could best be carried out; and, on his advice, Cook was ordered to make for Port Royal, in Tahiti.