Captain Cook's Journal During His First Voyage Round the World
built colliers, were bought for the voyage. Cook was promoted to
Commander, and Tobias Furnaux, in the Adventure, was placed under his
command. It was not, however, until April 1772 that they sailed.
It was originally intended that Banks should again accompany Cook, and
with a view to his better accommodation a poop was added to the
Resolution. The short trip, however, from Deptford to Sheerness proved to
Cook that the ship was dangerously over-weighted, and the poop was
removed, with the consequence that Banks did not sail. The alteration
delayed final departure until June 22nd from Sheerness, and July 13th
from Plymouth.
The naturalists on this voyage were two Forsters, Germans, father and
son; and as astronomers Mr. Wales sailed in the Resolution, and Mr.
Bayley in the Adventure. Two of Cook's former companions sailed as
Lieutenants: Clerke, who was Lieutenant, and Pickersgill, who was master
of the Endeavour when she reached England. This witnesses to the
confidence and enthusiasm that Cook inspired amongst those under him.
There were also other Endeavours amongst the junior officers.
The main object of the voyage was the settlement of the great question of
the southern Continent. Cook was directed to explore the whole region
about the South Pole, starting from the Cape of Good Hope, and working
eastward. The winter of the southern hemisphere was to be employed as
Cook thought fit.
This voyage brought Cook's qualities as a seaman and commander more
prominently to view even than the former. The conditions were very
different. Instead of mapping coasts and islands, the principal duty was
exploration of tempestuous seas in high latitudes, amongst ice, searching
in vain for the illusive southern land.
Cook carried it out thoroughly. No gales, no temperatures deterred him
from searching wherever the ships would safely sail, and it was only ice
in dense masses that turned him back.
What his people thought of it we do not know, but the Forsters have given
a piteous account of the privations and hardships of an exploration that
gave them little chance of exercising their special knowledge.
Cook was better provided with instruments for the determination of
longitude than before, and the ships carried four chronometric
timekeepers; but the proper method of making use of them was scarcely yet
realised, and the course of his voyage did not permit them to be of much
service.
Mindful of his former success in combating scurvy, and making use of his
experience, Cook carried with him all his former anti-scorbutics, and
redoubled his general precautions as to cleanliness, both of person and
ship. The result was complete immunity from more than symptoms of scurvy.
He was able to say, when he returned, that no man had died not only of
this disease, but of any other, due to the exposures of the voyage. Three
lost by accidents, and one from a complaint contracted before leaving
England, were the sole losses on a voyage lasting three years, and during
which the exposure to heat, cold, rain, and all the hardships of a sea
life was probably never surpassed.
Leaving the Cape on November 22nd, Cook stood at once to the southward,
intending to pass over a spot in latitude 54 degrees South, where in 1739
M. Bouvet sighted land that was generally supposed to be a part of the
Southern Continent, and which he had been especially directed to examine.
Gales, however, drove him from his course, and to this day Bouvet's
Islands (for Cook proved they could be nothing else) are doubtfully shown
upon charts.* (* They were again reported in 1825 by the Sprightly, an
English whaler, but Sir James Ross searched for them in 1840 without
success.) Cook soon got into the ice, and fought with it and gales of
wind, in snow and sleet and fog, working gradually eastwards from the
longitude of the Cape for four months. The ship penetrated to 67 degrees
South at one point, and kept as high a latitude as ice permitted
everywhere, but without discovering any land. Cook found to his great joy
that the ice yielded good fresh water, and replenished his water casks in
this manner, without any fear of falling short. With all his power of
communicating his enthusiasm to others, it may be doubted if they shared
his pleasure at finding that the search in these inclement regions need
not be curtailed from lack of this necessary.
At last, in the longitude of Tasmania, Cook hauled to the northward, and
headed for New Zealand, where, after sailing over eleven thousand miles
since leaving the Cape without once sighting land, he anchored in Dusky
Bay on March 26th, 1774, with the Resolution only, the Adventure having
parted company in thick weather on February 9th. Moving on to Queen
Charlotte's Sound, his old anchorage at the north end of Middle Island,
he found the Adventure there on May 18th. Captain Furneaux had, after
vainly searching for his consort, run for Tasmania, and explored the east
coast. He did not, however, clear up the point for which he states he
visited this coast, namely, whether it joined New Holland or not, as
strong winds from the eastward made him fearful of closing what he
thought was a deep bay, though really the Strait, and he sailed for the
rendezvous in New Zealand under the impression that Tasmania and
Australia were one.
The ships left New Zealand on June 7th, 1773, and, after making a wide
circuit to the south and east in search of land, arrived at Tahiti on
August 16th. A good many of the Adventure's people were ill with scurvy,
and Cook is much puzzled to know the reason why they were attacked while
his own crew were free. He puts it down to the greater trouble he had
taken to make all his men use wild celery and other herbs in New Zealand,
and no doubt this had its effect; but one cannot but suspect that the
constant care on his part to keep the ship clean and sweet below had much
to do with it. The Adventure had the same anti-scorbutics, and Cook
especially mentions that they were in use; but the personal efforts of
the captain in the direction of general sanitary precautions were, we
know, exercised in one case, while we know nothing of the other.
