When Captain James Cook, on the way home from the first of his three world voyages, reached Batavia in the East Indies, he found the port devastated by dysentery and malaria. In the days that followed, several members of his crew died so he sent a press gang to round up any able bodied English-speaking seafarers to replace them. One ‘volunteer’ protested angrily in broken English that he was a Dane from Elsinore and that the Dutch ship on which he worked had papers to prove it. Cook listened to him carefully, but detecting a strong Irish brogue, decided to ignore his impassioned pleas. Eventually, the man admitted that he was John Marra, a 24 year old from Cork. He agreed that one ship was much the same as another and that only a fool would wish to stay around that disease ridden coast, so his protests were short-lived and his name was added to the ship’s muster list. With the loss of more crew members, Cook was relieved to discover that not only was Marra hardened to a life at sea, but a very good worker, so he offered him the post of gunner’s mate for the second voyage of discovery aboard the Resolution. With hindsight, Cook should have left him behind in Batavia for Mr Marra was to prove a very sharp thorn in the side of this world famous navigator and explorer.
Marra’s problem was that he was very fond of grog or navy issue rum. A mug or two of the dark red liquid and he became a different person, difficult to handle and very unpredictable. Below decks, life for his shipmates was an unsettling experience. As Resolution lay in London docks being inspected by the Earl of Sandwich and other bigwigs, he took the opportunity to slip ashore for some refreshment. A search party of marines knew just where to find him, dragged him back aboard and clapped him in irons. Cook wasn’t going to put up with any indiscipline on a King’s ship and had him flogged over the barrel of a gun; ‘kissing the gunner’s daughter’ as this severe form of punishment was known. In elegant copperplate script, William Harvey, a young midshipman from London, wrote in the ship’s logbook: ‘Punished John Marra with 12 lashes for desertion and also for insubordination.’ He could have done with a rubber stamp for this was an entry he would repeat many times.
In between bouts of insolence and drunkenness, John Marra was no problem at all. When the bosun piped ‘all hands aloft’, his would be the first pair of feet to hit the deck and he would race to be first up the mast. When the crew of the Resolution entered the Antarctic circle, they faced the perils of storms, fog and ice, and shivered from the intense cold. But not your man from Cork; he continued with his duties as if the ship was cruising in the tropics. Cook was most impressed and asked what kept him so cheerful. John knuckled his forehead in salute and replied, ‘Tis the hope of an extra ration of grog, Sir.’
In Tahiti, John secretly made friends with Otoo, a local chief, who promised him a house, some land and the prettiest wife he could choose from a dozen maidens. John Marra could barely contain his joy. Being an excellent swimmer, he decided to jump overboard when the ship was leaving the island. As the crew unfurled the sails and broke out the anchor, he made his move and dived silently into the crystal clear waters of the lagoon. He had arranged for a canoe to pick him up half way and it was making its way from the shore when he was spotted in the water and the ship’s boat was launched. Recaptured, he struggled desperately with the marines in the
launch and dived overboard again but, unfortunately, the canoe had abandoned the race.
Despite his desertion, Cook was quite lenient with him. He considered that this solitary drifter, with no friends or family, couldn’t have picked a better spot where he could live at ease in a fine climate and with all the luxuries he desired. John Marra himself argued that by staying in Tahiti he would learn far more about the religion and government of the islanders than a few short visits by English gentlemen who couldn’t speak the language or stand the heat. Privately, Cook wondered if this wayward but enterprising Irishman could one day have become a king of the island or at least its prime minister! Nevertheless, he still gave him a dozen lashes and ordered that he was clapped in irons or kept under guard whenever the ship visited an island with similar distractions.
Later, when the ship explored New Zealand, he made his final attempt to desert. Once again, he was dragged back aboard, clapped in irons, and flogged. The officers were relieved to see him return for they valued his seamanship skills. But Cook was now tiring of this tempestuous man and wrote in his journal that he would willingly have let him go but for one reason. He was convinced that, following a warm welcome from the natives, John would assuredly be ‘Kill’d and Eat before morning’, an unfortunate fate that awaited Cook himself in Hawaii some years later.
With Resolution heading back to Europe, a change came over John Marra. He acquired a thirst for knowledge rather than rum and began to ask serious questions about the voyage: the latitude and longitude of places visited, the main discoveries, names of important chiefs, and so on. The officers were impressed and wondered if, inspired by the Captain who himself had risen from the lower deck, he was planning to advance his naval career. Though not highly educated, this intelligent and observant seafarer had a trick up his sleeve; he was keeping a diary. Anyone aboard ship was permitted to keep a journal or diary on these voyages but these could be impounded at any time by the Captain for official records. John Marra knew this so he kept his well hidden from prying eyes. It was a good move for all diaries and journals aboard were confiscated as the voyage drew to a close. Continually punished, flogged, lashed, manacled in irons, confined aboard, and denied his one chance of a happy marriage, Marra finally reached England and bid farewell to Cook and his ‘voyages of discoveries’.
He found lodgings in the Angel, a public house in south London, and wrote an account of the voyage which was the first one known to have entered the Antarctic Circle. He also told a few home truths about the expedition and the behaviour of those on it. A publisher eagerly snapped it up and gave it that little extra bit of literary polish to impress its readers. When published, it beat Cook’s official account by eighteen months and copies were published in Dutch and French. The Admiralty was appalled and Cook was beside himself with rage but there wasn’t a single thing they could do about it. The profits John Marra made from his book, however, were not invested in a pleasant cottage overlooking the River Lee in Cork but were probably squandered on the demon grog, and, within a few years, he was drifting around the coast of Australia in search of work.
Today, you can pick up accounts of Cook’s voyages for next to nothing, but if you want a copy of John Marra’s journal, it’s a collector’s dream and will set you back nearly $8000.
Tony Crowley (c) 2000
