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Cook spent only a little time back home with his family, for in the following autumn he was asked to go on another trip, "to complete the discovery of the Southern Hemisphere". He was given two ships, the Resolution and the Adventure.
He took great care to fill the ships with proper food stores, including lemons to prevent scurvy. He made sure there was enough to last for two years. He left England in July 1772, and sailed by way of the Cape far south into the Antarctic Ocean. For weeks he sailed among icebergs, pushing south wherever he found an opening, while the ship rolled violently, and the frozen rigging cut the hands of the crew.
After a run of "three thousand five hundred leagues" they put into Dusky Bay, New Zealand, where they landed domestic animals and planted English vegetables. The next few weeks were spent among the Pacific Islands, where old King Oree, who had welcomed them on their first voyage, was overjoyed to see them.
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Then once more they sailed to the southern ice. At last in January they reached the great ice-field and could go no further. Cook sailed his ship right round the South Pole, or the Antarctic, and the great southern continent of the old maps proved to be non-existent. He did not see any land here, because the ice fields stretched out far into the sea. |