tions xander which the average sailor slept and ate, he saw to it that 

 his men kept their quarters clean and their clothing dry. And he 

 compelled them — often against their will — to vary their diet with 

 fresh meat and vegetables. His ships' stores were always well 

 stocked with preserved soup and vegetables to eke out the salt 

 beef, weevily biscuits, and stinking water that were the sailor's 

 usual lot. Thus, not one of the Resolution's crew died of scurvy. 



Secondly, Cook made intensive use of recently developed 

 navigation instruments. Longitude had long been difficult to fix, 

 and as a result new discoveries were sometimes lost, but Cook took 

 advantage of two newly perfected methods of establishing longi- 

 tude : special nautical tables and a highly accurate chronometer. By 

 such means he proved that accurate fixes were possible. 



For a year after his return Cook lived ashore. His reputation was 

 now assured. He was presented to King George III, was given a 

 commission as post-captain, and was made a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society, one of the highest scientific honors of the eighteenth 

 century, as it is today. But a last adventure lay ahead for Cook. 



For centuries men had dreamed of finding a Northwest Passage, 

 a short cut from the Atlantic to the Pacific that would provide a 

 quick trade route to the East. Although all attempts to find such a 

 passage had failed, the British Admiralty was determined to try 

 again. Rumor had it that there was a through channel leading from 

 what is now British Columbia on the west coast of North America 

 to Hudson Bay, and that the channel might be easier to find from 

 a westward approach than from the east, although Drake had tried 

 and failed. So the Admiralty invited Cook to conduct a new search. 



Once again Cook flew his flag in the Resolution, accompanied 

 this time by the Discovery under the command of Captain Charles 

 Clerke. (The Resolution's master, incidentally, was the notorious 

 William Bligh, who was later to command the famous Bounty^ 

 Cook's instructions were twofold : he was to seek an entrance to the 

 Northwest Passage, and he was to stock some of Britain's new 

 dominions in the Pacific with livestock for the benefit of the natives 

 - an appropriate gift from George III, the Farmer King. 



On July 12, 1776, Cook sailed from Plymouth on his last voyage. 

 For eighteen months he cruised in southern waters, revisiting old 

 haunts in Tonga (the Friendly Islands) and Tahiti. On his north- 

 ward course he discovered the Hawaiian Islands - or, perhaps, 

 rediscovered them, since there is some reason for believing that 

 white men had visited them nearly two hundred years earlier. Cook 

 named them the Sandwich Islands after Lord Sandwich, the First 

 Lord of the Admiralty, and they were known by that name for a 

 long time. 



To the north of Hawaii, across more than a thousand miles of 

 desolate ocean, lies a narrow passage, only fifty-six miles across, 

 that separates Asia from North America. Gateway to the Arctic 

 Ocean, this strait had been discovered in 1728 by a Danish captain, 

 Vitus Bering, sailing under orders from Peter the Great of Russia. 

 Some years later Bering had explored part of the coast line of 

 Alaska. Cook now set out to fill in gaps in Bering's charts. 



After stopping to refit at Nootka Sound (on what was later 

 named Vancouver Island), the two ships sailed up the northwest 

 coast of America looking for the long-sought doorway to the 

 Atlantic. They failed to find it, of course. Instead, they rounded the 



This chronometer, used by Cook at sea, was 

 made by Kendall in 1 769. It is a copy of 

 Harrison's chronometer of an earlier date 



44 



