Their Last Suppers: Legends of History and Their Final Meals (24 page)

Sauce
:

• Mix meatball ingredients together; shape into small balls about ½ inch in diameter.
  

• *In a large saucepan, melt butter or margarine. Add chopped onion and cook slowly until lightly browned. Add garlic, chili powder, cumin, oregano, tomato juice, and salt to taste. Bring to a boil. Drop meatballs into boiling sauce, cover, and simmer for about 10 minutes or until meatballs are cooked.
  

Use to fill tortillas, adding grated cheese, chopped fresh vegetables, and salsa to taste.

• Heat the oil and add the onion, garlic, cumin, coriander, and chili if used.
  
• Stir fry 2 minutes.
  
• Add the beans and stir until everything is heated through. Mash some of the beans if you wish.
  

• Mix milk and eggs in a bowl. Dip each piece of veal into the milk and eggs, then cover with breadcrumbs.
  
• In frying pan, fry each piece gently on both sides.
  
• Then put in a pan about 9 inches X 13 inches X 2 inches.
  
• Put slices of cheese and a spoonful of tomato sauce on each piece.
  
• Bake at 350°F until cheese is melted, about 15 minutes.
  

CAPTAIN JAMES COOK

Born in Marton in the County of Yorkshire, England, on October 27, 1728, James Cook became one of history’s greatest explorers, from the most unlikely background. The son of a farm laborer and part of a system that condemned the poor to leave school at age 12 and work as adults in the mines, he displayed enormous drive and courage to teach himself to become a master navigator, sailor, and global adventurer.

Like those of so many other great figures in history, his public achievements seemed to be mirrored by deep personal tragedy. Four of his siblings died in infancy, and a fifth by the age of 23. All his children died before him, and two of them died without ever seeing his face. For a sea captain it was especially traumatic that his first two sons, James and Nathaniel, both drowned, unable to swim.

Merry England in the 1750s saw boys become men quickly, as war with Napoleon’s France had the Royal Navy enlisting children
as young as 10 years old to help crew its ships. Cook’s ability to absorb lessons quickly and his inquiring mind ensured his rapid promotion through the ranks, and he quickly became a ship’s master at an early age.

He discovered innate mathematical skills within himself, and this, coupled with his compassionate treatment of his men, immediately marked him out as a future captain, highly regarded by his superiors.

Drafted to Nova Scotia on the
Pembroke
to fight the French in Canada, he became appalled at the high mortality rate among the crews. Like another great sailor of his generation, Admiral Nelson, he realized that many of these deaths could be avoided by very simple methods. After losing almost half his crew in less than 6 months, he vowed that the old methods were finished. Fresh fruits and vegetables were literally forced on his men along with high standards of hygiene and cleanliness. Other captains started to copy his example, and service in the Royal Navy became a career, not a death sentence.

While he served in Canada, his accurate charting of the St. Lawrence River made the amphibious assault by the British on Quebec possible, eventually leading to the collapse of the French domination in Canada.

Returning to England for a 1-year break in 1762, he married Elizabeth Batts, some 13 years his junior. Like many other seafarers’ wives, she realized only too late that her husband’s first love was the sea. She could never have imagined her lot being to bear him a string of children, and then to inform him of their deaths when he returned from some voyage 2 or 3 years later.

On August 1, 1768, he took command of the
Endeavour
and sailed into history in New Zealand, where he began to produce incredibly accurate charts of the newly discovered country, setting the standard for the world’s finest nautical maps by the Royal Navy.

In the next 2 years he charted the coast of Queensland, Australia, and though originally naming his discoveries South Wales and Stingray Harbour, he eventually changed their names to New South Wales and Botany Bay.

Returning to a hero’s welcome in England after nearly 3 years’ absence from a journey that covered 30,000 miles and saw him
chart more than 5,000 miles of new coastline, he was greeted with the news that his third son, Joseph, had died after only 1 month of life. Picking up the pieces of his marriage at home in Whitby, he was present when his fourth son, George, mysteriously died on July 8, 1772.

For a man who lavished so much care and attention on his crews and their well-being, he seems to have been curiously detached from the feelings of his young bride. Five days after George’s death, now in command of the
Resolution
and its sister ship
Adventure
, he set out on his second great voyage of discovery. In January 1773 he became the first sailor to cross the Antarctic line and the first to circumnavigate the globe in both directions.

For many centuries there had always been rumors of a great southern continent, but by Cook’s third crossing of the Antarctic Circle he was able to prove that all that existed was an icy wasteland with no possible material use to the Crown.

Although he was bitterly disappointed at not being able to find more territory for the empire, his voyage was lauded for the new techniques he used to promote the health of his ships’ crews. Only one man out of 118 succumbed to disease, an unheard of statistic for the day.

