Captain Cook’s Antarctic voyage commemorated

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33095, 9 December 1972, Page 11

Captain Cook’s Antarctic voyage commemorated

(By

KENNETH ANTHONY)

Probably no one man — not even Columbus — has ever added more to our knowledge of the world than Captain James Cook. Today he is best remem-

bered for his epoch-making discoveries in Australia and New Zealand and in the South Sea islands, and many interesting stamps can be found to illustrate his voyages in those parts. But a new stamp from the Australian Antarctic Territory, illustrated here, is rather different. It reflects what was perhaps Cook’s greatest achievement, and yet one which is not nearly so well-known. For Cook was the first navigator to venture into the Antarctic

regions. It was in January, 1773, that his ship, the Resolution, became the first vessel to cross the Antarctic Circle — a feat never even attempted before. His object on this occasion was not discovery

as such, but rather to prove that nothing was there to be discovered — to dispel forever the myth of a. great continent stretching across the southern parts of the globe. » In the Resolution, a converted collier of only 462 tons. Cook and his crew faced gales, fog and heavy seas, sailing through pack ice and dodging icebergs, far aWay from any possible aid in the event of trouble. Although they penetrated hundreds of miles further south than anyone had ever sailed before, they did not set eyes on Antarctica itself. But Cook suspected that it must exist, a land of everlasting ice and snow. He had achieved his objective: to establish, once and for all, that there was no great land mass in the south suitable for settlement or exploitation by rival powers of the eighteenth century. The new stamp shows a chart of this historic voyage and a picture of the Resolution, an unusual philatelic tribute to James Cook, the first explorer in the Antarctic. The date on the stamp, 1772, is not an error. That was the year in which the great voyage began.