What his people thought of it we do not know, but the Forsters have given a piteous account of the privations and hardships of an exploration that gave them little chance of exercising their special knowledge.
Cook was better provided with instruments for the determination of longitude than before, and the ships carried four chronometric timekeepers; but the proper method of making use of them was scarcely yet realised, and the course of his voyage did not permit them to be of much service.
Mindful of his former success in combating scurvy, and making use of his experience, Cook carried with him all his former anti-scorbutics, and redoubled his general precautions as to cleanliness, both of person and ship. The result was complete immunity from more than symptoms of scurvy. He was able to say, when he returned, that no man had died not only of this disease, but of any other, due to the exposures of the voyage. Three lost by accidents, and one from a complaint contracted before leaving England, were the sole losses on a voyage lasting three years, and during which the exposure to heat, cold, rain, and all the hardships of a sea life was probably never surpassed.
Leaving the Cape on November 22nd, Cook stood at once to the southward, intending to pass over a spot in latitude 54 degrees South, where in 1739 M. Bouvet sighted land that was generally supposed to be a part of the Southern Continent, and which he had been especially directed to examine. Gales, however, drove him from his course, and to this day Bouvet's Islands (for Cook proved they could be nothing else) are doubtfully shown upon charts.* (* They were again reported in 1825 by the Sprightly, an English whaler, but Sir James Ross searched for them in 1840 without success.) Cook soon got into the ice, and fought with it and gales of wind, in snow and sleet and fog, working gradually eastwards from the longitude of the Cape for four months. The ship penetrated to 67 degrees South at one point, and kept as high a latitude as ice permitted everywhere, but without discovering any land. Cook found to his great joy that the ice yielded good fresh water, and replenished his water casks in this manner, without any fear of falling short. With all his power of communicating his enthusiasm to others, it may be doubted if they shared his pleasure at finding that the search in these inclement regions need not be curtailed from lack of this necessary.
At last, in the longitude of Tasmania, Cook hauled to the northward, and headed for New Zealand, where, after sailing over eleven thousand miles since leaving the Cape without once sighting land, he anchored in Dusky Bay on March 26th, 1774, with the Resolution only, the Adventure having parted company in thick weather on February 9th. Moving on to Queen Charlotte's Sound, his old anchorage at the north end of Middle Island, he found the Adventure there on May 18th. Captain Furneaux had, after vainly searching for his consort, run for Tasmania, and explored the east coast. He did not, however, clear up the point for which he states he visited this coast, namely, whether it joined New Holland or not, as strong winds from the eastward made him fearful of closing what he thought was a deep bay, though really the Strait, and he sailed for the rendezvous in New Zealand under the impression that Tasmania and Australia were one.
The ships left New Zealand on June 7th, 1773, and, after making a wide circuit to the south and east in search of land, arrived at Tahiti on August 16th. A good many of the Adventure's people were ill with scurvy, and Cook is much puzzled to know the reason why they were attacked while his own crew were free. He puts it down to the greater trouble he had taken to make all his men use wild celery and other herbs in New Zealand, and no doubt this had its effect; but one cannot but suspect that the constant care on his part to keep the ship clean and sweet below had much to do with it. The Adventure had the same anti-scorbutics, and Cook especially mentions that they were in use; but the personal efforts of the captain in the direction of general sanitary precautions were, we know, exercised in one case, while we know nothing of the other.
After a month's stay at Tahiti and the Society Islands, where the crews were much benefited by fresh provisions, the ships sailed for the Friendly Islands, never visited since Tasrnan's time, and touched at Eoa and Tongatabu, or, as Tasman had called them, Middleburg and Amsterdam. These were finally left on October 7th for New Zealand, which was made on the 21st, and from this day to November 2nd the time was spent in fruitless endeavours to get into Cook's Strait. Gale succeeded gale--no uncommon thing here--and in one of them the Adventure parted company never again to rejoin. Cook anchored in Queen Charlotte's Sound on November 2nd, and waited until the 25th for his consort in vain. Whilst here they gained further and indisputable proof of the cannibalistic tendencies of the Maoris, some of the natives eating human flesh before them. Cook has been much blamed for permitting this scene, which took place on board; but there had been so much disputing in England as to the possibility of the fact, that he could not resist the opportunity of putting it beyond a doubt.
It was, however, to be shortly proved in a much more horrible manner, for the Adventure, which only arrived at Queen Charlotte's Sound after the Resolution left, had a boat's crew attacked, overpowered, and eaten by the natives. The circumstances were never wholly known, as not a man escaped; but the cooked remains were found, the natives decamping as the search-party approached.
Cook sailed south on November 25th, 1773, and was soon again battling with the ice, into which he pushed as far as was safe with as much hardihood as if he had still had the second ship with him. He gained the latitude of 67 degrees south, and worked eastward, searching religiously for land--which, needless to say, he never found--his ropes frozen, and sails like, as he says, plates of metal. Whatever the feelings of others on board were, Cook never flinched from every effort to get south, penetrating in one place to 71 degrees south, where he was stopped by dense pack, until he found himself nearly in the longitude of Tierra del Fuego, when, satisfied that no Southern Continent existed in the Pacific, he, on February 6th, steered north, to continue exploration in more genial weather and more profitable latitudes. All this time there was no scurvy, and very little sickness of any kind; an indisputable proof of the untiring supervision Cook exercised over the health of his men. The object of his voyage, so far as the Southern Pacific was concerned, was now accomplished, and Cook might have rounded Cape Horn, and made for the Cape of Good Hope, completing his tour of the world in southern latitudes; but such was not his idea of his duty. His own nervous words will explain his feelings best:--
"We undoubtedly might have reached the Cape of Good Hope in April, and so have put an end to the expedition so far as related to the finding of a continent, which indeed was the first object of the voyage; but for me at this time to have quitted this Southern Pacific Ocean with a good ship expressly sent out on discoveries, a healthy crew, and not in want either of stores or provisions, would have betrayed not only a want of perseverance, but of judgment, in supposing the South Pacific Ocean to be so well explored that nothing remained to be done in it. This, however, was not my opinion; for, although I had proved there was no continent but what must lie far to the south, there remained, nevertheless, room for very large islands in places wholly unexamined, and many of those which were formerly discovered are but imperfectly explored, and their situation as imperfectly known. I was, besides, of opinion that my remaining in this sea some time longer would be productive of improvements in navigation and geography, as well as other sciences."