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The
Endeavour left England in 1768 and after visiting
Tahiti the following year Cook discovered New Zealand and
claimed it for Great Britain. Sailing west, in 1770 he
sighted the east coast of Australia. From here he sailed
north and on August 22 he claimed the whole of eastern
Australia as a British possession. The Endeavour
returned to England in 1771 having added significantly to
Britain's potential empire in the Pacific. One
question remained...whether the unexplored part of the
southern hemisphere can only be an immense mass of water or
possibly contain another continent. Such speculative
geography was a question which had engaged the attention not
only of learned men, but of most of the maritime powers of
Europe. The British Admiralty decided it was time to find
out once and for all. The Admiralty promoted Cook to
Commander and was told to prepare for his second voyage. He
was instructed to travel south to find Bouvet's
Cape Circumcision and determine whether or not it was
part of the imagined continent. If so, he was to "take
possession of convenient situations in the country in the
name of the King of Great Britain". If not part of a
continent, then he was to sail as far south as possible,
circumnavigate the area and sail north whenever weather and
ice made exploration impossible. The
Admiralty outfitted the newly purchased Resolution
and Adventure with the Resolution being Cook's
flagship. Resolution
and Adventure, June 1772 The two
ships arrived at Cape Town, South Africa, some 109 days
later. Cook soon learned of a voyage to the Indian Ocean by
a Frenchman named Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen-Tremarec and of
his discovery of land there which he called La France
Australe. It was important news as Cook determined this,
like Bouvet's Cape Circumcision, could prove an existence of
a southern continent. On November 23, 1772, Cook sailed out
of Cape Town heading into the unknown waters to the south.
On December 11 the crew of the Adventure thought they
found it. What they actually sighted was an iceberg and by
the following day they found themselves at the edge of an
endless pack of ice. On January 17, 1773, the ships most
likely became the first to cross the Antarctic Circle. For
two months Cook sailed alongside the pack, looking for an
entrance to travel further south. Cape Circumcision was not
to be found where reported and since he was well south of
Kerguelen's discovery Cook determined that Kerguelen's La
France Australe could not be part of a southern continent
either. With the onset of winter, Cook sailed north and
reached Dusky Sound, on the South Island of New Zealand, on
March 25 after sailing some 10,600 miles through uncharted
waters. He spent the winter exploring the islands of the
South Pacific. During a storm Cook became separated from the
Adventure but, nevertheless, sailed south once again
on November 27. He once again reached the ice pack, in mid
December, and continued his search for a way through to the
south. Cook's skill as a seaman and navigator cannot be
challenged...through heavy storms and dangerous seas filled
with huge icebergs the Resolution survived without
the loss of a single man. On January 30 he reached his
furthest south but could go no further. The ice "extended
east and west far beyond the reach of our sight, while the
southern half of the horizon was illuminated by rays of
light which were reflected from the ice to a considerable
height...It was indeed my opinion that this ice extends
quite to the Pole, or perhaps joins to some land to which it
has been fixed since creation". Cook
once again wintered in New Zealand, leaving in November 1774
on his third voyage. He sailed across the south Pacific and
arrived five weeks later at Tierra del Fuego. He remained
for two weeks and then left in a northeasterly direction
into the Atlantic. Unexpectedly, they sighted land and
immediately thought they had finally found the southern
continent but instead it was an island, covered in ice,
which he named South Georgia. Although his intentions were
to continue to England, his temptation to the south could
not be resisted and at the end of January he sighted a group
of islands even more desolate than South Georgia. These he
named the South Sandwich Islands. After a week of
exploration in them, he turned north for England, reaching
England on July 30, 1775. The voyage lasted three years and
eight days covering more than 60,000 miles. Cook had proved
there was no southern continent unless it was at the pole
itself. Cook's
reputation was unchallenged and with his conclusion one can
assume that all further exploration would have been
unnecessary except for one detail...he kept thorough records
of his sailing. Although governments were to turn their
attentions elsewhere for exploration, the owners of whaling
fleets in Europe and America were drawn to the southern
waters by the constant mention in his journals of large
numbers of seals and whales encountered during the voyages.
