Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora Part 6

[55-2] Manua, the most Easterly of the Samoa Group, called Opoun by La Perouse.

[55-3] Tutuila, discovered by Roggewein in 1721, visited by Bougainville 4th May, 1768, and by La Perouse 10th December, 1787. On the day before his murder by the natives, Comte de Langle, La Perouse's second in command, discovered Pangopango harbour while on a walk through the island, but neither Bougainville nor La Perouse seems to have discerned the masked fissure in the cliff which forms its entrance. Edwards must have had a copy of Bougainville on board, but no record of La Perouse's visit four years before, or he would have shown greater caution in communicating with the natives. That he had heard something of La Perouse's voyage, and had some ground for suspicion is shown by Hamilton.

A detailed account of de Langle's murder is to be found in "La Perouse's Voyage," vol. ii.

[56-1] Vavau.

[57-1] He might have added "in the Pacific," for it is a magnificent land-locked harbour, a little narrow for sailing s.h.i.+ps to beat out of in a southerly wind, but excellent for steams.h.i.+ps.

[57-2] This was Finau Ulukalala, one of the most notable men in Tongan history. He had just succeeded his elder brother, the Finau (Feenow) of Captain Cook's visit in 1777. On April 21st, 1799, he conspired against Tukuaho, the temporal sovereign of Tonga and a.s.sa.s.sinated him, plunging Tonga into a civil anarchy which lasted twenty years. He was Mariner's patron and protector until his death in 1809. "The great master of Greek drama," says a writer in the "Quarterly Review," "could have desired no better elements than are to be found in the history of this remarkable man; his remorseless ambition and his natural affections--his contempt for the fables and ceremonies of his country when in prosperity--his patient submission to them when in distress--his strong intellects--his evil deeds--and the death which was believed to be inflicted on him in vengeance by the over-ruling divinities whom he defied."

[58-1] Hunga.

[58-2] Niuababu.

[58-3] Falevai.

[58-4] Fonua Lei (Land of Whales' teeth).

[58-5] Late.

[58-6] Toku.

[58-7] These islands had already been twice visited and named, and Cook, though he did not visit them, gives all their native names in his list of the islands composing the Friendly or Tonga Group. The honour of their discovery belongs to the Spanish pilot Maurelle, who sailed from Manila in 1781, without proper charts or instruments and almost without provisions for his long voyage to America. Reduced to desperate straits by famine, he sighted Fonua Lei, the northernmost of the Tonga Group, which he called Margoura, believing it to be one of the Solomon Islands.

At Vavau he was liberally entertained by Bau or Poulaho, the Tui Tonga of Cook's visit four years before. La Perouse pa.s.sed close to the islands in December, 1787, but, consistent with his determination to hold no further intercourse with natives after the murder of M. de Langle, did not enter the harbour of Neiafu. Edwards had no account of either of these voyages.

La Perouse's journals were not published until 1797.

Fonua Lei was again destroyed by an eruption in 1846. The inhabitants who had plantations on it were removed to Vavau just in time.

[59-1] There is only one. It was so named by Tasman 1642. Maurelle called it Sola. But Edwards probably mistook the twin islets of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Haapai for Pylstaart.

[62-1] Niua-fo'ou (New Niua), discovered by W. Cornelis Schouten in the Dutch s.h.i.+p _Eendracht_ (Unity) on May 14th, 1616, and named by him "Good Hope" Island. Twelve canoes came off, and some of them attempted to take the boat that he had sent ash.o.r.e for water, but desisted on discharge of a volley which killed two men. He wrote: "The island was full of black cliffs, green on the top, and black, and was full of coco-trees and black earth. There was a large village, and several other houses on the seash.o.r.e: the land was undulating, but not very high." No s.h.i.+p is known to have visited the island from 1614 to this visit in 1791.

The cocoanuts grown here are the largest in the world, but the specimens planted in other islands do not appear to maintain their abnormal size.

The island is further remarkable from the fact that the Megapodius, or Scrub hen, is plentiful there, and nowhere else in the Pacific further east than the New Hebrides. The natives have no traditions of its introduction. The eggs have been prized as a delicacy in Tonga for centuries, and are exported thither by every canoe going southward during the breeding season. It is said that they are sometimes hatched artificially, but the young _malao_ does not take kindly to the bush in Tonga, although the vegetation is much the same. Why should the bird be found in Polynesia, having skipped all the intermediate islands of Melanesia? To what story of the migration of races is it the only clue?

[63-1] Niuatobutabu, like Niuafoou, subject to the King of Tonga.

[63-2] Uea, discovered by Wallis in 1767, and visited by Maurelle on April 22nd, 1781. It has 3000 inhabitants who are said by the French missionaries to be increasing. Uea is nominally independent under its own queen, but the French priests wield the real power in so spirited a fas.h.i.+on that the natives frequently attempt to escape from the island as stowaways.

