James Cook (\(1728\)–\(1779\)) - English navy, explorer, cartographer and discoverer, Fellow of the Royal Society and Captain of the Royal Navy. Led\(3\) expeditions to explore the oceans, all were around the world. During these expeditions he made a number of geographical discoveries.
First trip around the world J. Cook
Bark Endeavor
In \ (1769 \) the expedition barge Endeavor (Effort) left London in order to observe the passage of Venus through the Sun. Captain Cook was appointed its leader, who, together with the astronomer C. Green, was supposed to be engaged in research on the island of Tahiti. In January \ (1769 \) they rounded Cape Horn and reached the coast of Tahiti. Having landed astronomers on the island, Cook began to explore the archipelago and along the way discovered the Partnership Islands. Having set off in search of Novaya Zemlya, seen by Tasman in \(1642\), in October he approached the eastern shores of New Zealand. For more than three months, Cook sailed along its shores and made sure that these were two large islands separated by a strait (later named after him). The hostility of the locals did not allow him to penetrate deep into the islands.
Then he went to the shores of Australia. In \ (1770 \) he approached the unknown eastern coast of the Australian mainland (called New Holland at that time). By August of the same year, Cook reached its northern tip. He gave the name New South Wales to the entire east coast of the mainland, and declared Australia the property of England. Cook was the first to explore and map about \ (4 \) thousand km of its eastern coast and almost the entire (\ (2300 \) km) discovered by him Great Barrier Reef.
On the mainland, Cook saw strange animals with long legs and a strong tail. These animals moved by jumping. When Cook asked the locals what these animals were called, they replied “we don’t understand,” which sounded like “kangaro” in the Aboriginal language. And so the name appeared - kangaroo.
Cook passed through the Torres Strait to the island of Java and, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, \ (13 \) July \ (1771 \) returned home, having lost due to tropical fever\(31\) person. Thanks to the diet he developed, none of the team had scurvy. Cook's first circumnavigation of the world lasted a little over three years, after which he was awarded the rank of captain \ (I \) rank.
J. Cook's second round-the-world trip
During the first round-the-world expedition, Cook failed to find a large southern mainland south of Australia. To finally find out whether this mainland exists or not, the British government equipped a new expedition under the command of Captain Cook, consisting of two ships - "Resolution" ("Decision") and "Adventure" ("Adventure").
The ships left England in \ (1772 \) g. Having reached the Cape of Good Hope, they headed south. Soon it got colder, they began to meet floating ice, there was fog. Having met a continuous ice field, Cook was forced to turn east. After numerous attempts to break through to the south, Cook turned north. He came to the firm conviction that the vast land at the South Pole does not exist. This erroneous conclusion was refuted only in the \(XIX\) century. Russian navigators Bellingshausen and Lazarev.
"Resolution" and "Adventure" in the Gulf of Matavai (Tahiti). Painting. \(1776\)
Floating in the Pacific Ocean, Cook again visited the island of Tahiti, which is part of the Society (Partnership) archipelago, discovered many new islands, including New Caledonia. Cook's second voyage lasted \(3\) years and \(18\) days.
J. Cook's third round-the-world trip
Some time later, Cook accepted an offer to lead a new expedition, which was supposed to pass from Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic along the shores North America. In \ (1776 \) on the ship "Resolution" and the new ship "Discovery" ("Discovery"), he went on a third and last voyage.
For a long time ships sailed in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Several new islands were discovered there. Then Cook headed north. Soon the ships again noticed the land. They were unknown then Hawaiian Islands.
The islanders greeted the British friendly: they brought a lot of fruits, edible roots, drove pigs, helped the sailors pour barrels with fresh water and load them into boats. Scientists - members of the expedition - went deep into the islands for their research.
From the Hawaiian Islands, the ships headed east to the shores of America, and then went along them to the north. Coming out through the Bering Strait to the North Arctic Ocean, they stumbled upon solid floating ice. Cook decided to return to the Hawaiian Islands for the winter. This time, the British did not get along with the local population and turned the Hawaiians against them. In a fierce battle, Captain Cook was killed.
