Navigation for Nine To Noon
Tupaia
Joan Druett's latest book Tupaia: The remarkable story of Captain Cook's Polynesian navigator, tells the story the navigator that made Captian Cook's voyages possible.
Joseph Banks with South Seas souvenirs. Engraved from a portrait by Benjamin West, by J.R. Smith, 1788. From the collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library. Painted within months of Joseph Banks’s return to London, this famous portrait by the great American painter Benjamin West shows Banks proudly wearing a fine Maori flax cloak, decorated with dog-hair tassels and a taniko border. To his right is a Maori paddle, a taiaha tied with dog-hair tassels and feathers, and a plumed Tahitian helmet, worn by high priests and nobles. On the floor to his left are a Tahitian adze and a tapa bark-cloth beater. He is obviously taking pride in showing off these possessions, which are just a small part of the collection of ‘artificial curiosities’ he carried to England. The question is whether these objects, rich with cultural weight and meaning, were bought in trade, given directly to him, or presented by Polynesian nobility to a man who was considered to be of equal status in Polynesian society — a man like the noble high priest Tupaia.
Venus Fort, erected by the Endeavour’s people to secure themselves during the observation of the transit of Venus at Otaheite. Engraved by Samuel Middiman, from a sketch by Sydney Parkinson, 1773. On Monday, 17 April 1769, Robert Molineux noted that a patch of ground was being ‘Surveyed for erecting a Fort’ while Captain Cook took out the pinnace to find the best places to place the anchors to bring the ship round so that the ship’s guns covered the area ‘in case of an Attack from the Natives’. Frank Wilkinson, who was working on shore, recorded that the breastwork was made of empty water casks that were filled with sand; on 27 April ‘got 6 Swivel guns on Shore to be mounted upon the Brestwork’. Tents were set up inside the fortifications, and here the scientists lived, instruments were stored, Parkinson painted, and Banks conducted daily trade from his post at the gate.
Tupaia: The remarkable story of Captain Cook's Polynesian navigator by Joan Druett, published by Random House, ISBN: 9781869793869.
The images in this gallery are used with permission and are subject to copyright conditions.