“In the middle of ye night of 24th. we fell in with 9 Small Islands except one which is tolorable large. Some of these 9 islands are scarce better then large rocks low flatt but all well cloathed with green Trees, and well inhabited…” It was August 1767 and British navigator Philip Carteret had notched up another discovery as he searched for a “Place of Consequence in the South Seas”. Although Carteret’s voyage was heroic, he was quickly forgotten. But today his name is in the news – because the Carteret Islands (above) have acquired an awful significance. They are the first to be evacuated and abandoned to rising sea levels.
PHILIP CARTERET was astonished. The young British officer couldn’t believe he was being asked to sail a “miserable tool” like HMS Swallow around the world. The ship was slow and hard to handle. It was badly equipped. It leaked. He was short of officers, short of crew and didn’t have enough space to stow the supplies needed for a long voyage. But Carteret was an ambitious man and he had his orders. And if the Swallow didn’t sink and they didn’t all starve or die from scurvy, the voyage would make his name – or so he thought. So for three years he nursed his ship through wild weather and treacherous waters in search of new lands in the South Seas.
Carteret failed to find a new continent – the hoped-for place of consequence – but he pulled off an extraordinary feat of seamanship. Despite great hardships and constant danger of shipwreck he did discover new places, rediscovered the legendary Solomon Islands, and much to everyone’s surprise sailed the Swallow safely home.
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The Swallow’s adventures – or misadventures – began in the summer of 1766. In May, Carteret had returned from a two-year round-the-world voyage as lieutenant aboard HMS Dolphin. Within weeks, he was given command of the Swallow and told to get it ready to sail as consort to the Dolphin on a new and urgent mission under the command of Captain Samuel Wallis.
The Dolphin was a good, swift ship, copper-bottomed, crammed with gear and victualled “for twelve months with the best sort of Provisions that ever went to Sea”. The Swallow, a sloop that had never done more than ferry press-ganged men downriver to waiting ships, was “an old Vessel…and one of the worst, if not the very worst of her kind; in his majesty’s Navy”. Where could two such ill-matched ships be headed?
Carteret didn’t know, but he suspected that at the very least he might have to cross the Atlantic, in which case the Swallow would need a major overhaul. The navy baulked at the suggestion. Carteret drew up “a short list of necessaries, which I knew from Experience, were absolutely wanted in the course of a long, & far distant, Voyage; Among which was a Forge, & some Iron, a smal Skiff, with some other things…” The navy turned down almost every request. Frustrated, Carteret “told them I did not think she was a fitt ship nor properly fitted out for a long voyage”.
“I did not think she was a fitt ship nor properly fitted out for a voyage”
On 21 August, Dolphin and Swallow set sail from Plymouth and headed south through the Atlantic. Carteret’s ship lagged far behind. By now, he knew he must be going to the south Atlantic, but when the two ships met again at Madeira, Wallis broke the bad news: both ships were ordered to explore the Pacific.
As the more experienced man, Carteret was to pilot the ships through the treacherous Strait of Magellan into the Pacific. Swallow was so slow it took four months, and when the ships finally reached the ocean, Wallis sped off and disappeared over the horizon. He left no word of his intended route. Convinced the Swallow had been abandoned, Carteret decided to go on alone.
First he headed north to find food and water in the Juan Fernandez islands off Chile – only to discover the Spanish installed there. With orders to explore the southern parts of the Pacific, he turned west across the ocean, tracking farther south than any before him. Wallis, sailing well to the north of him, discovered Tahiti. The Dolphin’s crew thought they had found paradise and Wallis thought he had done his duty. He stayed six weeks and then headed for England.
While Wallis was enjoying the delights of Tahiti, Carteret made his first discovery. On 2 July, Midshipman Pitcairn spotted a massive volcanic island rising out of the ocean. Unlike lush, welcoming Tahiti, Pitcairn Island was “scarce better than a large rock”. It was remote, uninviting and uninhabited, and it was impossible to land because the surf “broke upon it with great violence”.
Pitcairn was then of little consequence. But 30 years later, Fletcher Christian and his band of mutineers from HMS Bounty needed a hiding place. In the Bounty’s library, Christian read an account of Carteret’s discovery and reckoned Pitcairn would suit. It turned out to be better even than he imagined, for without a chronometer to calculate longitude, Carteret had marked the island wrongly on the map. The mutineers escaped notice for 19 years.
On 11 July, Carteret discovered three unknown atolls in the Tuamoto archipelago. He was now hoping to find the Solomon Islands, discovered by Spanish navigator Alvaro Mendaña in 1568 but which no other European had seen since. Mendaña claimed the islands were the source of King Solomon’s legendary gold – which made all Europe keen to find them. By now, though, conditions aboard the Swallow were grim: most of the crew had scurvy and provisions were running out. Carteret’s priority was to find fresh food and water, and so instead of pressing on southward he continued west. On 12 August, with his men sick and his ship leaking, Carteret finally found a group of islands he named Queen Charlotte Islands. He made for the largest, which he called Egmont Island.
Whatever Carteret’s misfortunes before, they now faded into insignificance. Egmont had coconuts, water and apparently friendly islanders, so Carteret sent a party ashore to trade. Despite being given strict instructions to do nothing to upset the islanders, the sailors began chopping down coconut trees. The trees were taboo. The islanders attacked and eight of Carteret’s men were wounded. Four of them later died from tetanus.
The disaster at Egmont left Carteret still desperate for supplies, even shorter of men, and wary of exploring new islands. If he had stayed to investigate Egmont, he might have recognised it as the island the Spanish called Santa Cruz, and that might have encouraged him to keep going south in search of the Solomons. Instead, he kept going west towards Java and the familiar route back to Europe.
On 20 August he found three new islands. He named them, marked them on his map and charged on, his explorer’s curiosity all but extinguished by worry. Four days later, he spotted a ring of small coral islands. Carteret reckoned there were nine (there were six) and called them the Carteret Islands. What he failed to recognise was that all the islands he had seen that week were northern outliers of Mendaña’s fabled archipelago. He had made a great discovery – but didn’t know it.
The journey home was as difficult as the outward voyage. Carteret eventually found enough food and water to last until the Swallow reached the nearest friendly port – the Dutch settlement at Macassar in what is now Sulawesi. The Dutch, who were bound by a treaty of friendship to aid stricken British ships, initially refused to help him, an act that soured relations between the two countries for years. Eventually, and grudgingly, the Dutch capitulated and the Swallow went home, arriving in March 1769.
So why does no one remember Carteret? His discoveries were significant, and he charted routes that were later followed by British ships making the voyage to China and Australia. Misfortune had dogged him all the way, yet he had triumphed. But there was one misfortune he couldn’t overcome. While he was still in the South Seas, a new expedition set out – led by Captain James Cook. Cook’s achievements so eclipsed those of his predecessors, he became the nation’s hero. Carteret was laid off on half pay.
Two centuries on, Carteret’s name is in the news, not in belated recognition of his heroism but because the six low-lying islands that bear his name are about to disappear, victims of rising sea levels. One island has already been cut in half and seawater floods have made the soils useless for growing crops. Over the next two years, the 1500 islanders will all pack up and leave. Within a decade the islands will be under water and Carteret’s name will be forgotten again.