[64-1] Mourning for the death of a chief or near relation.

[65-1] This confirms the story of Kau Moala, a Tongan navigator, who returned to his native land in 1807 and related his adventures to Mariner. He had visited Futuna, Rotuma and Fiji in a double canoe, and, in describing Rotuma, he related the legend of two giants who had migrated from Tonga to Rotuma in legendary times. He was shown gigantic bones in proof of the story, the bones, no doubt, of some marine monster.

Mention is made of Rotuma in a Tongan saga of the early sixteenth century, and there can be no doubt that there was occasional intercourse between these distant islands during the period when the Tongans were the Nors.e.m.e.n of the Pacific.

Kau Moala heard nothing of Edwards' visit, though he brought news of the visit of a s.h.i.+p to Futuna, and of an ineffectual attempt to take her--perhaps the visit of Schouten, whose account of the affray tallies closely with theirs even to the killing of six natives. The tradition was still fresh after 190 years. Edwards' visit, having brought no disasters on the natives, escaped the attention of the native poets and was forgotten.

[67-1] Native name Fataka. The Russian Captain Kroutcheff, who landed upon it in 1822, found it uninhabited.

[67-2] Kroutcheff placed it 41 minutes further west.

[68-1] This was Vanikoro in the Santa Cruz Group. It was probably seen by Mendana in 1595, and again by Carteret in 1767, but the interest attached to it by Europeans, and particularly to Edwards' visit, lies in the undoubted fact that at that very time there were survivors of La Perouse's ill-fated expedition upon it. If his search for the mutineers had been as keen at this part of his voyage as it was in the earlier portion, he would have been the means of rescuing them. The smoke he saw may well have been signal fires lighted by the castaways to attract his attention.

La Perouse's s.h.i.+ps were cast away in 1788, just three years before, shortly after the Commander had delivered his journals to Governor Phillip in Botany Bay for transmission to Europe. Their fate was unknown until Peter Dillon chanced upon a French swordhilt in Tucopia thirty-eight years later in 1826. Satisfying himself that they had been brought from Vanikoro, he persuaded the East India Company to place him in command of a search expedition. In 1827 he made a thorough examination of the island, and found the remains of the _Boussole_; the _Astrolabe_, according to the native account, having foundered in deep water. He found the clearing where the survivors had felled timber to build themselves a brig in which they sailed to meet a second s.h.i.+pwreck elsewhere, perhaps on the Great Barrier reef of Queensland. But two had been left, and of these one had died shortly before his visit, and the other had gone with the natives to another island leaving no trace behind him.

D'Entrecasteaux, when in search of La Perouse in 1793, also pa.s.sed within sight of the castaways.

D'Urville made a thorough examination of the island both in 1828 and 1838. The relics brought home by Dillon may be seen in the Gallerie de la Marine in the Louvre.

[69-1] This was the dangerous reef now known as Indispensable Reef, after the s.h.i.+p _Indispensable_ commanded by Captain Wilkinson, who discovered it in 1790.

[69-2] It was, in fact, the mainland of New Guinea. The land East of Cape Rodney, comprising Orangerie, Table, and Cloudy Bays, lies so low and is so generally obscured with haze that on a dull day Edwards would not have seen it.

It is doubtful whether Edwards' Capes Rodney and Hood, are correctly placed in the modern charts. Our Cape Rodney is not a conspicuous headland, and it lies half a degree eastward of 21214 W. Longitude, and 9' South of 10^{6}3 S. Lat.i.tude. Edwards' positions are usually so accurate that I cannot see why they should have been departed from. Our Cape Hood, on the other hand, is exactly in the position of his Cape Rodney, and is besides a very conspicuous wooded tongue of land. Beyond is another conspicuous point. Round Head, which corresponds in position with Edwards' Cape Hood. Mount Clarence, moreover, would not appear to lie between Capes Rodney and Hood until the former was out of sight astern. I think that Mount Clarence must have been hidden by clouds, and that Edwards' Mount Clarence was in reality the high cone in the Saroa district, which is a conspicuous feature on the coast line. A further indication that the day was hazy lies in the fact that Edwards did not see the great Owen Stanley Range which towers up 13,000 feet behind. Had he done so he would not have mistaken the mainland for a group of scattered islands. Hamilton does not call Mount Clarence an "island," but a "mountain." A further proof that Edwards' "Cape Hood" was Round Head is found in the remark "After pa.s.sing Cape Hood the land appears lower, and to branch off about N.N.W., . . . for we saw no other land." This applies to Round Head, and to no other part of the coast.

[70-1] If he had kept this course he would have struck the New Guinea Coast again a little East of the Maikasa River.

