Khan's Legacy

Prelude Part Two

Prelude

Part TwoNew Zealand

Poverty Bay

October 9th 1769

Captain James Cook, selected by the Admiralty for his exceptional navigational skills, thought Poverty Bay, off the North Island of New Zealand, a most suitable name for the harbour. It lacked any form of vegetation and had an inhospitable air about it. They were critically low on drinking water after the long voyage from Tahiti on HMS Endeavour.

His Mission was to map the entire coastline and prove that New Zealand was not the Southern Continent, to observe the transit of Venus, and claim the vast lands in that hemisphere for His Majesty the King. So far he had succeeded. On his first attempt to land, natives had attacked the landing party, four had been killed and three more captured. The Marines returned later to get the critical water supplies, this time there was no resistance.

Cook and his chief botanist, Joseph Banks, explored the terrain. On the top of a small hill Cook found a uniform pile of rocks, their sides interlinked with straight edges; no natural rock formation could ever look like that. He ordered marines to investigate and they began digging. They found a large iron casket, so heavy they needed to use lifting gear to get it out. There were Chinese characters on it and the date 1423. He ordered the casket to be put aboard Endeavour. He later established, from the Chinese script, that the casket had been put there by Admiral Zheng He and it required the finder to regard the casket as a legacy and re-bury it in nominated positions in different parts of the world. Cook accepted the responsibility to carry out the request.

Australia 1770

Three months later after his successful circumnavigation of New Zealand, Cook sailed to Botany Bay, so discovering Australia. He mapped its eastern coastline with its verdant and healthy looking topography and sailed steadily eastwards. The plan was to identify where the land ended, then head northwest. They made good progress and he noted the waves breaking further out to sea; he ordered a reduction in speed. The depth remained consistent so he decided to sail on through the night passing control of the ship to Lieutenant Molyneaux. In the early hours of the morning, on June 11th he was thrown from his cot by a violent Craaaack! The ship was held fast on a coral reef and settling down hard onto the sharp organisms, the ship’s timbers splitting as they did so; there was little that could be done until the tide changed.

Land was at least eight leagues away and the odds on their survival weren’t good. Cook ordered everything moveable be thrown overboard even the cannons. The casket he had taken from New Zealand he treated differently, he and his cabin boy Svente made the box watertight, then threw it overboard with the rest of the ballast. He wrote the precise coordinates into his diary. Cook despaired at what threatened to be an inglorious end to an otherwise successful exploration.

Through the great efforts of the crew, the ship was lifted from the coral reef with the rising tide. It was taking on too much water and clear they would sink long before they reached land. Cook resorted to fothering the ship, a process of pushing a spare sail under the damaged area of a broken hull to act as a huge bandage. Coated with wool and oakum it was fastened into place and, to their great relief, stabilized the ship. Eventually they made landfall in a river delta. He was amazed they hadn’t sunk when he saw the bow had been ripped clean away revealing a gaping hole which would require major repair work.

Joseph Banks was delighted to find a tropical rain forest to explore. He’d never seen such flora and fauna. Cook gloomily calculated what would need to be done to set the Endeavour afloat. Cook regarded it as a matter of honour to carry out the wishes of a fellow explorer but he and Svente set to work to ensure the safety of his own legacy too.

Alaska January 1778

Cook’s third and final voyage on HMS Discovery took him to the frozen wastelands of northern Alaska. He was commissioned to find the North Western Passage, said to connect the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic. He shouldn’t have agreed to undertake it. Everything he did seemed harder and he found himself constantly dreaming of his London home and beloved Yorkshire Moors. Only his commitment to leave his legacy as instructed kept him going. They had surveyed the harsh Alaskan landscape without finding an entry route to the Atlantic and now he headed west into Russian waters.

Wearily he went ashore with two trusted marines and Svente. In the most westerly point he could find they located a suitably flat, sheltered surface and cut into hard tundra. The work finished, he stood back and saluted, honour between the explorers was complete; his mission was accomplished. He made copious notes in his diary before passing it to Svente. To everyone’s relief, he gave orders to set sail southwards, back to warmer climes. Cook had honoured a man he regarded as one of the world’s most daring sailors. Instinctively he knew what he had done would be of value long after his death. The following February in 1779, after again sailing around the Pacific, he lay dead on the shores of Hawaii.