Sextant Read online

  The work of the new breed of naval surveyors—often conducted in conditions of great hardship and danger, far beyond the reach of any help—played a crucial part in the emergence of the world we know. The development of safer, faster, and more reliable transoceanic transport routes depended heavily on the accuracy of the new charts they made, and was also sometimes prompted by the discoveries recorded on them. Australia, for example, might well not have been colonized by the British had it not been for the reports brought back from Cook’s first voyage. The projection of Western naval, military, and commercial power around the globe, and the huge colonial expansion that helped to fuel the Industrial Revolution, were thus heavily indebted to the work of the naval surveyors. More honorably, perhaps, the expeditions they led also provided unprecedented opportunities for scientists of all kinds, and even artists, to expand the horizons of their disciplines. The new world order—for better or worse—depended on good charts, and these in turn crucially depended on the sextant.

  The French hydrographic office—the Dépôt des Cartes et Plans de la Marine—was established as early as 1720. The British were very slow to follow their example, and the Royal Navy was consequently forced to rely on French charts of the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay—from which vital information was sometimes deliberately withheld—during the Napoleonic Wars.1 The Admiralty Hydrographic Office was not set up until 1795 and the first charts published under its aegis appeared in 1801. Until that time all British charts were published privately. By 1855, however, the Hydrographic Office had made up for lost time, and more than two thousand Admiralty charts covering much of the world were already available.2 Many of the early naval surveyors have been forgotten, or are at best obscurely commemorated by the places that still bear their names. The accounts of their exploits make fascinating—and sometimes terrifying—reading, but they were (for the most part) tight-lipped professional men who rarely recorded their private feelings. It is seldom possible to assess their state of mind, but there can be no doubt that they were dedicated, independent, highly skilled, immensely hardworking, and courageous. What they were doing had never been done before. They understood that lives and fortunes would depend on the quality of their work, and that doing their duty would often expose them to great danger, but they knew they belonged to a small elite: the finest navigators of the age.

  In the 1760s the map of the world was marked by many blank spaces, and even where the shape of the land was shown it was often misleading. There were, however, two subjects of especially lively geographical debate. In the first place, many were still convinced of the existence of a large and fruitful continent somewhere in the unexplored southern reaches of the Atlantic, Indian, or Pacific oceans—perhaps even spanning all three. This fabled southern continent had been the subject of speculation from the days of Magellan in the early sixteenth century, though no one had yet found any reliable evidence of its existence. Second, it was still hoped—despite many unsuccessful attempts to discover it from the eastern side—that a navigable passage might be found linking the North Atlantic and Pacific oceans either in the Arctic or possibly farther south, in more temperate latitudes.* For example, there were rumors that a channel linked Hudson’s Bay in northern Canada directly with the Pacific. Beyond doubt was the fact that the vast Pacific Ocean had only so far been explored in a haphazard, piecemeal fashion and that the available Pacific charts were full of gaps and baffling inconsistencies. It was therefore not unreasonable to suppose that the “southern continent,” if it existed, might lie hidden in its unexplored reaches, and that the Pacific coast of North America might reveal a new and commercially valuable trade route between Europe and the Far East.

  It was against this background that, in 1768, the British Admiralty decided to send an expedition to the South Seas, under the command of an obscure warrant officer in the Royal Navy who was soon to become a celebrity throughout Europe. Envisaged initially as a contribution to the international scientific effort to observe the second Transit of Venus of the eighteenth century (the first having taken place in 1761), the expedition had the additional task of exploring the southern Pacific in search of the fabled continent.

