Was James Cook a flogging captain?

CAPTAIN COOK'S DISCIPLINE

Somehow, I missed this story in our local paper, the Dominion Post, or I would have searched out this book much earlier.  I already knew that Captain James Cook, very involved with his self-image, and how he appeared to his superiors, was inclined to fudge certain items in his journals.

For instance, he altered the date of Tupaia's death on the voyage of the Endeavour, to make it seem impossible that this Polynesian genius, priest, and star navigator could have died from complications from scurvy.  Determined to go down in history as the first captain to circumnavigate the world without losing a single man from scurvy (a feat that Captain Samuel Wallis of the 1766 voyage of the Dolphin had already accomplished), it did not serve his purposes to leave any hint that Tupaia might have suffered mortally from that dreadful disease of the sea.

However, until I found Captain Cook's Discipline, I did not know that Cook also veiled the number of floggings on board his ships, by merely noting that "nothing remarkable" had happened on flogging days.

It took a review by a member of the Captain Cook Society to send me in search of the book.  And a worthwhile quest it was indeed.  Privately published by its author, Allan Arlidge, it reflects thirty years of searching through logs and journals kept on Cook's three discovery voyages to list and describe the punishments carried out on board and on shore.

Historians have described the eighteenth century as "the flogging century," and pointed out that flogging was carried out so often that it was indeed "nothing remarkable."  But is this true?  Did some captains discipline more harshly than others?

Let's look at Bligh, for instance.  The usual story of the mutiny on the Bounty blames the uprising on the brutal behavior of the captain.  And this is what happened during the 18 months between departure from England and the mutiny in the south Pacific.

On voyage:

Matthew Quintall, 24 lashes, for insolence and contempt

John Williams, 6 lashes, for carelessness while casting the lead

At Tahiti:

Alexander Smith (John Adams), 12 lashes for allowing the cutter’s gudgeon to be stolen while he was on watch

Matthew Thompson, 12 lashes, for insolence and disobedience

William Muspratt, assistant cook, 12 lashes for neglect of duty

Robert Lamb, butcher, 12 lashes for allowing his cleaver to be stolen

Charles Churchill, 12 lashes x 2 for desertion

William Muspratt, 24 lashes x 2 for desertion

John Millward, 24 lashes x 2 for desertion

That's ten floggings -- a total of 198 lashes -- in 18 months.

According to Mr Arlidge's fascinating account and the listing in an appendix:

On Cook’s Endeavour voyage (37 months), there were seventeen instances of flogging — 330 lashes.

On the first Resolution voyage (36 months), there were thirty-two instances of flogging — 546 lashes.

On the second Resolution voyage (36 months), there were forty-nine instances of flogging — 618 lashes.

It is remarkable that instances of discipline increased so drastically each voyage.  Many historians believe it is evidence of Cook's poor health and deteriorating temper.  

Finally, let's look at Samuel Wallis, the captain who was the first European to discover Tahiti, and who brought his men home scurvy-free on the Dolphin.

On Wallis’s Dolphin, during the discovery voyage (20 months), there were four instances of flogging — one for quarreling, two for refusing to obey orders, and one for cheating a Tahitian — a total of 48 lashes.  There were two instances of “running the gauntlet,” where the seaman was punished by his own shipmates -- once for fighting, and the second time for throwing his messmates' dinner overboard -- by making the fellow run between two lines of men wielding "nettles" which were light lines usually used for tying up canvas.

Remarkably, too, Wallis never ordered more than 12 lashes at a time, which was the limit posed by the Admiralty when there was not a courtmartial.  Obviously, it was an easy rule to ignore, when the ship was on the other side of the world from England, and there were no other captains to stage a court hearing.  But Wallis chose not to ignore it.

There were other extremes, of course.  Hugh Pigott of the Hermione , who was notorious for flogging the last man down the mast, logged over a thousand lashes per year.  A sadist, and probably a psychopath, he was slaughtered by his own men.  A lesser known sadist was Captain Howes Norris of the Fairhaven whaler Sharon, who was chopped up by Pacific Islanders who were terrified of being beaten to death, which had been the fate of Norris's young black steward.

