Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii (3 page)

It was a retirement that he did not want, and Cook found a way to fight it. Over the years he had acquired the friendship, and the patronage, of the formidable John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, a man of sobering means and weighty influence, who since the end of Cook’s first voyage had acted as First Lord of the Admiralty. Cook knew him also as a man of vision (his later reputation for incompetence was overwritten by historians), and Sandwich offered him a third commission that would dwarf the others in importance. Almost from the time that Columbus had proved that the world was round, the Holy Grail of navigation had been to discover the Northwest Passage, a sea route that must lie to the north of the New World. It would link Europe and the Orient by a voyage a fraction of the distance required by rounding the tip of Africa and crossing the Indian Ocean. All who had attempted to descry it failed, crossing the Atlantic only to be frustrated by the maze of icy islands in the Canadian arctic. But, no one had tried to find it from the west. The Bering Strait was known, separating Siberia from Alaska, but what lay north and east of there? That breathtaking task was handed to Cook, but no one must know. None of the competitors in the scramble for imperial expansion—the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, and now above all the Russians, for the Bering Strait was their back door—must have any inkling of the reason for Cook’s heading to sea once more.

It was put out for public consumption that the purpose of this third voyage was to return a native Tahitian named Omai to his home. This first South Sea islander to visit the West had accompanied Cook to England, had been the toast of London, and now gave convenient cover for the third voyage. Cook was promoted again, to captain, commanding the stout
Resolution
and accompanied by a second ex-collier, half the size of the
Resolution
, HMS
Discovery
, Capt. Charles Clerke commanding. Leaving Omai once more with his people on Tahiti, Cook turned north toward Alaska, the Bering Strait, and glory in finally finding the Northwest Passage. Some 2,700 miles later, in the very heart of the vast central Pacific in what was assumed to be open ocean, he raised an island. It was the morning of January 18, 1778. Its tall mountains were obvious, although rendered dark blue by the distance over the water. The winds had been weak, and occasionally Cook found himself becalmed altogether. Throughout the day the island slowly slipped by them to the east, then another island appeared before them. When a lazy wind finally filled their sails it was from the east, making it easier to steer for this second island ahead of them.

Becalmed again during the night of the nineteenth, the ships drifted a bit to the west, and on the morning of the twentieth they finally approached the south coast of the second island. Cook found no anchorage here, but he could see that it was well populated, the landscape heavily dotted with grass houses and agricultural plots. A few canoes knifed their way out to them, paddled by a handsome swarthy people who closely resembled the Polynesians that Cook had left far behind. They were friendly, but apprehensive. Cook and his officers recognized the language as a variant of what was spoken in Tahiti and the other Society Islands—a different dialect, but communication was possible.

The natives were too cautious to come aboard, but Cook lowered gifts to them, brass medals and bits of iron. Once the islanders understood the visitors’ friendly intentions, they pitched overboard the stones they had brought to hurl at them had they proven otherwise. Cook had no idea of the impact that the gift of metal would have on these people. In trade, the islanders sent up quantities of fish and sweet potatoes, and then paddled heartily away to spread the news: This alien race of men brought
iron
to trade.

To find an anchorage Cook turned west, toward the lee side of the island, and soon a third mass of land appeared on the horizon to the west. As the discoverer, Cook named the archipelago the Sandwich Islands, in honor of his patron, the earl. As the two ships proceeded, more canoes approached them with produce to trade, all for iron. “Such is these People’s avidity for iron,” wrote Captain Clerke of the
Discovery
, “a moderate sized Nail will supply my Ship’s Company very plentifully with excellent Pork for the Day, and as to the Potatoes and Tarrow, they are attained on still easier Terms.” The natives appeared to have an advanced culture, but no source of metal.

On the west side of the island Cook put in at a shallow bay from which they could see a village on the shore, perhaps sixty grass houses, and farther inland, a number of curious, flimsy white towers. As more canoes paddled their way out, Cook learned that the island was called Kaua‘i, with a glottal stop separating the final two vowels. The village was called Waimea.

