The Botany Bay Medallion

‘He [Dawes] was the scholar of the[First Fleet] expedition, man of letters and man of science, explorer, mapmaker, student of language of anthropology, teacher and philanthropist. Professor G. Arnold Wood, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society Vol. X, 1924, Part 1

Aside from Kate Grenville’s 2008 fictional cardboard cut-out The Lieutenant’s star-struck Daniel Rooke Australia knows very  little of Marine Lieutenant William Dawes and almost nothing of his pivotal role in revealing the why or wherefore of the ‘war nasty and decidedly lacking in glory’ Britain waged against Australia’s First Nations’. See: The Big Switch

‘English clockmaker John Harrison, a mechanical genius who pioneered the science of portable precision timekeeping…invented a clock that would carry the true time from the home port, like an eternal flame, to any remote corner of the world’. Dava Sobel, Longitude, Fourth Estate, 1998

Warranne:  Given into the care of Lieutenant Dawes  ‘an eternal flame’  K I – a faithful replica of John Harrison’s H – 4 ‘sea-going pocket watch’ fetched up at one particular ‘remote corner of the world’  – Sydney Cove – on 26 January 1788 aboard HMS Supply one (1) of eleven (11) ships of the ‘First Fleet’.

The discord that attended H-4’s birth accompanied K-1 to New Holland. See: Cook, Harrison, Green – Three Yorkshire-men  Walked  into a Bar

IF INTERESTED – READ ON

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‘He [John Harrison] wrested the world’s whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch’. Dava Sobel, Longitude, Fourth Estate, London, 1998

Harrison H-4 Chronometer

Since earliest times Europe’s sea-faring nations England, Portugal, France, Spain the Netherlands vied with each other to solve – the Holy Grail of Navigation – longitude – calculating with precision a ship’s position at sea while beyond sight of land.

Cornwell – 1707:  In heavy weather six (6) of Admiral Clowdisley Shovell’s ships lost their bearings off the Cornish coast and dashed to pieces against the Scilly Isles with the loss of 1500 lives

1714  – Westminster: An enquiry into England’s first recorded 18^th century maritime disaster resulted in legislation- The Act of Longitude 1714.

A Board of Longitude was established under the Act. Its task to invite and evaluate submissions and award a prize of £20,000 to whom-so-ever solved the problem of determining longitude at sea.

To the detriment of the world’s seafarers the contest developed into a naked grab for cash. The king’s ransom, reckoned now more than £400,000,000 did much to delay recognition of the solution at the cost of countless lives.  See: Lotto and Longitude

There were only two (2) viable contenders for the Longitude Prize. Astronomer Royal Rev. Nevil Maskelyne’s Nautical Almanac , a system of  Luna Tables  and Star Cataglog favoured by a succession of Astronomer Royals and a sea-going ‘pocket-watch’ the invention of John Harrison a Yorkshire carpenter.

‘The Board of Longitude was top-heavy with astronomers, mathematicians and navigators…[Harrison] made a special enemy of the Reverend Nevil Maskelyne the fifth astronomer royal, who contested his claim to the [Longitude] prize money and whose tactics at certain junctions can only be described as foul-play’. Dava Sobel. ibid.

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‘The Royal Society had accepted the recommendation of the Astronomer [Royal] that [Dalrymple] the well-known hydrographer of the Pacific should be chosen as ‘a proper Person to be sent to the South Seas’. H.C. Cameron, Sir Joseph Banks, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1968

Greenwich: Rev. Nevil Maskelyne, Britain’s fifth Astronomer Royal adjudged the hydrographer, a Fellow of the Royal Society; ‘a proper Person to be sent to the South Seas’. The Admiralty however would have none of Alexander Dalrymple. See: Malicious Maskelyne 

Tahiti: Instead Admiralty chose James Cook, then a lowly Warrant Officer of the Royal Navy, to lead a scientific expedition to Tahiti and there observe the Transit of Venus. This event was predicted to occur in early June 1769.

