The European Discovery of Tahiti

[Music] thank you take yourself back to the mid 18th century it is May 1764. James Watts steam engine has yet to be built an Iron Bridge is still some 15 years in the future however the Age of Enlightenment is beginning and with it a thirst for Global expansion the Seven Years War ended two years ago and Britain's Consolidated position in North America leads to a rekindled interest in the Northwest Passage at the same time the British are also seeking to secure a base in the unexplored South Atlantic it is known that the French smarting from the loss of Canada along with the Spanish are looking for the next discovery a fabled great South continent the chase is therefore on life at this time is hard the cities and towns of Britain are starting to expand these largely suffer from poor sanitation and shoddily constructed accommodation the industrialized areas around the major Naval dockyards are the largest employers in the country slums and dos houses in London and other ports are a fact of life for most of the population added to this we have the harsh and inflexible justice system prison hulks overcrowded jails and the threat of deportation to the colonies for minor infractions are a reality for the vast majority of the population the thought of a Tropical Paradise is an unknown dream the dockyards at the same time are also one of the largest consumers of raw materials the demand for Timber cloth rope iron work and now copper is insatiable to keep a large Fleet at Sea also requires constant supplies of provisions and munitions all of this places a huge drain on the country's resources Crews on Royal Navy ships are largely drawn through press gangs from The Merchant Navy and the dregs of the prison system they are largely uneducated although the commissioned officers and warrant officers are at least becoming professional and because and increasingly talented and skillful Navigators the dockyard reform of Anson and the establishment of 1745 are also seeing improvements With Better Built ships although the Royal Navy will remain behind the French and Spanish in ship design for another 20 years the Navy relies on a huge network of suppliers from Canada to the Baltic to keep it in operation and a proposed Voyage around the world focuses the Royal dockyards attention this will be a scientific exploration which enables them to use the voyage to test out new methods and notably copper sheathing in London the Royal dockyards at Woolwich and Deptford have been relieved of some of the pressures by the peace and have time to carefully refit two ships for service on the 7th of May 1764 Phillip Stevens secretary to the admiralty rights to the Navy Board instructing them to find a 24-gun frigate and to sheath her with copper for an intended Voyage to the West Indies the lead ship in the proposed Voyage is to be HMS dolphin and she is shifted from a layup birth of Chatham into Woolwich Stockyard for the refit two weeks later the aristocratic Captain John Byron is appointed to command her Byron was the Second Son of William Byron the fourth Baron and the grandfather of the famous poet he had joined the Royal Navy at the age of 14 making his first voyage aboard HMS Romney in 1738 in 1740 he had accompanied George Anson on his voyage around the world as a midshipman aboard the Starship HMS wager on the 14th of May 1741 while off the coast of Patagonia attempting to round Cape Horn The Vessel was wrecked the crew mutinied and split into a number of factions Byron supported his captain the two parties sailed open boats in different directions one under the command of the Gunner John bulkley made its way by boat to Rio De Janeiro on the Atlantic coast while John Byron and the captain sailed North along the Spanish Colonial Coast to Chile Island there they made it only to be taken prisoner by the Spanish for the duration of the war the Spaniards treated them well but Byron was to remain in Santiago on parole until late 1744. Byron's account of his adventures are recounted in his narrative that he published in 1768 in 1760 during the Seven Years War Baron commanded a squadron and defeated a French French flatilla of Canada in the battle of restagosh his appointment to the dolphin May therefore have seemed like a retrograde step in his career given her small size Baron's initial instructions on this Voyage were to seek out a permanent Naval settlement off the South American Coast with the mythical peeps Island being suggested the aim of the base was to allow the resupply of Naval vessels seeking to enter the Pacific via Cape Horn his supplemental instructions were then to cross into the Pacific and seek out the Northwest Passage Byron was to be joined by a couple of important names in Pacific exploration in particular we see Masters make John Gore Erasmus Gower and Robert molyneux and along with Lieutenant Philip Carteret let's take a look at our two ships for the expedition HMS dolphin was a 24 gun sixth or eight frigate originally ordered in September 1747 and launched at Woolwich dockyard in 1751. you can see here the