Museum digs up South Seas treasure

Published on Saturday 23 January 2010 19:45

A LOST collection of exotic artefacts from the Pacific expeditions of Captain James Cook and the Scottish explorers who followed him to the South Seas has been rediscovered.

Rare and historic items from the Pacific islands collected by the sailors, scientists and colonists over decades of exploration will go on show when the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, reopens next year after its 46 million revamp.

The haul includes a beautiful Maori cloak, a feathered standard owned by a Hawaiian chief and a coconut-fibre hunting slingshot from the remote Marquesas Islands, brought back to Scotland by Cook's surgeon William Anderson.

The Anderson collection of around 100 rare objects had been lying unnoticed among the museum's vast holdings until being uncovered during painstaking research by staff. It was thought the collection had either gone missing or been split among overseas collections.

But Anderson's legacy will now form one of the key displays in the museum's new Facing the Seas gallery, which aims to chart the impact of Scottish seafarers on global development.

Some items – three tribal necklaces made of jade and flying fox fur – have already been returned to New Caledonia because of their ceremonial value.

Curators tracked down the family of the Scottish missionary, the Rev James Hadfield, who had lent them to the Edinburgh museum a century ago. It was agreed they should go back to the western Pacific.

Cook, the mariner son of a Scot, is famous as the sea captain who sailed to the Pacific islands of Hawaii and Tahiti in the mid-18th century. He made the first circumnavigation of New Zealand and opened up the Pacific with his charts. He was killed on his third voyage by Hawaiian villagers.

Chantal Knowles, the museum's principal curator for Oceania, the Americas and Africa, said: "Scots have always been part of these ships. There were a lot of Scots involved in all of these expeditions.

"They were well educated, so you get Scots at every tier of the ships' crews. You are getting surgeons and artists, as well as the seamen."

Among them was Anderson, who trained as a doctor at Edinburgh University and served as a surgeon on Cook's second and third voyages, between 1772 and 1780.

An avid collector, his booty also included pieces of rare bark cloth from Tahiti, some up to two metres long, made from the supple inner bark of the mulberry tree, beaten, layered, and painted.

There are also mats, baskets, human hair from a beard, and an elaborately carved toggle. The intricate weaves of the islanders' work fascinated European sailors, who also relied on woven ropes.

Scholars had speculated that Anderson gave his collection to the naturalist Joseph Banks, who accompanied Cook on his first voyage, or that it became part of a St Petersburg collection of Pacific materials.

"He made a collection that was deemed lost, for a long time," said Knowles.

But Dale Idiens, the museum's deputy director, now retired, uncovered records of a gift of Anderson's collection in the minutes of an Edinburgh Town Council meeting from 1780.

The artefacts went to Edinburgh University's Natural History Museum and were then later absorbed into NMS collections. In research soon to be published in an academic journal, Idiens matched the records to items held in the museum, piecing the original collection together.

"We knew they were early pieces and we suspected a connection with Cook, but we needed the evidence. Finally, you find the thread that leads to the answer," said Knowles.

A second piece of detective work involved a Maori canoe tracked back to Thomas Brisbane, the Scottish governor of what was then New South Wales. It was unearthed as the museum emptied its Chambers Street cellars in advance of construction work.

"We could actually see a lot of our objects for the first time, that might have been three or four deep in a store," said Knowles.

"One of the objects we were really able to start looking at was what was called a Maori war canoe."

The boat, three or four metres long, was in pieces. Documents confirmed that a badly damaged Maori canoe had arrived at the museum, from Brisbane's home in Kelso, in 1826. George Nuku, a Maori artist, was brought in to help identify the pieces of the canoe, and he carved a perspex stern.

The unearthed objects, many of which have never been on display before, will go on show with other artefacts from the family of Cook. NMS says it has now raised nearly 10m in private gifts and pledges towards its massive overhaul of the Royal Museum building and its collections.

The museum has worked closely with Pacific researchers, keeping them informed of its discoveries, and providing lists and photographs.

The project is backed by 34m in Scottish Government and Heritage Lottery Fund cash. With 9.4m in donations for work that will deliver 16 new exhibition galleries, a public campaign to raise the remaining 2.6m of the 46.4m cost will be launched this coming summer.