‘[Cook] Whose remarkable qualities as a seaman and as a navigator and cartographer the Admiralty had learned to value because of his outstanding service in the operation under [General] Wolfe in Canada [Seven Years War 1756-1763]. Cameron. ibid. 

Yorkshire – 1728: James Cook was born on 27 October 1728 in Marston, Yorkshire. Vanessa Collingridge Captain Cook The Life, Death and Legacy of History’s Greatest Explorer, Random House, 2003 says he spent most of his childhood; ‘in the lee of the largest peak in Yorkshire’s North Riding’.

Whitby – 1747: Cook left school in 1747 to begin work as deckhand on a Whitby barque bringing coal from Newcastle to Hull and London.

1752: Working steadily through the ranks by 1752 Cook was Mate on a collier Friendship.

1755: War with France was looming in 1755 when James enlisted an Able Seaman in the Royal Navy where his experience made for steady progression.

1756: The Seven Year’s War broke out in the mid 1750s with on one side Britain, Prussia and Hanover ranged against France, Austria, Russia, Saxony, Sweden and Spain on the other. Military historians classify The Seven Years’ War 1756-1763 as the world’s first truly global war.

Britain was successful but after a few years of uneasy peace it morphed into a cascade of conflict that included yet another Anglo-Dutch war, war with Spain and in 1775 the American Revolutionary War.

1757 – June: Cook, after passing his sailing master’s examination at Trinity House in mid 1757, joined as crew on HMS Eagle .

1757 – October: In October, then aged 29, he was posted to HMS Pembroke a sixty-four (64) gun fighting ship of the Line.

1757: In late 1757 England’s Prime Minister William Pitt [Elder] ‘gained control of the [war] strategy’. With the intention of seizing French colonies in North America and India England’s struggle with France moved away from the Continent.

THE BACK STORY

Canada – 1758: Seven Years’ War: Cook on HMS Pembroke, sailed for Canada under command of Captain John Simcoe RN, as part of General Amherst’s expeditionary force intent on capturing Louisbourg from the French. 

Louisboug: Named for King Louis XIV the city was founded in 1713. Louisbourg as well as being a busy centre for fishing, fur trading and ship-building, was of immense strategic importance to France.

Its port supported a substantial French naval presence guarding Quebec and Montreal. According to Fred Anderson’s Crucible of War, the French squadron consisted of ‘eleven (11) ships including five (5) of the line’.

Pembroke’s crew and troops were so badly affected by scurvy and the ship itself so severely damaged en-route by heavy weather she took no part in the battle for Louisbourg.

1758 – 26 July:  After a siege of five (5) weeks Louisbourg fell to the British leaving Montreal and Quebec exposed to invasion.

‘Cook first learned from a British army officer [Samuel Holland] how to make maps they would become Cook’s fascination, as he mastered the technique of translating the three dimensions of landmarks, shores, rocks, and shoals precisely and exactly onto two dimensional charts’. Arthur Herman, To Rule the Waves, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2004

HMS Pembroke underwent repairs. It was during the lay period that James Cook met Lieutenant Samuel Holland. A Dutchman Holland served as engineer and surveyor on General James Wolfe’s staff.

After Louisbourg, his [Cook’s] meticulous correcting of existing charts of the St. Lawrence River, and creation of new ones where none existed saved Saunders and Wolfe’s expedition to [capture] Quebec, and won him the reputation as one of the navy’s finest navigators’. Herman. ibid.

It is said ‘maps are power’. James Cook and Samuel Holland sealed the fate of a free people – New Holland’s First Nations’ Peoples. See: A Tale of Two Cities, Quebec 1759 – Sydney 1788

‘Unwittingly Cook had stumbled into one of the great periods of change in naval history; the rise of scientific navigation’. A.W. Beazley, Fellowship of Three. The Surgeon John Hunter, The Navigator James Cook, The Naturalist Joseph Banks, Kangaroo Press, Sydney 1993

‘[To] rectify the Tables of the Motion of the Heavens, and the Place of the fixed Stars, so as to find out the so-much desired Longitude at sea for the Art of Navigation’.  Dava Sobel, Longitude, Fourth Estate, London, 1998 §

Whitehall – January 1649 Following the beheading of his father King Charles the First, on the orders of Oliver Cromwell, Heir Apparent Prince Charles fled initially to Scotland from where he launched a Scots invasion of England.

