Endeavour’s Ghost Crew

The original ship carried about 94 crew, and would have been crowded, as seen here on the decks of the replica Endeavour. Photo: Captain Cook Society

This feature article originally appeared in AFLOAT Magazine and forms part of our latest edition of boating features exploring one of the enduring mysteries of Captain Cook’s Endeavour voyage: the identity of her uncounted “ghost crew.”

Two hundred and fifty eight years have passed since HM Bark Endeavour set sail from Plymouth on what was to be one of the world’s greatest voyages of scientific discovery. And yet, despite the meticulous journals kept by her Master, First Lieutenant James Cook, the botanist Joseph Banks and so many other gentlemen and artists on that historic three-year circumnavigation, an irritating element of the unknown still shrouds the names and details of all of those onboard.

How many people were aboard the Endeavour when she set sail from Plymouth in August 26, 1768? According to the bark’s official muster roll, she carried a total of 94. These comprised the 71 crew (including her Master, James Cook), 12 Royal Marines and 11 supernumeraries in the parties of Joseph Banks and the Royal Society’s astronomer, Charles Green. However, as the Captain Cook Society’s historian John Robson points out, there were other people on board who suddenly materialised at various points during the voyage without ever having appeared previously on the muster. According to John Robson, those ghostly figures appear to have been young boys.

He explains that in the 18th century, the Lords of the Admiralty, who were all distinguished veteran Royal Navy officers, often turned a blind eye when captains followed the age-old practice of fiddling their muster rolls. In an era in which seniority of service was an essential prerequisite for promotion in the Royal Navy, captains saw no great harm in falsifying their ship’s muster by entering the names of their young male family members in order to add experience to their records as and when they might actually join the Navy. James Cook, the Seaman’s Seaman, followed this time-honoured practice by having his own infant sons James, 4 and Nathaniel, 3 added to Endeavour‘s muster, knowing full-well that at the time, his sons were safely at home with their mother Elizabeth at 88 Assembly Row, in the Mile End Road at Stepney, East London. Names omitted at the beginning of the voyage, were subsequently added to the muster. And in the case of the Endeavour we still don’t know how many were involved.

Boys

Shortly after Endeavour arrived in New Zealand waters in October, 1769, Cook describes an incident where he and others went ashore in an exploring party leaving the ship’s 18ft yawl in the hands of “boys.” On October 8 Cook wrote: “However we went as far as their (Maori) hutts, which lay about 2 or 3 hundred yards from the water side, leaving four boys to take care of the yawl, which we had no sooner left than four men came out of the woods on the other side of the river, and would certainly have cut her off, had not the people in the (28ft) pinnace discover’d them and called to her to drop down the stream, which they did, being closely persued by the Indians.” John Robson points out that the boys in question were midshipmen or similar “young gentlemen” as several of them were born in the 1750s.

Just before Endeavour reached New Zealand’s North Island, Cook offered a reward of a gallon of rum to the first person to sight land. The winner on October 7, 1769, was a 12-year-old boy named Nicholas Young. Cook wrote: “the SW Point of Poverty Bay (which I have named Young Nick’s Head after the boy who first saw this land.)” Before that incident, Nicholas Young had not been featured in any way in the Endeavour‘s records. So, how many other boys were aboard?

About six months later, the Orcadian seaman, Forby Sutherland, died of consumption (tuberculosis) at Botany Bay on May 1, 1770. As a result, John Charlton suddenly appears on Endeavour‘s books for the first time. He is shown as James Cook’s servant, replacing William Howson, who became an Able Seaman (AB). Cook had a history of such action. For example, the same William Howson had materialised from nowhere to apparently join Cook’s crew aboard his survey brig HMS Grenville off the west coast of Newfoundland on June 24, 1767, after the death of James Surridge the previous day.

According to John Robson, the third and final example occurred on July 1, 1771, when Endeavour was in the North Atlantic approaching the English Channel near the end of her three year circumnavigation. John Still appears as gunner’s servant, without having been mentioned before, in place of Daniel Roberts, who had died on February 2, 1771 in the Indian Ocean. Were there any more non-mustered boys aboard Endeavour? Well, yes, if one can believe the life-long claim which was repeatedly made by an illiterate British seaman, Peter Kenney Hibbs (1757-1847). Hibbs’ many descendants in Australia and elsewhere, continue to insist upon the veracity of his claim to this day.

Peter Hibbs’ claim

Although Peter Thompson, a senior curator at Britain’s National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, undertook a special search of the Royal Navy Archives at my request, he was unable to find any direct evidence to substantiate Peter Hibbs’ claim to have shipped aboard Endeavour as an 11-year-old boy. However, historic records do offer us other well-attested references to Peter Hibbs’ stellar career in the Royal Navy. Not the least of these is the fact that Hibbs, then ranked as an Able Seaman, was so highly regarded that Governor Arthur Phillip requested his immediate transfer from HMS Goliath, a 74-gun Third Rate ship of the line, with orders to join him aboard HMS Sirius, the flagship of the First Fleet, which was then about to sail for Botany Bay. The British Home Secretary, Lord Sydney, is said to have personally approved Hibbs’ transfer. Commodore Phillip, a hugely experienced sea officer, is said to have issued the transfer order on the understanding that Hibbs was the only Royal Navy man alive who had had personal experience of sailing in Australian waters. And of course, the only Royal Navy vessel that had ever sailed in Australian waters was Captain Cook’s Endeavour. Thus, if a distinguished senior Royal Navy officer like Commodore Arthur Phillip believed Hibbs’ story, why should any mere lubber ever doubt it?

To be fair to Hibbs, he remained resolutely consistent in his claim throughout his 90 years of life. He maintained that he not only sailed with Captain Cook as a cabin boy but claimed to have been the second person ashore at Botany Bay after Joseph Banks. Over time, Hibbs became a highly experienced seaman and played a heroic role during the disastrous 1790 wreck of HMS Sirius on Norfolk Island. Hibbs may have been illiterate but, unlike most of his shipmates, he was a powerful swimmer and on that occasion he rescued a great many men and women who might otherwise have drowned. He swam out to the wreck again and again and helped rig the flying fox that succeeded in hauling stores from the stricken ship, through the boiling surf to the safety of the beach at Slaughter Bay. Hibbs subsequently settled on Norfolk Island where he was given a 60-acre land grant and where he married 18-year-old convict girl Mary Pardoe, with whom he had five sons and a daughter.

Hibbs subsequently became a captain in his own right and was Master of the colonial sloop Norfolk during Matthew Flinders’ historic circumnavigation of Van Diemen’s Land, which proved that Tasmania is in fact an island. Flinders was so impressed with Hibbs’ qualities as a seaman that he named several prominent places near Macquarie Harbour in his honour. Hibbs was subsequently Master’s Mate aboard HMS Porpoise. He was also an early settler on the Colo River and the Hawkesbury River. Throughout his long life Peter Hibbs never wavered in his claim that he had sailed with Cook. As tempting as it may be to accept his word, dispassionate historians are obliged to rely not on hearsay but entirely upon the facts backed-up by irrefutable evidence. Hibbs’ claim will forever remain contentious until proof-positive is eventually unearthed and the matter is finally settled. In the meantime, Hibbs’ many proud descendants can with confidence continue to honour the unique contribution left by their ancestor. Among his extensive family he is still revered as “Australia’s unsung colonial maritime explorer.” No one with a knowledge of our history can deny that Peter Kenney Hibbs has left a very considerable colonial legacy.

This feature article originally appeared in AFLOAT Magazine. To explore more stories like this, browse the AFLOAT Magazine archive or view the latest edition of AFLOAT Magazine.