Captain Cook's Journal During His First Voyage Round the World
they were, if placed on a map at all, shown in very different longitudes.
Several voyagers had sighted different members of the extensive Paumotu
Group, but the varying positions caused great confusion.
Tahiti had been found by Wallis.
Tasman had laid down the south point of Tasmania, the western coast of
the North Island of New Zealand, and the Tonga Islands. Dampier and
Carteret had shown that New Britain and New Ireland were separate
islands, lying north-east of New Guinea. Quiros had found the northern
island of the New Hebrides.
But of none of these lands was anything really known. Those who had
visited them had merely touched. In no case had they gone round them, or
ascertained their limits, and their descriptions, founded on brief
experience, were bald and much exaggerated.
Let us turn to what was unknown.
This comprises the whole of the east coast of Australia, or New Holland,
and whether it was joined to Tasmania on the south, and New Guinea to the
north; the dimensions of New Zealand; New Caledonia and the New Hebrides,
with the exception of the fact that the northern island of the latter
existed; the Fiji Islands; Sandwich Islands; the Phoenix, Union, Ellice,
Gilbert, and Marshall Groups, with innumerable small islands scattered
here and there; the Cook Islands, and all the Society Islands except
Tahiti. The majority of the Paumotu Group. The coast of North America
north of 45 degrees north was unknown, and there was the great,
undefined, and imaginary southern Continent to disprove.
Whether other voyages of exploration would have been undertaken one
cannot say; but in 1768 the Royal Society put in a word.
A transit of Venus over the sun's disc was to occur in 1769, and
astronomers were anxious to take advantage of it, the object of the
observation being to ascertain the distance of the earth from the sun,
the fundamental base line in all astronomical measurements, and which was
very imperfectly known.
The Central Pacific afforded a favourable position, and the Royal Society
memorialised the king to send a ship for the purpose. The request was
granted, and at first Alexander Dalrymple, who had conducted marine
surveys in the East Indies, and was known as a scientific geographer, was
selected as observer. As, however, it was found that he also expected to
command the ship, the Admiralty positively refused to have anything to do
with him, and after some discussion James Cook was selected.
This says volumes for Cook's reputation at the time. To have risen
absolutely from the ranks was a great deal, but to be chosen as a master,
to command a ship, and undertake a scientific observation of this
importance, was a most exceptional occurrence, and speaks well for the
judgment of those who had the selection.
It seems that Mr. Stephens, the Secretary to the Admiralty, had much to
do with it. How Stephens had become acquainted with Cook history does not
relate, but doubtless his personal visits to the Admiralty in connection
with the completion of his charts of Newfoundland, from which he returned
every winter, had brought him into contact with the Secretary, who had
clearly formed a high opinion of him.
Cook, we may be sure, jumped at the chance, and his pride must have been
great when he found he was to receive a commission as Lieutenant.
This in itself was a most unusual step. The occasions on which a master
had been transferred to the executive line of the Royal Navy were very
rare, and many an admiral used his influence in favour of some deserving
officer in vain.
This was not without good reason, as the whole training of the Master of
those days was unfavourable to success in command of ships or men. The
exception was, however, in this case amply justified.
Cook was allowed to choose his vessel, and bearing in mind the dangers of
grounding in unknown seas, he pitched upon his old friends, the
stoutly-built, full-bottomed colliers of the North Sea trade.
His ship, the Endeavour, was a Whitby built vessel of three hundred and
seventy tons, and was known as H.M. Bark Endeavour, there being another
vessel, a cutter, of the same name in the Royal Navy. She was brought to
the dockyard at Deptford to fit out. Her appearance was, of course,
wholly different from that of a vessel built as a man-of-war, and we
shall see that this caused trouble at Rio Janeiro, where the combination
of merchant build and officers in uniform in an armed ship, aroused
suspicions in the mind of the Portuguese Viceroy.
It is nowhere directly stated whether the Endeavour was sheathed with
copper or not; but as Cook in the account of his second voyage expresses
himself as adverse to this method of protecting ships' bottoms, and the
operation is recorded of heeling and boot topping, which was cleaning and
greasing the part of the ship just below waterline, it may be concluded
that her sheathing was wood.
She proved a most suitable vessel. The log states she was a little crank,
but an admirable sea-boat. Her rate of sailing was of course, with her
build, slow, but her strength and flat bottom stood her in good stead
when she made acquaintance with a coral reef.
She mounted ten small carriage guns and twelve swivels.
Mr. Banks, a scientific botanist, afterwards well known as Sir Joseph
Banks, and for a long time President of the Royal Society, a gentleman of
private means, volunteered to accompany Cook, and took with him a staff
of his own, of artists and others.
He also induced Dr. Solander, a Swedish naturalist, afterwards attached
to the British Museum, to accompany him.
Mr. Charles Green, one of the assistants at the Royal Observatory at
Greenwich, was sent as astronomer.
