Antarctica, ice, illness, and Easter Island
The year was 1772, and the Resolution was refitted, but not as the Endeavor had been. At the request of the rich naturalist and nobleman Joseph Banks she was fitted with a high castle to accommodate him and the large entourage he was planning to take into the Antarctic Circle. His company included 2 liveried musicians, various court dandies, and even an American mistress disguised as a man if all tales be true. Cook and his officers complained to the Admiralty that the castle made the Resolution un-seaworthy. It was ordered removed, and Banks then refused to sail. Cook engaged some more sensible naturalists and artists, and carried on well enough, I suppose.
Unencumbered by Banks’ frivolity, but carrying two brand new chronometers on each ship. Cook set his course to round Cape Horn, and make a long voyage skirting the Antarctic ice in search of a continent he no longer believed to exist due to his careful observations of currents on his first voyage. After months in freezing weather without any losses from sickness he made for Tahiti to give his crew a well deserved rest. Then it was back to the ice again. After basically circumnavigating the Antarctic ice Cook turned north fairly sure there was no great southern landmass without ice. He discovered several more Island chains including the New Hebrides. He visited New Caledonia, and rediscovered Easter Island.
Cook himself was quite ill at this point in this voyage, and some feared he would die, but he made a recovery, and led his crew into the Strait of Magellan from the West. Having passed there he made for St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic, and from there sailed home to England in 1775. He had added much to the charts, discovered, and named more new lands. The reputation of Captain James Cook was definitely made, scurvy and other dideases had been defeated for those who followed the extrordinary dietary and hygiene methods of Cook, and the imaginary “Terra Australis” had been disproved. His chronometers had also settled the problem of finding accurate longitude which had been another bane of long voyages. Many men would have rested on their laurels and basked in their glory, but not the indefatigable Captain Cook. He requested command of a third voyage as soon as he was consulted about it. The Resolution would sail again, this time in the company of the Discovery.
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