plans for her unlike the later Napoleonic War frigates we can see she has large ports cut on her lower mess deck she is a far less Sleek ship than the ships that were to come but nevertheless she was a fast sailor dolphin had first been commissioned in 1752 she was a 511 tons burden had a length of gun deck of 113 feet with a 32 foot beam her Armament was two nine Pounders on the lower deck and on the main deck 29 pounders she had an additional two three Pounders on the quarter deck on the deck plans at the stern you can see the captain's great cabin night cabin and dining cabin on the main Deck The Well deck in the center is enclosed by bulkheads on both sides but is otherwise open to the elements while the enclosed voxel was where the galley was located and the animals were housed at the stern of the lower deck is the water room in the office's cabins with all the crew quarters forward the lower platforms are the various storerooms for the bosun Purser cap carpenters and Gunner dolphin was to be accompanied by another copper bottom support ship the smallest Loop of War HMS Tamar she was a 16 gun favorite class super War launched John Snook's yard in saltash in 1758. she was of 313 tons with a length of 96 feet on the gun deck her beam was 27 foot 4 inches and she was armed with sixteen six-pounder guns Tamar sailed under the command of Patrick muat with Lieutenant Philip Carteret a protege a Byron appointed to support him Byron the Byron journal commences with the departure of the frigate and the accompanying Sloop from the Downs on the 21st of June 1764. it records The Voyage to Madeira to San Diego Rio de Janeiro which was reached in September 1764 and the east coast of Patagonia during the voyage Byron was tasked with looking for the mythical peeps Island however when he could not find it he headed for the Falkland Islands discovered by Cowley in 1686 he landed on the island in January 1765 without realizing that Louis Bougainville had already already established a small French Colony on the island a few months early earlier this was located only a few miles away despite this and after making minimal attempts to explore the island he claimed it for the king and sailed off after transiting The Straits of Magellan they refitted at Juan Fernandes Island before effectively abandoning their instructions to head up the American coast and instead simply crossed the Pacific they visited the islands of the tourmotus and the Gilbert Islands putting them on the European maps for the first time the island of nikunu was to go by the name Byron Island for over a hundred years Byron had hoped to fall in with the Solomon Islands where legend told of Spanish treasure during his Transit but he did not find them the ships re-provisioned again at tinian in the northern Marianas Islands before heading to Batavia and returning home via the Cape of Good Hope she arrived off the silly Isles on the 7th of May 1766. no major discoveries had been made and foul whether Jack as Byron was known was questioned for not following his orders in proceeding up the American Coast nevertheless it was renowned as the fastest circumnavigation of the globe and proved the to the admiralty the value of copper sheathing despite electrolysis issues being faced by the Tamar the Tamer had had to park company with the dolphin back in March 1766 on account of damage to its rudder she sailed to Antigua before returning to England in June 1766 but not before transferring Philip Carteret to the dolphin to serve as Byron's first lieutenant with only seven deaths amongst dolphin's crew during the first circumnavigation we can see the gains in knowledge of diet following the poor record of Anson's voyage which had suffered such huge casualties the failures of the voyage and the suggestions that land was believed to be just below the Southern Track of the ship necessitated another attempt this time to focus on covering areas not yet traversed across the Pacific dolphin was hastily refitted and this time we have a new Commander Captain Samuel Wallace born in camelford Cornwall on the 23rd of April 1728 he was 38 years old at the time of his appointment here earlier also served under John Byron and Admiral boss Cowan with the patronage of both of these being key to his appointment for this voyage at the same time Philip Carteret was promoted to the rank of commander and given command of the replacement support vessel HMS swallow Philip Carteret hail from Jersey he had been born on the 22nd of January 1733 entering the Navy in 1747 aboard the Salisbury and then joining Byron between 1751 and 1755. in 1757 he was appointed as a lieutenant on HMS Guernsey of 50 guns in the Mediterranean this second circumnavigation was to go down in history with Masters mate John Gore Robert molyneux and Richard pickerskill rejoining the dolphin along with Erasmus Gower who was promoted to Lieutenant to support Carteret on the swallow we should also note another famous name joining the ship Tobias Ferno he joins dolphin as second lieutenant and George Robertson is appointed ship's master the latter is