"The Death of Captain Cook". Painting by Sean Linehan
The travels of James Cook gave a lot of new things for the development of Earth science. He penetrated further than his predecessors into the southern latitudes. Scientists-naturalists took part in his expeditions, collecting a variety of scientific material about the nature and population of the numerous islands he discovered. His voyages are valuable for the development of geographical science in that they refined knowledge about the southern parts of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans.
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For a long time there were no stamps with images of travelers and their famous sailing ships. Today's story is about the second round-the-world voyage of James Cook on the sloop "Resolution" and his failed attempt discover Antarctica. As always, brands will help us in this. And the story of the first journey can be found.
Australian Antarctic Territories stamp, 1972 (Michel AQ 22, Scott AQ L22)
Second circumnavigation of the world by James Cook
In 1772, England equips another long-range geographical expedition v south seas and James Cook becomes its head again. The expedition this time consisted of two ships, Cook commanded the ship "Resolution" ("Resolution"), the captain of the second - "Adventure" ("Adventure") was Furneau.
On July 13, 1772, the ships left Plymouth. Having rounded the Cape of Good Hope, the ships headed southeast and on January 17, 1773 crossed the Antarctic Circle for the first time.
After 200 years, a commemorative stamp was issued on the island in honor of this event.
Norfolk Island stamp commemorating the first crossing of the Antarctic Circle. 1973, Mi:NF 132, Sn:NF 152 During the winter cold, Cook decided to explore the little-studied areas of the Pacific Ocean. Due to an outbreak of scurvy, the ships were forced to call at Tahiti, where an abundance of fruit made it possible to cure the entire crew of this scourge.
Resolution and Adventure in Tahiti. Hood. Francis Jukes Then the ships headed back to New Zealand and lost sight of each other. Cook waited for Furneaux in Charlotte Bay, but he didn't. And he moved south alone. Furneaux came to Charlotte Bay only a week later. And then a terrible event happened - eight crew members sent ashore for supplies were killed and eaten by the natives. The captain of the Adventure, stunned by this event, decides to return back to England.
The advance of the Resolution to the south was not easy. The route was constantly blocked by pack ice and icebergs. Cook finally comes to the conclusion that the southern mainland does not exist and leaves the polar waters.
Iceberg seen on January 9, 1773 Further, Cook sails to Easter Island and further to the Marquesas Islands and again to Tahiti. Describing an arc around the southern part of the ocean, the Resolution approached the Espiritu Santo Islands, which Cook renamed the New Hebrides. Then he moved west and in September 1774 opened big Island named New Caledonia.
New Caledonia stamp, 1926 Back Cook returned past New Zealand and Cape Horn. During this expedition, which lasted three years, Cook crossed the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans. Total length the route was 84 thousand km, that is, more than twice the length of the earth's equator.
Map showing the itinerary of the second voyage of James Cook (1772-1775), National maritime museum, London After returning, Cook received the rank of captain of the first rank and was elected a member of the Royal Geographical Society. Although this time Antarctica was not discovered, Cook's journey significantly enriched geographical science with new information about the southern part of the oceans.
The very next year, Cook organized a third expedition to find the Northern Passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic. But more on that in the next episode.
Portrait of James Cook, made after the completion of the second expedition. Nathaniel Dance, National Maritime Museum, London, UK "Resolution" - James Cook's ship
"Resolution" (Resolute), like the first ship of James Cook, a former collier.
Resolution was built at the Fishburne shipyards in Whitby in 1769 for Captain William Hammond, her first name was Drake. In 1771 it was purchased by the British Admiralty for £4151 especially for Cook's second expedition. Before sailing, the ship's hull was strengthened at the shipyard in Deptford. The best equipment of that time was installed on the ship - a chronometer, an azimuth compass, an ice anchor, a desalination plant.
resolution. Painter William Hodges, 1774 Specifications:
- type - sloop
- displacement - 462 tons
- deck length - 33.7 m
- keel length - 28.5 m
- width - 9.3 m
- crew - 110 people
- armament - 12 guns
Resolution in the ice. Painter William Hodges, 1774 After serving his captain faithfully on Cook's second and third expeditions, the Resolution was converted into an armed transport in 1780 and sent to the East Indies in March 1781. On June 9, 1782, the ship was captured by de Suffren's squadron. After the battle of Negapatam (July 6, 1782), the ship was sent to Manila, where it was supposed to replenish supplies, as well as recruit all the sailors there by force. On July 22, the ship set off and went missing.
