[CHAPTER VIII]
Cook's Second and Third Voyages
Not long after Cook's return to England in July, 1771, he was appointed to command a ship of 462 tons, built at Whitby by the same person who had constructed the Endeavour.[91] She was named the Resolution, and with her was associated a smaller vessel of 336 tons, called the Adventure. Almost immediately after Cook's return it had been decided by the Admiralty to equip a still better furnished expedition to complete the discovery of the Southern Hemisphere. A lieutenant who had sailed with Captain Wallis in 1766, Tobias Furneaux (no doubt a descendant of French Huguenots), had been promoted to command the Adventure. At first it was thought that the expedition should be accompanied by Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) Banks and a number of assistants, who should make a careful examination of the botany and zoology of the countries to be visited by the ship under Cook's command. And Banks spent several thousand pounds in getting his share of the expedition ready, the British Government being then, as now, very loath to spend much money on these branches of scientific research, in the value of which it is only beginning to believe. But at the last moment difficulties were put in Banks's way. He was offered so little accommodation on the Resolution that he decided not to accompany Captain Cook, and went later on to Iceland instead.
Still more determined to combat scurvy, Cook included amongst his stores such things as malt and a concentrated extract of wort and beer, which, diluted with water, might in fact make for the men throughout the voyage a drink of a wholesome and a palatable nature. They also took sour crout (cabbage cut up and pickled with salt, juniper berries, and aniseed) and salted cabbage, orange and lemon peel, mustard, and "marmalade of carrots". This was the juice of yellow carrots evaporated until it was as thick as honey or treacle, and it had been strongly recommended by a learned person of Berlin as being a great remedy for scurvy, but when put to the test was not found to be of much use.
A landscape painter, William Hodges, was appointed to this expedition in order to make drawings and paintings of the scenery and people of the countries which might be visited, and in place of Joseph Banks and his party a naturalist of German extraction—John Rheinhold Forster—and his son,[92] were both engaged to make botanical and zoological researches. (At the Cape of Good Hope, Cook also allowed Forster to engage in this department a Swedish naturalist, Sparrman.) The expedition, which was to search, amongst other things, for the South Pole, left England at the end of June, 1772, called at the Cape of Good Hope, and then directed its course to the south-east, getting amongst icebergs, over which the terrific waves of the Southern Ocean broke even when they were 60 feet high, soon after it had passed the fortieth degree of south latitude. Cook had been preceded in these waters nearly forty years before by the French navigator Bouvet, who had reported the existence of land in the far south. But Cook, on this voyage, though he penetrated as far south as 64°, did not even encounter one or other of the island groups which dot the surface of the ocean at rare intervals between South Africa and Antarctica. Yet he must have been near these islands, some of which he discovered on his next voyage, on account of the abundance of sea birds which they saw, including penguins, which never travel out into the ocean far from land.
The expedition sighted the coast of the South Island of New Zealand on 20 March, 1773, and anchored in Dusky Bay on the following day, having been 117 days at sea, and sailed 10,980 miles without once seeing land. Yet only one man had been seriously ill with scurvy on this long voyage, and the excellent health of the ship's crew is justly attributed to the antiscorbutics they had carried with them, especially to the weak beer and to the portable broth. Immediately after they came to an anchor in Dusky Bay one of the ship's officers killed a seal (of which there were many lying about on the rocks), the meat of which was most welcome to the messes. Cook had brought with him numbers of domestic animals and birds from England to introduce into these new lands, but a good many of them had been killed by the stormy and cold weather through which the expedition had passed, and had even suffered from a form of scurvy, so that when the sheep, for example, were landed in New Zealand their teeth were so loose and their gums so tender that they could not masticate the grass of the country, and could only feed feebly on leaves. The geese were landed on the South Island of New Zealand in the hope that they might increase and multiply and so furnish this part of the world with a valuable domestic bird. But apparently they died out without leaving any issue, and about the only creature that Cook's expedition succeeded in introducing permanently into New Zealand was the pig. But this part of New Zealand was found to abound in native ducks of five different kinds.
"The largest are as big as a Muscovy duck, with a very beautiful variegated plumage, on which account we called it the painted duck: both male and female have a large white spot on each wing; the head and neck of the latter is white, but all the other feathers, as well as those on the head and neck of the drake, are of a dark variegated colour.[93] The second sort have a brown plumage, with bright-green feathers in their wings, and are about the size of an English tame duck. The third sort is the blue-grey duck or 'whistling duck', as some called them from the whistling noise they made. What is most remarkable in these is that the end of their beaks is soft, and of a skinny, or more properly, cartilaginous substance. The fourth sort is something bigger than teal, and all black except the drake, which has some white feathers in his wing."[93]
Cook also noticed the characteristic wingless rails of New Zealand, which he called wood hens. "As they cannot fly they inhabit the skirts of the woods, and feed on the seabeach; and are so very tame or foolish as to stand and stare at us till we knocked them down with a stick."[94] The natives were even then fast destroying them. Amongst the small birds Cook particularizes the wattle-bird, poë-bird, and fan-tail, on account of their singularities of form and plumage.[95]