By Roselyn Fauth
Most of us look at Timaru from the land... We stand at Caroline Bay and look out to sea. We notice ships waiting offshore, weather coming up the coast and perhaps, on a clear day, how far the horizon seems.
Captain James Cook saw the view the other way around. In February 1770, the Endeavour approached the South Canterbury coast. Cook was not directly outside Caroline Bay. His recorded position places him well south of present-day Timaru, probably off the wider Otaio or Hook coast. But from the deck of his ship, he was looking towards the same broad landscape, before the harbour, lighthouse, giant grain buildings, or church towers.
There were no macrocarpas rooted into Cliffs as the coastal Californian tree was not introduced to New Zealand until the nineteenth century.
Cook had only the land itself to read... so what did he see and why was he here?
Why was Cook here? Well, Cook had not sailed from England looking for Timaru.
The Endeavour left Britain in 1768 so that Cook and members of the expedition could observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti. By comparing observations made from different places, astronomers hoped to calculate the distance between the Earth and the Sun more accurately. Once that work was complete, Cook followed further instructions. He was to search the southern Pacific for a hypothetical great continent and investigate New Zealand.
Europeans still did not understand the country’s full shape.
Abel Tasman had reached New Zealand in 1642, but he had not sailed around it. Cook’s task was to establish whether New Zealand was connected to a larger continent and to chart its coastline. That meant working slowly around unfamiliar shores, recording bearings, depths, winds, currents and the shape of the land. Cook became the first European to define the outline of New Zealand in detail. His chart was remarkably good, but it was not perfect.
When Canterbury’s coastline played a trick
A few days before reaching South Canterbury, Cook sighted Banks Peninsula. From offshore, the low land connecting the peninsula to the Canterbury Plains disappeared from view. The volcanic hills appeared to be surrounded by water, so Cook concluded that he had found an island. He named it Banks Island after Joseph Banks, the expedition’s naturalist.
Low ground vanishes into haze and the hills would have appeared to float and seem to sit on top of one another. Cook was an outstanding navigator. He was still limited by distance, weather and the horizon.
How close did he come?
On 20 February 1770, the Endeavour stood towards the South Canterbury shore. Cook recorded the depth reducing from 32 fathoms to 13 fathoms. At that point, he turned the ship away, writing that they were: “about 3 Miles from the Shore”
Three miles is roughly five kilometres sounds very close to Timaru, but there is an important catch... Cook’s noon latitude was 44 degrees 44 minutes south. Central Timaru is about 20 minutes of latitude farther north, a north–south difference of roughly 37 kilometres. so I think the ship probably came within about five kilometres of a South Canterbury shoreline, not within five kilometres of Caroline Bay.
Its closest recorded approach was probably somewhere off the coast south of Timaru, around the wider Otaio or Hook area. We cannot give an exact modern location because the ship was moving and tacking, Cook’s three-mile figure was an estimate, and we do not have a sufficiently precise longitude for the moment of closest approach.
A later editor placed the heading “Off Timaru” above this section of Cook’s journal. Cook did not write that heading himself. The careful version is: On 20 February 1770, the Endeavour approached to about three miles from the South Canterbury coast, roughly 35 to 40 kilometres south of central Timaru.
What did Cook see?
Cook described the shore as lying nearly north and south and being: “very low and flatt”. He wrote that the low country continued inland towards hills. I wonder if these were the Hunters Hills, and if Cook was tacking off South Canterbury. He did not land here.
His account of what he saw wouldn't take anyones breath away, just a low, flat coast and hills behind it, a coastal plain rising towards the downlands and foothills. I wonder though, if he could visualise the future town that one day would attract European settlers attention.
While looking out, he was no doubt also looking down to ensure the ship didn't catch on the sea floor. Cook recorded a “fine sandy bottom”. Sailors could establish this using a lead line: a weighted line lowered overboard to measure depth. Tallow placed in a hollow at the base of the lead could bring up traces of sand, mud or shell.
Cook was reading the coast using angles, depth and whatever the lead brought back from beneath the ship and his and the crews observations were new to European charts.
The landscape was not new.
Long before the Endeavour appeared offshore, the South Canterbury coast was known through Māori names, whakapapa, travel routes, kāinga and mahinga kai.
Cook was making one kind of map... Mana whenua held another. His journal also says that those aboard saw no signs of inhabitants. That does not prove the district was empty. It means only that people, settlements or fires were not visible from a ship several kilometres offshore.
As Timaru developed, buildings appeared above the shore. Flagstaffs and signals communicated with vessels offshore. Lookouts watched the roadstead. Church towers, hotels, stores and other prominent structures gave the town a recognisable profile.
Blackett’s Lighthouse entered service in 1878. It originally stood on Le Cren’s Terrace and was built as part of the development of Timaru’s harbour navigation system. It was later moved to its present position near Benvenue Cliffs.
By then, sailors approaching Timaru were no longer reading only the hills, cliffs and shoreline.
They were reading a town.
Where do the macrocarpas fit?
The macrocarpas above Benvenue Cliffs belong to this later, planted skyline. Cook could not have seen them. Macrocarpa, also known as Monterey cypress, came from North America and was introduced to New Zealand long after his 1770 voyage. Large trees can become useful marks from offshore because their silhouettes are easy to recognise against the sky.
We should still be careful about claiming that Timaru’s surviving macrocarpas were originally planted specifically as navigation aids. That requires evidence from harbour records, planting records, charts or sailing directions. They may have been planted for shelter or amenity and later became useful to mariners. A tree does not need to be planted as a beacon to become a landmark.
The harbour eventually transformed far more than the town’s appearance, as the breakwaters pushed out into the sea, the currents and shingle movement rapidly changed. Caroline Bay developed into the sandy shoreline familiar to us today. Te Ara describes it as an artificially created beach, formed after harbour development altered coastal processes.
If Cook had decided to land here, we would have looked at a different-shaped coast, as Timaru built by the sea, it also changed the view to it.
The next time you stand at Caroline Bay, turn around... look back towards Timaru. Imagine removing the port, viaduct, lighthouse, silos, roads and planted trees... and it will be a little closer to the coast Cook might have seen.