Here at last the natives came aboard the
Resolution
, and were awestruck at the experience. Some prayed; some threw themselves prostrate on the deck before the officers. As remembered in Hawaiian traditional lore, two men at the fore, a priest and a chief, tied
malo
sashes in their left hands; “they went before
Kapena Kuke
[Captain Cook] bent over, squatted down, and offered prayers … then took the hand of Kapena Kuke and knelt down; then rose up free from any tabu.” Cook presented the priest with a knife, who then named his daughter Kua-pahoa (After this Knife.)
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Once convinced that they were welcome, the islanders inquired into matters of etiquette and proper behavior. In their society men did not swallow their saliva, but spit incessantly, and they asked where they might do so. But again they were almost frenzied at the presence of iron. One man seized a meat cleaver and leapt overboard with the prize, racing for shore with others in his canoe. Lt. John Williamson, who was just lowering the pinnace to find a landing spot, pursued him; his men were under orders not to fire, but when Williamson shot his pistol after him, his men leveled a musket volley. Terrified natives dived overboard and swam, but the cleaver was not recovered.

As soon as the first English boat slid onto the beach, a native spied the iron boat hook and determined to seize it, and Williamson shot him. The locals carried his body away with no great show of mourning; apparently life was cheap here, and to English eyes the incident was soon forgotten. It occasioned much discussion among the natives, however. The thief may have been a chief named Kapupu‘u (Forbidden Hill). In this culture, chiefs were accustomed to taking what they pleased, and this one ignored the priests’ warnings, took the iron, and was killed. There was sentiment to avenge him, but the fear that this was a visiting god convinced them that hospitality was the safer course.
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Aboard the
Resolution
the natives at first showed a disposition to help themselves to anything the visitors had, but once they understood that this was not acceptable, they settled down to trade, eagerly and amicably. “No people,” wrote Cook after convincing them they could not just take what they wanted, “could trade with more honesty than these people.” Within a short time the ships had taken on nine tons of fresh water and a host of provisions, all acquired in exchange for more bits of iron.

During their days at Waimea, Cook went ashore three times. As a distinguished visitor, he was conducted to the most important sites in the village. The first was one of the white towers that he had seen rising above the forest; Cook estimated its height at fifty feet, but noted others even taller farther away. At its foot was a grass house, with a small altar outside on which food offerings had been left. It was the grave of an
ali‘i
, a member of the ruling noble class. The second was a burying ground nearby, marked off by skulls set on the ground; this was the cemetery of the
kanaka kapu
, commoners (
kanaka
, or more formally the
maka‘ainana
, people of the land) who had been privileged to be sacrificed to the gods.
Kapu
, among these people, was the same as
tabu
among the Tahitians, meaning set apart, holy, forbidden.

The English assessed an essentially Polynesian culture, with a diet based on taro, bananas, fish, pork and dogs, with clothing of
tapa
, the inner bark of mulberry or selected other trees, thinned by pounding until it became a coarse but flexible cloth. Cook recognized the culture well. Their weapons, though inventive, were edged with stone or sharks’ teeth. The English also noticed two distinct classes of people. With some exceptions the
ali‘i
, the chiefs, loomed in size over the low-status
kanaka
, and exercised unquestioned power.
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Commoners fell on their faces before them. Cook did not meet any of the high chiefs, who were withheld by their retainers until they could learn more about this white foreign race and their vast powers.

Anxious to continue with his exploration, Cook took the
Resolution
over to the island visible to the west, called Ni‘ihau. Clerke and the
Discovery
lingered at Waimea, where at last he met the island’s handsome young king and his wife. The monarch was escorted out to the ship with great ceremony, but his attendants would not allow him to go farther onto the vessel than the gangplank. They “took as much care in getting him in and out of the Canoe,” wrote the amazed Clerke, “as tho’ a drop of Salt Water wou’d have destroyed him.” Clerke patted him on the shoulder in greeting, and the retainers looked on agape: To touch the king meant death; only some higher being would dare such familiarity.

