The early years
The three major voyages of discovery of Captain James Cook provided his European masters with unprecedented information about the Pacific Ocean, and about those who lived on its islands and shores. His achievements were the more remarkable because of his humble origins in an agricultural labouring family, from Marton, North Yorkshire.
... he intended to go not only 'farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go'.
Cook first went to sea at the age of 18. He spent ten years working in the coal trade of the east coast of England - with its shoreline of treacherous, shifting shoals, uncharted shallows, and difficult harbours. In 1755 he joined the Royal Navy, and within two years passed his master's examination to qualify for the navigation and handling of a royal ship. He gained surveying experience in North American waters during the Seven Years War - as Britain and France fought for supremacy in North America - and spent the first years of peace between 1763 and 1767 charting the fog-shrouded coastline of Newfoundland.
During those years he gained a practical training in mathematics and astronomy, and steadily accumulated the technical skills needed to make an effective explorer. The following years were to show that in addition he possessed those less tangible qualities, of leadership, determination and ambition, which made him the outstanding explorer of the 18th century. As he wrote, he intended to go not only 'farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go'.
Top
The first Pacific voyage
Cook's first voyage (1768-71) was a collaborative venture under the auspices of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. The original intention was to organise a scientific voyage to observe the transit of the planet Venus from Tahiti, and this was supplemented by instructions to search for the great southern continent, Terra Australis Incognita, whose location had intrigued and baffled European navigators and projectors since the 16th century.
Captain Cook's voyage around New Zealand and the east coast of Australia©With Lieutenant Cook (as he was at that time) sailed the botanist Joseph Banks, the astronomer Charles Green, and a small retinue of scientific assistants and artists. Cook's ship, the Endeavour, was a bluff-bowed Whitby collier chosen for her strength, shallow draught, and storage capacity. Although the ship was to change, the type did not; the Resolution of the second and third voyages was of the same build, and even came from the same shipyard as the Endeavour, to whose qualities, wrote Cook, 'those on board owe their Preservation. Hence I was enabled to prosecute Discoveries in those Seas so much longer than any other Man ever did or could do.'
... Cook had put more than 5,000 miles of previously unknown coastline on the map.
Cook sailed first to Tahiti to carry out those astronomical observations that were the initial reason for the voyage, before turning south where, his instructions told him, 'there is reason to imagine that a Continent or Land of great extent, may be found.' After reaching latitude 40°S, without sight of land, he sailed west to New Zealand, whose coasts he charted in a little over six months to show that they were not part of a southern continent.
From there Cook pointed the Endeavour towards the unexplored eastern parts of New Holland (the name given by the Dutch to Australia in the 17th century). Cook sailed north along the shores of present-day New South Wales and Queensland, charting as he went. After a hair-raising escape from the dangers of the Great Barrier Reef he reached the northern tip of Australia at Cape York, where he annexed the east coast on the grounds that it was terra nullius, no person's land.
He then sailed through the Torres Strait, so settling the dispute as to whether New Holland and New Guinea were joined. With only one ship Cook had put more than 5,000 miles of previously unknown coastline on the map. The twin islands of New Zealand, the east coast of Australia and the Torres Strait had at last emerged from the mists of uncertainty.
Top
The second Pacific voyage
Cook's second voyage (1772-75) was the logical complement to what had been explored, and left unexplored, on his first. Again there were scientists and artists on board, and for the first time chronometers, one of which was Kendall's copy of John Harrison's famous no. 4 marine chronometer. This superb instrument kept accurate time throughout the buffeting it endured on the long voyage, showing that a practical solution to the problem of determining longitude at sea had been found.
In his three years away, the newly-promoted Captain Cook disposed of the imagined southern continent, reached closer to the South Pole than any previous navigator, and touched on many lands - Tahiti and New Zealand again, and for the first time Easter Island, the Marquesas Islands, Tonga and the New Hebrides.
... on his two voyages he had laid down the essentials of the modern map of the South Pacific.
Most of these places had been sighted by explorers on earlier expeditions, so that even by conventional definitions Cook did not 'discover' them for Europe. His contribution was to bring order to confusion, to replace vagueness and uncertainty with a scrupulous accuracy. He had, he explained, put an end to the search for the great southern continent, 'which has at time ingrossed the attention of some of the Maritime Powers for near two Centuries past and the Geographers of all ages.' But his achievement was more than this, for on his two voyages he had laid down the essentials of the modern map of the South Pacific.
Top
The third Pacific voyage
On his return from his second voyage, Cook found that his fame had spread beyond naval circles. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and awarded its Copley Gold Medal, was painted by Nathaniel Dance, dined with James Boswell, and was described in the House of Lords as 'the first navigator in Europe'. Brief thoughts of retirement were replaced by a determination to return to the Pacific. Cook's third and final voyage (1776-80) had its own logic in that it took him to the North Pacific in an effort to solve a geographical mystery as old as the southern continent - the question of the existence of a navigable north west passage.