I thoroughly recommend Captain Cook's Discipline as superb piece of research and a readable, and thought-provoking account.  You can buy it directly from the author by emailing allansa@xtra.co.nz

How Conan Doyle learned his trade

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a very interesting man.  Sometime ago, I wrote about his strange belief in fairies.   He also sailed on a Greenland whaler, the Hope of Peterhead -- probably not so unusual, as it was common for new graduates from the Edinburgh medical school to pay off their debts and amass some savings that way.  However, Doyle fell overboard so unusually often that his shipmates called him "the Great Northern Diver."

Now we find that he learned a system of detection from one of his mentors, one that not only earned him classic status as a mystery writer, but inspired him to solve a crime of his own.

Watching the detectives

When Arthur Conan Doyle cried “J’Accuse…!”

In the case of the “Scottish Dreyfus”, the novelist deployed the acuity of his fictional detective

Jul 7th 2018

Conan Doyle for the Defence. By Margalit Fox. Random House; 352 pages; $27. Profile; £16.99.

TOWARDS the end of the 19th century a patient appeared before a doctor and his students in a Scottish hospital. The doctor, Joseph Bell, eyes bright above a hawk nose, addressed him. “You came from Liberton,” he said. “You drive two horses, one grey, one bay; you are probably employed by a brewery.” To the awe of his students, the sharp-eyed doctor was right on all counts.

The sharp-eyed reader will have guessed the identity of one of his acolytes: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (pictured left). It is well known that Conan Doyle borrowed Bell’s deductive genius (and his profile) for his fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. Less well known is that Conan Doyle also used Bell’s methods to solve real-life crimes. One such crime—a murder—is the subject of Margalit Fox’s new book, “Conan Doyle for the Defence”.

Conan Doyle had involved himself in miscarriages of justice before, but this one would eclipse them all. It was so corrupt that it “savoured rather of Russian than of Scottish jurisprudence”; so anti-Semitic that its wrongly accused victim became known as a “Scottish Dreyfus”; so embarrassing to national pride that British writers resorted to not one but two international analogies to convey their disgust.

The inquiry should have been simple. On December 21st 1908 Marion Gilchrist, a wealthy spinster, was bludgeoned to death with a blunt instrument. Shortly afterwards the Scottish police “solved” the case when they arrested Oscar Slater (pictured right), a local German Jew. Slater was found guilty and sentenced to hard labour in His Majesty’s Prison Peterhead.

There he might have remained, had his plight not been brought to Conan Doyle’s attention, via a method itself redolent of Victorian melodrama. A pleading note was carried out of Peterhead, hidden in the dentures of a discharged prisoner. Conan Doyle, a Victorian dynamo with a walrus moustache and a passion for cricket and fair play, felt duty-bound to investigate. He set to work, trawling through page after page of evidence. He was horrified by what he found.

It is a capital offence, Holmes declared to Watson, to theorise in advance of the facts. Like Bell, Holmes drew conclusions from evidence as minute as bloodstains, mud on shoes and the precise sort of ash found at a crime scene—scientific techniques that, largely thanks to Holmes himself, would eventually become standard practice in police departments across the world. As Conan Doyle examined the Slater affair, he realised the Scottish police had theorised not merely in advance of the facts but in advance of the crime.

The bobbies in Glasgow had been watching Slater for months. He was no angel but, Ms Fox argues, he had aroused suspicions mostly because he was foreign. Not merely foreign, but German, Jewish, a gambler and (perhaps most horrifying of all) debonair. The police were immediately on their guard.

The deepest stains identified in the Slater case by Conan Doyle were not of blood, but the darker tones of anti-Semitism and xenophobia. If this was a Scottish Dreyfus, then Conan Doyle was its Zola and he cried “J’Accuse…!” with all the might that his position allowed. On November 14th 1927 Slater was released. The case was over. But the prejudices it exposed lived on.

Slater never returned to his family in Germany. That, says Ms Fox, was probably “just as well”. A few years later the Nazis took power and his two sisters were murdered at Theresienstadt and Treblinka.

