I have been reading Brett Hilder’s Book, “The Voyage of Torres”. It’s a really interesting book. Hilder is a sailor and historian. In the 70’s, he wrote a university thesis and published a book on the side – this is the book. Hilder collected all the information on the Torres/Prado y Tovar voyage through the Torres Strait to try to best figure out the exact path that Torres took. Hilder used nautical charts and visual descriptions to find the path. He actually went out and sailed the route.

I have done something similar – but from my lounge chair using google satellite. I too, have found Torres to go through between Prince of Wales Island and Cape York. But the timing of the passage is a bit different than Hilder’s – I have Torres approaching further from the east.

Honestly, I don’t think either of our paths (Hilder or mine) perfectly fit the description given by Tovar. I have a problem locating the Island of Dogs, whereas Hilder has a problem (which he admits) with Isla de la Cantarides not having any water or natives to run for non-existent hills, and Hilder’s path also has a problem because there is not a big enough time window for Torres to stay 8 days.

Anyway – there is evidence that on arrival to Manila, Tovar sent FIVE charts of ‘landing places’ back to Spain, and that these five charts were received. However, there has only ever been FOUR charts found. One is Espiritu Santo (Vanuatu), the other three are ports on the south coast of New Guinea. But one chart is missing.

So what is the missing, fifth chart of?

Well, I have Torres anchored in the passage on Isla de la Cantarides for 8 days. The two large islands he is anchoring between are Prince of Wales Island and Cape York. Isla de la Cantarides could be any island in this area that has water, hills and people. It could be Cape York itself. If Torres and Tovar were there for 8 days, they probably did a chart of the area. This may be the missing chart. If we had the chart we would know where he landed.

Isn’t it funny then – that James Cook should go through this same passage? If you read Cook’s journal and also other journals such as Banks’, they seem extraordinarily confident they are passing through the passage between New Guinea and New Holland. However, they are passing through a passage between Prince of Wales Island and Cape York. This is clear from their descriptions. Cook climbs up a hill on Possession Island to get a view of the strait. He must be looking into the strait towards the south west and into the Gulf of Carpentaria – not directly to the west where his view would be obstructed by Prince of Wales Island. This is supposed to be uncharted territory. It does not make sense for Cook to be celebrating that he has safely passed through until he is somewhere on the south coast of New Guinea in an identifiable location.

I think the reason Cook is so confident of being in a through passage is that he has Tovar/Torres’ chart of the strait. Cook actually follows Torres’s path for almost a week afterwards to confirm with sighting of Cape False.

Alexander Dalrymple ended up with a stack of old documents raided in the British occupation of Manila, the five charts would be there if Tovar left copies in Manila. Four of the charts went on to collectors, the one of the passage was used by Cook then conveniently ‘lost’.

Why is the British claim (via Cook) executed from “Possession Island”, and not Cape York on the mainland? (Personally, I don’t think Cook did any possession ceremonies, and the admiralty figured them all out retrospectively when he got back to England, because things got so complicated) Maybe it’s because – the British have the fifth chart. And the fifth chart shows that Torres has already landed on Cape York and stayed 8 days. Maybe it even says Tovar and Torres claimed possession of Isla de la Cantarides/Cape York. That means, Cook would not be the first – which is a good reason to suppress that particular chart.

I am currently putting together a book on James Cook’s First Voyage.

The idea of it is to look at the voyage in relation to: 1. the Doctrines of Discovery 2. Potential British motivations 3. The mass theft of documents the British made in Manila (ie. what the British secretly knew). 4. The geopolitical context especially with respect to Dutch claims over “New Holland”. 5. The available navigational technology available during different eras. Yes – the same kind of thing that I sometimes blog about, but I want to put it in a book, with some kind of structure (unlike my blog which kind of jumps about all over the place) and focusing on Cook’s first voyage.

This will be unlike any book ever written about Cook’s first voyage. Because I have found details that have been sitting there – right in front of everyone noses in Cook’s journals and charts – that no one seems to have noticed. You know – all those little odd details that seem out of place – like the location of Point Hicks. Most Cook authors just skip over it like it’s nothing. For me – I want a explanation. I think previous authors have been caught up and overly influenced by previous books on Cook – such as Beaglehole’s – that they have failed to step back and see the forest for the trees. Most authors also have so much respect for Cook that they cannot envisage him making mistakes or being outright deceptive. This is kind of ridiculous given the cloak-and-dagger way colonialism functioned in practice. I have taken a different approach by concentrating firstly on the primary sources, on the doctrines of discovery and how they operate in practice by looking at how it worked in other parts of the world, and using satellite imagery to recreate the path of different voyages (not just Cook’s).

I have never written a book before, so I don’t know how long it’s going to take. I know it will be a lot different from a blog where I can just write about random stuff I find when I find it. At the moment, I got an idea of what I want to put in the book, but I am not sure of the structure yet.

I’m tossing up between a non-fiction narrative style (which reads like a novel – a bit more creative, and hopefully entertaining to read with an attempt at character development) or a strait-up chronological run-down of history (not as fun to read, dry, but potentially more comprehensive and closer to the truth). I’ve already put together outlines for both styles and have started to fill them out. I think a narrative style book will be a real page turner if I can successfully pull it off… But I’m kind of a stickler for including all the minutia I have found that support my hypothesis. A lot of that minutia will have to be tossed in a narrative style because it will bog down the flow of the story.

The really important thing about this book – and why I want to write it – is that I think there is currently an attempt to rewrite Australian history but in a very misleading way. Under this new history, Aboriginal people were never colonised. Aboriginal people were simply people of an earlier wave of settlement. It may be that they were not even the first wave – if the ridiculous “pygmy hypothesis” gets picked into the mainstream narrative (I think this may happen – given enough time). The new history narrative is simply false. By examining Cook’s voyage in the way I will in this book will prove that we were colonised, how we were colonised (because it happened a bit differently than in other parts of the world) and that we are under colonial occupation to this day. This book will be a preemptive strike against the new history narrative. From a practical political standpoint, right now it doesn’t even matter if we are not the first people (we are!)… what matters is we are under colonial occupation and that entails special rights for self determination under a decolonial context.

So maybe I will not blog as much now as I focus on the book. But during my research I am still finding new surprising things which I can’t help but share…. in that case I might still drop a blog post here and there.