20 MAY 1778
Dearest Elizabeth,
We are at sea again, following the coast of Alaska. It is trending south-west, and this concerns me, as we should by rights be making progress northward. Furthermore, the conditions are adverse. Again, driving rain from the west and strong, mainly contrary winds …
There was a heavy knock on the cabin door. James blotted the journal entry and placed the notebook back in the locker. ‘Come.’
Gore entered. His cape, face and hair were drenched, and he was agitated. ‘Excuse me Captain, but I’ve been aloft. And while there I saw a wide break in the coastline, a league or so to starboard, and a clear passage beyond the gap.’ Gore’s eyes glittered. ‘I believe it may be the passage separating America from Alaska. The one through to the Arctic.’
There was a long silence. Then, ‘Could you see much beyond the breech?’
‘Yes. There’s open water there. Wide open water.’
James considered the implications of this. It presented a dilemma. They could alter course and pass through the gap, then follow what lay beyond. If it was the pass separating Alaska and America, then this would be an important discovery. One that would save them weeks of sailing. But should it not prove so and they had to turn back, then more time would be lost.
Returning his attention to Gore, he said, ‘The passage is wide?’
‘Yes. Three leagues across, I would say.’
Resolution lurched to larboard. Both men reached for the table edge and gripped it. Recovering, James considered the alternatives. The current south-west trend in the coast bothered him. It suggested that the time it took them to reach the Bering Strait would be extended. So if there were a quicker way …
Having reached a decision, he spoke crisply. ‘Very well, we’ll alter course and enter the passage. Alert Bligh and the other officers. And tell the gunner to signal Discovery that we’re changing course. They too should have seen the breach by now.’
‘Aye, Captain.’ Gore’s pleasure at this decision was obvious.
After Gore left the cabin, James went to the cabinet and took out his journal to Elizabeth again. He opened it at the last page, read what he had written, closed it and put it away again. He would wait to see what eventuated before he made another entry. Besides, the pain in his gut was bad today. It was all he could do to concentrate on maintaining his official log.
Moving hesitantly, he went across to the cabin door. He must visit the head again, to see if his bowels would move.
As he squatted he heard the ship’s timbers creaking and felt her pitching and rolling as she came about. There were yells from above as the sheets were loosed. She rolled again, then by degrees settled into her altered course, like a steed whose reins had been released. If only my bowels could change course as readily, James thought as he sat with his breeches around his boots. He bent forward and wrapped his arms around his chest, trying to contain the pain.
The gulf they entered was indeed wide, but as it trended north-east and the wind was now against them, the sloops made very slow progress. Yet from the decks and yards there was plenty to look at and admire. After passing two small islands they entered a broad stretch of water. To larboard the land rose abruptly to a massive range of snowy mountains. Rivers fell in tumbling sections of white water down the mountain slopes, then dropped to a narrow plain before flowing into the sound. To starboard the land was less steep but heavily forested, and the air around the ships was as clear and cold as ice.
During the ensuing days the gulf began to narrow, as if its two sides were being drawn together by some inexorable, invisible force. But the leadsmen found the water reassuringly deep, and when it was sampled it proved to be saline. A hopeful sign. James had resumed his running survey of both coasts. Already he had named the place the Gulf of Good Hope. When he informed Gore of this decision the American replied smugly, ‘I prefer the name Hope’s Return.’
On the sixth day James observed that the sound was definitely trending nor-nor-east. King also noted this. He asked, ‘If this is a passage through to the polar sea, ought it not to be trending north?’ James just harrumphed.
Now hemmed in on both sides by huge, snowy mountains, the gulf was definitely funnelling them north-east. And the winds were fluky, making the ships less manageable. At times they were becalmed, and the water in the sound turned shiny, like scar tissue. Now when Bligh took a sample of water and tasted it, he gave James a knowing look. ‘Brackish, sir,’ he declared. James turned away, unwilling to admit the significance of this. Gore, looking on, said nothing.
Now concerned at where they might be heading, James ordered two of the boats hoisted. He told King to go in one and Bligh in the other. Dense fog filled the sound and visibility was limited to 20 yards. ‘Go ahead on both coasts and see what lies beyond,’ he told the two men, and ordered the helmsmen to bring the ship to.
