A Navigator for the Ages

Captain James Cook has insinuated himself into my consciousness during the past two years. While we wandered in Alaska, his name popped up in Anchorage and the coast south of that city. Cook Inlet, Turnagain Arm, and a dozen other names up in that remote part of the world highlighted the influence of Cook's voyages.

Then, we went to the end of the eastern part of the North American continent and Capt. Cook made his presence felt many times. He mapped the entire coast of Newfoundland and created charts that were so accurate they were used until just recently.

All of this created a hunger in me for more information about Cook. I remember learning about this great navigator back in school. It it was fairly scimpy in details. The easiest way was to visit Amazon.com and search for Cook biographies. There are a handful and I chose one by a rather stuffy Englishman, Richard Hough, who did a pretty thorough job.

Cook was born in Yorkshire, in the north of England. His father came from Scotland but crossed the border when he married. James took up the seafaring life aboard a coal-carrying boat that ranged up and down the east coast of England. He was essentially self-taught and he realized he wanted more than to be a coast wanderer.

Britain ruled the seas back then so he naturally joined the Royal Navy. It didn't take him long to make a mark with the Admiralty and the First Sea Lord ordered his captain to knock off the French in Quebec and Nova Scotia. That's where Cook began to latch on to the idea of charting the coast as well as the St. Laurence River. His charts are spectacularly detailed and accurate.

When he returned home, he took a wife, got her pregnant in time to be ordered off to sea in the HMS Endeavour for a circumnavigation of the world, via Cape Horn, Tahiti, New Zealand. He was ordered to find the southern continent which everyone thought was out there. He failed in finding Antarctica because there was just too much ice for him to push farther south than 70 degrees to find the mysterious land. But he discovered and charted the eastern edge of Australia. This voyage took more than two years and he kept his men free of the dreaded scurvy by requiring them to eat sauerkraut (vitamin C), along with fresh fruit as soon as he touched land like Tahiti or New Zealand.

The natives were a fairly tough bunch, of course, prone to eating their own. But the ladies were able and willing to meet the needs of the seamen when they, far from home, sought the favors of the chicks.
The girls had been infected by earlier French visitors to Tahiti, however, and the boys picked up a fair amount of the STDs of the time. Cook had had the ship's surgeon check all the men before they landed to be sure they would not infect the women. So there is an ironic justice there as the Brits moved in on the locals.

Cook returned home a hero, impregnated his wife again and the Admiralty sent him off on a much larger expedition. This one required that he chart the Pacific coast of North America after pushing as far south in the Pacific in yet another attempt to locate the southern continent. On his way to the land north of California, he happened to discover the Hawaiian Islands. He enjoyed those islands before moving north and east to chart the mainland all the way to the Bering Sea. He had hoped to find a passage that would either allow the ships to sail east across the top of North America, or west across the north of Russia. Can't get here from there, of course. But he surely kept trying.

Aboard the ship on this voyage was William Bligh, who was a master mariner in the sense that he often was used by Cook to locate channels and passages with a small sailboat where his large ship did not dare attempt to enter.

Bligh was a tough case even then and was pretty brutal with his crew – a sign of things to come when he returned years later as captain of the HMS Bounty.

On this third voyage, Cook seems to have gone through a fair large personality change. It is possible the endless thieving on the part of the natives throughout the Pacific ground him down (they were always stealing parts of the ship, hatchets, compasses, clothing. But it seems more likely there was a mental change caused by some vitamin shortage.

His temper flared too often, he turned to flogging which he had steered clear off in his earlier voyages. Anyway, when the Hawaiian natives stole some valuable material from his ship, he ordered them shot and when they swam out of range, he determined to take a party ashore and hold their king hostage.

It all ended badly when some of the Hawaiians (who generally seemed to believe he was the god Orono) decided to attack him. They hacked him to pieces on the rocky beach and then took his various parts and distributed them among the different villages and tribes.

It's a great, great story that does not end happily, obviously. His men negotiated with the king to retrieve as much of Cook as was possible and they gave him a decent burial at sea. Then they sailed their ships back to England – arriving four years after setting out.

Mrs. Cook had produced another kid in the meantime and lived on for more than 40 years.

His impact on cartography as well as discovery is for the ages.