... in a single season Cook put the main outline of the coast of north west America on the maps ...
As he approached the north west coast of America in 1778, Cook made the major discovery of the Hawaiian Islands, the northernmost outliers of Polynesia. He spent that summer in hazardous exploration along the American coast from Vancouver Island to the Bering Strait, searching in vain for the wide strait leading to an ice-free Arctic Ocean, as indicated on the speculative maps of the period.
Although he found no north west passage, in a single season Cook put the main outline of the coast of north west America on the maps, determined the shape of Alaska well beyond the Bering Strait, and closed the gap between the Spanish coastal probes from the south and those of the Russians from Kamchatka.
Did one of Cook's temper tantrums seal his fate?©It was to be his last achievement, for the following winter he was killed on his return to the Hawaiian Islands. His death at Kealakekua Bay on 14 February 1779 has remained a source of scholarly controversy. During the weeks after his arrival Cook seems to have been regarded by the Hawaiians as the god Lono, bringer of light, peace and plenty, for he had arrived at the time of makahiki, Lono's festival.
Cook continued to conform to the sacred calendar of the islanders by sailing away from Hawaii as makahiki came to an end. However, the Resolution got damaged at sea, so that Cook was forced to return to the bay to repair his ship out of the correct season, thus making himself a violator of sacred customs.
It was noted that there was an eerie atmosphere among the islanders following his return, and Cook's death after an argument on the beach was predictable if not preordained. Not all accept this interpretation. Some scholars see Cook's 'deification' as the product of a Western, imperialist tradition, and they explain his death as being the result of a row caused by one of his uncontrollable outbursts of temper, which had become increasingly noticeable during the voyage.
Top
Consequences
The circ*mstances of Cook's death were a reminder that one of his tasks was 'to observe the Genius, Temper, Disposition and Number of the Natives'. This was easier said than done, for successive migrations across the Pacific had left societies organised in overlapping layers and groups, and the strained nature of the contact between Europeans and non-Europeans made understanding between them all the more difficult.
... the coming of venereal disease, alcohol and firearms brought a depressing train of consequences to the islands.
Cook and his fellow navigators of the period were for the most part humane and moderate commanders. Even so, the Europeans were intruders, emerging by the score from their towering vessels, appearing and disappearing without warning, violating sacred sites. An inescapable tension hung over the encounters, sometimes dissipated by individual contacts or trade, but often erupting into violence and death. Although the relationship between Polynesians and Europeans was not the one-sided affair of some portrayals, in the longer term the coming of venereal disease, alcohol and firearms brought a depressing train of consequences to the islands.
Cook set new standards in the extent and accuracy of his surveys, but to see his voyages simply in terms of geographical knowledge would be to miss their broader significance. The observations of Cook and his colleagues played an important role in natural history, astronomy, oceanography, philology and much else. Above all, the voyages helped to give birth in the next century to the new disciplines of ethnology and anthropology.
In practical ways, too, Cook set new standards, especially in terms of health. There were no recorded deaths from scurvy on any of his voyages, and few from natural causes generally - except during the Endeavour's disastrous stay at Batavia in 1770, when 30 members of the crew, who had been remarkably healthy until then, died of fever and dysentery.
Specialists have corrected the popular view that Cook discovered the cure for scurvy - rather he applied with unusual thoroughness all suggested remedies. He ensured cleanliness and ventilation in the crew's quarters, and insisted on an appropriate diet that included cress, sauerkraut, and a kind of orange extract. Even so, his epitaph in a medical journal claimed that Cook's success in keeping his crews alive 'added more to his fame, and is supposed to have given a more useful lesson to maritime nations, than all the discoveries he ever made'.
Top
Find out more
Books
The Ship - Retracing Cook's Endeavour Voyage by Simon Baker (BBC Worldwide, 2002)
The Life of Captain James Cook by JC Beaglehole (Hakluyt Society, 1974)
The Journals of Captain Cook edited by Philip Edwards (Penguin, 1999)
How 'Natives' Think: About Captain Cook, For Example by Marshall Sahlins (University of Chicago Press, 1995)
Voyages of Delusion: The Search for the Northwest Passage in the Age of Reason by Glyn Williams (HarperCollins, 2002)
Links
Whitby, North Yorkshire
Captain Cook Memorial Museum, Whitby
The National Maritime Museum, London
Top
About the author
Professor Glyn Williams is Professor Emeritus at Queen Mary, University of London. He has published numerous books on exploration and oceanic history, including The Great South Sea: English Voyages and Encounters (1997), Captain Cook's Voyages (1997), and The Prize of all the Oceans: The Triumph and Tragedy of Anson's Voyage Round the World (1999).
Top