After briefly probing the coast of Ni‘ihau, Cook desired to top off his stores before venturing into the northern reaches of the Pacific, but wind and sea made it impossible to return to Kaua‘i. Cook therefore sent three boats of armed men—a provisioning party—to ascertain a landing spot on Ni‘ihau. Once they were ashore the surf increased, and it was clear that they would have to spend at least one night there. This displeased him, for Cook knew what would happen. He himself never partook of native women. During his brief visits home he had fathered five sons and a daughter with his wife, Elizabeth, to whom he had been married for fifteen years. Tolerant of his men’s needs, he was also conscious of his role in empire building, with a sincere exertion to limit the spread of sexual diseases from his crew to native populations. But the English quickly learned how aggressive the women of these islands could be. This culture had developed a keen sense of eugenics, and to mate with a superior person was greatly desired. On Kaua‘i, according to Lieutenant Williamson, the women “used all their arts to entice [the sailors] into their Houses & even went so far as to endeavour to draw them in by force.” Cook had only allowed men with no venereal symptoms ashore on Kaua‘i, although he knew that was no guarantee, but now with twenty stranded on Ni‘ihau, infection was sure to be introduced.

*   *   *

On Ni‘ihau, Cook left behind a gift of diversified diet: seeds of pumpkins, onions, and melons, a ram goat and two ewes, and an English boar and sow. Then, in company with
Discovery
, he sailed north to unlock the mystery of the Northwest Passage. Over a period of months, Cook explored and mapped the western coast of North America from California to Alaska, filling in the gap between charts left by previous Spanish explorers to the south and Russian explorers to the north. He discovered the Cook Inlet and realized it was a dead end. Rounding the southwest corner of Alaska, he perceived that the Bering Strait was the only possible outlet of any Northwest Passage. Repeatedly he tried to punch through to the northern sea but was driven back. Frustrated and angry, increasingly hobbled by pain in his stomach, Cook’s nerves frayed and he took it out on his crew. At one juncture he forced them, when they complained of their rations, to eat walrus. The total number of disciplinary lashes meted out for all offenses, which had totaled only 288 on the second voyage, now numbered 684.
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Cruelty was not unknown in the British navy, as would one day be made clear by Cook’s own sailing master on the
Resolution
, twenty-four-year-old William Bligh, but for Cook this was new behavior.

Conceding defeat for the winter, Cook sailed due south to revisit his Sandwich Islands, which lay just south of the Tropic of Cancer. Two thousand miles or more from the nearest landmass in any direction, the most isolated archipelago yet discovered on earth, their strategic importance to future trade and imperial power must become vast, and a thorough exploration and claim for Britain would be signal.

For the better part of two months the
Resolution
and the
Discovery
coasted the islands: the two Cook had visited a year before, the tall volcanic island that the natives called Kaua‘i and the smaller, agricultural Ni‘ihau, as well as the island he had first seen to the southeast, which they called O‘ahu. Having been at sea for a year, the sailors were almost crazy to get ashore, but Cook was intent on his exploration and took no notice. In later years Cook’s third voyage inspired memoirs from about two dozen of his officers, each more reverent than the previous in his praise for the captain. Taken together they created an iconic, almost godlike Captain Cook. One account, however, written by the only American on Cook’s vessel, and later resolutely buried by British historiography, took a different view,
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John Ledyard of Groton, Connecticut, was a corporal of marines aboard the
Resolution.
He was twenty-eight, from a wealthy family, and had been on a recreational excursion when he was shanghaied in England and press-ganged into the Royal Navy. Ledyard accepted his fate, which seems astonishing but for the fact that he had been intent on exploring the world anyway. He had signed aboard a merchant vessel as an able seaman once before, and once impressed into the Royal Navy he even volunteered for marine duty on the famous Cook’s ship. But he had a darker memory of Cook’s cooping the men on board for two months within sight of rest and women—and not just women but eager, lusty, aggressive women. “This conduct of the commander in chief was highly reprobated and at last remonstrated against by the people on board both ships,” wrote Ledyard. Cook seemed to care only for his chart making, disregarding the needs of his crew, “the brave men who were weaving the laurel that was hereafter to adorn his brows.”
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