The Reef: A Passionate History: The Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to Climate Change (5 page)

On August 6, after warping out of the harbor and embarking hesitantly behind the pinnace on a northeast course, Cook quickly had to take a fresh survey. He dropped the sails, anchored the ship against the buffeting gale, then climbed the masthead, but still saw no passage. This most decisive of captains was at a loss: “… as yet I had not resolved whether I should beat back to the Southward round all the shoals or seek a passage to the Eastward or to the northrd, all of which appear’d to be equally difficult and dangerous.” He resembled Theseus trying to circumvent the Minotaur, the monstrous man-bull that lurked in the maze of the Labyrinth, but in Cook’s case there was no prospect of an Ariadne to lead them to safety.
28

Reconnoiters the following day from the headland promontory of Cape Flattery revealed a further shock—what Banks called a “ledge of rocks” or “a Grand Reef” that blocked them from entering the open sea. They’d sighted for the first time what we today call the outer Barrier. On August 11, Cook and Banks rowed to the steepest of a group of three nearby islands in the desperate hope that “the shoals would end.” Climbing the highest hill dashed this hope. “When I looked around,” recorded Cook, “I discovered a Reef of Rocks, laying about two or three Leagues without the Island, and extending in a line N.W and S.E. farther than I could see on which the sea broke very high.” Straining his eyes further, however, he could detect some faint fissures in the long chain of white breakers that might prove to be channels through the Reef. On their way back down to the beach, they named the place Lizard Island, after the giant monitor lizards they saw crashing through the underbrush.
29

Within hours Cook and his officers agreed they must attempt to navigate one of these small channels into the open sea, rather than risk being “locked in by the great reef,” which would likely “prove the Ruin of the Voyage” by forcing them to turn back, lose the prevailing winds to the East Indies, and run out of provisions. On August 13 the
Endeavour
followed the pinnace into a narrow channel earlier reconnoitered by the master. Once through the breakers, they found themselves in “a well growen sea rowling in from the SE,” with no ground at 150 fathoms. Once again Hawkesworth imagined the unspoken thoughts that underlay Cook’s much terser journal entry.

Our change of situation was now visible in every countenance, for it was most sensibly felt in every breast: we had been little less than three months entangled among shoals and rocks, that every moment threatened us with destruction; frequently passing our nights at anchor within hearing of the surge that broke over them; sometimes driving toward them even while our anchors were out, and knowing that if by any accident, to which an almost continual tempest exposed us, they should not hold, we must in a few minutes inevitably perish. But now, after having sailed no less than three hundred and sixty leagues, without once having a man out of the chains heaving the lead, even for a minute, which perhaps never happened to any other vessel, we found ourselves in an open sea, with deep water; and enjoyed a flow of spirits which was equally owing to our late dangers and our present security.
30

Perhaps they celebrated that night with a feast of turtle?

*   *   *

At this point Joseph Banks delighted in the paradox “that the very Ocean which had formerly been looked upon with terror by … all of us was now the Assylum we had long wish’d for and at last found.” Yet his elation was short-lived, for hardly had the crew finished exulting in the freedom of the open sea than Cook, instead of steering northeast as everyone expected, set a course westward, straight back toward the Reef.

In retrospect this seems an insanely risky act, like a scorched moth returning to circle a flame. Cook later justified himself on the grounds that he was afraid to miss the passage that could confirm whether New Holland and New Guinea were separate continents rather than a single landmass. The chance to make this discovery, which would eclipse the achievements of the mighty Portuguese explorer Fernandes de Queirós, had been on his mind ever since they first sighted New Holland, and he could not bring himself to let it go.
31

The fruits of this folly were soon upon them. Cook woke at 4:00 a.m. on August 16 to the sound of the surf “foaming to a vast height.” With no wind to give them motion and no ground for the anchor, the ship was carried toward the Reef by the powerful current. Banks recognized this as a unique moment of peril.

All the dangers we had escaped were little in comparison of being thrown upon this Reef where the Ship must be dashed to peices in a Moment. A Reef such as is here spoke of is scarcely known in Europe, it is a wall of Coral Rock rising all most perpendicular out of the unfathomable Ocean, always overflown at high-water generally 7 or 8 feet and dry in places at low-water; the large waves of the vast Ocean meeting with so sudden a resistance make a most terrible surf breaking mountains high …
32

Two hours later, despite strenuous efforts to tow the ship clear with the longboat and yawl, “we were,” Cook observed, “in the very jaws of distruction.” Banks was certain their last moment had come: “a speedy death was all we had to hope for.”
33

Just then a few intermittent puffs of wind gave them enough leeway to kick the ship one hundred yards from the breakers, bringing into view a channel through the Reef about a boat-length wide. Cook’s immediate attempt to thread this needle was, however, rebuffed by the strong ebb tide, which pushed the ship a quarter of a mile back out to sea. Anxiously they waited for the tide to turn, while the master in the pinnace looked for and eventually located another narrow channel, a quarter of a mile in breadth. Once again hopes rose. “The fear of Death is Bitter: the prospect we now had before us of saving our lives tho at the expence of every thing we had made my heart set much lighter on its throne,” wrote Banks. When the flood tide eventually rushed in, “we soon enter’d the opening and was hurried through in a short time by a rappid tide like a Mill race which kept us from driving againest either side.” The portly
Endeavour
shot through like a nimble canoe. Once they were back within the inner reef lagoon, they dropped anchor in nineteen fathoms on a “Corally and Shelly bottom.”
34