Five hours later the boats returned. King and Bligh climbed to the quarterdeck, their faces set. King reported, ‘To the east the sound ends at an inlet, and that ends at a river mouth.’
‘And to the west is another inlet and another river mouth,’ Bligh added.
James turned away, cursing. They had come to the end of a cul-desac. They had wasted a week and now, in returning to the open sea, they would waste another. Two weeks, two whole weeks. He brought his stick down hard on the rail. Why hadn’t he ignored Gore’s suggestion? Why had he placed faith in the Russian’s fictional passage? This senseless deviation would cost them a fortnight, time that ought properly to have been spent sailing west towards the Bering Strait.
Returning to the quarterdeck, he saw his first officer in discussion with Williamson. ‘Gore! A word!’
‘Yes, Captain?’
‘This sound comes to nothing. We are at a dead end.’
‘Yes, King has informed me of the fact.’ Gore drew a deep breath. ‘Yet it was worth the exploration.’
‘It was not!’ James was openly angry now. ‘We have wasted valuable time in entering this sound, and we must now waste yet more.’
Gore’s expression became mulish. ‘I hope you are not blaming me for this error, Captain.’
‘You were the one who urged us to change course,’ James retorted.
‘But the decision to change course was yours to make, sir, and you made it. You did not have to agree to my suggestion.’
Speechless with rage now, James turned away. Yes, the ultimate authority lay with him. He should have insisted they continue to follow the coast. And he had not done so. He had agreed to follow this phantom passage to nowhere.
He closed his eyes tightly. Again he felt the anguish of failure. And the pain in his gut was worse, lodged there like a lump of hot iron. Anything that could go wrong on this voyage was doing so.
He went to the rail and called down to Bligh, who was overseeing the hoisting aboard of the launches. ‘Bligh!’
‘Captain?’
‘We are returning to the open sea. Signal Clerke.’
From now on it became distressingly evident that the shape of the land was forcing them to follow a south-west course. Instead of pushing north towards the Bering Sea and Strait, for over two weeks they had been losing water. Standing well off from a lee shore, they could not tell if the fog-obscured land in the distance was a peninsula or a series of islands. Again the Russian charts were so sketchy they were of no practical use.
As the days passed they cursed the fogs that hung around the ships like soggy shrouds. ‘What is the cause of these infernal mists?’ Williamson asked as he and James huddled in their capes on the deck. The fog was so dense that even the foredeck was not visible.
James sniffed. To add to his discomforts, he had developed a chill. ‘The fog is condensation,’ he replied, ‘caused by the meeting of Arctic air and warm water.’ The phenomenon was known to him from his time on America’s eastern coast, where the Gulf Stream also met polar air, producing frequent fogs.
Frowning, Williamson peered overboard. ‘That water is warm?’
‘Relatively. The ocean currents carry it up here from the tropical latitudes.’
‘Will the fogs ease as we go further north?’
‘Probably not. So you’d best get used to it.’
Glimpses of the land to starboard revealed that it was mountainous and covered in snow. After several more days of hard sailing they saw a volcanic cone ejecting a plume of black smoke thousands of feet into the air. The volcano’s slopes were coated with snow, but near its summit there was a clear ring of black where the snow had been melted by the crater’s heat. They studied this satanic feature in awed silence before the fog descended again.
Fearful of losing one another, both ships regularly fired their guns, beat drums, blew whistles and sounded rattles in order to maintain their precious companionship. As they did so, James recalled the distressing days in the Antarctic Ocean in the New Year of 1773, when Resolution and Adventure had become separated because of dense fog. ‘This must not happen to us,’ he stressed to his officers and Bligh. But the risk of a separation was always present.
Whenever the fog lifted it was replaced by sleet and driving rain, and when that ceased, snow fell, coating the decks and rigging and freezing the crews’ hands and faces. Sea birds too battled the wind and were sometimes snared in the shrouds. They were brought down, killed, plucked and eaten. Contrary currents added to the helmsmen’s struggles and Bligh’s course settings. For James, memories kept returning of his time in Antarctic waters. On that voyage too the daylight hours had been long. But now, as then, this was irrelevant, as the fogs turned both day and night into blinding white light.
