THE GLORIOUS NAVIGATOR: CAPTAIN COOK’S VOYAGES.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20330, 13 June 1934, Page 6

THE GLORIOUS NAVIGATOR: CAPTAIN COOK’S VOYAGES.

“Ran Away to Sea” Fable Dispelled: Mistaken for God Lono by Hawaiians.

“Fables of the kind that cling to famous men'.’’ is the way in which Mr Lindsay Buick dismisses the reasons commonly given for Captain James Cook's running away to sea as a lad. Mr Buick recently gave an address in Wellington on the famous navigator. He said he liked to think of Cook as a youth of eighteen, with the spirit of adventure so strong upon him. the lure of the life so potent within him. that, uninfluenced by any extraneous circumstances, he went to sea because he wanted to go to sea.

r |’HE BIRTH OF COOK at Marton, in 1728, in a cottage of the type known as a “ clay biggin,” his early years there, and at Ay ton, were sketched by Mr Bui.'k As a boy, he said. Cook showed marked aptitude for figures, symptomatic of his later proficiency in mathematics. At the age of 17 he left home and entered tl e employ of a Mr Saunderston, a storekeeper at Staithes.

He then journeyed to Whitby, and obtained an indenture with John Walker, a Quaker shipowner of that town, and rose rapidly in his service until he decided to leave the Mercantile Marine and join the Navy. At this period the Navy was notoriously undermanned, and Cook saw that as an eligible seaman he would have difficulty in evading the press-gang, and that as an efficient seaman the prospects of promotion were brighter in the Navy, where anything was possible in war-time. He, therefore, did not wait for the press-gang, but volunteered for the King's service, which he entered as a master’s mate. His Opportunity. The struggle that began in 1758 between Britain and France for the possession ct Canadian colonies was Cook’s opportunity. He went to the St Lawrence River in H.M.S. Pembroke, and was given charge of the surveying and navigation problems of those difficult waters. Returning to England, he married Elizabeth Batts, “of ye parish of Barking in ye County of Essex ” Domestic life did riot hold him long, for soon he was off to survey the bleak coasts of Newfoundland, and it was from this work that he was called to take command of the Endeavour on her great voyage of discovery. Astronomers had predicted that the planet Venus would pass across the sun’s disc during June of 1769. An observation taken frpm an island in the South Seas was suggested, and the King sanctioned the ptovi s'on by the Navy of a vessel for the purpose. The Immortal Endeavour. For the purposes cf the expedition, a “ cat-built ” barque of 368 tons was secured, and she became the immortal Endeaxour. Cook was raised to the rank cf lieutenant, and on July 26, 1768. he sailed from Pivmouth with a complement of 97 people “to observe the transit of Venus across the sun’s disc, and then to prosecute the design of making discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean.”

Part of this “design” was the finding of a gr£at southern continent, which Alexander Dalrymple maintained must exist in the South Sea, as a counterbalancing influence to the vast land areas of the Northern Hemisphere. The Endeavour arrived at Tahiti in April, and on the due date a

successful observation of the transit of Venus was made. Then began the voyage across the Pacific in search of new lands, most of the island groups being visited and named before New Zealand was sighted on October 7, 1769. During the next six months Cook circumnavigated these islands,

charted their coasts, and, according to Admiral Wharton, “ never before had a coastline been so well laid down by a first explorer.” After taking possession of New Zealand, Cook sailed for Australia, and there he surveyed 2000 miles of its eastern coast. His Second Voyage. Cook made two further voyages in the interests of science, the second to again probe for the Great Southern Continent.. This involved the traversing of the semifrezen seas of the Far South, where for munths gales, fogs and intense cold were constant companions of the ship's company, but they found no continent where they were told they would find it. The third voyage commenced in July, 1776, and made memorable by Cook’s death, was organised for quite a different purpose—the finding of a northern passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic. It was not intended to send Cook, but no other suitable leader being available he volunteered for the service. The chief geographical find on this voyage was the discovery of the Hawaiian Islands, or. as Cook called them, the Sandwich Islands. Both the Asiatic and American coasts were surveyed as far as a point on the edge of the Arctic Sea, which Cook called Cape North. He then turned south to winter m a warmer climate, and so came back to the Hawaiian Islands Here he was mistaken by the native people for their expected god Lono, and his crew as a retinue of immortals. While they remained there they were treated with the utmost hospitality, but after their departure it seems obvious that the natives had discovered their mistake, and when an iccident to a mast of the Resolution brought the ships back within a few days they faced a pe jpie of a totally different temper. Natives Were Quarrelsome.

They were quarrelsome, they interfered with the work of the ships, and pilfering was going on. The crisis came when a boat belonging to the Discovery was stolen Cook’ went ashore on February 14, 1779, to endeavour to induce the king to come on board as a hostage for the return of the boat, and it was while so engaged that there arose a sudden altercation, during which he was killed while endeavouring to prevent his marines from firing on the natives.

Few men. said Mr Buick, had inspired so copious and enthusiastic a literature as that which centred round Captain Cook Throughout the pages of that literature many tributes had been paid to his virtues, but no better summation of the man, no more fitting epitaph, has been composed than that which has come from the pen of Dr Reinhold Forster, the naturalist of the Resolution, who, in the course of his panegyric on this “ truly glorious and justly admired navigator,” declared: “We must acknowledge him to have been one of the greatest men of his age. and that reason justifies the tear which friendship pays his memory.”