Cook was received in England by King George III as a national hero on July 30, 1775, after another 3 long years at sea. Cook’s enthusiasm at being reunited with his wife immediately led to another pregnancy for her and the birth of his fifth son, Hugh, who was born on May 25, 1977. But only 10 months after his return, Cook was already provisioning the ships
Resolution
and
Discovery
for his last great voyage, which began on July 12, 1776, only 18 days after Hugh’s birth.

The mission was to find the fabled Northwest Passage that would supposedly open up the entire American continent. Sailing down the coast of Africa, he rounded the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the Indian Ocean, and bypassed New Zealand, Tasmania, and the Friendly Islands, where the not-so-friendly natives tried to kill him as he put in for water.

On January 18, 1778, he discovered a new chain of islands that he named the Sandwich Islands after one of his sponsors, the Earl of Sandwich. These were later renamed Hawaii.

Continuing to Oregon still looking for the elusive passage, he now discovered the territory of Alaska and charted Anchorage Bay before heading into the Bering Straits, where he was turned back by heavy ice.

Deciding to wait out the winter in the Pacific, he discovered the island of Maui, where his best officer, William Bligh (later to command the infamous
Bounty
), produced superb charts of the coastline. His charts were setting a standard for other navies to emulate.

After another 2 months he decided to move on yet again and finally found a safe anchorage at Kealakekua Bay on the Kiona coast of the big island.

For many of his years at sea fortune had always seemed to favor Cook, enabling him to record many achievements, and once again his fabled luck seemed to be in. As he entered the bay on January 16, 1779, the natives had just begun the Makahiki festival, a period of great feasting dedicated to the fertility god Lono.

Sexual partners were usually exchanged and all rules were suspended as the smell of Hawaiian pit roasts and feasting hung over the bay for almost a month to celebrate the legend of the god Lono.

The Hawaiians believed their god Lono, who was represented by a small wooden figure perched on a tall mastlike crossbeam on which were hung long white sheets of taro leaves, would one day return to them. Kealakekua Bay was the ancestral home of the god, and as Cook arrived with his ships and their tall masts and large sails, who else could be arriving but Lono himself?

Captain Cook and his crew were treated like gods for nearly a month; the ships were fully provisioned with timber, wild pigs, and the freshest fruits and vegetables. The native women threw themselves at the sailors, many of whom had not seen a woman for years.

The Hawaiians had no interest in gold or beads; the islanders coveted only nails and other simple metal objects. Women gave themselves to the sailors for any simple piece of metal.

Cook further enhanced his god status by amazing the natives with a firework display. It both shocked and terrified the
Hawaiians, who had no concept of gunpowder and were overawed by the powers of these strangers.

However, Cook’s luck was beginning to change. With little warning one of his crew, William Watman, died of a stroke, showing the superstitious natives that maybe these were only mortal men after all.

As relations rapidly became strained, Cook and his crew got the message that their time was up and sailed away on February 4, 1779, straight into the mouth of a fearsome Pacific storm.

After fighting heavy seas for more than a week, the battered ships were forced to return to Kealakekua Bay, which, with the end of the festival, they found deserted except for a few fishers. Word soon got around that the god Lono had been battered in his own domain, and the natives flocked to the bay to see the Englishmen struggle to repair their tattered vessels.

James Cook then made one of his few mistakes. Reacting to the theft of one of his small boats by some islanders, he sought to take King Kalaniopau hostage in exchange for the return of his cutter. This infuriated the Hawaiians, who had already given him everything they had, from women to food, receiving in return only a few nails, a violin, and sexually transmitted diseases.

As the king sat on the beach, encouraged by his wife not to trust these “haoles,” his warriors got more and more enraged. Then word came that some marines had shot and killed a lesser chief, Nookemai, for attempting to leave the bay in a canoe.

This was the last straw. One warrior advanced on Cook and struck him with his heavy wooden club. Cook fell. “Lono” was mortal. Immediately the marines with him were attacked, and although they tried to fire volleys, they were slowly forced to retreat to their boats, leaving Cook knee deep in water, facing the native charge alone, with the bodies of four marines floating around him. The soldiers flung themselves into the ocean and swam for their lives to the boats waiting offshore. Cook could not follow his soldiers to safety because, like his sons before, he couldn’t swim.

The natives stripped the dead captain but refrained from eating him, as was their normal custom. Later they returned
some of his bones and both hands, preserved in salt, to the shaken crews of his ships.

His remains were put in a coffin. With great fanfare, his grieving crew buried James Cook in the waters of the bay on February 21, 1779.