This scientific staff added much to the success of the expedition.
Banks and Solander, both men of observation, were able to collect
specimens of natural history, and study the manners and customs of the
natives with whom they came in contact, which neither the time at Cook's
disposal nor his training enabled him to undertake; and though the
Journal of the former has never yet been published, and cannot at the
present time be traced, many interesting remarks were extracted by Dr.
Hawkesworth from it and went far to make his account of the voyage
complete.
Mr. Green also demands special notice.
One great question of the day amongst seamen and geographers was the
discovering of some ready and sure method of ascertaining the longitude.
Half the value of the explorations made up to this time had been lost
from this want. The recognised means of finding longitude was by the
observation of lunars; that is, accurately measuring the angular distance
between the centres of the moon and of the sun, or of the moon and some
star.
The motion of the moon is so rapid that this angular distance changes
from second to second, and thereby, by previous astronomical calculation,
the time at Greenwich at which its distance from any body is a certain
number of degrees can be ascertained and recorded.
By well-known calculations the local time at any spot can be obtained,
and when this is ascertained, at the precise moment that the angular
distance of sun and moon is observed, the difference gives the longitude.
This seems simple enough, but there is a good deal of calculation to go
through before the result is reached, and neither the observation nor the
calculation is easy, especially with the astronomical tables of those
days, and there were very few sailors who were capable of, or patient
enough to make them, nor was the result, as a rule, very accurate. For
one thing, the motions of the moon, which are extremely complicated, were
not enough known to allow her calculated position in the heavens to be
very accurate, and a very small error in this position considerably
affects the time, and therefore the longitude.
Luckily for Cook, the Nautical Almanac had just been started, and
contained tables of the moon which had not previously been available, and
which much lightened the calculations.
The great invention of the chronometer, that is, a watch that can be
trusted to keep a steady rate for long periods, was at this time
completed by Harrison; but very few had been manufactured, and
astronomers and sailors were slow to believe in the efficacy of this
method of carrying time about with a ship. Thus Cook had no chronometer
supplied to him.
Green had accompanied Mr. Maskelyne, afterwards Astronomer Royal, to
Barbados in 1763 in H.M.S. Princess Louisa, in order to test Harrison's
timekeeper, and also a complicated chair, from which it was supposed
observations of Jupiter's satellites could be observed on board ship; and
as this trial afforded the final triumph of the new method, one would
have thought that on a voyage of circumnavigation he would have made
every effort to get one of these watches.
Be this as it may, the Endeavour had no chronometer, and lunars were the
mainstay of the expedition.
In these observations Green was indefatigable. Cook, an excellent
observer himself frequently took part in them; but it was Green's
especial business, and no doubt to him is due the major part of the
determinations of accurate longitude, which is one of the very remarkable
points of this voyage.
Green's log, which is extant, is filled with lunar observations, and the
extraordinary coincidence between different observations attests the care
with which they were made. I dwell upon this because, while full of
admiration for Cook's knowledge, and his untiring zeal in every detail of
his expedition, it is evident, from a study of the original documents,
that without Green many opportunities of getting longitude would have
been lost, Cook having no time to spare to make use of them. Let us give
honour to whom honour is due.
The final results of the observations are not equally good, but this
arises from the errors, before referred to, in the moon's place in the
heavens as given in the almanac, which would vary with her position, and
affect the longitude accordingly. The astonishing thing is, not that some
longitudes are considerably in error, but that the majority of them are
so near the truth.
The Endeavour sailed from the Thames on June 30th, 1768, and was in
Plymouth Sound from July 14th to the 26th, when she finally sailed, Banks
and the scientific staff having joined here.
She carried a complement, all told, of ninety-four, and very close
stowage it must have been.
A list is given in this book, immediately before the "Journal," of every
person on board when the ship sailed from Plymouth.
The draught of the ship was 13 feet 6 inches, and her provisions were
calculated to last eighteen months. The original intention had been that
the transit of Venus should be observed at the Marquesas; but the
Dolphin's return before Cook sailed, with the news of the discovery of
Tahiti and its friendly inhabitants, caused this island to be finally
selected.
The exact text of Cook's orders cannot be given. They were secret orders;
but, curiously enough, while the covering letter, which enjoined him to
show them to nobody, which is dated July 30th, 1768, is duly entered in
Admiralty Records, the orders themselves, which should follow in the
letter book, are omitted. They have never been published. Nevertheless,
we can gather what they were.
Cook, in the published account of his Second Voyage, says he had
instructions to proceed directly to Tahiti, and afterwards to prosecute
the design of making discoveries in the Pacific by proceeding southward
to the latitude of 40 degrees, and if he did not find land to continue
his voyage to the west till he fell in with New Zealand, which he was
directed to explore, and thence to return to England by such route as he
should judge most convenient.