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HMS Endeavour
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Captain James Cook is best known for his discovery of Australia. He has other solid claims to fame. He was a superb seaman. He was almost certainly the best navigator of his era. He was one of the very few men of this period to be commissioned from the lower deck.
His greatest achievement was to virtually eliminate the terrible scourge of scurvy. This disease is a vitamin deficiency, caused by limited understanding of diet. Before Captain Cook, it was accepted that on every long voyage, a large proportion of the crew would die. Cook was not prepared to accept this. He made a scientific study of diet, and used his crew as guinea pigs to test his theories, experimenting with a variety of different diets. He nearly caused a mutiny at one point, by ordering that every man should eat two pounds of raw onions each day for a week, but in a voyage of almost three years, he did not lose a single man to scurvy.
He was also responsible for enormous advances in the science of navigation. While a ship's distance north or south from the equator can be calculated using a simple noon sight, to calculate an accurate position east or west demands a precise knowledge of the time. There is an alternative method involving sights of the moon, but it is complex, and only the finest navigators would be able to use it. Cook took to sea and tested the first really accurate chronometers. It is a sobering reflection to realise that before this important advance in technology, few captains could have been exactly certain of where they were once they sailed out of sight of land.
It was these huge advances in diet and navigation which made long-distance ocean voyages far less reliant on chance. They thus paved the way for the huge expansion in European colonialism in the nineteenth century. This quiet, intelligent son of a Yorkshire farm worker probably did more to change the history of the world than all the fighting admirals put together. To a very great extent, we all of us live in the world he made possible.
This model of Captain Cook's "Endeavour" is thus not only a beautiful display piece in her own right, but she is of the greatest historical interest. She will make a fitting embellishment to any home, to a museum, or to the offices of any shipping company, all of which still owe a debt to Captain Cook's pioneering discoveries.
(model by Frank Hasted)
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