[70-2] East Bay.

[71-1] It is difficult to understand how Edwards failed to see Flinders Pa.s.sage, which, while not free from obstructions to the westward, would have admitted him to a safe anchorage at the Murray Islands, inside the Barrier Reef.

[71-2] It was an unfortunate choice. Had he steered north on first encountering the reefs he would have made the coast which he might have followed in safety, as Bligh did in his boat voyage after the mutiny, by what is now known as the Great North-East Channel. He was led Southward by his plan of using the Endeavour Straits. See Hamilton's account, pp.

141-2.

[73-1] Two men were crushed to death; one by a gun that had broken loose, and the other by a falling spar. The whole s.h.i.+p's company seems to have behaved splendidly, working at the pumps and at the sail they were preparing to haul under the s.h.i.+p's bottom until they could scarcely stand for fatigue, with nothing to replenish their strength but "a cask of excellent strong ale which we brewed at Anamooka" (Hamilton).

[73-2] Every reader must be struck by the fact that in his description of this disaster, Edwards never once speaks of the prisoners. Hamilton, it is true, does say "The prisoners were ordered to be let out of irons,"

but another account, ascribed to Lieutenant Corner, second lieutenant of the _Pandora_, throws a sinister light on this part of the narrative.

"Three of the _Bounty's_ people, Coleman, Norman, and M'Intosh, were now let out of irons, and sent to work at the pumps. The others offered their a.s.sistance, and begged to be allowed a chance of saving their lives; instead of which, two additional sentinels were placed over them, with orders to shoot any who should attempt to get rid of their fetters.

Seeing no prospect of escape, they betook themselves to prayer, and prepared to meet their fate, everyone expecting that the s.h.i.+p would soon go to pieces, her rudder and part of the sternpost being already beat away. No notice was taken of the prisoners, as is falsely stated by the author of the 'Pandora's Voyage,' although Captain Edwards was entreated by Mr. Heywood to have mercy upon them, when he pa.s.sed over their prison to make his own escape, the s.h.i.+p then lying on her broadside, with the larboard bow completely under water. Fortunately the master-at-arms, either by accident or design, when slipping from the roof of 'Pandora's Box' into the sea, let the keys of the irons fall through the scuttle or entrance, which he had just before opened, and thus enabled them to commence their own liberation, in which they were generously a.s.sisted, at the imminent risk of his own life, by William Moulter, a boatswain's mate who clung to the coamings, and pulled the long bars through the shackles, saying he would set them free, or go to the bottom with them. Scarcely was this effected when the s.h.i.+p went down. The master-at-arms and all the sentinels sunk to rise no more. Among the drowned were Mr. Stewart, John Sumner, Richard Skinner, and Henry Hillbrandt, the whole of whom perished with their hands still in manacles."

Some allowance is to be made both for the confusion of a s.h.i.+pwreck, and for the natural fear of the commander that in the loosening of the ties of authority natural to such a moment, the liberation among his crew of a number of men who had already mutinied successfully, and were going home with a rope about their necks, would be an act of merciful folly. This, however, does not excuse him for refusing his prisoners the shelter of an old sail on the sand cay, and so obliging them to get shelter from the sun by burying themselves neck-deep in the sand, as Heywood afterwards stated. Heywood further a.s.serted that after the vessel struck the prisoners, having wrenched themselves out of their irons, implored Edwards to let them out of "Pandora's Box," but that he had them all ironed again.

[74-1] In his evidence before the court-martial Edwards said: "The double canoe, that was able to support a considerable number of men, broke adrift with only one man, and was bulged upon a reef, and afforded us no help when she was so much wanted."

[74-2] Hamilton says 34.

[75-1] Each boat was supplied with the lat.i.tude and longitude of Timor, 1100 miles distant. As soon as they embarked the oars were laid athwart the boat so that they could stow two tiers of men. The men were distributed as follows:

_Pinnace_--Capt. Edwards; Lieut. Hayward; Rickards, Master's Mate; Packer, Gunner; Edmonds, Captain's Clerk; 3 prisoners, 16 privates.

_Red Yawl_--Lieut. Larkan; Surgeon Hamilton; Reynolds, Master's Mate; Matson, Mids.h.i.+pman; 2 prisoners; 18 privates.

_Launch_--Lieutenant Corner; Bentham, Purser; Montgomery; Carpen Bowling, Master's Mate; Mackendrick, Mids.h.i.+pman; 2 prisoners; 24 privates.

_Blue Yawl_--George Pa.s.smore, Master; Cunningham, Boatswain; Innes, Surgeon's Mate; Fenwick, Mids.h.i.+pman; Pycroft, Mids.h.i.+pman; 3 prisoners; 15 privates.

[77-1] Tree Island.