Worcester: After the Scots were defeated by Cromwell’s Model Army at Worcester in 1651 Charles fled to exile on the Continent. He lived firstly in France then in the Netherlands.

Oliver Cromwell died of natural causes in September 1658 and the Protectorate collapsed in on itself.

London – 1660 May: Amidst cheering crowds Prince Charles, who returned from the Netherlands, was crowned King Charles II of England, Ireland and Scotland in Westminster Abbey with much pomp and ceremony. See Moon Versus Machine 

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1675: To make his mark King Charles 11 desired England take the lead in the ‘rise of scientific navigation’. To that end Charles II commissioned Christopher Wren build an Observatory.

Greenwich: The site Wren chose was Greenwich Castle destroyed by Oliver Cromwell’s Model Army during the Protectorate Interregnum.  Using the castle’s surviving foundations the build was swift.

Just one (1) year after work began Greenwich Observatory was up and running. The King appointed Rev. John Flamsteed Britain’s first Astronomer Royal.

So began a century of great scientific advancement. But in the world of astronomy it was also a toxic century defined by trickery, deception, and skulduggery.

‘What Endeavour (1769) lacked was a convenient means of establishing her position at least so far as longitude was concerned…what he [Cook] did have was….[Maskelyne’s] Nautical Almanac which facilitated the tedious method of establishing longitude by the observation of the ‘lunars’. A.W.  Beasley. Fellowship of Three Cook, Hunter, Banks.

Jealously and skulduggery were the reasons why, a century later – 1769 – Cook sailed HMS Endeavour to Tahiti and then into the South Seas in search of the fabled Great South Land without a reliable sea-going chronometer. See: Cook, Harrison, Green – Three Yorkshire Men Walked Into A Bar – Nevil Maskelyne

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‘Shortly before Cook sailed Maskelyne published the Nautical Almanac’. Lyn Withey, Voyages of Discovery, Captain Cook and the Explorations of the Pacific, Century Hutchinson, Melbourne, 1987 See: Lotto and Longitude

Longitude:  On a pitching weather deck on a near starless night, with a telescope pressed to one eye, surely emphasis must be placed on selecting ‘convenient’ over ‘tedious‘.

A sound knowledge of ‘true time’ is necessary to determine longitude while a ship was at sea. Dava Sobel put John Harrison’s achievement with his marine chronometer H-4 eloquently; ‘He [Harrison] wrested the world’s whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch’

‘John Harrison, the man who solved longitude in 1759’. Peter Ackroyd, Revolution, Macmillan, London, 2016

Harrison’s ‘pocket-watch’ had conquered time-keeping by 1759. It would have given James Cook‘ a convenient means of establishing longitude’.

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What HMS Endeavour and James Cook, its captain and navigator did have, were the services of Charles Green. He had been selected by the Royal Society to replace Alexander Dalrymple as Assistant Observer for the Transit of Venus.

Greenwich: Green had served as Chief Assistant under two (2) Astronomer Royals. Firstly in 1742 under Rev. James Bradley on his elevation to the post following Edmond Halley’s demise.

Oxford: In 1762 Rev. Nathaniel Bliss succeeded Bradley. But due to ill health, though he made an occasional visit, Bliss did not take up residence. He remained in Oxford where his death in 1764.

During Bliss’s short two (2) year tenure Charles Green functioned as surrogate Astronomer Royal. He left the Observatory soon after Rev. Nevil Maskelyne was appointed to the post in March 1765. See: The Third Man – Charles Green

‘The grim roll-call broke his [Cook’s) heart…the death of the astronomer Charles Green marked a wave of those who ‘departed this life’….By the end of January [1771] they had barely enough men to man the ship [HMS Endeavour]’. Vanesssa Collingridge, Captain Cook, The Life, Death and Legacy of History’s Greatest Explorer, Ebury Press, 2002

Swinton- 1734: Charles Green son of ‘a prosperous’ free-hold Yorkshire farmer, born in Swinton towards the end of 1734, received a broad education with a strong emphasis on science.

