James Cook - History Lab

The second voyage of James Cook

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:41:33 +0000

During the 18th century, British and French expeditions ploughed the great Pacific Ocean to carry out missions with both colonial and cognitive intentions, thanks to the scientific and technological support of their respective National Academies of Science. From the second expedition (1772-1775), which aimed to verify the existence of the southern continent, the Terra Australis Incognita, Captain Cook was able to take advantage of technological progress, represented by the new Larcum Kendall K1 marine timekeeper, which proved to be very reliable for measuring longitude: since half a degree of longitude is equivalent to about fifty-five kilometres on the equator, it is clear that calculation errors caused enormous problems for the certainty of the route and the safety of the voyage and prevented the exact location of a place from being determined

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The third voyage of James Cook

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:41:33 +0000

Cook’s third voyage (1776-1780) had the ambitious goal of seeking the ‘Northwest Passage’, i.e. navigable access from the North Pacific to the North Atlantic to facilitate trade between Britain and the Pacific. The drawing, made by John Webber in May 1778, depicts the ships of Captain Cook’s third expedition anchored in what is now Prince William Sound, Alaska. John Webber took part in the expedition with the task of depicting the places encountered during the voyage, in order to have a more effective description of them than the textual one.

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Captain Cook’s Second Pacific Expedition

ad_hlab_min — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:41:33 +0000

Johann Reinhold Forster and his son Georg took part in Captain Cook’s second expedition with the task of drawing up a report of the voyage to be published on his return to make the scientific results known; however, due to disagreements with the captain and the Earl of Sandwich, the main financier of the voyage, they lost the publication rights. Georg Forster, then, in 1777 printed A Voyage round the World in His Britannic Majesty’s Sloop Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years 1772, 1773, 1774, and 1775, an unofficial report of the voyage written in English. The work was highly appreciated, from a literary and scientific point of view, for its particular focus on ethnographic and anthropological aspects.

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