of great importance to our tale due to his providing us with the most Vivid Journal of from the voyage both Molino Gore and Wallace also have surviving journals however the sickness of both Wallace and the first Lieutenant William Clark during the voyage render them all rather sparse of information or color beyond the basic navigational entries have a few interesting comments but on the whole neither were good travel writers taking a quick look at HMS swallow she was a sorry excuse for a vessel and totally unsuited for her intended voyage choose not to be sheathed in Copper due to cost cutting at the Navy Board and as they had hoped that the Tamar would return and save them the bother of fitting out another vessel swallow was a merlin-class Sloop of War built at rotherhide in 1745 and launched on the 5th of April of that year her Dimensions were 268 tons burden length of 91 foot on deck and had a beam of 26 foot she is lightly armed with just 14 6 pounder guns originally built as a 10-gun snow-rigged Briggs loop with just two masts she underwent a middling repair in 1755 at Deptford dockyard when she was converted to a ship-rigged Sloop with a small missing mask being added the conversion was not a success and the refit for the voyage was poorly executed and undertaken in a hurry due to the diversion of the Tamar Carteret makes some cutting remarks with Wallace being blamed for some of the issues notably the distribution of equipment and trade goods and the failure of the dockyards to supply a forge for the ship her last small repair had been back in 1763 and since then she had been used as a recruiting ship and so her bottom was already foul from laying at her Moorings in the river the dockyard it refused to dry dock the ship before the voyage Carter I joined the ship on the 17th 7th of July 1766 a month after Wallace had taken command of dolphin and so our second voyage commences but before we discuss this in detail let us consider life on board ship we have a crew of 78 signed on board the swallow and 156 men and Marines crammed onto the dolphin the majority of the crew are birthed in the midship's mastics the Lower Deck with limited ventilation and Light the sailors sleep in hammocks slung between the ship's beams with a permitted 14 inches of width between the hammocks the weekly Naval rationed for all the men are as follows seven pounds of biscuit which could be exchanged for rice four pounds of beef which could be exchanged for flour and raisins two pounds of pork two pounds of peas which in ports would be exchanged for fresh vegetables one and a half pounds of oatmeal six ounces of sugar six ounces of butter or oil 12 ounces of cheese and the drink rations due to the poor quality of of water on board Sailors were allowed seven gallons of beer or seven pints of wine or three and a half pints of rum a week the crew eaten messes with between six to ten men in each every week one of the mess would be appointed cook of the mess with his duties to collect the rations from the purses Steward and take them to the galley where he assisted the cook all of the cruise food tended to be boiled in large Vats although the development of the Brody stove allowed some fresh meat to be roasted providing some variety and fresh bread could also be baked for the officers all of the meals were split into two sittings breakfast was between eight and nine dinner at noon between noon and 1 and supper at four to five thirty pm what is interesting is that we see in the journals of the voyage of the first use of pickled cabbage or sauerkraut as a treatment for scurvy cook and Bly were of course to continue the use of this early anti anti-scorbutic before lime and lemon juice became the more common prep preventative later in the century Crews of dolphin and Wallace's Voyage operated in three watches so you would stand the 12 to 4 watch or the four to eight or the 8 to 12 Watch twice a day this was a new system and not widely employed in the Navy due to the lack of space on board and the large Crews needed to man the guns the usual two-watch system with a dog watch to rotate the night watches would only have half the watch crew plus the idlers asleep at any one time allowing more than the regulation 14 inches of space between the hammocks with three watches two watches were off watch at any one time and therefore in their hammocks and hence the mess decks would therefore be more crowded hammocks would be piped down at 8 45 every evening and you had to be down and out of your hammock by 7 15 in the morning when The Hammocks would be sent on deck and stowed in the hammock nettings along the ship's rails this meant that your bed may be frequently wet the officers fed slightly better with small cabins located in the ward room at the stern of the lower deck giving a small amount of privacy they also had the ability to take on private Provisions to supplement this poor standard rations the captain had even more space with the Grand Vista of the stern windows and his own night and dining cabins however with a long Voyage salted Provisions illness and particularly