Return of the ‘death ship’
A replica of Captain Cook’s Endeavour is sailing around New Zealand but many Ma¯ori want nothing to do with it. Philip Matthews reports in the second of five stories on the histories behind Tuia 250.
Captain’s log, December 9, 1769. It is a Saturday. As the Endeavour sails up the east coast of the North Island, its captain, Lieutenant James Cook, sees a deep bay but strong winds stop him from getting closer. From afar, he names it Doubtless Bay.
Exploration is often an exercise in naming that which already has a name. Ma¯ ori called the long sandy beach Tokerau. The next day Cook saw a peninsula that he called Knuckle Point; Ma¯ ori knew the peninsula as Karikari. A long-established pa¯ site looked like a camel when seen from the sea, so Cook named it Mt Camel.
A Treaty settlement in 2015 restored the original name, and now we can call it Tohoraha/Mt Camel.
Do place names matter? It can seem like one of the more banal features of Cook’s first voyage that New Zealand places were unimaginatively named to honour or recognise contemporaries and superiors or record incidents along the way, like diary entries. In the first category, Mt Egmont, Cape Palliser, Queen Charlotte Sound, Banks Peninsula. In the second, Cape Farewell, Bay of Plenty, Cape Kidnappers, Cape Turnagain.
Even Bream Head, familiar from countless radio weather forecasts, was named by Cook after his crew caught up to 100 bream, ‘‘a fish so called’’ that we would know as snapper.
Some names recorded violent encounters. A little over a month before the naming of Doubtless Bay, there was the naming of Cape Runaway, at the eastern end of the Bay of Plenty.
Ever wondered about the name? On October 31, more than 40 weapon-carrying Ma¯ ori men appeared on five canoes, ‘‘with no friendly intentions’’, Cook noted nervously. He ordered shots to be fired near them and over their heads, and the Ma¯ ori fled – hence the name.
An earlier instance was more notorious. Poverty Bay saw the first contact between Cook and his men and local Ma¯ ori. It is said that Cook would have called it Endeavour Bay had the encounter gone better – had the explorers been able to gather supplies as easily as they had in Tahiti.
But ‘‘because it afforded us no one thing we wanted’’, a negative name was applied to one of New Zealand’s most fertile areas. The original name, Tu¯ ranganuia-Kiwa, was finally made official this year.
But of course that original encounter left behind more than just a bad name. Five or possibly six Ma¯ ori were shot and killed in those first days.
‘‘No contact at Tahiti had gone as badly wrong as this,’’ as historian Nicholas Thomas observed in Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook.
Two hundred and fifty years later, that contact has been reassessed, remembered and mourned again. Many Pa¯ keha¯ who had a vague belief that New Zealand settlement was generally peaceful heard about it for the first time.
Six days before a replica of the Endeavour sailed into
Tu¯ ranganui-a-Kiwa – history repeats as pageantry, not farce – British high commissioner Laura Clarke issued an expression of regret to four iwi, including Nga¯ ti Oneone, whose ancestor Te Maro was the first man killed by the Endeavour crew.
He was shot dead by four ship boys who guarded a boat while Cook and others were further along the beach. The next day, Cook and armed marines went ashore a second time. The ‘‘natives’’, as Cook called them, presented weapons, performed their ‘‘war dance’’ and snatched at the Europeans’ belongings, especially their guns, so Cook ordered one of the men to be fired at – he was ‘‘wounded in such a manner that he died soon after’’, Cook wrote.
The second man was Te Rakau, a chief from the Rongowhakaata iwi, another of the four who finally received an expression of regret from the British 21⁄2 centuries later. In all, the statement of regret, which is not quite an apology, covers the deaths of nine Ma¯ ori killed during Cook’s first voyage to New Zealand.
Death and disrespect
The reappearance of the Endeavour is a centrepiece of the $23 million Tuia 250 commemorations that are not intended to celebrate Cook’s actions so much as prompt discussions about our difficult histories.
But it was not surprising, given the raw events of 1769, that the four Gisborne iwi refused to hold a powhiri for the replica Endeavour in what was widely understood to be a significant snub. Rongowhakaata Trust general manager Amohaere Houkamau felt it was more appropriate that ‘‘descendants of the colonialists who came and settled amongst us’’ welcomed the ship instead.
Waikato University academic Arama Rata dubbed it ‘‘a replica death ship’’ arriving to ‘‘re-enact the invasion of Ma¯ ori whenua’’. During a panel discussion on TV3’s The Hui, she added that it was tasteless for Ma¯ ori suffering to be used to create ‘‘a teachable moment for Pa¯ keha¯ New Zealand’’.
‘‘We’re talking about a man who arrived in this country and the first encounter involved the deaths of our people,’’ New Zealand Ma¯ ori Council executive member Matthew Tukaki said during the same discussion.
The most sustained public criticism of the replica Endeavour and the wider Tuia 250 project has come from indigenous rights advocate Tina Ngata. She appealed to the United Nations Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues and presented a petition to the Government from 3235 signatories who wanted the replica stopped.
Ngata bumped into Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern when Ardern was visiting the East Coast, and was able to raise the subject: ‘‘It didn’t sound like there was much intention for them to budge on it,’’ she remembers, ‘‘but there were a lot of fantastic sentiments expressed that we are platforming on the petition site.’’
One typical response: ‘‘It’s a re-enactment of the devastation and murder of our people.’’ And another: ‘‘It is disrespectful to my people and my whenua to revisit the main cause of the raping and pillaging of my ancestors, the stealing of our lands, the introduction of sickness and disease and the suppression of our language and culture.’’