  James Cook was not the obvious choice to command the Endeavour, the vessel selected to convey the British scientists to the recently discovered island of Tahiti, where their astronomical observations were to be made. There were other members of the Royal Navy who were at least as well qualified, and there was one civilian who was sure that the job was made for him—Alexander Dalrymple.3 Though not a naval officer, Dalrymple was a persuasive character, and he had solid experience of maritime exploration and chart-making in the Far East on behalf of the East India Company. He also had the support of the Royal Society and was a devoted—almost obsessive—advocate of the southern-continent hypothesis. However, when the Admiralty flatly refused to allow him to command a naval vessel, he declined to sail merely in the capacity of an observer.4 *

  Dalrymple’s rejection was Cook’s opportunity. From a poor farming family in North Yorkshire, Cook had started his seafaring life at an early age on board colliers in the North Sea, only joining the Royal Navy—as an ordinary seaman—in 1755, at the unusually late age of twenty-six. His abilities were so obvious that he rose quickly, soon reaching the most senior noncommissioned rank of master, in which capacity he had responsibility—under the captain—for the navigation and general management of the ship. Cook’s survey work in North America had demonstrated his exceptional skills, as well as his courage and initiative. In addition to his vital services on the St. Lawrence River before the fall of Quebec, he had charted much of the coast of Newfoundland and had even seized the opportunity of an eclipse of the sun to determine the longitude of an island off its south coast. This last exploit was the subject of a paper submitted on Cook’s behalf to the Royal Society in London.5 By the time he was appointed to the Endeavour he had won the support of a number of powerful figures in the Royal Navy.

  His new command was a tough little ship of exactly the type he had sailed in the merchant service—a flat-bottomed, bluff-bowed North Sea collier, only a little over 100 feet in length while her maximum beam (or width) was less than 30 feet: the soon-to-be-famous Endeavour. In addition to her crew, room had to be found for the rich young gentleman-naturalist Joseph Banks and his “suite,” which included the eminent botanist Daniel Solander, two artists, a secretary, and four servants.6 The Endeavour’s normal complement when serving as a collier would have been fewer than twenty men,7 but now she would be packed with more than ninety, together with all the stores, trade goods, and equipment needed on a long voyage, as well as pigs, poultry, and a goat—not to mention Banks’s two greyhounds. She carried the very latest astronomical instruments, which included a “Brass Hadley’s sextant, bespoke by Mr. Maskelyne of Mr. Ramsden”—one of the finest instrument-makers of the day.8 To describe the Endeavour as overcrowded when Cook at last set sail in August 1768 would be a gross understatement, and she was not very fast—slower even than the much smaller Saecwen—seldom managing more than 120 miles in twenty-four hours, often much less. Almost at the last minute, Cook was promoted to the rank of lieutenant—with the strictly honorific rank of captain. He was a remarkable man, and he needed to be.

  In the course of his three great voyages of discovery, Cook, with sextant in hand, added more to European knowledge of the Pacific Ocean than any other single person. It was he who first recognized the kinship of the peoples inhabiting the so-called Polynesian Triangle—the vast area of sea that embraces at its extremities Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island.9 On his first voyage (1768–71), he put many islands on the map for the first time, circumnavigated New Zealand (of which, until then, only parts of the west coast were known), and went on to explore most of the east coast of what we now know as Australia. On his second voyage (1772–75), Cook sailed farther south than anyone before—on one occasion coming almost within sight of Antarctica itself—in his determined effort to prove that no habitable l
andmass lay in that region.

  The conditions Cook and his crew endured on this second voyage were rugged, to say the least, and the dangers posed by icebergs and heavy seas were severe. Not long after leaving Cape Town in late November 1772, they ran into heavy weather, and for many days Cook’s ship, the Resolution, another collier very like the Endeavour, and her consort, the Adventure, rode out storms in which they could carry almost no canvas. As they headed farther and farther south, freezing temperatures left the sails and rigging “all hung with icicles,” and they had to pick their way cautiously through icebergs and drifting pack ice. Visibility was often reduced by fog and snow, and Cook had to issue extra clothing and warm caps to the long-suffering crew to protect them against the extreme cold. The weather conditions gave them few opportunities to make lunar observations. South of the Antarctic Circle in the longitude of 39°35' East, they encountered solid pack ice, and even Cook’s determination could carry them no farther.