"Resolution" on stamps
James Cook and his ships very often appeared on the stamps of the most different countries. I have already counted almost a hundred stamps from the Resolution, it's just not the easiest job to list them.
The first appearance of "Resolution" on stamps was most likely in 1920 in the same series, issued in small island states Oceania, which were part of the British Commonwealth - Aitutaki, Penrhyn, Niue and Rapotong. Issuing identical stamps for the colonies was quite common.
On January 17, 1773, the crew of Captain James Cook crossed the Antarctic Circle for the first time in history. His ship Resolution was the first ship ever to reach that latitude in the South. This was done during the second round-the-world trip of 1772-1775.
Cook's second expedition began in July 1772. It was then that the crew of the Resolution and Adventure ships sailed from England to Antarctica in search of the Great Southern Continent. There were many on board the ships that studied the southern latitudes.
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During the expedition, Captain Cook and his team faced many disappointments and dangers. Cook reports about them in the logbook. Namely, on December 11, 1772, the crew of the ship Resolution, seeing something big ahead, incorrectly assumed that ahead was the Southern Continent. In fact, it was just an iceberg.
By the end of that day, the ship was among the ice. It was in these ice and cold mists that James Cook lost sight of the second Adventure ship under the command of Tobias Furneau. Here is what Cook wrote in his diary about this: "Here we ran into ice, the ships separated in thick fog"
In May 1773, they met, as agreed, in Charlotte Bay in the Pacific Ocean off New Zealand, from where they again set off west.
James Cook wrote in his diary in January 1774: "At 4 o'clock in the morning in the south they noticed a dazzling white stripe, a harbinger of nearby ice fields. Soon, from the main mast, they saw a solid ice barrier stretching from east to west over an immense space."
When Cook saw the ice-covered land of Antarctica, he decided that it was just an ice barrier. Therefore, I did not take it for the continental coast, but decided that it was in the Pacific Ocean in the south big earth does not exist at all.
The second attempt to find the southern mainland still brought positive results. It was during this time that Cook discovered and mapped such islands as New Caledonia, the South Sandwich Islands, South Georgia in the south Atlantic Ocean.
Cook's achievement remains the discovery of Australia, an unknown continent where no European has ever set foot before. In total, Cook made three trips around the world.
In 1779, Cooke was killed by natives on the islands of Haiti. At first they took Cook for a certain deity and began to worship him. However, this did not stop them from stealing some things from Cook's ship. Then the captain got angry and took hostage the local king. Then the islanders took Cook prisoner. At the end of February 1779 he was killed. Subsequently, the team was provided with the head of the deceased. Cook's lower jaw was cut off. Body parts were distributed to shamans. According to local laws, this is how the tribe acted with the strongest warriors and rivals.
But why did the natives eat Cook? For what - it is not clear, the science is silent. It seems to me a very simple thing - they wanted to eat and ate Cook ...
V.S.Vysotsky
On July 11, 1776, Captain James Cook, the world-famous English navy sailor, traveler, explorer, cartographer, discoverer, who led three round-the-world expeditions of the British fleet, set off from Plymouth on his third (last) circumnavigation of the world. Killed in a collision with aborigines Hawaiian Islands.
James Cook
Captain James Cook (1728-1779) is one of the most revered figures in the history of the British Royal Navy. The son of a poor Scottish farmhand, at the age of eighteen he went to sea as a cabin boy to get rid of the hard work on the farm. The young man quickly mastered marine science, and after three years the owner of a small merchant ship offered him the position of captain, but Cook refused. On June 17, 1755, he signed up as a sailor in the Royal Navy and 8 days later was assigned to the 60-gun ship Eagle. The future navigator and traveler took an active part in the Seven Years' War, as a naval military specialist (master) participated in the blockade of the Bay of Biscay and the capture of Quebec. Cook was given the most important task: to furnish the fairway of the section of the St. Lawrence River so that British ships could pass to Quebec. I had to work at night, under fire from French artillery, repulsing night counterattacks, restoring the buoys that the French managed to destroy. Successfully completed work brought Cook an officer rank, enriching him with cartographic experience, and was also one of the main reasons why the Admiralty, when choosing the leader of a round-the-world expedition, settled on him.