Delighting in the calm, Banks and a few sailors took a small boat to the Reef to hunt for shellfish and turtle. The coral, no longer an emblem of terror, seemed for the first time to be a source of scientific curiosity and aesthetic pleasure. After first collecting three hundred pounds of great cockles for the pot, Banks found himself entranced by “Corals of many species, all alive, among which was the
Tubipora musica
. I have often lamented that we had not time to make proper observations upon this curious tribe of animals but we were so intirely taken up with the more conspicuous links of the chain of creation as fish, Plants, Birds &c &c. that it was impossible.”
35

*   *   *

Though relieved at having orchestrated yet another hair’s-breadth escape, Cook’s mood was now altogether darker. The inconsistency of his actions in first leaving and then reentering the Labyrinth was obvious to all. “How little do men know what is for their real advantage,” Banks reflected, “two days [ago] our utmost wishes were crownd by getting without the reef and today we were made happy by getting within it.” This philosophical reflection on the foibles of man appeared to carry no judgment against his captain, but Cook knew he could not presume the same tolerance from his employers in the Admiralty or the gentlemen of the press. The despair and anger that washed over him at this thought led to an unusual spurt of self-vindication.

… such are the vicissitudes attending this kind of service and must always attend an unknown Navigation … The world will hardly admit of an excuse for a man leaving a Coast unexplored he has once discover’d, if dangers are his excuse he is than charged with
Timorousness
and want of Perseverance and at once pronounced the unfitest man in the world to be employ’d as a discoverer; if on the other hand he boldly incounters all the dangers and obstacles he meets and is unfortunate enough not to succeed he is than charged with
Temerity
and want of conduct (italics added).
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A recent Cook biographer has seen this cri de coeur as a clue to Cook’s “deep character” and a revelation of his tendency to self-pity, paranoia, and a “mortal fear of being … found wanting,” as well as of his overweening hunger for fame. Perhaps this was so, though a historian’s judgment is easy to make thousands of miles from the roar of the breakers. To me the moment seems significant more as the disclosure of a profound dilemma: navigating this maze was not only Cook’s greatest ever test of maritime skill and physical stamina, but it also confronted him with the explorer’s most insoluble moral and psychological nightmare—whether to endanger his men or fail his mission.
37

From now on he determined to sail northward hugging the coast, “whatever the consequences might be.” On Tuesday, August 21, 1770, after a relatively smooth if laborious passage through the remainder of the Labyrinth, including the vortices of currents, shoals, and fringing reefs around the Torres Strait, he was now confident of being “about to quit the eastern coast of New Holland.” He therefore landed with a group of sailors and marines on a small stony island to perform a formal ceremony of acquisition: “I now once more hoisted English Coulers and in the Name of His Majesty King George the Third took posession of the whole Eastern Coast from the above Latitude [38] down to this place by the name of
New South Wales
, together with all the Bays, Harbors Rivers and Islands situate upon the said coast (italics added).” That he had not, as his Admiralty orders prescribed, consulted with and gained the prior agreement of the Indigenous peoples must have been an oversight.
38

There remained some tricky navigation around the barren, guano-covered rock off the tip of Cape York that he named Booby Island, but his crew accomplished it without difficulty. They were by now perfectly drilled in combating the swirling currents and sudden shallows of this capricious sea country. A gentle wind and rolling swell from the southwest convinced the captain on August 23 that the
Endeavour
had passed the northern extremity of New Holland and entered the open sea that lay westward, “which gave me no small satisfaction, not only because the dangers and fatigues of the Voyage was drawing near to an end, but by being able to prove that New Holland and New-Guinea are 2 separate Lands or Islands.”
39

Despite his relief, Cook still felt the need to pen a small apology to posterity. He hoped that a less hazardous passage through the Torres Strait would one day be discovered, never doubting that “among these Islands are as good if not better passages than the one we have come thro’.” But James Cook the navigator was exhausted by his battle with the Labyrinth and had “neither time nor inclination” to explore further, “having been already sufficiently harass’d with dangers without going to look for more.”
40

He wanted, in fact, to get out of there as fast as the
Endeavour
could take them, having accomplished his key tasks. Along with assessing and claiming for England the land of New South Wales, which might or might not be a new continent, separate from the westerly land that the Dutch called New Holland, he’d achieved his own personal goal of determining whether or not New Guinea was detached from the northeast coast of New South Wales.

James Cook’s chart of the South Sea
(National Library of Australia)

Cook did not know how important it would one day become for British trading ships to have a speedy, thoroughly charted passage through the Torres Strait: for the time being, his protracted route would do. As for the coral Labyrinth, he probably guessed, rightly, that it would interest his masters less as a scientific wonder than as an annoying obstacle for future navigators. But then neither he nor his readers ever realized the true vastness of this coral maze.

These issues were unfinished business, and would one day become the lot of another British explorer-navigator, Matthew Flinders.

2

BARRIER

Matthew Flinders’s Dilemma

F
LINDERS, WHO WAS NOT YET BORN
when Cook turned the
Endeavour
for home, grew up longing to emulate, and then to exceed, his mighty predecessor. By 1802, at the age of twenty-eight, Flinders was commander of the bark HMS
Investigator
, and July 20 of that year found him in Port Jackson, New South Wales, pouring his heart out to his newlywed wife, Ann. He was replying to her twelve-month-old batch of letters from England, which had just reached him. After a grueling survey of a large portion of the southwest coast of New Holland, he was now in the process of refreshing his ship and men in preparation for what he expected to be the most testing leg of a vast journey of scientific discovery: to circumnavigate and survey the great body of southern land known as New South Wales and New Holland, to which he would one day give the name “Australia.”