  Having searched the southern Indian Ocean, Cook turned his attention to clarifying the confused geography of the South Pacific. After visiting New Zealand and Tahiti once again, as well as Tonga, he headed south, crossing the Antarctic Circle again on three separate occasions. This was dangerous work at the best of times, but in December 1773 the Resolution—now separated from the Adventure—had a particularly narrow escape. The ship strayed perilously close to an iceberg, and by the time Cook was called on deck the situation seemed almost hopeless. The massive island of ice was so near that the men were readying themselves to fend the ship off as best they could, but she managed—just—to get clear. One of the midshipmen later described it as “the most Miraculous escape from being every soul lost, that ever men had.”10 Cook dryly commented: “a miss is as good as a mile, but our situation requires more misses than we can expect. . . .”11On Christmas Day, while between 135 and 134 degrees West and just north of the Antarctic Circle, the crew were allowed to celebrate, but not everyone was pleased. Johann Forster—the gifted but awkward German-born naturalist who was something of a figure of fun on board the Resolution—gave a lurid account of the occasion:

  The Islands of Ice surrounding the Ship look like the wrecks of a destroyed world, every one of them threatens us with impending ruin, if you add our solitary Situation & being surrounded by a parcel of drunken Sailors hollowing & hurraing about us, & peeling our Ears continually with Oaths & Execrations, curses & Dam’s it has no distant relation to the Image of hell, drawn by the poets: & were it not for the pinching cold, we would really think it were still more similar.12

  At the end of January 1774, once again south of the Antarctic Circle, though now at 106 degrees West, Cook encountered an immense ice field that extended as far as the eye could see to east and west. The comments in his journal at this point are revealing of this extraordinary man’s pride and determination, as well as his deep sense of duty:

  I will not say it was impossible anywhere to get in among this Ice, but I will assert that the bare attempting of it would be a very dangerous enterprise and what I believe no man in my situation would have thought of. I whose ambition leads me not only further than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go, was not sorry at meeting with this interruption, as it in some measure relieved us from the dangers and hardships, inseparable with the Navigation of the Southern Polar regions.13

  Cook could now have headed for home, but instead he criss-crossed the South Pacific, systematically verifying the existence and accurately determining the positions of many important island groups reported—often unreliably—by earlier explorers, while also making new discoveries. On his way home he briefly reconnoitered the wild southern coast of Tierra del Fuego and probed the South Atlantic, where he charted the north coast of South Georgia and discovered the even less hospitable South Sandwich Islands, lying still farther to the south. To the dismay of Dalrymple and the other promoters of the southern-continent hypothesis, his conclusion on this subject was devastatingly clear, but he also rightly took credit for his extensive survey work in the tropics:

  I had now made the circuit of the Southern Ocean in a high Latitude and had traversed it in such a manner as to leave not the least room for the Possibility of there being a continent, unless near the Pole and out of the reach of navigation; by twice visiting the Pacific Tropical Sea, I had not only settled the situation of some old discoveries but made there many new ones and left, I conceive, very little more to be done even in that part. Thus I flater [sic] my self that the intention of the Voyage has in every respect been fully Answered, the Southern Hemisphere sufficiently explored and a final end put to the searching after a Southern Continent, which has at times ingrossed the attention of some of the Maritime Powers for near two Centuries past and the Geographers of all ages.14

  Forster again gives a vivid account of what life was like aboard the Resolution in the stormy waters of the deep south:

  our Ship is tossed backwards & forwards, up & down the mountainous waves: each summit, from which you may overlook the vast extent of the Ocean, follows again a deep abyss, where we get hardly light in our Cabins. . . . At 9 o’clock, there came a huge mountainous Sea & took the ship in her middle, & overwhelmed all her parts with a Deluge. The table in the Steerage, at which we were sitting, was covered with water, & it put our candle out: the great Cabin [Cook’s] was quite washed over & over by the Sea coming through the Sides of the Ship. Into my Cabin came the Sea through the Skuttel & wetted all my bed. I had new sheets laid & the bed rubbed up & dried as well as could be done, & in this damp bed I turned in . . . but the continual rolling of the Ship hindered me from Sleeping. . . . The Ocean & the winds raged all night.15

