Second Voyage
July 13, 1772 - July 29, 1775

Route map Copyright/Source

James Cook was still determined to prove or deny the existence of the Great Southern Continent. His plan was to sail as close to it as was humanly possible. He would use Tahiti, and Queen Charlotte Sound in New Zealand, as bases for making repairs and gathering supplies. The Royal Navy was impressed with his plan. It promoted him to commander and gave him two new ships: HMS Resolution, and its sister ship, HMS Adventure.

Crossing the Antarctic Circle: Ice, Ice and More Ice!

Resolution and Adventure set sail on July 13, 1772. On January 17, 1773, Cook's expedition became one of the first to cross the Antarctic Circle. The ship managed to navigate through perilous icebergs, dense fog and buffeting gales. However, just as Cook, onboard Resolution, neared Antarctica, a bridge of ice prevented him from going further.

The Adventure became separated from Cook's ship and eventually returned to England on its own. Cook, however, was determined to succeed. He was not sure if the bridge of ice he had encountered went all the way to the South Pole, or joined with land at a further point. Winter had set in, making further exploration of the South Pole very difficult. He headed north to Tahiti, gathered supplies, recuperated, and explored the Pacific islands.

The following year, Cook made a second crossing of the Antarctic Circle. He ventured even further south, but the ice stopped him once again. He had gone "as far as I think it possible for man to go," he wrote in his journal on January 30, 1774. Apparently, others thought so as well: Cook's second voyage may have inspired the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) to write "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Rime_Ancient_Mariner.html. Coleridge's tutor was the astronomer on the Resolution and a good friend of Cook. The following lines from this famous poem have much in common with descriptions found in Cook's own journal from the voyage:

	And now there came both mist and snow And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald. And through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen: Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken -- The ice was all between. The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around: It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound!

Using New Technology: The K1 Chronometer

Navigators had long used lunar calculations, which were unreliable and frustrating, to find their way across the ocean. Cook was the first to use a sea clock called a chronometer. It solved the problem of finding longitude by keeping perfect time under rough sea conditions. Using the chronometer in combination with observations of the stars, Cook knew exactly where his ship was on the globe, even in seas that had not been mapped.

Major Accomplishments

Cook's second voyage is considered one of the greatest single expeditions in history. Although he did not reach the Antarctic mainland, he put an end to the popular myth of the Great Southern Continent. He showed that it existed only near the South Pole, where it would be too cold and inhospitable for people to live.

Cook criss-crossed the Pacific in the Resolution, mapping and fixing the positions of islands that had been observed by earlier explorers. He was the first European to visit many islands in the region. He created a very good map of the Central and South Pacific that future explorers would build upon.

Cook demonstrated that it was possible to protect a ship's crew from diseases such as scurvy. His insistence on cleanliness and a healthy diet meant that only a few of his men died from disease. He provided an example for other explorers to follow.