Captain Cook

By Jerry Hayes

Captain Cook figures prominently in our Victorian consciousness. Cook Street runs all through the city and forms the border of our downtown. His statue stands at its core, in front of the Empress, presiding over the inner harbour. I am told that there was once a Captain Cook Bakery among the shops of antique row. Further upisland, the Cook Channel stretches north from Nootka Sound and Cape Cook caps the end of the Brooks Peninsula. Indeed, our island is named after someone who apprenticed under Cook: George Vancouver.

The name Cook resounds around the whole Pacific basin from the Cook Inlet in Alaska to Cook Bay at the southern tip of Chile. The Cook Islands are one of the many island groups discovered by Captain Cook. The Cook Straight lies between the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The country's highest peak, Mount Cook, stands in the South Island.

It is ironic that, although there are literally shelves full of books detailing his exploits, there is little known about the private person. He was a straightforward, "get the job done" type with few foibles. The only quirk that comes down to us is that he would eat almost anything and pronounce it palatable. Clearly he had strength of character and intelligence in abundance, which enabled him to rise from a humble Yorkshire farm lad to captain in the Queen's navy. Something of his personal life can be glimpsed from his wife, Elizabeth, who must have been long-suffering and resourceful given the extraordinary amount of time that he was absent. In the 17 years of their marriage, they were together an accumulated four years. Although they had six children, Elizabeth survived them all.

Truly, this man is understood from his deeds. And what incomparable deeds they were. Rarely has history recorded the equal of Cook's three great voyages of discovery, which were begun when he was forty years old. He disposed of old theories and brought back to Europe far-reaching and astonishing knowledge of geography, botany and zoology. The breadth of Cook's observations forever changed our view of the earth.

On August 26, 1768, in command of HMS Endeavour, Lieutenant James Cook set out for the island of Tahiti from Plymouth, England. Two members of the Royal Society were among the ship's company. An artist was brought along to record their findings. There was also an astronomer, a draughtsman and a secretary. All together nearly 100 souls along with scientific instruments and provisions necessary for a two year voyage were crammed into a ship 97 feet long and 28 feet wide. Walking at a leisurely pace, one can cover 97 feet in less than 30 seconds. The living area was about the same as that of a good sized suburban home.

The immediate purpose of the voyage was to record the passage of the planet Venus across the sun. By coordinating observations of this rare event from a number of points on the earth, the Royal Society hoped to calculate distances within the solar system. Point Venus on the island of Tahiti marks the spot where the observation was made on June 3, 1769. Endeavour remained six weeks in the Society Islands, now part of French Polynesia, then moved on to New Zealand to do a complete charting.

Certainly, Cook's voyages had a profound effect on the peoples of the Pacific. Isolated as they were, the cultures that Cook encountered were fragile; isolated for centuries, they had developed no defence mechanisms.  Before the arrival of Cook and his crew, the life in Tahiti was idyllic, but Cook, and others, changed it irrevocably. The innocent sexuality of the Tahitians was exploited and perverted. By the prevailing standards, he was sensitive to the cultures that he encountered. Indeed, he regretted the changes that would surely follow the incursions of Europeans.

Among the other achievements of the first voyage was the discovery of the east coast of Australia. Botany Bay, not far from Sydney, is evidence of the scientific interest in flora and fauna. Imagine the excitement of the scientists at the exotic animals and plants that were discovered in abundance. Even today kangaroos are a curiosity. Perhaps, these wonders were compensation for the hardship and perils of the voyage.

The voyage up the east coast of Australia illustrates the dangers faced by Cook and his companions. The Great Barrier Reef is one of the wonders of the world, but for a wooden sailing ship without charts, it is a terrifying labyrinth. On June 11, 1770, Endeavour became impaled on a rock during high tide. It was only by large measures of seamanship, courage and sheer luck that she escaped: a chunk of coral lodged in the hull staunched the flow of water just long enough for the ship to get to shore.

On September 11, the severely damaged ship limped into Batavia, now Jakarta, to be repaired. The repairs were made, but the crew suffered grievously and a number perished. By careful attention to diet, Cook had never lost a crewman to scurvy, that scourge of long voyages in the 18^th century. However, Batavia was a 'stinking hellhole' which was ravaged by malaria and dysentery to the point that it was considered fortunate that he lost less than half of his crew. Endeavour reached home on July 12, 1771, after nearly two years' voyage.

