Navigators of the Pacific Rim
by Harold Stephens

Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1503 and became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean, which he named and claimed for Spain.
The news of Balboa¹s discovery caused a great excitement throughout Europe. It spurred the Spanish to make fresh attempts to reach India, this time by sending a Portuguese sailor named Ferdand Magellan westward to the Far East via the southern tip of South America. And thus began the first recorded navigation of the South Pacific.
The Polynesians had, of course, been in the Pacific long before the arrival of Europeans, but they kept no records and the dates of their settlement of the islands is unknown in spite of anthropologists¹¹ on-going efforts to define the early history of the Pacific. In 1519, Magellan sailed from Lisbon for the south of South America, passed through the dark and forbidding "Strait of Magellan," and came into the Pacific Ocean.

Magellan's expedition continued across the Pacific westward, and for "eight and ninety days" he sailed blindly over that vast, empty ocean. What is so incredible about Magellan¹s voyage is that they sighted only two tiny desert islands, and yet they passed through chains of islands from the Marquesas and Taumotuas to the numerous Micronesian islands. The crews were rotten with scurvy; there was little water, and that was foul; and had nothing but putrid biscuit to eat. Rats were hunted eagerly; cowhide was gnawed and sawdust devoured to stay the pangs of hunger. In this state the expedition reached Guam in the western Pacific, and a few weeks later discovered the Philippines. Here Magellan was killed in a fight with the natives. Several other captains were murdered. Five ships had started with Magellan in August 1519 and two hundred and eighty men; only a handful of men and one ship made it back to Portugal. It took another three hundred years for European explorers to master the winds and currents of the Pacific before any serious exploration began.

Leading the pack was Captain James Cook in the late 18th century. Cartographers were finally able to fill in what had been, to them, a totally unknown third of the globe. Cook was sent by the British Crown to explore the Pacific to either prove or disprove two prevailing theories at the time. It was commonly accepted in the West that the Northern Hemisphere landmasses must have an antipodean equivalent to keep the world balanced and spinning evenly. Many believed his land mass, Terra Australis Incognita, was rich in minerals and spices. By the early 16th century, when the outlines of Africa, Southeast Asia, and the east coast of America were roughly determined, speculations now were that Terra Australis had to be in the sosuthrn Pacific Ocean.

The other theory was that there was a northwest sea passage across northern North America. It took Captain Cook three voyages of exploration to learn that neither existed, the southern continent nor the northwest passage. However, he made some valuable discoveries, including the Hawaiian Islands. Unfortunately, this was where he died on his last voyage, at the hand of the natives. Other explorers and navigators were soon to follow Captain Cook. However, many of the charts and maps that now appeared were faulty and misleading. The positions of islands were often poorly determined. Others were the result of errors in reporting, charting, and typography. Some were born of fraud and deception. Quite a few must have been optical illusions. In the early years there were few trade possibilities in the Pacific. The refinement of coconut oil from copra was a long way off and pearl shells had not yet created a market. But there was another industry that was soon to change the face of the Pacific--whaling. Whaling had become a great industry of the Western world. America and the nations of Europe were lighted by whale-oil lamps or spermaceti wax candles. Machinery was lubricated by sperm oil, which was also used to make soap and paints. Ladies of fashion were scented with an essence of ambergris, coughed out from the stomach of a sick whale. Their crinolines and bodices were stayed with whalebone. Big fortunes were made pursuing the largest of all mammals through the most distant oceans. The two that provided the real riches were the sperm whale and the right whale.

The Pacific, from 1820 to 1870, was to be the main hunting ground of the whalers. More than two-thirds of the world's whaling fleet prowled this ocean. Most of the ships were American, and most of these were from a few towns on the New England coast. The greatest whaling port, of course, was Nantucket, on an island south of Cape Cod. It was a Nantucket ship that was the first American whaler to reach Honolulu, the tropical town that later became headquarters for the Pacific whaling industry. Whalers soon discovered all the grounds that teemed with whales, scattered from one end of the Pacific to the other. Although many whaling operations had to be carried on in cold waters, in winter they came to the tropical islands of the Pacific to recuperate and resupply. In the year 1852, for example, the masts of 131 whaleships forested the port of Honolulu, and a man might clamber from one end of the harbor to the other across the decks of the anchored vessels. The log books and sailing charts of whaling captains were closed to outsiders. Their whaling grounds were kept secret and well guarded and not shared with others. Whalers also had their own islands that they stocked with both domestic and wide game, strictly for their own use. When I was sailing my own schooner around the Pacific, I ran upon a few of these uninhabited islands. Mostly we found goats but some islands had deer, pigs and cattle, all gone wild. My crew dined well after such visits, thanks to the whalers.

Some fine navigators left their mark on the Pacific. One was Captain William Bligh of the Bounty mutiny. After the Bounty was seized by Fletcher Christian and his mutinous crew, Bligh and 18 of his loyal followers were cast adrift in a19¹ longboat. Bligh navigated the boat all across the Pacific, through the savage Fiji Islands, to Dutch Timor, some 4,300 miles in a open boat. Finding no ships there to take them home, they built their own and sailed back to England. Another breed of navigators entered the Pacific--the solo sailors, circumnavigators sailing alone around the world. Solo circumnavigation started with master mariner Joshua Slocum when he sailed his ketch Spray around the world in 1895-98. After Slocum a number of intrepid sailors took up the challenge‹Prigeon, Dumas, Robinson, Boden, to name a few. In 1968, the London Sunday Times put up £5,000 for the first person to sail alone and nonstop around the world. Nine yachtsmen set out. Favoured to win was a catamaran sailed by Australian Bill Howell, known in yachting circles as "Tahiti Bill." One who certainly wouldn't win was Robin Knox-Johnson, a 29-year old ex-British Merchant Mariner. He entered in a scruffy little ketch.

Tahiti Bill dropped out before the race began and of the eight others only one finished. After nearly nine months at sea, Knox-Johnson crossed the finish line in his 32¹ ketch.

Another to enter the race was Donald Crowhurst. His motives: fame and the prize money. Eight months after he sailed, a passing ship found his boat ghosting along in the Mid-Atlantlc. There was no one aboard. For eight months he had sailed in circles. He faked his entries in one log, which he would present to the acceptance committee. He was ingenious enough to invent a hoax that fooled the world, but was unable to endure the strain of deceiving himself. Another baffling behavior was that of Bernard Moitessier of France. He was already a legendary figure, having sailed thousands of miles in the Pacific, and in 1966 had completed the longest non-stop voyage by small boat ‹ from Tahiti to Spain via Cape Horn, totalling 14,216 miles. In what was clearly the lead, he rounded Cape Horn and pointed his trimaran northward on the last leg of his voyage, and to certain victory. But victory was not his objective, he came to realise. He asked himself why he was doing it. To win a race? For prize money? He altered course for south Africa and after rounding the Cape of Good Hope for the second time he sailed nonstop to Tahiti. The South Pacific lured Moitessier back. It can do that to you.

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