A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1Cook, James
History
A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1
Cook, James
Antarctica; Oceania -- Discovery and exploration -- Early works to 1800; Voyages around the world -- Early works to 1800
I know not how to account for the scurvy raging more in the one ship than
the other, unless it was owing to the crew of the Adventure being more
scorbutic when they arrived in New Zealand than we were, and to their
eating few or no vegetables while they lay in Queen Charlotte's Sound,
partly for want of knowing the right sorts, and partly because it was a new
diet, which alone was sufficient for seamen to reject it. To introduce any
new article of food among seamen, let it be ever so much for their good,
requires both the example and authority of a commander; without both, of
which it will be dropt before the people are sensible of the benefits
resulting from it. Were it necessary, I could name fifty instances in
support of this remark. Many of my people, officers as well seamen, at
first disliked celery, scurvy-grass, &c., being boiled in the peas and
wheat; and some refused to eat it. But, as this had no effect on my
conduct, this obstinate kind of prejudice by little and little wore off;
they began to like it as well as the others; and now, I believe, there was
hardly a man in the ship that did not attribute our being so free from the
scurvy, to the beer and vegetables we made use of at New Zealand. After
this I seldom found it necessary to order any of my people to gather
vegetables, whenever we came where any were to be got, and if scarce, happy
was he who could lay hold on them first. I appointed one of my seamen to be
cook of the Adventure, and wrote to Captain Furneaux, desiring him to make
use of every method in his power to stop the spreading of the disease
amongst his people, and proposing such as I thought might tend towards it.
But I afterwards found all this unnecessary, as every method had been used
they could think of.
1773 August
The wind continued in the N.W. quarter, and blew fresh at times, attended
with rain; with which we stood to the N.E. On the 1st of August, at noon,
we were in the latitude of 25 deg. 1', longitude 134 deg. 6' W., and had a great
hollow swell from N.W. The situation we were now in, was nearly the same
that Captain Carteret assigns for Pitcairn's Island, discovered by him in
1767. We therefore looked well out for it, but saw nothing. According to
the longitude in which he has placed it, we must have passed about fifteen
leagues to the west of it. But as this was uncertain, I did not think it
prudent, considering the situation of the Adventure's people, to lose any
time in looking for it. A sight of it would, however, have been of use in
verifying, or correcting, not only the longitude of this isle, but of the
others that Captain Carteret discovered in this neighbourhood; his
longitude not being confirmed, I think, by astronomical observations, and
therefore liable to errors, which he could have no method to correct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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