scurvy was bound to play a major role luckily despite his own illness Wallace proved to be an enlightened Commander insisting on a clean ship and this and his attention to diets during the shore stops prevented the diseases that had plagued the Anson voyage The Voyage set out from the north Anchorage on the 9th of August of 1766 with both ships in company after calling at Plymouth they were joined by a Starship the Prince Frederick which was to carry additional stores for re-provisioning before entering the Pacific they sailed from Plymouth on the 20th of August and called Madeira on the 8th of September the frequent remarks about swallow being a poor sailor are telling as the ship was left behind due to her poor sailing qualities and foul Hull by December they had reached penguin Island in Patagonia and on the 15th of January were near Port famine essentially repeating the pattern established on Byron's voyage it was here where they emptied what they needed from the Starship before sending off sending her off to the Falklands loaded with Timber to supplement the baron Island supplies the swallow and dolphin proceed towards the Magellan Strait the weather was cold and frequently stormy and the ships struggled with dragging anchors and headwinds in the narrow channel it was at this point that the frustration of the poor sailing of the swallow must have been becoming very annoying for the dolphin and her crew despite the ever increasing chances that the ships would become separated Wallace failed to plan a rendezvous point should the ships lose sight of each other it was not until the 11th of April that the two ships finally reached the mouth of the Magellan Straits on the Pacific side it was then that the two ships were separated during a Squall of Cape pillar from this day on the two ships were on their own it had taken three months to Transit The Straits over a month longer than Byron the dolphin proceeded north west across the Pacific while swallow headed for refreshment and refitting in the known safe Anchorage at Juan Fernandes as a result dolphin was well ahead of her slow consort dolphin passed through the turmo to archipelago in early June 1767. on a track just to the south of Byron's voyage and at half past seven on the 17th of June spotted land to the South the island a tall volcanic cone was named osnabruck Island and it's now called mere tear the dolphin had entered the society Islands the hazy weather delayed their approach and they lost sight again of a larger Island that had been seen to the Southwest Dolphins steered west southwest and again on the 19th of June found Highland to the South it was Tahiti the ship briefly anchored off the peninsula of tahitiati but quickly left to find a better Anchorage Wallace entered matavai Bay on the 23rd of June briefly running the ship aground on what was to become known as Dolphins Bank a reef that Fletcher Christian was later to strand the Bounty upon when departing Tahiti after the mutiny Wallace officially took possession of the island and named it King George III Island large numbers of the ship's crew and its captain and first lieutenant were by this time seriously ill they needed refreshment and hence the ship was to remain at anchor initially the natives prove hostile a large Fleet of canoes approached dolphin while trying to distract the crew with naked girls they launch an attack on the ship with a hail of stones in return Wallace fired the ship's guns loaded with grape and Round Shot Dolphins Gunnery cut a canoe in two killing most of its occupants Wallace then sent Carpenters ashore to cut up a further 80 canoes left on the beach by the fleeing natives despite the violent Beginnings friendly relations were then established between the British Sailors and the locals the relationships become particularly friendly when sailors discovered that the women were eager to exchange sex for iron this trade became so extensive that the loss of nails started to threaten dolphin's physical Integrity with cleats and hammock Nails being pulled from the ship's Timbers to pay for sex the ship stayed for six weeks recuperating and re-provisioning the idyllic nature of the island was to stay with them forever probably the most striking point to note about the discovery is the Island's population at this time cook estimated the island to hold some 200 000 Islanders in 1769 within 30 years this was to fall to only twenty thousand largely due to a mixture of European diseases principally the measles after sailing on the 28th of July the rest of the voyage was relatively uneventful due to Wallace's ill health he failed to head south and the ship proceeded West towards home naming Wallace Island on the 16th of August 1767 before continuing on to Batavia however further south the little swallow was to make another important discovery Pitcairn Island was discovered on the 2nd of July 1767 and named after Robert Pitkin the son of major Pitcairn of the Marines this discovery was followed by raft of others in August with Egmont Island and Lord Howe Island in the Queen Charlotte Islands which