Thus it was they, not the explorers, who now prepared
themselves for exploration into the Antarctic
waters. Resolution
and Discovery at Kerguelen Islands The
Resolution, now under command of Captain Clerke, was
to sail to Tahiti to return a native who had been brought
back to England by Tobias Furneaux on the Adventure
when it lost contact with Cook's Resolution in the
New Zealand storm of 1773. The Adventure was
unseaworthy and Cook was asked in early 1776 to find a
replacement to accompany the Resolution on the
voyage. He recommended another Yorkshire collier, which the
Admiralty accepted, renamed it the Discovery and
promptly decided to take command of the
expedition. Cook
took command, once again, of the Resolution while
Clerke was in command of the Discovery. The voyage
was to be another sailing of exploration to the Pacific.
However, this time the route was to be different. Known in
England as the Northwest Passage, the route to the Pacific
from the Atlantic could only be suspected as all 50 previous
attempts at the passage had failed. Discovery of this
northerly route to Asia could be significantly quicker than
the hazardous route around Cape Horn. Since Cook needed to
call at Tahiti, he decided to enter the Pacific from the
Indian Ocean, in the process giving him an opportunity to
investigate the land discovered by
Kerguélen-Tremarec. Cook and
the Resolution left Plymouth on July 12, 1776 with
Clerke following a few weeks later in the Discovery.
A leaking Resolution arrived in Cape Town on October
18 with the Discovery arriving on the 10th of
November. Together they left on November 30th steering
southeast in an attempt to locate a group of islands
discovered some years earlier by Marion du Fresne. On
December 12 they spotted the first of the islands whereby
Cook promptly named them the Prince Edward Islands.
Continuing further south, on December 24 they saw land
exactly where they expected it to be. The land was an islet
off the northwest point of Kerguélen's La France
Australe which they encountered later that day. The
following day they entered a large bay and anchored near a
sandy beach. Crew members went ashore and one of them found
a bottle with a note in it containing an inscription in
Latin recording the French visits in 1772 and 1773. Cook
wrote of his own visit on the same parchment, placed it back
in the bottle together with a silver coin and buried it
again. Cook
spent four days exploring the island and coastline. While
unimpressed due to the lack of trees, shrubs and little
grass, there nevertheless was a good supply of fresh water.
Cook called them the "Islands of Desolation" although they
are known today as the Îsles
Kerguélen. On
December 30, 1776, Cook and Clerke sailed away from the
island for New Zealand. This was Cook's last contact with
the Antarctic region. Cook was advised to wait until the
summer of 1778 before starting his search for the Northwest
Passage. On January 18, 1778, Cook made his last great
discovery...the Hawaiian Islands. For the following month,
the two ships sailed north up the west coast of America.
Several unsuccessful attempts to locate the passage were
tried along the coasts of Canada and Alaska. After sailing
through the Bering Strait and crossing the Arctic Circle,
Cook abandoned his search and turned both ships south for
the Hawaiian Islands. They
reached the islands at the end of November and in the middle
of January, 1779, Cook anchored at Kealakekua Bay where he
was greeted by thousands of cheering natives. Upon returning
to his ship on February 10, Cook discovered a native had
stolen one of their boats. Cook went ashore on the 14th with
a squad of marines to take the king back to the ship as a
hostage. The king was even willing to go but when they
reached the water's edge, a large group of natives stopped
them and urged the king not to go. Up the shoreline, a chief
was killed while trying to leave the beach and suddenly the
mood became very hostile. A native approached Cook in a
threatening manner and Cook fired at him. The natives
attacked and the marines fired back with guns and bayonets.
The battle only lasted a few minutes but when it was over,
Cook lay dead on the beach.
James
Cook was born in the Yorkshire village of Marton on October
27, 1728. His first experience at sea came at the age of 18
when he signed on as a deckhand aboard a Whitby collier
carrying coal to London. He became an good mathematician in
his spare time and was actually offered a command of his own
ship but refused and joined the Royal Navy as a seaman. His
talents were soon recognized and after two years he became
master of his own ship, the Pembroke, and was ordered
to chart the waters of the St. Lawrence River in Canada. His
work was excellent and the Admiralty recalled him to England
and placed him in command of the Endeavour which was
to take a number of scientists to the Pacific Ocean for
observing Venus.
The Resolution was only 110 feet long and 35 feet
across the beam. The Adventure was even smaller. With
little ceremony the two tiny ships set sail from Plymouth
Sound at 6:00 am on July 13, 1772 faced with a three year
voyage.
Cook was promoted again after returning from his second
voyage in 1775. He accepted his appointment as Fourth
Captain at Greenwich Hospital but with conditions; at 46
years of age he was not ready for this form of retirement so
if his country were to call him for more active service or
if he felt he could be of an essential service to the
public, then he would quit the position. It didn't take
long.