After a month's stay at Tahiti and the Society Islands, where the crews
were much benefited by fresh provisions, the ships sailed for the
Friendly Islands, never visited since Tasrnan's time, and touched at Eoa
and Tongatabu, or, as Tasman had called them, Middleburg and Amsterdam.
These were finally left on October 7th for New Zealand, which was made on
the 21st, and from this day to November 2nd the time was spent in
fruitless endeavours to get into Cook's Strait. Gale succeeded gale--no
uncommon thing here--and in one of them the Adventure parted company
never again to rejoin. Cook anchored in Queen Charlotte's Sound on
November 2nd, and waited until the 25th for his consort in vain. Whilst
here they gained further and indisputable proof of the cannibalistic
tendencies of the Maoris, some of the natives eating human flesh before
them. Cook has been much blamed for permitting this scene, which took
place on board; but there had been so much disputing in England as to the
possibility of the fact, that he could not resist the opportunity of
putting it beyond a doubt.
It was, however, to be shortly proved in a much more horrible manner, for
the Adventure, which only arrived at Queen Charlotte's Sound after the
Resolution left, had a boat's crew attacked, overpowered, and eaten by
the natives. The circumstances were never wholly known, as not a man
escaped; but the cooked remains were found, the natives decamping as the
search-party approached.
Cook sailed south on November 25th, 1773, and was soon again battling
with the ice, into which he pushed as far as was safe with as much
hardihood as if he had still had the second ship with him. He gained the
latitude of 67 degrees south, and worked eastward, searching religiously
for land--which, needless to say, he never found--his ropes frozen, and
sails like, as he says, plates of metal. Whatever the feelings of others
on board were, Cook never flinched from every effort to get south,
penetrating in one place to 71 degrees south, where he was stopped by
dense pack, until he found himself nearly in the longitude of Tierra del
Fuego, when, satisfied that no Southern Continent existed in the Pacific,
he, on February 6th, steered north, to continue exploration in more
genial weather and more profitable latitudes. All this time there was no
scurvy, and very little sickness of any kind; an indisputable proof of
the untiring supervision Cook exercised over the health of his men. The
object of his voyage, so far as the Southern Pacific was concerned, was
now accomplished, and Cook might have rounded Cape Horn, and made for the
Cape of Good Hope, completing his tour of the world in southern
latitudes; but such was not his idea of his duty. His own nervous words
will explain his feelings best:--
"We undoubtedly might have reached the Cape of Good Hope in April, and so
have put an end to the expedition so far as related to the finding of a
continent, which indeed was the first object of the voyage; but for me at
this time to have quitted this Southern Pacific Ocean with a good ship
expressly sent out on discoveries, a healthy crew, and not in want either
of stores or provisions, would have betrayed not only a want of
perseverance, but of judgment, in supposing the South Pacific Ocean to be
so well explored that nothing remained to be done in it. This, however,
was not my opinion; for, although I had proved there was no continent but
what must lie far to the south, there remained, nevertheless, room for
very large islands in places wholly unexamined, and many of those which
were formerly discovered are but imperfectly explored, and their
situation as imperfectly known. I was, besides, of opinion that my
remaining in this sea some time longer would be productive of
improvements in navigation and geography, as well as other sciences."
Cook mentions that, on communicating his intentions to his officers, they
all heartily concurred; and he adds, "Under such circumstances it is
hardly necessary to say that the seamen were always obedient and alert,
and they were so far from wishing the voyage at an end that they rejoiced
at the prospect of its being prolonged another year." This, be it
remembered, without a prospect of news from home or contact with
civilisation, for Cook's design was to pass again through the breadth of
the Pacific searching for islands as far as Quiros' discovery of Espiritu
Santo, which lay due north of New Zealand, and then to return through the
tempestuous regions they were now quitting to Cape Horn. Perhaps the
charms of Tahiti reconciled them.
This design Cook triumphantly carried out; though shortly after leaving
southern latitudes he was so ill of what he describes as a bilious
cholic, that his life was despaired of. He first searched for, and
visited, Davis' discovery of Easter Island, where he examined and
described the wonderful colossal, though rude, statues there found. He
then went to the Marquesas, a group but little known, where, after the
usual attempt of the natives to appropriate sundry articles, and the
consequent necessity of firing upon them, peaceful relations were
established, and a brisk trade in much-wanted refreshments was set up.
This did not last long, however, as the market was spoiled by some red
feathers, obtained at the Friendly Islands, being given for a pig; after
which nothing would buy provisions but these same red feathers, and these
being scarce, trade ceased. Cook therefore sailed once more for Tahiti.
On his way he touched at some of the coral atolls of the innumerable
Paumotu Group, and arrived at Matavai on April 22nd, again with not a
sick man on board.