James Cook

I was in a café, on highway 11, which provided a picturesque overlook of Kealakekua – the place where Captain Cook was killed by the local population. From my vantage point the seas were blue, with small coral beds stretched around the shoreline, which was littered with old lava flows and jungle. The Bay, that is below the current city of “Captain Cook,” is full of clear waters on the leeward side of the Big Island. Cook had traveled there in the 18^th century to make repairs to his two ships as he searched for the/a Northwest Passage. It isn’t clear why he selected Hawaii, having discovered the islands earlier in his voyage, then having already made it to the Bering Sea, he returned to winter here. I picked the city of Captain Cook to visit for these reasons. The placard in the café, hung nicely by my table, I read was simply a coincidence. The café’s placard had a slight difference in recording the incident of Cook’s death. I take it that the café hung the Hawaiian account of the story, while I had just finished Rob Mundle’s version, in his text “Captain James Cook,” 2013. The Hawaiian version has cook kidnapping the King of Hawaii, to blackmail the locals into returning a stolen skiff. Mundle’s version has cook inviting the King of Hawaii back to his ship to negotiate the return of the ship. Both versions are more than likely true, given any analysis of the incident in comparison with European tactics of the day. I personally don’t have much desire to know the truth, I am satisfied with the two different accounts. The fact that many a prestigious captain died in the hands of aboriginal tribes across the globe, during the great age of exploration, while on beaches and unable to retreat, is enough satisfaction for me – I care a bit, though not enough to investigate further.

So Cook was murdered on the shores of Hawaii as he attempted to find a take back a skiff that belonged to him and his crew. His death came at the end of a mighty career. Cook was a navigator, an excellent one (starting to sound a lot like Magellan). His career started as a blue collar worker in England, in small fishing towns, then later larger ports, where he met sailors and wharf rats mingling in seaside towns. Cook worked his way to the top at a local business, which sailed cargo across the English Channel (sounding like Drake too). He was smart and he was dedicated to his dreams (Columbus, now). So when Cook ditched everything and enlisted in the Royal Navy, his entire network thought he had lost it. In the mid 18^th century, the Navy operated much like it did in the 16^th century. Sailors had a pretty good chance of dying at sea, at returning to nothing, and not getting paid for their hardships. And Cook joined regardless. Because Cook grew out of rags, into the maritime industry, we finally received a captain who gave credit to his working mariners.

It didn’t take Cook long to work his way up, of course. And eventually he was given orders to start surveying the shores of the St. Lawrence River, which he did superbly. Now, acting as an officer, Cook started to shine. He made changes to his operations that many a scholar say changed maritime history for the working sailor. Cook, having been a working sailor, cared for his crew – at least as far as their help with the ship went. Cook ensured they were wearing proper attire for their voyages, that they didn’t trade their warm clothes for sex to the natives of which ever ports they were in. He stocked his ship with food that included vegetables – and unknowingly almost eliminated scurvy on all of his voyages. And what is cool for our purposes here, he logged the everyday actions of his men in his journal!

As a cartographer and a sailor Cook became well known amongst the British Navy and science community. When an opportunity arose to send a ship around the globe to monitor the transit of Venus across the Sun (a great story that we do not have time for here) Cook was the natural selection – he was a supreme navigator and an aspiring astronomer. Within Cook’s orders to travel to New Zealand to monitor Venus, was additional orders to map the coastal regions of the South Pacific and to navigate into unknown waters West of New Zealand to attempt to find land there. His voyage was successful and full of wonderful maritime documentation.

We hear from Cook the toils of being a mariner aboard an 18^th century sailing ship. It is surprising many of Cook’s crew made it back to England alive, after three years at sea, given the realities of every other circumnavigation to that point. Scurvy played almost no part on his voyage – though hunger was a norm. With a diet of grog (rum and water) and plants, not to mentioned the standard salted meats and dried breads. In addition to death arising from starvation, dehydration, and vitamin deficiency, Cook avoided premature death from technology. From the start, the new technology of the day was to wrap the keel of the ship in copper plates, which Cook refused to allow. Cook insisted on the older tradition of adding small strips of sacrificial planks to the hull. This was a life saver as ship builders soon learned about electrolysis – electrical currents that moved freely and survived healthily between the copper plates and iron nails holding the ship together. Electrolysis sent many ships to the bottom within months after being launched. Also, Lighting rods were placed aboard the Endeavor (Cook’s Venus voyage ship). With Benjamin Franklin’s recent kite experiment, Cook decided it best to take small chain to run up the mast during storms – which later saved the men and ship. And finally, Cook kept order through discipline and punishment, though also a focus on morale.

Cooked logged everyday life on the boat, that the mariner experienced. One of the first death’s Cook ever logged as a Master was that of a boatswain who was wrapped in an anchor cable as is was dragged to the bottom. Cooked logged a suicide, when a marine decide to jump overboard instead putting up with hazing from his shipmates. There was the time when Cooked flogged that flogger: two crewmembers were sentenced to receive a dozen lashes from the Cat o’ Nine Tails. Cook didn’t believe the flogger gave hard enough whippings, so he in turn sentenced the flogger to receive a dozen lashes – Cook used this punishment as his first ever – most likely to establish authority over the crew. When dealing with natives, Cook would rarely allow violence and he did his best to avoid conflict (perhaps he learned from his predecessors, though he didn’t learn good enough).