Cook's round-the-world expeditions
Hundreds, if not thousands of books have been written about D. Cook's round-the-world travels, which greatly expanded the ideas of Europeans about the world around them. Many of the maps he compiled were unsurpassed in their accuracy and accuracy for many decades and served navigators until the second half of XIX century. Cook made a kind of revolution in navigation, having learned how to successfully deal with such a dangerous and widespread disease at that time as scurvy. A whole galaxy of famous English sailors, explorers, scientists, such as Joseph Banks, William Bly, George Vancouver and others took part in his expeditions.
Two round-the-world voyages under the leadership of Captain James Cook (in 1768-71 and 1772-75) were quite successful. The first expedition proved that New Zealand- these are two independent islands separated by a narrow strait (Cook Strait), and not part of an unknown mainland, as was previously believed. It was possible to put on the map several hundred miles of the east coast of Australia, until that time completely unexplored. During the second expedition, the strait between Australia and New Guinea was discovered, but the sailors failed to reach the coast of Antarctica. Members of Cook's expeditions made many discoveries in the field of zoology and botany, collected collections of biological specimens from Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.
The purpose of Cook's third expedition (1776-1779) was the discovery of the so-called Northwest Passage - a waterway that crosses the North American continent and connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and Australia.
For the expedition, the Admiralty allocated two ships to Cook: the flagship Resolution (displacement 462 tons, 32 guns), on which the captain made his second trip, and the Discovery with a displacement of 350 tons, which had 26 guns. The captain on the Resolution was Cook himself, on the Discovery - Charles Clerk, who participated in Cook's first two expeditions.
During Cook's third voyage around the world, the Hawaiian Islands and several hitherto unknown islands in Polynesia were discovered. Having passed the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean, Cook tried to go east along the coast of Alaska, but solid ice blocked the path of his ships. It was impossible to continue the road north, winter was approaching, so Cook turned the ships, intending to spend the winter in more southern latitudes.
On October 2, 1778, Cook reached the Aleutian Islands, where he met Russian industrialists who provided him with their map for study. The Russian map turned out to be significantly fuller maps Cook, it contained islands unknown to Cook, and the outlines of many lands, plotted by Cook only approximately, were displayed on it with a high degree of detail and accuracy. It is known that Cook redrawn this map and named the strait separating Asia and America after Bering.
Why did the natives eat Cook?
On November 26, 1778, the ships of the Cook squadron reached the Hawaiian Islands, but a suitable parking was found only on January 16, 1779. The inhabitants of the islands - the Hawaiians - concentrated around the ships in in large numbers. In his notes, Cook estimated their number at several thousand. Later it became known that the high interest and special attitude of the islanders to the expedition was explained by the fact that they mistook white people for their gods. locals they dragged from the ships of the Europeans everything that lay badly there, and often stole what lay well: tools, rigging and other things necessary for the expedition. Good relations, established at first between the members of the expedition and the Hawaiians, began to deteriorate rapidly. Every day, the number of thefts committed by the Hawaiians increased, and the skirmishes that arose due to attempts to recover the stolen became hotter. Detachments of armed islanders flocked to the parking lot of the ships.
Feeling that the situation was heating up, Cook left the bay on February 4, 1779. However, the storm that began soon caused serious damage to the Resolution's rigging, and on February 10 the ships were forced to return. There was no other anchorage nearby. The sails and parts of the rigging were brought ashore for repair, where it was increasingly difficult for travelers to protect their property. During the absence of ships, the number of armed islanders on the coast only increased. The natives were hostile. At night, they continued to commit theft, sailing in their canoes to the very ships. On February 13, the last pincers were stolen from the deck of the Resolution. The team's attempt to return them was unsuccessful and ended in an open clash.