This review first appeared in The Economist.

With thanks to Brian Easton

The Discovery of Tahiti

A great review of The Discovery of Tahiti from a fellow writer, seafarer, and maritime historian whose knowledge of the islands of Eastern Polynesia is encyclopedic.   A vast compliment indeed!

lscollison reviewed The Discovery of Tahiti  Great shipboard or armchair reading July 7, 2018 My love affair with Tahiti began in 2001 when husband Bob and I arrived aboard our 36-foot sloop Topaz, having made our way from Hawaii where we lived. Our first view of Tahiti and her island group was the exquisite emerald landscape of Moorea -- roughly the same as shown on the cover of Joan Druett's book, The Discovery of Tahiti. This image remains clear in my mind and stands for the anticipation we felt, the lush beauty, seductive charm and romance the word "Tahiti" provoked in us. Bob and I spent the summer cruising Polynesia while I immersed myself in all the history, art, literature and culture I could discover. In the years that have passed since our Tahiti experience, I've continued to discover Tahiti through reading history, fiction, and through visiting Gauguin exhibits in Paris and London. Joan Druett's book is an important addition to the history and literature of Tahiti. Like her earlier book, Tupaia; Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator, The Discovery of Tahiti draws on logbooks, journals, manuscripts and books to frame the story around a notable individual history has largely overlooked. In her earlier work it was Tupaia, the Polynesian navigator Cook employed. In this book, it's the Cornishman, Samuel Wallis. The British Admiralty chose Wallace to command HMS Dolphin on a mission to find a missing continent believed to be somewhere in the largely uncharted South Pacific Ocean. Druett points out that historians have largely overlooked Wallace and his crew's contribution as the first Europeans to find Tahiti, giving Captain James Cook most of the publicity and credit. Yet Samuel Wallace was here first and, making a great impression on the Tahitian queen, paved the way for Cook's subsequent success. Druett sheds light on the man, the ship, the crew, the voyage, and the aftermath. One of Druett's strengths as a writer of popular history is her ability to gather and cull all the known facts and present them in an immensely readable fashion. Her command of the historical Pacific maritime world is apparent. She brings the account to life with a historian's eye and a seaman's familiarity of pertinent details. Includes bibliography, illustrations, maps, author's commentary, and a creative essay by the ship's barber, Rogers Richardson.

Whale in Wellington

Wellington City has a visitor who is obviously enjoying the stay, despite torrential rain and gales, because he (or she) is so reluctant to move on.

It seems that he (or she) is an exhibitionist, because the whale plays so happily to the crowd.  It also is supremely confident -- on Friday the ferry wasn't able to dock for 30 minutes, as the whale had taken up the berth.  But, as the captain remarked, the passengers didn't seem unhappy -- they were too busy with their cameras.

Instead of the barbaric and inappropriate Guy Fawkes firework celebration, we now have our big fireworks show at Maori New Year -- Matariki -- which meant that it would have been staged on Saturday night.  But even if the weather had been kind, the show would not have gone ahead, in case it frightened our large guest.

The sex of the whale will not be known until the scientific bods get DNA results from the sample they sneakily took.  But, whatever the gender, popular opinion has opted for the whale's name to be "Matariki."

You can read all about it in the Dominion Post.

And see a terrific video on Newshub.

Whalers and whales, and their song

I picked up an intriguing collection of short stories edited by veteran Ellen Dallow, mainly because (a) I like short stories and (b) anything about the sea intrigues.

So far, it is brilliant.  A great story about a whispering skull from Western Australia's 17th century past by Terry Dowling, "The Tryal Attract," which just not have an enticing touch of history, but was eerily reminiscent of the second story in the collection, "Fodder's Jig," one that could easily have been written by a past master of the genre, John Wyndham.

But what drove me to post a sort-of assessment on my blog was a stand-out story by Ray Clueley, "The Whaler's Song."

Delving deep into history, it evokes the Scandinavian link with the sea -- with the whales and the fish that live within it.  Fishing happens one season of the year, and whaling the other .... in a primitive wresting of a living from the icy ocean. 