are now known as the Santa Cruz group Carteret also discovered a new archipelago inside Saint George's Channel between New Island and New Britain Islands now known as the Carteret islands of Papua New Guinea he had named them the Duke of York Islands also during carteret's travels he visited the Solomon Islands that had first been cited by Alvaro de mendana in 17 in 1568 after failing to replenish the ship in Mindanao Carteret was then to have a Troublesome time with the Dutch in the East Indies while trying to resupply and repair his weakened ship with a depleted crew and weakened by severe illness Carteret finally arrived back in England at spithead on the 20th of March 1769 having been ably assisted during the voyage by Erasmus Gower who was for much of the voyage the only fit person on board swallow who could navigate carteret's Health was ruined by his voyage of exploration and he received little reward from the admiralty he did not have any patrons who would allow that which were necessary for Naval promotion at the time and this and his complaints before the voyage about the swallow's ill-suitedness for the voyage ensured that his requests for a new ship fell on deaf ears in 1773 his journals of the voyage were published as part of John Hawksworth accounts however he was unhappy with this account and his original journals of the voyage became a treasured family heirloom carteret's next command was not to come for 10 years he was given command of HMS endemio a crack 44 gun frigate and he served in the West Indies during the American war of independence under Rodney all his petitions for a new ship were unsuccessful after this and he suffered a stroke in 1792 retiring to Southampton with the rank of rear Admiral he was to die two years later Wallace and the dolphin had arrived back in England on the 20th of May 1768 just in time to provide important news of tahiti's Discovery for use by the admiralty after the voyage John Gore was promoted to Lieutenant and Robert Molino received his master's warrant together they joined Richard pickerskill who stayed on as Masters mate and Abel Seaman Thomas Jones Francis Wilkinson and Samuel Evans Who was the coxson on board the Endeavor for cook's first voyage plans for this Voyage were already well underway by the time dolphin arrived back home however the amazing tale of Tahiti were to change the voyage with the island being chosen as the sighting for the transit of Venus Tobias Ferno dolphin's second Lieutenant along with nine able seamen from the dolphin were to later serve in HMS Adventure on Cook's second voyage and Abel Seaman William Ewan was to become boson of the resolution the high numbers rejoining for another circumnavigation has to be seen as being as a result of the Allure of Tahiti even today it is a magical place Wallace himself was to go on to command HMS Torbay in 1770. before being appointed a commissioner at the admiralty in 1785 a post he retained until his death in 1795. shortly after the dolphin set out on her second voyage the French were to follow with Louis Antoine come to Bill Bougainville receiving permission from Louis XV to circumnavigate the globe he would become the first Frenchman to do so following France's defeats of the Seven Years War it was hoped that the voyage would recover some prestige The Voyage was to be the first expedition to a circumnavigate the globe with professional naturalists and geographers on board in this it preceded that at Banks and cook like both Byron and Wallace Bougainville was only lose seven men during the voyage this low level of casualties shows that both France and British navies were learning from the discoveries of the Age of Enlightenment Bougainville left North on the 15th of November 1766 with two ships the Boudro's under the command of Nicholas Pierre ducos guyo and the Atwell commanded by Francois shinard de la gourdes this was a large Expedition and a crew of 214 were on board the budos and 116 aboard it while budos was a 26 gun 12 pound of frigate so significantly larger than dolphin including the party was the botanist Philbert commerson who was to name the flower bougainvillea commissar also smuggled his mistress jean-bar aboard as his valet making her the first lady to circumnavigate the globe on the 6th of eight on the 2nd of April 1768 Bougainville saw the peak of Mayor tier and he landed on Tahiti on the 6th of April despite hearing of Wallace's visit Bougainville later claimed the island for France and named it nusifera he stayed there was Far shorter than the dolphin but the excitement in Paris probably exceeded that scene in London overall without the discovery of Tahiti we would have been unlikely to see the great enthusiasm for Pacific Adventures that was to continue for the next 50 years however it would be the French rather than the English who retained their claim to this magical groups of islands thank you for listening [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: James Walters

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Length: 35min 0sec (2100 seconds)

Published: Sun May 14 2023