"Having been entangled among Islands and Shoals more or less ever since the 26th May, in which time we have sailed 360 leagues by the Lead, without ever having a Leadsman out of the chains, when the ship was under sail, a Circumstance that perhaps never happened to any ship before, and yet it was here absolutely necessary."
But their satisfaction in getting outside was diminished when it was found that the increased working of the ship's timbers necessitated the continual use of one pump.
Cook was afraid that being forced outside the Barrier Reef he would be unable to put to the proof the opinion he had formed that New Guinea and New Holland were not joined. He did not know till after his return to England, that the point had already been settled in 1606, by Louis Vaez de Torres, and he readily yields the honour of the discovery in the Introduction to his Second Voyage. The log of Torres's voyage was lost for many years, and was found at Manilla, when that place was taken by Admiral Cornish in 1762. Cook had with him a copy of De Brye's Voyages, published in 1756, which contained three charts that he found to be "tolerably good" with regard to New Guinea, and he evidently formed the opinion that both the Spaniards and the Dutch had circumnavigated that island.
"I always understood, before I had a sight of these maps, that it was unknown whether or no New Holland and New Guinea was one continued land, and so it is said in the very History of Voyages these maps are bound up in. However, we have now put this wholly out of dispute; but as I believe it was known before, but not publickly, I claim no other merit than the clearing up of a doubtful point."
With this question of New Guinea and New Holland in view, he again made to the west, sighting the Barrier again on 15th August, and on the following morning, the wind having changed in the night, the breakers were heard very distinctly. The lead gave no bottom at 140 fathoms, but at daybreak the reef was not a mile away, and they found themselves in a dead calm, rapidly drifting with the current towards the breakers. The yawl and long-boat were got out, the pinnace being under repair, and the sweeps were used from the gun-room ports. By six o'clock she was heading north again, but:
"not above 80 or 100 yards from the breakers. The same sea that washed the side of the ship rose in a breaker prodigiously high the very next time it did rise, so that between us and destruction was only a dismal valley, the breadth of one wave, and even now no ground could be felt with 120 fathoms."
A PERILOUS POSITION.
The carpenter had by this time fastened a temporary streak on the pinnace, and it was sent off to assist in towing. Cook had almost given up hope, but he says:
"In this truly terrible situation, not one man ceased to do his utmost, and that with as much calmness as if no danger had been near."
Admiral Wharton draws special attention to the fact that in the very height of the danger, Green, Charles Clerke, and Forwood, the gunner, were engaged in taking a Lunar for the longitude. Green notes: