Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora. Captain R. N. Edward Edwards
except a little muddy and fetid liquid at the bottom of shallow wells which the natives, who rely upon coconuts for drinking water, only use for cooking. Provisions also are very scarce there at all times. The same objections apply to Ongea and Fulanga which lie fifty miles north of Vatoa, in the same longitude, though they certainly possess harbours in which a vessel could lie for five weeks, which Vatoa does not. If, however, the schooner ran at the rate of six knots, as may safely be assumed, all difficulties, except that of latitude, vanish together, for at the distance of 290 nautical miles from Tofoa lies Matuku, which with much justification has been described by Wilkes as the most beautiful of all the islands in the Pacific. There the natives live in perpetual plenty among perennial streams, and could victual the largest ship without feeling any diminution of their stock. In the harbour three frigates could lie in perfect safety, and the people have earned a reputation for honesty and hospitality to passing ships which belongs to the inhabitants of none of the large islands. There is another alternative—Kandavu—but to reach that island, the schooner must have run at an average of eleven knots, and the number and cupidity of the natives would have made a stay of five weeks impossible to a vessel so poorly manned and armed.
All these considerations point to the fact that Oliver lay for five weeks at Matuku, which lies but fifty miles north of the latitude of Tofoa. He was, therefore, the first European who had intercourse with the Fijians. Their traditions have never been collected, and if one be found recording the insignificant details so dear to the native poet, such as the boarding netting, or the sickness of Midshipman Renouard, or better still, the outbreak of the Great Lila Sickness, the inference may be taken as proved.
Any other navigator than Edwards would have given us details of Oliver's wonderful voyage, or, at least, would have preserved his log, but the voyage from Fiji to the Great Barrier reef is a blank. Hamilton, indeed, alludes vaguely to the crew having had to be on their guard "at other islands that were inhabited," and since their course from Fiji to Endeavour Straits would have carried them through the heart of the New Hebrides, and close to Malicolo, we may assume that they called at Api, at Ambrym or at Malicolo to replenish their stock of water. They reached the Great Barrier reef in the greatest distress, and having run "from shore to shore," i.e. from New Guinea to within sight of the coast of Queensland without finding an opening, and having to choose between the alternatives of shipwreck or of death by famine, they went boldly at it, and beat over the reef. Even then they would have starved but for their providential encounter with a small Dutch vessel cruising a little to the westward of Endeavour Straits, which supplied them with water and provisions. The governor of the first Dutch settlement they touched at, having a description of the mutineers from the British Government, and observing that their schooner was built of foreign timber, refused to believe their account of themselves, especially as Oliver, being a petty officer, could produce no commission or warrant in support of his statement, and imprisoned them all, without, however, treating them with harshness. On the first opportunity he sent them to Samarang, where Edwards had them released. The plucky little schooner was sold, to begin another career of usefulness as set forth in the footnote to p. 33, and her purchase money was divided among the Pandora's crew.
Thus ended one of the most eventful voyages in the history of South Sea discovery, dismissed by Edwards in a few lines; by Hamilton in two pages. The search made among the naval archives at the Record Office leaves but little hope that any log-book or journal has been preserved.
Meanwhile, Edwards, disappointed in his search for the tender at Namuka and Tofoa, and prevented by a head wind from examining Tongatabu, set his course again for Samoa, and passed within sight of Vavau by the way. Making the easterly extremity of the group, he visited in turn Manua, Tutuila, and Upolu, but, like Bougainville, did not sight Savaii, which lay a little to the northward of his course. It is not surprising that the natives of Upolu denied all knowledge of the tender, seeing that they had made a determined attempt upon her less than a month before. From Samoa he sailed to Vavau which he named Howe's Group, in ignorance that it had been discovered by Maurelle ten years before, and subsequently visited by La Pérouse. Running southward, he made Pylstaart, at that time inhabited by Tongan castaways, and the fact that he did not stop to examine it, although he saw by the smoke that it was inhabited, shows that he had begun to tire of his search for the mutineers. Having enquired at Tongatabu and Eua, he returned to Namuka for water, and at this point any systematic search either for the tender or the mutineers seems to have been abandoned.
Edwards had now been nine months at sea, and the prospect of the long homeward voyage round the Cape was still before him. With every league he had sailed westward the scent had grown fainter, and he was about to pass the spot from which the mutineers were known to have sailed in the opposite direction. His course is not easy to explain. To reason that the tender had fallen to leeward of her rendezvous, and had been compelled to seek shelter and provisions at one of the islands discovered by Bligh only two days' sail to the westward, required no high degree of foresight; and yet Edwards, who must have known the position of the Fiji islands from Bligh's narrative, deliberately set his course for Niuatobutabu, two days' sail to the north-west. But, falling to leeward of it, he made Niuafo'ou, the curious volcanic island discovered by Schouten in 1616, and never since visited. The prevailing wind making a visit to Niuatobutabu now impossible, he visited Wallis Island, and then bore away to the west.
On August 8th, 1791, he made the discovery of Rotuma, whose enterprising people now furnish the Torres Straits pearl fishery with its best divers. It is difficult to forgive him for leaving so meagre an account of this interesting little community of mixed Polynesian and Micronesian blood. Edwards was probably mistaken in thinking their intentions hostile. Kau Moala, a Tongan who visited them in 1807, and related his experiences to Mariner, describes them as always friendly to strangers. Probably they took the Pandora for a god-ship, and since the Immortals of their Pantheon are generally malevolent, they left their women behind, and flourished weapons to scare the gods into good behaviour. In 1807 they had forgotten the visit, perhaps because it had brought them no calamity to inspire the native poets. Hamilton relates an incident quite in keeping with the character of this determined and sturdy little people. "One fellow was making off with some booty, but was detected; and although five of the stoutest men in the ship were hanging upon him, and had fast hold of his long flowing black hair, he overpowered them all, and jumped overboard with his prize."
The ill fortune that pursued Edwards, that had baulked him of Pitcairn when it lay within a few hours' sail, that had cheated him at once of the recovery of his tender and the discovery of Fiji, and was soon to rob him of his ship, now dealt him the unkindest cut of all. On August 13th, he sighted the island of Vanikoro, and ran along its shore, sometimes within a mile of the reef. There was no conceivable reason why he should not have made some attempt to communicate with the inhabitants whose smoke signals attracted his attention. Had he done so, he would have been the means of rescuing the survivors of La Pérouse's expedition, and of clearing away the mystery that covered their fate for so many years. For, after Dillon's discoveries, there can be little doubt that they were on the island at that very time, and it is not unlikely that the smoke was actually a signal made by them to attract his attention. The Comte de la Pérouse, who had been despatched on a voyage of discovery by Louis XVI. on the eve of the Revolution, handed his journals to Governor Phillip in Botany Bay for transmission to Europe in 1788, and neither he, nor his two frigates, nor any of their company were ever seen again. Their fate produced so painful an impression in France that the National Assembly, then in the throes of the Revolution, sent out a relief expedition under "Citizen-admiral" d'Entrecasteaux, and issued a splendid edition of his journals at the public expense. We now know from the native account elicited by Dillon that during a hurricane on a very dark night both frigates struck on the reef of Vanikoro, that the Astrolabe foundered with all hands in deep water, and the crew of the Boussole got safe to land. They stayed on the island until they had built a brig of native timber, in which they sailed away to the westward to meet a second shipwreck, perhaps on the Great Barrier reef. But two of them stayed behind for many years, and of these one was certainly alive in 1825. Now, Edwards saw Vanikoro just three years after the wreck, and even if the brig had sailed, there were two castaways who could have cleared up the mystery.
After a narrow escape from shipwreck on the Indispensable Reef, he made the coast of New Guinea, supposing it to be one of the Louisiades. And here has occurred one of