There was the occasional respite. One day they were becalmed and the mist was melted by the watery sun. The men dropped lines baited with meat scraps over the gunwales and brought up more than 100 fat halibut, a haul that brought them all a welcome change of diet.
Caped and scarfed against the cold, James spent hours on the platform with his scope, hugging the mainmast, searching the shore for a break in the land that might admit them to Alaska’s north-western coast. Although he glimpsed one or two possible breaks, they were too uncertain and the risks thus too great. The ships would continue on their present course, although it was still being bent south by the trend of the land.
Aware that time was slipping away, and with the wind rising, on 26 June James ordered all sails loosed. The ships were again surrounded by fog, but to heave to and wait for it to lift would only waste more time. Now that the summer solstice had passed, time was more crucial than ever. Visibility was reduced to less than 50 yards, but there was a following wind.
Sailing blind but gathering impetus under full sail, Resolution approached five knots. Discovery followed close astern, her helmsmen’s eyes fixed on the fog-buoy Resolution was towing. This was a piece of wood shaped like a scoop that threw up spray and so gave them a sign to follow. Shrieking whistles from astern told the crew of Resolution that Discovery was still following them.
On board Resolution, helmsmen Whelan and Roberts, with Bligh alongside them, looked askance at James. We’re running too fast for the conditions, their expressions read. Ignoring them, James yelled, ‘Hold your course!’
Then from the mainmast platform came a cry from midshipman Watts. ‘Breakers! Breakers dead ahead!’
The sound of waves crashing onto rocks was like claps of thunder. Between the crashings a ghastly sucking noise carried to them.
James rushed to the starboard rail. ‘Leadsman!’
Minutes later came the reply. ‘Twenty-five fathoms!’ Then a few minutes later, ‘Twenty-three fathoms!’
James shouted, ‘Heave to! Heave to!’
Bligh yelled at the crew, his cries ringing out around the decks. ‘Down helm! Clew up everything! Haul the spanker to windward! Let go the sprits and foresail sheets!’ His voice was now almost a scream. ‘Look lively! Lively, damn you!’
Turned into the wind, both ships rolled heavily. Their sails began to droop. The leadsman’s cries came regularly. ‘Twenty fathoms! … Eighteen fathoms! … Sixteen fathoms!’
Two hours later the fog began to lift. When the air cleared the crews stared, shocked, at what lay around them. To both larboard and starboard, and only yards astern, were rows of tall rocks like blackened fangs. And ahead of them by only 200 yards waves were rising then dashing down onto more rocks. They had missed those on either side by mere yards. And if the ships had held their course, within a few minutes they would have been impaled on the rocks that lay ahead, and fatally holed.
On the larboard mid-deck Bligh clutched the rail, his chest heaving. The faces of his helmsmen had turned a shade paler. Officer of the watch Williamson stared at James in consternation. The deck crew too all looked towards him, their expressions easily read: why had the captain ordered full sails with a following wind when they were surrounded by fog?
Up ahead, beyond the breakers, was a mountainous but grassy island. Now that the wind had dropped, its coast looked sheltered. ‘That’ll make a fine anchorage,’ James said to Williamson. He looked to starboard through his scope. ‘And to the west it looks likely there’s a clear passage to the north.’ He called down to Bligh. ‘Lower the anchors!’
Later, Clerke was brought aboard. Over brandies, he smiled ruefully at James. ‘Nice pilotage, Captain. Considering our perfect ignorance of the situation.’
James did not return his smile. Staring at the island he said dispiritedly, ‘I’m calling this place Providence.’
And that night, while trying unsuccessfully to sleep, his mind was consumed by what had almost happened. The nightmarish scene of 10 June 1770 on the Great Barrier Reef, and the foundering of Endeavour, had nearly been repeated. Then, as now, he had made an almost-fatal error of judgment. In New Holland, to sail through the night amid coral reefs; in this place, to sail hard with virtually no visibility. Both ships could have been lost. It was a near-miracle they had not been.
Hearing the ship’s bell ring for the midnight hour, he turned again in his berth. Resolution rode easily at anchor, and the soothing slurp of the sea reached him through the bulkhead. Always he believed in erring on the side of caution, but today his actions had been unwise, even reckless, and every man aboard must be aware of the fact.
Lying on his back now, he pressed his hands to his aching belly. There would be little sleep again tonight. Am I going insane?