Tupaia, Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator by JOAN DRUETT

Author:JOAN DRUETT
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Tahiti, Captain Cook, Polynesian navigation, canoes, ancient Maori of New Zealand
Publisher: Old Salt Press
Published: 2018-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

12

Latitude Forty South

THE WEATHER BECAME unpleasant as they left the tropics behind, with almost constant icy rain. A heavy swell made the ship roll sickeningly. Loose gear slid from one side to the other, while the rigging thrummed, and the hull groaned. The pad of seamen’s bare feet was replaced by the clatter of boots and shoes, and the hogs on deck huddled together for warmth, shivering and squealing, skidding in their muck and tumbling comically as the ship rolled back and forth.

Tupaia and Taiata, resistant to seasickness but not to cold, changed from loose, comfortable tapa robes into European clothes. Taiata could now be mistaken for just one of the boys, having adapted to ship life very easily. The cold meant little to a lad who could chase friends about the decks, and skylark in the rigging. He was also popular with the seamen, who told Marra later that he was “the darling of the ship’s company from the highest to the lowest.”

Tupaia, by contrast, was both lonely and alone. He went below to the crowded berth deck, to strike up conversations with old Dolphins Richard Pickersgill and Frank Wilkinson, and talk with madcap midshipmen like the American James Magra (who wrote the gist of Tupaia’s story down), but would not have been made welcome. The sailors, contrary by nature, accepted that as a highborn “man of real genius,” Tupaia should be respected, but at the same time they resented it. As Marra was told just over a year later, Tupaia was “by no means beloved by the Endeavour’s crew, being looked upon as proud and austere, extorting homage, which the sailors who thought themselves degraded by bending to an Indian, were very unwilling to pay.” And when they were disrespectful, Tupaia complained to the officers, which did not help matters at all.

It was such a foreign world, and the routine was so very strange. Time, which had been measured by the sun, stars, and tides, was now marked by bells and watches, so that an officer who asked the time of day would be answered with something like, “Two bells in the morning watch, sir!” At dawn—five a.m., two bells in the morning watch—the men on duty broke out buckets, and washed and scrubbed the decks. This was not incomprehensible, as in Tahiti the people rose at dawn, and went to the nearest pool to wash—but there was nowhere for personal washing on the Endeavour, so Tupaia became as unpleasantly smelly as his companions. Breakfast was eaten at eight bells, eight in the morning, which was familiar enough, being close to the time Tahitians broke their fast with a few leftovers from the day before. The noon-time dinner, however, was almost as alien as the first issue of a pint of grog that followed, because in Tahiti noon was the hottest part of the day, not the time for heavy meals. The sailors’ early supper hour of four in the afternoon was more acceptable for a man who

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