  Cook reached home in July 1775 and was greeted as a hero—rather like Neil Armstrong returning from the moon, though he had been away for much longer. He was promoted to the rank of post-captain and, early the following year, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He could now have enjoyed a comfortable retirement with his wife and children, but the challenge of further exploration could not be resisted. In July 1776 Cook set sail on his final voyage with two ships—the Resolution (again) and the Discovery—this time heading into the far north of the Pacific in search of the fabled northern route to the Atlantic. On the way he became the first European discoverer of the Hawaiian Islands. Though very doubtful of the passage’s existence, he dutifully reconnoitered the coasts of what are now British Columbia and Alaska, and then, having passed through the Aleutian Island chain, pressed on into the Arctic Ocean, beyond the Bering Strait, where solid pack ice at last forced him to reverse his course. On his return journey, he coasted among the Hawaiian Islands, finally anchoring at Kealakekua Bay on the west coast of the great island of Hawaii itself on January 17, 1779.

  Cook was received there almost—or perhaps actually—as a god, and the ships obtained plentiful provisions, carried out necessary repairs, and made the usual astronomical observations. After a stay of almost three weeks Cook departed, but damage caused by a violent gale unluckily obliged him to return to the same anchorage to carry out further repairs. His reception on this second visit was much cooler, and his customary restraint and tact in his dealings with native peoples now deserted him. Perhaps the strain of three extraordinarily demanding voyages had at last proved too much, even for him.

  On February 14 he attempted to recover a stolen ship’s boat by taking a chieftain hostage—a strong-armed stratagem he had employed successfully elsewhere. On this occasion, however, he gravely misjudged the mood of the large throng that greeted him as he went ashore, and exposed himself and his small guard of marines to unnecessary danger. A confused fracas broke out during which he and several of his men were killed, as were many of the natives. Cook’s companions were appalled and outraged, but his second-in-command, Lieutenant Charles Clerke, though himself fatally ill, was able to prevent reprisals that might well have led to a bloodbath. The few remains of Cook that could be recovered—most of his body had by then been di
vided up among the island’s chiefs—were solemnly committed to the waters of the bay. When news of his death reached home he was lamented not just in Britain but throughout Europe.

  READING ABOUT COOK’S exploits today, it is easy to underestimate the scale of the challenges he faced. So many of the places he visited are now holiday destinations that we may even envy him the privilege of seeing them in their pristine state—before they were ravaged by imported pests and diseases and turned upside down by missionary Christianity, colonial exploitation, and tourism. It requires an effort of imagination to grasp how demanding and relentless were the difficulties he had to overcome.

  The single biggest problem, apart from the safe management of his ship, was ensuring that her crew and passengers had adequate supplies of fresh food and water—an anxious and unremitting task when sailing in almost completely uncharted waters. Less obviously, wood for the cooking fires was also vital and not always easy to obtain. Always present in Cook’s mind was the tension between, on the one hand, the demands of prudent seamanship and the proper care of his men and, on the other, the need to gather as much navigational and scientific information as possible. But he was also well aware of the grave risks to which the first, mutually uncomprehending contacts between his crews and native peoples would give rise, and—to his credit—took strong measures both to prevent acts of violence and to avoid the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Sadly these all too often proved ineffective. “Tell me”—he asked rhetorically—“what the Natives of the whole extent of America have gained by the commerce they have had with Europeans?”16 He knew the answer all too well.

  Cook’s journals, written on the spot in his own blunt style and full of misspellings, shed a vivid light on the enormous strains and hardships—both physical and psychological—involved in exploring unknown coasts far beyond the possibility of rescue in small, slow, crowded sailing ships with no effective auxiliary source of propulsion. On many occasions he and his crews came close to disaster, but seldom were they in greater danger than when they were carrying out a “running survey” of the east coast of Australia on his first voyage. Cook chose not to explain his survey methods in detail, but this process entailed following the coast as closely as possible during the hours of daylight, taking compass bearings of all prominent landmarks, sounding continually with the lead, and all the while keeping close track of the ship’s course and speed. “Ship stations” (fixed points) would have been established from time to time by taking horizontal sextant angles between prominent landmarks. Cook and his officers—as well as the artists—also made sketches of significant coastal features whenever they could.