Captain Cook's Crew and the Cannibals

Resolution and Discovery

The second voyage of James Cook, from 1772 to 1775, sought to circumnavigate the globe as far south as possible and to try and find more evidence of the great southern land (Terra Australis). Cook was in command of HMS Resolution, while Tobias Furneaux commanded the sister ship, HMS Adventure.

During the voyage, the ships visited many islands, including, Tahiti, Easter Island, Tonga, South Sandwich Islands and New Caledonia. However, on 8 February 1773, Cook's Resolution and the Adventure, commanded by Furneaux, were separated due to thick fog and Furneaux decided to head for the agreed rendezvous, Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand.

Furneaux arrived at Queen Charlotte Sound only to find that he had missed Cook by days and that Cook had already left for the south to explore the Antarctic.

In need of fresh food to combat scurvy, Furneaux sent a party of ten men in a cutter to collect wild edible greens in nearby Grass Cove. But the men did not return. On the next day, December 18, Furneaux sent out a search party in a long boat to look for the lost men. 

Near Grass Cove, on the beach in Wharehunga Bay, Lieutenant James Burney soon discovered twenty baskets of human flesh and several belongings and body parts, including the head of Captain Furneaux's black servant.

Burney wrote:

we found no boat—but instead of her—Such a shocking scene of Carnage & Barbarity as can never be mentiond or thought of, but with horrorr; for the heads, hearts and lungs of several of our people were seen lying on on the beach, and, at a little distance, the dogs gnawing their intrails.

The Adventure had lost ten of her crew to cannibalism. Furneaux departed New Zealand on 23rd September 1773 and arrived back in England on the 14th July 1774.

Captain Cook was murdered by the Hawaiian people, On February 14, 1779, whilst on his third voyage. Interestingly, according to legend, the Māori people came to New Zealand from Hawaii. However, DNA evidence from three-thousand-year-old skulls found in the Pacific shows that the early ancestors of Maori people were actually from Asian farming groups and these people later mixed with Papuans.

After his murder, Cook was disembowelled and baked to enable the removal of the flesh, and the bones cleaned. This funerary ritual was supposedly reserved for those of high status.