The next day, February 14, a longboat was stolen from the Resolution. This finally pissed off the leader of the expedition. To return the stolen property, Cook decided to take Kalaniopu, one of the local leaders, as a hostage. Landing with a group of armed men, consisting of ten marines led by Lieutenant Phillips, he went to the leader's dwelling and invited him to the ship. Having accepted the offer, Kalaniopa followed the British, but at the very shore he suspected evil and refused to go further. In the meantime, several thousand Hawaiians had gathered on the shore, who surrounded Cook and his people, pushing them back to the water itself. A rumor spread among them that the British had killed several Hawaiians. In the diaries of Captain Clerk, one native is mentioned who was killed by Lieutenant Rickman's people shortly before the events described. These rumors, as well as Cook's not entirely unambiguous behavior, pushed the crowd to start hostilities. In the ensuing battle, Cook himself and four sailors died, the rest managed to retreat to the ship. There are several conflicting eyewitness accounts of those events, and it is difficult to judge from them what really happened. With a sufficient degree of certainty, we can only say that panic began among the British, the crew began to randomly retreat to the boats, and in this turmoil, Cook was killed by the Hawaiians (presumably with a blow to the back of the head with a spear).
Captain Clerk emphasizes in his diaries: if Cook had abandoned defiant behavior in the face of a crowd of thousands and had not started shooting Hawaiians, the accident could have been avoided. From the diaries of Captain Clerk:
“Considering the whole matter as a whole, I am firmly convinced that it would not have been carried to extremes by the natives if Captain Cook had not made an attempt to punish a man surrounded by a crowd of islanders, relying entirely on the fact that, if necessary, the soldiers of the Marine Corps could fire scatter the natives with muskets. Such an opinion was undoubtedly based on long experience with various Indian peoples in various parts of the world, but the unfortunate events of today have shown that in this case this opinion turned out to be erroneous. There is good reason to believe that the natives would not have gone so far if, unfortunately, Captain Cook had not fired at them: a few minutes before this they began to clear the way for the soldiers so that the latter could reach that place on the bank against which the boats stood (I have already mentioned this), thus giving Captain Cook the opportunity to get away from them.
According to Lieutenant Philips, a direct participant in the events, the Hawaiians were not going to prevent the return of the British to the ship, let alone attack them. The large number of the gathered crowd was explained by their concern for the fate of the king (not unreasonable, if we bear in mind the purpose for which Cook invited Kalaniop to the ship). And Phillips, like Captain Clerk, puts the blame for the tragic outcome entirely on Cook: outraged by the previous behavior of the natives, he was the first to shoot one of them.
After Cook's death, the post of expedition leader passed to the captain of the Discovery. The clerk tried to obtain the extradition of Cook's body peacefully. Failing, he ordered a military operation, during which the landing under the cover of cannons captured and burned to the ground the coastal settlements and drove the Hawaiians into the mountains. After that, the Hawaiians delivered to the Resolution a basket with ten pounds of meat and a human head without a lower jaw. It was completely impossible to identify this as the remains of Captain Cook, so the Clerk took their word for it. On February 22, 1779, Cook's remains were buried at sea. Captain Clerk died of tuberculosis, which he was ill with throughout the voyage. The ships returned to England on February 4, 1780.
The name of the great navigator James Cook is known to most of our compatriots only by the names on geographical map, yes to the song of V.S. Vysotsky "Why did the natives eat Cook?". In a playful way, the bard tried to beat several reasons for the death of a brave traveler:
Do not grab onto someone else's waist, Escaping from the arms of your girlfriends. Remember how the now deceased Cook sailed to the shores of Australia. As in a circle, sitting under an azalea, Ride from sunrise to dawn, Ate in this sunny Australia Friend to friend evil savages. But why did the natives eat Cook? For what? It is not clear, science is silent. It seems to me a very simple thing - they wanted to eat and ate Cook. There is an option that their leader Big Buka, Shouted that a very tasty cook on Cook's ship. The mistake came out, that's what science is silent about, They wanted a cook, but they ate Cook. And there was no trick or trick at all. They entered without knocking, almost without a sound, Launched a bamboo club, Bale right on the crown and there is no Cook. But there is, however, still the assumption that Cook was eaten out of great respect. That everyone was incited by a sorcerer, a cunning and wicked one. Atu, guys, grab Cook. Whoever eats it without salt and without onions, He will be strong, brave, kind, like Cook. Someone came across a stone, Threw a viper, and there is no Cook. And now the savages are wringing their hands, Breaking spears, breaking bows, Burning and throwing bamboo clubs. They worry that they ate Cook.
