Beyond the Coral Sea: Blink and you'll miss the past

Perhaps the biggest gap in our plans to circumnavigate in the next few years is located in the south-west Pacific, the quite bloody large area between the teeming hordes of Indonesia and the "same but different" country/continent of Australia. Traveller and author Michael Moran's Beyond the Coral Sea: Travels in the Old Empires of the Southwest Pacific remedies this somewhat, or rather gives me a taste for going to the islands around and to the east of Papua New Guinea that I didn't know I had.

Think "tropical island paradise" and most Westerners think of Polynesia. Movies, TV and tales of HMS Bounty have inculcated a sense of flowers, bare-breasted young women free with their favours, and a life of leisure in which one might be roused to husk a coconut or spear a fish. Less prevalent is the idea of cannibalism, obscure magical rites and "the blackest people on Earth".

Welcome to the Solomon Islands, friend.

Moran describes Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the various Solomon, Bismarck and Trobriand Islands as the last frontier of European exploration and, inevitably, exploitation, and he's not wrong. The Melanesian cultures, almost immeasurably variable and yet seemingly linked in ways designed to appal the most imperialistic Eurocrat, proved an obdurate nut to crack for the cadres of missionaries sent to civilise and/or Christianize the locals, but this didn't deter the Germans, the Dutch, the British and finally the Australians for trying. The Japanese had a brief, destructive run during the '40s, but they didn't treat the Melanesians any better, and in some ways, considerably worse. The history of the constantly volcanic island of Rabaul encapsulates a place that not only saw outsiders in residence, but at war. The lava ate most of their works, anyway. Only crazy Aussies remain.

Just the history of "first contact" of PNG's vast coastline could make a book of itself alone: Being a "final frontier" attracted a passel of eccentric characters probably unsuitable for polite company in 19th century Europe and yet made a home (unless they dropped dead of fever or were eaten) in the very wild wilds of PNG's coast and interior...an interior, as Moran points out, still not entirely explored even today.

As the author relates with frequent ironic or funny asides, the cannibalism and pro-sex attitudes of Melanesia's array of tribes and linguistic groups were charted for a prurient Western audience by pioneering anthrologists like Bronisław Malinowski, who didn't necessarily get it right, but by bothering to live there at all with an eye not blinded by Western religion and mores, perhaps eased the transition of Melanesia into the world community simply by writing non-judgementally about it. Moran's relation of PNG's speech is most fascinating to a language buff like myself. The use of "pidgin" is everywhere: a creole language elevated to a lingua franca due to PNG's incredible diversity of native tongues, none of which have more than regional influence, it seems.

PNG and its islands are a new (1975) and sometimes uncertain country and Moran wonders if Western notions of democracy and governance can work there. So do many of the citizens, some of which question the existence of a Western form of governance in an arguably artificial nation made from bits that only colonialism has put in common. Nonetheless, PNG needs some collective voice, if only to regulate its continuing exploitation of its myriad natural resources by the nominally "civilized" world.

Moran observes that the slow dissolving of tribal ties cannot be said to be entirely positive, and the durable heathenism of old just doesn't have the juice of missionary worldviews, even as it persists in some places in a sort of synthetic fashion. Still, Moran finds hope on distant, coral-sand shores, along with beautiful, friendly people seldom visited not only by "outsiders", but by other PNGers in such a rugged, widely scattered landscape. Visitors will get there, but don't expect either Western adherence to timetables or safety standards in the (likely protracted) process.

A great introduction to a rich and imperfectly appreciated part of the world, Beyond the Coral Sea gets my strong recommendation.

Half Moon not half bad

Before becoming the world's most famous historical castaway after William Bligh, English explorer Henry Hudson was known as a bit of a bad boy. He would work for the highest bidder, but then would use their ships, gear and men to sail wherever he felt, presumably utilizing his orders for the 17th century version of toilet paper or perhaps as firestarter.

Like his rough contemporaries Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, Hudson was "results-oriented", naturally cagey about his plans, loath to commit much to writing and usually had three or four contrasting agendas in play. Plan B for this fellow was to keep mum about the rest of the alphabet, each letter of which signified yet another exit strategy.

As we learn in Ontario sailor Douglas Hunter's Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the Voyage that Redrew the Map of the World, Hudson was a rogue, but not particularly lovable. He was, however, very good at picking up the fragments of information that circulated among the small cadre of skipper/explorers/freebooters who regularly visited the imperfectly known shores of North America, where overlapping claims and failed colonies did not dissuade those merchants eager to exploit its unestimated riches (and perhaps find a good source of slaves). Better yet, the various inland rivers from Virginia to Greenland might be the fabled Northwest Passage to China, of which considerably more was known and lusted after.

Unfortunately, Hudson's voyage to the river that today bears his name, and to the complicated harbour of today's New York City, is not well documented, and the author's original research, culled from second-hand accounts, Dutch mercantile writings and painstaking research of long-outdated sailor's charts, gives a sketchy if probable outline of where Hudson's small ship, Half Moon, and largely Dutch (and rebellious) crew touched and, after a fashion, explored.

The history is therefore naturally couched in "likelies", "perhapses" and "probablies", but this is not to be faulted. Hudson seemed a cagey, secretive sort, and as his stock-in-trade was less native trade goods and more raw information no one European knew, it is inevitable that four centuries have obscured his accomplishments. More well known, however, is the clashes his crew had with native North Americans, and how their presence led to large-scale disruptions of the social order, as well as the better-known effects of European diseases.

Within a couple of decades after Hudson's death at the hands of his own crew in the frosty bay named after him (which happened a mere two years after his probing of the Hudson River at Manhattan and beyond), the area now known as New York City would be established as a Dutch outpost, and later as an English city. Hudson had, very likely, no concept of how his attempt to find the right Northwest Passage would play out, but thanks to this book, we do.