And another: ‘‘Our people navigated the seas long before this murderer came on the scene. As far as I’m concerned they can shove the replica of his Endeavour where the sun does not shine.’’
And while Ardern obviously did not cancel the replica, it was notable that scheduling issues kept her from being in Gisborne when it appeared, having spent four days there as Ma¯ ori and Tahitian vessels arrived. It was left to MPs Kelvin Davis and Kiritapu Allan to board the replica and greet its crew.
It looked to some that the flotilla of European, Ma¯ ori and Tahitian vessels sailing peacefully together was intended to create a new myth, a 21st-century fantasy of racial harmony.
Nothing new there, says Ngata. New Zealand has a long
‘‘Wherever he went, like most people of the time of imperial expansion, there were murders . . . abductions . . . were rapes.’’
history of claiming racial harmony – see our ‘‘point-blank refusal to address and understand white supremacy’’ before the March 15 terror attacks.
‘‘Anything that contributes to the myth of racial harmony delays the important discussions we need to be having about the truth of race relations in Aotearoa,’’ she says. ‘‘The optics of Ma¯ ori and Pa¯ keha¯ shaking hands and coming together survives longer than the content of those discussions.’’
Yes, there is still a broad belief that colonisation was essentially bloodless here. That it was not as bad as other places. And that persists in Tuia 250, Ngata argues. Take the use of that neutral word ‘‘encounter’’.
‘‘We don’t say Saddam Hussein ‘encountered’ Kuwait. We’re talking about imperial expansion.’’
And the legacy is still as plain as day, Ngata says. ‘‘We have some of the greatest disparities in the country. You are six times more likely to die before your time, an early and preventable death, if you are Nga¯ ti Porou on the East Cape than anywhere else in the country, even any other Ma¯ ori community in the country.
‘‘ You’re much more likely to earn less than your Pa¯ keha¯ counterparts and less than any other Ma¯ ori in the country.’’
Reporters estimated that 100 people protested against the arrival of the replica as it appeared at Tu¯ ranganui-a-Kiwa on the 250th anniversary. And of course some Ma¯ ori are taking part in Tuia 250 events, thinking it better to participate and share stories that may not otherwise be widely heard.
‘‘We’re not a hive mind,’’ Ngata says. ‘‘Everyone approaches these things differently. There are diverse opinions and lines drawn in different places. But one of the things to also reflect on is that after the boat leaves, we’re all still going to be here. We’re still going to be wha¯ nau and we’re going to have to figure out a way ahead.
‘‘But if there is one thing that everybody agrees on, it is that they’re not fans of Cook. I don’t think many, if any, in the Ma¯ ori community are in the position that Cook should be celebrated or honoured.’’
And despite the emphasis from the Government on dual heritage and Ma¯ ori voyaging traditions, there is no getting away from the fact that this is still about Cook. It is his anniversary that is being recognised, with other stories added on.
‘‘Directly or indirectly, we are giving merit to the idea that our identity is centred on Cook’s arrival, and I will never accept that.’’
Round trip
After Gisborne, the replica Endeavour sailed north to Tolaga Bay, the second stop in its retracing of Cook’s circumnavigation.
For Cook and his men, Tolaga Bay in 1769 offered the happier encounter they had hoped for at Tu¯ ranganui-a-Kiwa. The ‘‘natives’’ brought them fish, kumara and ‘‘several trifles which we deem’d curiosities’’; in return, they were given ‘‘Cloth, Beads, Nails’’. The cloth was probably bark cloth from Tahiti, which ‘‘they valued more than anything we could give them’’, according to Cook’s account.
The hills at Tolaga Bay, which Ma¯ ori knew as Uawa, were luxurious, the birds were numerous and beautiful, the gardens were abundant with yams and kumara. Water and wood were sourced for the ship, and Tupaia, the Tahitian navigator who travelled with the Endeavour and could converse with Ma¯ ori, was a useful guide.
But remember the bay that Cook sailed past in December 1769? Mangonui in Doubtless Bay was set to be one of the stops for the replica Endeavour but far North iwi Nga¯ ti Kahu banned it.
Chief executive Anahera Herbert-Graves stressed that the iwi had not been contacted by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage before the itinerary was drawn up. Instead the ministry added Mangonui in the belief that it was recognising Sir Hector Busby, the venerable navigator and waka builder who died in May.
If a travelling replica seems dubious to some, the reenactment of an event that never happened in the first place seems even worse, and especially odd given the real history.
Only days after Cook sailed past, French explorer Jean Francois Marie de Surville visited Doubtless Bay and traded with Ma¯ ori. The visit ended with the French burning Ma¯ ori huts and taking a Nga¯ ti Kahu leader hostage.
‘‘Cook never came into our rohe,’’ Herbert-Graves explained. ‘‘It’s a fiction for him to ‘re-visit’ us.’’
Herbert-Graves has called Cook a ‘‘barbarian’’, which will seem controversial to some, but speaks to his part in the wider history. ‘‘Wherever he went, like most people of the time of imperial expansion, there were murders, there were abductions, there were rapes, and just a lot of bad outcomes for the indigenous people.
‘‘He didn’t discover anything down here, and we object to Tuia 250 using euphemisms like ‘encounters’ and ‘meetings’ to disguise what were actually invasions.’’
Next week: how was Cook’s voyage celebrated in 1869 and 1969?