i84 CAPTAIN COOK 



and Europe with the countries of the Far East, 

 such as China and Japan, would be greatly 

 facilitated. 



A British Act of Parliament of 1745 promised 

 an award of £20,000 to any vessel belonging to a 

 subject of the King of England who should dis- 

 cover this passage. Ships of the Royal Navy 

 could not claim the prize. This Act of Parlia- 

 ment stipulated, besides, that the passage must 

 be found in Hudson's Bay. To remedy the in- 

 justice of the second clause and the limitations 

 of the third. Parliament passed a new Act in 

 1776, providing that '4f any vessel, belonging 

 to a subject of His Majesty or His Majesty him- 

 self, found a communication between the Atlan- 

 tic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, in any direction, 

 or parallel of the Northern Hemisphere below 

 52° of latitude, the owners of the vessel, if they 

 were subjects of the King of England, or the 

 captain, officers and crew, if the vessel were one 

 of His Majesty's Ships, should receive, as a re- 

 ward for this discovery, the sum of £20,000." 



Until then all the expeditions which had been 

 undertaken with the object of finding this pas- 

 sage on the eastern coast of North America had 

 completely failed. Frobisher, in the sixteenth 

 century, James, Fox and Wood in the seven- 

 teenth, and in the middle of the eighteenth Cap- 

 tains Middleton, Smith, Moore and Lord Mul- 