Cook's greatest achievement and one of the great feats of human endeavour was his second voyage.  On July 13, 1772, Cook sailed out of Plymouth on HMS Resolution accompanied by HMS Adventure. The primary mission was to search for the great southern continent whose existence had been postulated from ancient times. The theory was that the symmetry of the universe demanded a counterpart to the great northern land masses. 

In the quest for the 'missing continent', Resolution crossed the Antarctic circle () three times! Up until the first time on  January  17, 1773, it had never been done once. On December 21, 1774 Cook reached south latitude when stopped by pack ice. (On the other end of the globe,  runs through the Beaufort Sea, Baffin Bay and Victoria Island.) He would have discovered the continent of Antarctica if he had had the good fortune to choose the right longitudes for these probes below the Antarctic Circle. As it was, with this exploration, plus a passage across the South Atlantic at high latitude, he laid to rest the theory of the great temperate southern continent.

In order to comprehend the magnitude of the achievement, it is important to remember that he was in a small wooden ship in uncharted waters at unimaginable distances from any rescue. Because of his skill with the navigational instruments available in the 18^th century, the sextant, the chronometer and sounding lines, he knew precisely where he was, but he could not know the dangers that lay ahead. It is a tribute to his leadership that the crew members caught the spirit of exploration, which carried them through the hardships of the voyage on the southern oceans. Imagine the cold and terror of storms below the Antarctic circle where the subzero temperature turned ropes into steel wires.

On the second voyage, Cook explored a wide range of island groups in the Pacific. He discovered Huahine, Raitea both in Society Islands.  He glimpsed the Cook Islands. He discovered the Friendly Islands, now called the Tonga Islands. He found the Cyclades, 80 islands stretching over 500 miles and named them the New Hebrides. At one point, Resolution had been at sea for 117 days when it arrived for rest and replenishment at Tahiti. The crew had certainly earned the earthly and earthy delights they had learned to expect there.

The third voyage was anticlimactic, but tragic. The main purpose was to find a northwest passage through the Arctic. On June 25, 1776, Cook, recently elevated to Post Captain, set sail on HMS Resolution, now accompanied by HMS Discovery. Cook sailed the eastern Pacific up to the Bering Straight. On the way, he surveyed the West Coast, putting in at Nootka Sound at one point. He failed to find the passage to the eastern Arctic from the Strait, which is today still only a possibility, even after a century of global warming.

On the way to the North, he discovered the Hawaiian Islands, which he named the Sandwich Islands. This discovery showed the wide dispersal of the Polynesians. These islands are the farthest corner of the area occupied by Polynesian people whose domain stretched over an immense triangle whose other apexes were New Zealand and Easter Island.

On this last voyage, there is evidence that the long and arduous work had taken its toll. For example, there were lapses in his previous even temper and good judgement. Resolution stopped at the Hawaiian Islands on the way back from Alaska, where, on February 14, 1779, Captain Cook was killed in a minor and completely unnecessary skirmish with the natives.

Some years ago, as I was reading about Cook's adventures, I made a discovery. The narrow escapes from intense peril and frequent encounters with exotic cultures brought on a feeling of déjà vu. On Eua in the Tonga islands he found a high level of civilization. He found the people of the Marquesas to be especially handsome and those of Nuie to be savage. Suddenly, it came to me: the adventures in each of the island groups were like the weekly episodes of Star Trek that I loved as an original trekkie. Could the voyages of Cook have been the model for Star Trek? The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became. Surely, the names Captain James Cook of HMS Endeavour and Captain James Kirk of the star ship Enterprise could not be accidental similarities. Other pieces fell into place. Both Cook and Kirk were farm boys. Star Trek's statement of purpose, 'To boldly go where no man has gone before' is not very different from Cook's:  'Not only to go farther than anyone had done before but as far as it was possible for a man to go.' The Scottish engineer is a British tradition, after all. Perhaps one of Cook's crew was a Venetian with a name something like Spoccherini, who had long pointed ears and a decidedly green cast to his skin?

Keep on trekkin'.