CONQUERING THE GREAT SOUTH SEA - A Brief History of the Circumnavigators - page 188

of the tropics, and, turning westward followed a course which was at
times more than five hundred miles to the south of that followed by
Wallis. This proved to be another misfortune. In conscientiously at-
tempting to chart unknown regions Carteret missed Tahiti and oth-
er islands where he could have gained refreshment. He discovered
lonely Pitcairn and described it with some justification as 'scarce
better than a large rock in the ocean'. 28 (He never knew that his
description of this forested isle far distant from any inhabited land
would commend it to Fletcher Christian and the Bounty mutineers
twenty-three years later, when they were looking for somewhere to
hide.) Swallow encountered some of the outlying, barren islets of the
Tuamotu archipelago but her crew found no evidence of a continent
or even some of the islands marked on earlier charts.
After six weeks, Carteret had to bow to necessity:
The ship's company growing sickly, the scurvy making great pro-
gress among them, and seeing that in spite of all endeavours we could
not keep in any high south latitude . . . that, from the badness of the
weather, variableness of the winds and ill sailing of the ship, I ad-
vanced and made but slow progress on the voyage, it was now abso-
lutely necessary to fix on some determined point for the future safety
of the ship and crew ... in consequence of the above said reason and
circumstances, I bore away to the northward and got into the strong
trade wind, keeping in such track as I was made by the charts to hope
I should meet with some island from which I flattered myself I should
procure some refreshments. 29
There can scarcely have been an unluckier Pacific voyager. Had
Carteret continued on a westerly course he might well have fallen in
with islands of the Tonga or Fiji groups. Turning northwards where
he did carried him through empty sea to the west of the Society Isles
and to the east of Samoa.