Apparently, the author of the song did not know the real details of the incident on February 14, 1779. Otherwise, the curious theft of ticks and the ill-fated longboat, which served as the main cause of the conflict between the islanders and the expedition leader, would not have been ignored, as well as the fact that James Cook did not die in Australia at all, but in the Hawaiian Islands.
Unlike the inhabitants of Fiji and most other peoples of Polynesia, the Hawaiians did not eat the meat of victims, and especially enemies, for food. During the solemn ceremony, only the left eye of the victim was usually offered to the presiding chief. The rest was cut into pieces and burned as a ritual sacrifice to the gods.
So, Cook's body, as it turned out, no one ate.
The captain of the Discovery, Charles Clerk, described the transfer of Cook's remains by the natives as follows:
“About eight in the morning, when it was still rather dark, we heard the swing of the oars. A canoe was approaching the ship. There were two people in the boat, and when they got on board, they immediately fell on their faces before us and, it seems, were terribly frightened by something. After much wailing and copious tears in connection with the loss of "Orono" - as the natives called Captain Cook - one of them told us that he had brought us parts of his body.
He handed us a small bundle from a piece of cloth, which he had previously held under his arm. It is difficult to convey the horror of all of us, holding in our hands a stump of a human body weighing nine or ten pounds. This is all that remains of Captain Cook, they explained to us. The rest, as it turned out, was cut into small pieces and burned; his head and all the bones, with the exception of the bones of the torso, now, according to them, belonged to the temple at Terreoboo. What we held in our hands was the share of the high priest Kaoo, who wanted to use this piece of meat for religious ceremonies. He said that he was handing it over to us as proof of his complete innocence in what happened and his sincere affection for us ... "
The name of the English navigator James Cook in the minds of most people is inextricably linked with Australia. Someone is sure that Cook is its discoverer, someone, recalling the humorous song of Vladimir Vysotsky, is sure of the sad connection between the local population and the death of Captain Cook. The beloved bard of the entire post-Soviet space, indeed, made a big mess, being right in only one thing - James Cook was killed by aborigines, but not Australian and not for the purpose of cannibalism.
By the time Captain Cook set out on his first voyage around the world (1767-1771), during which he passed between the east coast of Australia and the Great Barrier Reef, the Australian continent had already been partially marked on geographical and nautical charts. The western shores were roughly indicated and partially described, but, of course, there were still many blank spots, and all East Coast was completely unexplored.
Quest for Terra Incognito
Looking into history, the expression "Terra Incognita", or rather "Terra Australis Incognita" - the Unknown Southern Land, is recalled, as the medieval geographers of the Roman Empire called the part of the land, which, in their opinion, should be located somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. This hypothesis existed for quite a long time and was the cause of numerous marine explorations, not only by scientists and travelers, but also by adventurers from different countries suffering to get rich. In search of this mythical southern land, the islands of Oceania, Australia and New Zealand were discovered.
The first information about the seen outlines unknown land came from the Portuguese. It is known that they secretly searched for islands with gold and rare spices, in one of these voyages in 1522 the first landing on the coast of the northwestern coast of Australia was carried out. Although there is no reliable evidence, vintage cards of Portuguese origin, which have survived to this day, display part of the coast of the Great Australian Land.
Later, in 1605-1606, a Spanish expedition with captain Luis Vaes Torres in search of an unknown southern land, having discovered the New Hebrides archipelago, rounded the coast of New Guinea from the south and passed by a number of large islands, unable to land due to strong currents and numerous shoals. During this voyage, the Spanish navigators proved that New Guinea- this is an island, and became the first Europeans who passed through the strait, dangerous because of the coral reefs, separating it from Australia. For a long 150 years, the Spanish government managed to keep its discovery secret, until during the Seven Years' War, documents with maps fell into the hands of the British.
At the same time, in 1606, the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon landed on Australia's northernmost point, the Cape York Peninsula. The discovered lands were named New Holland and declared possessions of the Netherlands. Following the coast to the south, in one of the bays, the team first met with Australian Aborigines. The expedition cartographer mapped detailed picture discovered coast and some nearby islands.