Dysentery hit Cook’s ship on his final leg of the Venus journey. A third of the crew fell victim to it, though Cook never did, mostly because the Captain had a separate source of food. Despite this drama, Cook continued his orders to map coast lines. The Venus voyage lead to the “discovery” of Australia as well as tons of islands in the South Pacific.

Cooks second voyage was to discover any continent in the South Seas. A continent we know of now as Antarctica, though a continent Cook thought didn’t exist, even though he sailed further south than any explorer before him. In his journal Cook wrote, “No man will ever venture farther [south] than I have done and that the lands that lay farther South will never be explored[…] It would have been rashness in me to have risked all which had been done in the Voyage, in finding and exploring a Coast which when done would have answered no end whatever, or been of the least use either to Navigation or Geography or indeed any other Science…”

On this second voyage Cook brags on about the health of his crew, even in the frigid climates, and he did actually have relatively good results. Cook’s outlook on preparing the working sailor for weather by ordering them to make and wear warm clothes may seem obvious to us, though it was an outlook never had by an officer with any pull. Cook was ahead of his time and sailors are in his debt for this.

It is always fun to note the sex appeal that sailors have when reaching foreign ports. And the Southern Pacific Islands were certainly full of their sex appeal. The ship’s logs discuss women rowing out to the ship and offering sexual gestures towards the crews. Cook realizing that his men were better behaved after port calls would often pull into ports and give boundaries to his men in regards to their freedoms, though he never revoked a seaman’s chance at a port call. In multiple instances, a marine would desert in order to stay with his new-found friends. Each time the deserter would be hauled back onboard and masted, whipped, and confined. Cook himself, like most other Captains, make no reference to his own sex life in the years he spent at sea. Cook was a married man, which apparently mattered little to his shipmates, and one may suspect he had no sex life for the years he was away. It is noted early in his maritime career, before the Navy, he signed a contract to work aboard a British cargo ship and a portion of the contract was to remain celibate – which was apparently a custom of that time. What a world we would live in if these sex taboos would disappear in the maritime – if we could allow mariners to hump freely underway.

On James Cook’s last voyage, he was charged with the search of the great Northwest Passage. Cook rounded Cape Horn and headed North, soon bypassing where Sir Francis Drake turned back in Oregon. On this leg of the journey Cook “discovered Hawaii.” Not to be delayed he continued onwards towards Oregon, then North, through the Aleutian Islands and into the Bering. Having arrived too late in the season, Cook’s weather window had already closed and an ice wall was found between Alaska and Russia. History suggest that Cook was undergoing some sort of mental suffering at this time, and his actions were not easily recognized as a great leader and/or mariner. Cook retreated to Hawaii of all places, instead of the nearby Coast of North America.

It was here in Hawaii that our story first started. At anchorage on the Leeward shore of the Big Island, the natives had grown reckless with the Europeans presence. The peaceful coexistence had all but fallen apart and aggravations on both sides ignited. When Cook went to discuss a stolen skiff with the King, things went haywire. Europeans say Cook had offered the King a spot at a negotiation table aboard the “Discovery.” Hawaiians say that Cook was trying to kidnap the King. Either way, Cook and four marines were killed in a retreat while on the beach. Cook’s body was chopped into pieces and passed around to the local communities. Eventually, the new commander, Clerke, would negotiate the return of what limbs still remained of Cook (a jaw bone, hand with flesh on it, and a few other burnt pieces). Once this was done, the Discovery and Resolution continued their orders to find the Northwest passage – which they never did. The voyage made it back to England fours years after they left, without Cook. After Cook died, there was no officer to ensure the men didn’t trade their clothes for sex, and many a man died from the frigid artic temperatures without their dress.

There is no mention of syphilis during the Cook’s journals. Though scurvy and dysentery re mentioned often. In addition to disease, the crews of these voyages dealt with daily stresses that we cannot imagine. Mundle’s book does a great job at describing what it is like to slowly drift towards deathly breakers in the great barrier reef – a multi-day process that each sailor can only cross their fingers and hope a good wind saves them. We also know that these sailors were exposed to tribes who actively practices cannibalism – even if it is not as often as English sailors claim. Fatigue was common, and it caused physical sickness. Cook was a man who constantly looked for better methods of manning his ships, and assigning watches. On his vessels the crews would stand rotating 8s. Amongst all of this, the 18^th century is when we start seeing major signs of hazing and morale events on ships – the two can be combined, and Cook practiced the Line Crossing Ceremony with all his men – at which point each man being new to crossing the line would either pay a ransom of liquor or be dunked over the side of the vessel while tied to a chair.

(Disclaimer: this article is by definition scanty information. While Dirty Sailor Company does its best to paint accurate histories and biographies, we mostly get it wrong or incomplete. The idea this early in the game, 2018, is to put in a lot as place holders and then to go back with interviews and investigation and production to make something grand, useful and sexy for all you sailors out there. Captain Cook is a good story, and he deserves more than what we have given him. Please sign up for email updates so you know when we give the Captain more due credit.)

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