Hugh Carrington - The Discovery of Tahiti, A Journal of the Second Voyage of H.M.S. Dolphin Round the World, under the Command of Captain Wallis, R.N.

First published by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Founded in 1846, the Hakluyt Society seeks to advance knowledge and education by the publication of scholarly editions of primary records of voyages, travels and other geographical material. In partnership with Ashgate, and using print-on-demand and e-book technology, the Society has made re-available all 290 volumes comprised in Series I and Series II of its publications in both print and digital editions. For information about the Hakluyt Society visit www.hakluyt.com .

ISBN 13: 978-1-4094-1464-3 (hbk)

Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge
(Brooke Crutchley, University Printer)

I. A View of Port Royal Bay at Georges Island

From a pen-drawing by George Pinnock (B.M. Add. MS. 15499, f. 15). The Dolphin is shown at anchor in Matavai Bay, Tahiti.

A. The Tracks of Byron, Anson, and Wallis in die Pacific Ocean. Inset: Magellan Straits.

The President and Council of the Hakluyt Society record with deep regret that Major Arthur Hugh Carrington, the editor of this volume, died on 18 May 1947.

Hugh Carrington was born on 28 July 1895, the third son of the Vicar of West Bromwich. As a child he was taken to New Zealand with a large family of brothers and sisters when his father was appointed principal of a Theological College there. He was brought up in Christchurch (New Zealand) of which his father was later Dean. At the age of 16 Carrington was admitted to the Royal Military College of Australia and for 10 years was a regular soldier; this was his true profession, which left its mark on him. He was severely wounded at Gallipoli, when aged 19, and was very proud, though he rarely alluded to it, of having temporary command of a battalion of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade on the Western Front, at the age of 22.

Between the Wars he led a roving life, with little success as the world counts it, trying his hand at farming, journalism, and other occupations, and building up a fund of odd information about hunting, sailing, and pioneering, from expeditions which he made alone or with a friend or two. He became intimate with Maori elders from whom he learned to study the archaeology and folklore of Polynesia, an unusual hobby for a man of his type. Finding himself at a loose end in England in 1937 he began a systematic inquiry into the history of the Pacific Ocean of which he knew so much from his own observation and from Polynesian tradition; and so came to Captain Cook.

Though without academic training or any great store of formal knowledge, he possessed a surprising aptitude for research. In his Life of Captain Cook (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1939) Carringtons able analysis of Cooks character and methods and his first-hand knowledge of the islands and coasts visited by Cook in the southern Pacific attracted considerable attention, and the book was a success. In the same year he undertook to edit the Journal of George Robertson for the Hakluyt Society; but on the outbreak of war rejoined the Army, in which he held a Reserve commission.

During the War of 193945 he served as a Staff Officer, training troops in England and in India, but was too old for active command. Meanwhile, his interest in historical studies never flagged; he eagerly looked forward to the day when he would resume his regular place in the Library of the British Museum. It came in 1945. He went to live very quietly in Bloomsbury, husbanding his small resources; but he resumed work on Robertsons Journal and became constantly and enthusiastically busy among the naval records of the eighteenth century which are housed in the Public Record Office and the National Maritime Museum. From the valuable discoveries which he made there he built up material for three books on British exploration of the Pacific and the rise of Britain to supremacy on all the seas during the second half of the eighteenth century. The manuscripts of two of these, Cooks Lieutenants and Pacific Window, he completed before his death, and with the third, and probably the most important from the historians point of view, the Life of Alexander Dalrymple , he had made considerable progress. The Hakluyt Society elected him a Member of Council in 1945, and to its service he brought a versatile and infectious energy and a quite exceptional knowledge of unpublished narratives of exploration. It is to be hoped that the two books which he finished will be published, and that his Life of Alexander Dalrymple, of which the MS. material is in our possession, will be completed by another hand. It would be a fitting and worthy memorial to him. His tragic illness caused dismay among his friends, who had predicted for him a notable career as an historian. He was unmarried. The present volume he completed only a short time before his death.