In 1616, the Dutchman Dirk Hartog discovered the western coast of Australia and walked along the coast for about 300 km. In 1619, the coast was explored off modern Perth and further north. In subsequent years, Dutch ships regularly visited the shores of the new land they discovered, described and mapped bays and gulfs, replenished drinking water supplies on their ships, but all the time noted the inhospitability and incorporeality of the coasts of Australia. Once a whole tragedy broke out when one of the ships, following with passengers to the island of Java, was severely damaged during a storm, and about 300 surviving people were able to escape on one of the islands. Not finding enough water and food there, the captain sailed on a boat to the coast of Australia, walked along 250 km, but could not find drinking water. He had to sail for help to the island of Java, and when he returned to those who remained on the island, more than half of the survivors of the shipwreck were killed by several rebellious sailors who wanted to leave the island and become pirates. This story has become the basis of many books and plays.
The Secret Mission of the British Kingdom
But back to James Cook and his contribution to the discovery of Australia. The British Admiralty, equipping an expedition to the Southern Hemisphere to the island of Tahiti, officially announced its goal as astronomical observations of the movement of Venus, while in secret orders the primary task of Captain Cook was to move south and find the southern mainland. The British Kingdom urgently needed new colonies. After completing an official assignment, Cook headed for New Zealand, discovered a previously unknown strait between its islands, which was called the Cook Strait, and in 1770 discovered the eastern coast of Australia. Arriving at a parking lot in one of the bays of the coast, the botanists who were part of the expedition discovered and described many unknown and unusual plants, on this occasion the bay was named Botanical.
Moving to the northwest and finding himself sandwiched between the coast of Australia and a huge ridge of coral reefs that did not allow access to open ocean, James Cook discovered the strait between Australia and New Guinea, until then considered part of the Australian land. The main most important task of the leadership, the discovery of new lands of the elusive Southern continent, was never completed. I must say that neither in the second nor in the third round-the-world voyage of Captain Cook did he manage to find Antarctica. This was done in 1820 by Russian navigators Mikhail Lazorev and Thaddeus Bellingshausen.
Death of James Cook
In 1776, Great Britain equipped a third expedition, led by Captain James Cook, whose task was to open a passage through North America connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. During this voyage, a group of new islands was discovered, which he called the Sandwich Islands, and later the name Hawaiian was assigned to them. There was a first acquaintance with the local population, an exchange of offerings and gifts. When Cook went ashore, the natives prostrated themselves, showed increased signs of respect and attention, as if he were one of their gods.
After a short rest, the team moved to the shores of North America to continue research on the instructions of the Admiralty, and then returned to Hawaii again for repairs, rest and replenishment of supplies. It should be noted that in those days Cook was one of the rare European explorers of new lands who sought to establish relations with the natives through negotiations, the exchange of goods and the establishment of communication. While most of the other navigators without ceremony slaughtered entire villages if they were refused to supply food supplies to ships for free.
As in his past trips, the captain filled his ships with gifts and goods for exchange, was determined to establish friendly communication with the indigenous population. But this time everything went differently. After a short stay to repair ships on one of the islands, the natives, who at first joyfully met the Europeans, began to change their attitude towards them. Conflicts and misunderstandings, theft of things and tools began. James Cook decided to urgently complete the repairs and leave the islands.
Sailing from Hawaii, the team got into a storm, the ship was badly damaged and was forced to return. But they were not at all welcome, skirmishes and clashes continued. During the next conflict, the British were forced to use weapons, in the ensuing turmoil, Cook was killed with a spear and his body was taken deep into the island.
Last honors to the captain
The legends and numerous stories that arose after the death of the great navigator are undoubtedly based on information about the cruelty and bloodthirstiness of the natives of Oceania, the Pacific Islands and other corners of the earth remote from civilization. Many tribes of warm latitudes practiced cannibalism, obeying their culture and religion. In the Hawaiian Islands, religion was based on the worship of wildlife and the spirits of ancestors, the natives revered many gods. There were complex rites of worship and strict religious rules, and human sacrifices were performed. The second captain of the expedition, after unsuccessful negotiations to return Cook's body back to the ship, carried out a punitive operation, destroying coastal settlements. The captain's body was returned in separate fragments, the severed head was without a jaw. What exactly the natives wanted to do - eat their enemy or use his remains in rituals according to their laws, one can only guess. The remaining members of the expedition buried the great traveler in the waters of the bay, which was later called sacred.
