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60 chapter four The Arrival of Foreign Ships Until the voyages of Byron, Wallis, Carteret, and Bougainville, all in the years 1764–1769, and under Cook between 1768 and 1779, the arrivals of foreign ships at Pacific islands were few and sporadic. Some voyagers merely sighted islands, but when landings did occur, they were of short duration, although often traumatic for the inhabitants. The early European explorers were mainly naval. Most of them knew little about, and cared even less for, the cultures, religions, or achievements of the island societies they encountered. Their attitudes toward local people were, with few exceptions, imperious and predatory. The First Encounters Magellan, in his sixteenth-century voyage across the Pacific, was seeking an alternative route to the Spice Islands of Southeast Asia. On the ninetynine -day passage from South America, he saw only two small islands until the landfall at Guam on 6 March 1521. On arrival, his ships—the Trinidad , Victoria, and Conception—were surrounded by local craft and the Chamorros clambered on board. In a confrontation of a type that was to be repeated in many parts of the Pacific, and that baffled and infuriated foreign captains, the islanders attempted pillaging anything they fancied before being driven back over the side. The theft, as Magellan saw it, of his skiff from the stern of the Trinidad during the second day caused him to seek immediate retribution. A party of forty soldiers landed, burned a village, and killed seven men. After collecting fruit and vegetables, the Spaniards butchered the dead and carried buckets of intestines back on board to nourish the crew, who were suffering from scurvy and anemia. Such was the first encounter of Pacific islanders with European sailors.1 The Trinidad was eventually abandoned as unseaworthy and the Conception caught fire, but the Victoria completed the voyage to Seville The Arrival of Foreign Ships 61 loaded with spices. This Spanish commercial success provoked the Portuguese in the Moluccas to explore and colonize eastward, taking possession of islands in the Carolines in 1526.2 In subsequent Spanish voyages local men at Guam were kidnapped to replace lost and sick crew, and in 1565 Guam was claimed for Spain and became the staging place for galleons sailing between Manila and Acapulco, although not before the islanders stoned the ships and killed seafarers ashore. To teach them a lesson, Admiral Miguel López de Legazpi burned villages and hanged several of the inhabitants.3 The route from Guam to Mexico was northward under the trades until the westerlies were reached. For over two hundred years, this passage took the ships beyond the visibility of Hawai‘i, while the more southerly return voyage passed through an almost empty area of the ocean. During a more systematic search of the Pacific for new lands, people to convert, and gold, the Spaniards found the Marquesas Islands in 1595. On arrival the San Geronimo under Álvaro de Mendaña was surrounded, and people swarmed on board: “For a time there was merriment and a spirit of mutual curiosity, until the freedom with which islanders helped themselves to the odd gear about the ship became annoying.”4 The navigator Pedro Fernández de Quirós estimated that some two hundred Marquesans were killed during the two weeks they were there. Mendaña sighted Tuvalu and reached several Melanesian islands. He attempted religious settlements, with disastrous results for both the Spanish and the Melanesians.5 The Dutch in the Pacific were more secular and primarily in pursuit of trade. The expeditions of Willem Schouten and Isaac Le Maire in 1616 achieved little but are distinguished by being memorialized in the first painting of European mariners firing on a Pacific island vessel at sea (see figure 2.1). The Dutchman Abel Tasman in his voyages of 1642–1643 sighted Australia and Tasmania, called briefly at New Zealand, and sighted Fiji and Tonga. The major contacts with the islands came with British extensions of naval power and acquisition of territory following the Seven Years’ War with France, which ended in 1763. Commander John Byron made a long and largely inconsequential voyage in the Pacific during 1764 with the frigate HMS Dolphin. This was followed in 1767 by Captain Samuel Wallis, also on the Dolphin, accompanied by Captain Philip Carteret on HMS Swallow. Wallis revealed Tahiti to Europeans when he arrived there on 18 June 1767. The ship anchored for five weeks, and Wallis proclaimed Tahiti as British territory and changed the name...

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