We begin with a relatively modern whaling boat -- too small to be called a ship, but murderous nonetheless.  There are few in the crew, but they are all driven, by history as well as economics.  One of a pair of minke whales is harpooned and butchered, with details that reveal how deeply the writer immersed himself in research.  Then, the following night, the whaling boat is sunk.  While whale attack isn't mentioned, there is a definite Moby-Dick influence, here.  The difference is the author's description of what follows afterward.

Where Melville left the reader to imagine the sequel, and the story of the sinking of the Essex by a whale is followed by the saga of an open boat voyage, the small crew of the whaling boat are cast up on a shore that has been exposed by global warming -- along with the great skeletons of the whales that have been slaughtered in the past.

A compulsive read, with a memorable ending, which I leave you to find out for yourselves.

White whale sighted in New Zealand

From the New Zealand Herald

Shades of Moby!  White whale sighted near Gisborne -- and a rare southern right whale is currently cruising Wellington harbour

Story by Ryan Dunlop

A white humpback whale sighted off the coast of the North Island is a significant find, according to whale biologist and expert Dr Ingrid Visser.

It is likely the whale is Migaloo, a famous white humpback found in Australian waters, or the first sighting of a new white whale, both extremely rare finds.

Commercial cray fisher Joshua Whitley was out casting pots about 16km off the coast of Gisborne when he noticed something strange near the boat.  "I just happened to look up and see a whale spout. We decided to go over and have a look."

Upon approach Whitley noticed something wasn't quite right with one of the whales - "It was completely white".

Whitley and his crew were "completely buzzing" at the "once in a lifetime" sighting.

"When we left, we thought it was Migaloo, he was right underneath the stern, it was crazy.

"At first, they were pretty spooked, they were cruising at 5 knots. Once they got used to the boat and knew we weren't going to hurt them they came closer."

Visser said just from the footage it was difficult to identify the whale which was probably Migaloo.

However, there was a possibility it was the first documented sighting of the third recorded white humpback whale.

The second recorded white humpback is located in the Atlantic Ocean and Visser was 99 per cent sure it would not be that whale.

It was also possible the whale was the offspring of Migaloo, she said.

The whale in the video was either albino or leucistic, meaning white pigmentation. The difference between the two was albino animals have pink eyes while leucistic animals have black eyes.

"If it was, then it would show he was on a different migration pattern, then it's a real biggy.

"Humpback whales do move between different areas. There are reports of humpbacks moving from the west coast of North America to Japan."

In the next week, the whales would continue north which, if spotted again, could provide another opportunity to identify the animal.

However, Visser stressed observers should follow the law and give the animals more than 50m of space and travel no faster than 5 knots when near them.

Both Migaloo and the white humpback from the Atlantic have identifying features on their tails.

"The Atlantic whale has black on the underside of the tail whereas Migaloo is all white.

Migaloo also has a distinctive dorsal fin, she said.

It was "a very exciting find" for Visser who had gained an interest in white marine mammals after publishing a report of all the black dolphins and whales around New Zealand in 2004.

A white whale, later confirmed to be Migaloo, was spotted in the Cook Strait in 2015. DNA analysis by Oregon State University in the United States confirmed that a skin sample taken from the white whale matched the genetic profile taken from Migaloo off Australia, confirming it is the same whale.

Anyone who sights the latest white whale is asked to report it to the Orca Research Trust on 0800 733 6722.

Marine Mammals Protection Act

* Do not disturb, harass or make loud noises near marine mammals.

* Contact should stop if marine mammals show any signs of becoming disturbed or alarmed.

* Do not feed or throw any rubbish near marine mammals.

* Avoid sudden or repeated changes in speed or direction of any vessel or aircraft near a marine mammal.

*There should be no more than three vessels and/or aircraft within 300m of any marine mammal.

* Ensure that you travel no faster than idle or "no wake" speed within 300m of any marine mammal.

* Approach whales and dolphins from behind and to the side.

* Do not circle them, obstruct their path or cut through any group.

* Keep at least 50m from whales (or 200m from any whale mother and calf or calves).

* Swimming with whales is not permitted.

With thanks to Brian Easton