Captain Cook – Part 2

By Jerry Hayes

In the quest for the 'missing continent', Resolution crossed the Antarctic circle (66°33'39") three times! Up until the first time on  January  17, 1773, it had never been done once. On December 21, 1774 Cook reached 70°10' south latitude when stopped by pack ice. (On the other end of the globe, 70°10' 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'.