THE WORLD AS DEPICTED BY MAP-MAKERS BEFORE CAPTAIN COOK'S FIRST VOYAGE TO "THE GREAT SOUTH SEA" This chart, reproduced from Moll's Atlas, published in London about the time of Cook's first voyage, emphasizes especially how little was then known of the west coast of North America, a region which Cook explored on his third voyage (see, also, map, page 87). Captain James Cook, Foremost British Navigator, Expanded the Great Sea to Correct Proportions and Won for Albion an Insular Empire by Peaceful Exploration and Scientific Study BY J. R. HILDEBRAND AUTHOR OF "THE GEOGRAPHY OF GAMES," "THE SOURCES OF WASHINGTON'S CHARM," "MAN'S PROGRESS IN CONQUERING THE AIR," ETC., IN THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE O NE can picture him coming up to Whitby a tall, angular lad, his cheeks ruddy after his crosscountry tramp in the sea air from Staithes. What would he do first-inflamed with this crazy idea of going to sea, so crazy that, failing to explain it satisfactorily to his employer, he ran away-what would he do, but go to the docks and mingle with the sailors? What a town and what sights for a boy who had felt the call of the sea! Down a narrow street, evil-smelling, the landsman would say, between red-roofed, close-built houses, past ship chandlers with nets and blocks and tackle and sails, he trudged to the water front. There, riding at anchor, were the whalers and colliers and merchantmen; this one bound for Bremen with iron and stone; that one for Danzig, or maybe even St. Petersburg, with jet or alum; a third, the one with the stern sails, just in from Penzance. The fishermen are lolling about, pipes in mouths, indolent and slouching, until midnight galvanizes them into action. Thereafter the raging storms of the German Ocean and its icy breath alternately bedevil and benumb them. A HABERDASHER'S CLERK YEARNS FOR The boy, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, pack still on shoulder, was a target for this loutish crew. "Name, son?" "James Cook, sir." Then perhaps a hesitating inquiry about a berth on some ship, and counterquestions about age, experience, his people; why he wanted to sign up for such a dog's life, anyway. He was 18. His father was a day laborer. Mistress Walker, at Marton, had taught him his letters. He had helped on the farm; then he had been a clerk in a grocery and haberdashery back at Staithes. Of course they laughed a hearty, derisive, deep-lunged roar. "He dug potatoes, and he sold ribbons and reefers and gingerbread, and he wants to ship aboard. the first boat out! Well, I'll be !" And so on. NEW-WORLD DISCOVERY CULMINATES Every boy yearns to see the world; but it is likely that no other boy has grown up to fulfill that yearning so completely as Captain James Cook, R. N., the circumnavigator. School children study the conquests of Alexander and Napoleon, but they come upon surprisingly little about the bloodless, enduring victories of Magellan, Marco Polo, Vasco da Gama, and Cook. One widely discussed list of men who influenced the course of world history sent readers scurrying to reference books to identify Asoka, but omitted mention of Columbus. If only for the strange, unheard-of things he saw-people who played flutes with their nostrils, curious birds of amazing colors, canoes as big as the vessel he commanded, savages who roasted dogs in crude fireless cookers, calendars that went by the moon, an animal that a sailor at first took for the devil (it was the first kangaroo seen by a white man)—these and other queer, new spectacles make Cook's voyages fascinating as narratives. Photograph by J. R. Hildebrand WHITBY, WHERE JAMES COOK FIRST SAILED AS A SHIP'S BOY The quaint old town is famous for its seamen, its jet, and its staunch ships. It meanders along the ravine where the Esk River flows between tall cliffs into the North Sea, and its cross-streets, therefore, are, for the most part, stairways. The epic voyages of New World discovery that began with Columbus culminated when Cook put Australia and New Zealand on the maps, took off the mythical southern continent, found numerous island oases in the hitherto single-track Pacific, sailed farthest north and farthest south up to his time, and extended the cruising radius of future navigators immeasurably by his conquest of scurvy. Cook not only was a discoverer, he was truly an explorer in surveying and mapping what he found and observing what he saw. To that he added the third, and immortal, distinction of finding a way to conserve the health of sailors, and thus enabled his countrymen to travel again the paths he marked out. We, with New York within 34 hours of San Francisco by airplane mail, or within instant audible reach by a twist of a radio dial, find it hard to believe that Cook was opening up the Pacific many years after the Thirteen Colonies had been settled, and that this Englishman was nosing his way along the uncharted shores of what now are Oregon and Washington State and British Columbia and Alaska while the Colonies were fighting their War of Independence. THE MAP OF THE And we add another mite to our respect for the many-sided Benjamin Franklin, who, at the court of Louis XVI, suggested that our Revolutionary ally refrain from molesting Cook and other Voyagers whose business on the high seas concerned with was exploration, not war. A map of the Pacific in 1768, the year that Cook first set sail for the South Seas. showed very few of the numerous island groups we know, and much of what it did show was wrong (see pp. 84 and 87). If it seems strange that only a century and a half ago most of the islands that dot the Pacific were unheard of in Europe, consider that this great water body covers about one-third the surface of the globe; its area is greater than all the continents combined; its width at the Equator is nearly half the earth's circumference and on one occasion Cook sailed for THE ROUTES OF CAPTAIN COOK'S THREE VOYAGES THROUGH THE GREAT SOUTH SEA Each of the famous English geographer's expeditions filled in blank places on the Pacific map or corrected gross errors of current atlas-making. On his first voyage he mapped the Society Islands, showed New Zealand to be two islands, and "amputated" Australia, which hitherto was considered a peninsula of New Guinea. On his second voyage he circumnavigated the Southern Hemisphere between the 40th and 67th parallels, dipping nearer the South Pole than any previous navigator, and explored New Caledonia and South Georgia. The important result of this voyage was the elimination of the great southern continent geographers believed projected northward between Africa and South America. Cook reported, however, that he thought a land body existed in the region of the South Pole. On his third voyage Cook discovered the archipelago named for him, explored the Hawaiian group, and mapped the western shores of North America from what now is Oregon to northernmost Alaska. He cruised in the Bering Sea and reported the existence of the Aleutians. Returning from these discoveries, he met his death in Hawaii. 117 days without sighting land. Small wonder that the Spaniards in crossing it hugged the parallel of 13° north as they would have clung to a life line, thus insuring their touching the Ladrones on their 80-day voyage to the Philippines. Headlands all over the Pacific are the headlines of Cook's geographical explorations. COOK OBTAINS "BOOK LEARNING" BETWEEN VOYAGES Cook's private life is almost as blank as Shakespeare's. At Whitby he had FUNCHAL, MADEIRA ISLANDS, WHERE COOK PROVISIONED HIS SHIPS Photograph from C. W. Wright In beginning his first voyage Cook foresaw that his cruising radius depended on the health of his crew, especially in the prevention of scurvy. He had confidence in the value of onions as an antiscorbutic, so he purchased generous quantities of this vegetable at Funchal and served them regularly as long as the supply lasted, much to the disgust of his crew. |