London: John his elder brother took Holy Orders and established a school in Soho, London where Charles found his ‘heavenly passion’ astronomy. He stayed and taught mathematics after graduating.

Greenwich 1760: In 1760 Charles Green applied successfully for the position of Assistant Astronomer at Greenwich Observatory. He went on to serve as Chief Assistant to three (3) Astronomer Royals, James Bradley, Nathaniel Bliss and briefly to Reverend Nevil Maskelyn.

§

In 1675 King Charles II engaged Sir Christopher Wren to design a National Observatory. Wren considered the ruins of Greenwich Castle a perfect site. Although Oliver Cromwell’s Roundhead Model Army had destroyed its buildings during The Protectorate Interregnum (1653-59) its foundations were left  intact.

Greenwich: In 1676, Rev. John Flamsteed, England’s inaugural Astronomer Royal, took up residence in the newly minted Greenwich Observatory. He remained in the role until his death in 1720.

Edmond Halley of comet fame succeeded Flamsteed holding  the post for twenty-two (22) years until his death in 1742.

Rev. James Bradley followed Halley. His tenure too was lengthy 1742-1762. Bradley is celebrated principally for his work on the speed of light. In 1728 he estimated light moved at the speed of 295,000 km (183,000 miles) per second.

Three (3) centuries later Bradley’s calculations were amended slightly to 299,790 km (186,290 miles) per second.

Arguably had Bradley stuck to light and left longitude to Mr. John Harrison inventor of the H-4 sea-going ‘pocket-watch’ many a sea-farer would not have met a watery end. Bradley died in 1762

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‘The Transit [of Venus] was more than just an astronomical curio, it was the key to a wealth of information about the universe, information that would be seized upon by the intensely curious men of science who characterised the age’. Vanessa Collingridge, Captain Cook, The Life, Death and Legacy of History’s Greatest Explorer, Random House, 2003

England – 1663: In 1663 during the reign of King Charles II (1660-1685) a collection of ‘intensely curious men of science’ – the ‘Invisible College’ – morphed into the Royal Society.

A century later, the Society flowered under the patronage of King George III (1720-1820), to become one of the world’s most celebrated scientific institutions.

Tahiti: In 1767 with the Transit of Venus in the offing – 3 June 1769 – its second appearance that decade – the Society petitioned King George III for financial support to send observers to send an expedition to Tahiti and report on the phenomenon.

‘That the passage of the Planet Venus over the Disc of the Sun, which will happen on the 3^rd of June in the year 1769, is a Phaenomenon (sic) that must, if the same be accurately observed in proper places, contribute greatly to the improvement of Astronomy on which Navigation so much depends.

 As the [Fellows] are in no condition to defray this Expense about £4,000 pounds, exclusive of the Expense of the Ships…with all humility and submit the same to your Majesty’s Royal consideration’. Cited, H.C. Cameron, Sir Joseph Banks, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1968

1768 – February: To that end James Douglas 14^th Earl of Morton, then President of the Royal Society, on 15 February 1768 penned a Memorial requesting the Monarch’s financial support.

Royal money was forthcoming for it was clear accurate and reliable ‘Navigation on which so much depends’ equated with domination over the world’s oceans. Domination would expedite expansion of territory and trade. Strategically placed ‘bases’ would more likely assure victory in time of conflict.

‘And the sum of £4,000 pounds clear of fees, [was] to be placed at the disposal of the Society…On March 5^th of the next year, 1768, the Navy Board was instructed by the Admiralty to purchase a suitable vessel for the great voyage to the South Seas’. Cameron, Sir Joseph Banks, Angus and Robertson, 1968

Deptford -1768, 5 March: Admiralty settled on the Earl of Pembroke. Renamed Endeavour she was a typical coal carrier ‘cat-built bark’ of 368 tons ‘stoutly built, flatly bottomed of shallow draught’.

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