Who can tell me something about Captain Cook?
Navigating Figure—Captain Cook
James Cook is a British explorer, navigator and cartographer. He is famous for his three expeditions. Through these expeditions, he added new content to people's geographical knowledge about the ocean, especially the Pacific Ocean. He is also credited with helping to prevent scurvy during long voyages by improving the crew's diet, including more fruits and vegetables. Captain Cook's great voyages in the Pacific and Antarctica made great contributions to the development of world science. He was also the first person to chart the east coast of Australia.
Cook was born on October 27, 1728, in a poor peasant family in Yorkshire, England. At the age of 18, he found a job with a ship owner and made several voyages to the Baltic Sea. When war broke out between England and France, he was drafted into the Royal Navy as a strong sailor. Within a month he was promoted to first mate. Four years later he was promoted to captain. In 1759, he took command of a ship that participated in the battle on the St. Lawrence River. In 1763, after the war, Cook, as captain of the schooner Grenville, undertook surveys of the coasts of New Zealand, Labrador and Nova Scotia. In more than four years he achieved many important results. These results were later published by the British government.
Captain Cook's cabin
On August 26, 1768, Cook led the "Endeavor" to set sail to investigate the Venus Channel in the Pacific and investigate new islands in the area. . He was accompanied by an astronomer, two botanists and a painter who was good at natural history. He first sailed south, then turned west, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and arrived in Tahiti on April 13, 1769. After investigating Venus's passage, his research vessel sailed for New Zealand on June 3. He stayed there for six months and charted the two islands. Later he sailed along the east coast of Australia. He named Australia New South Wales and claimed it as belonging to England.
After sailing to Java, he crossed the strait between Australia and New Guinea, passed through the Indian Ocean, and returned to England around the Cape of Good Hope. He arrived in England on June 12, 1771. On July 13, 1772, Cook sailed from England again. The purpose of his voyage was to verify the report that "there is a continent in the south." He sailed south along the coast of Africa on the Explorer. Arrive near the Cape of Good Hope and begin crossing the Atlantic Ocean. By January 1773, he made a circle in the Atlantic Ocean but found no "Southern Continent". Later it sailed to New Zealand. From there he surveyed the New Hebrides, charted Easter Island and the Marquesas, and visited Tahiti and Tonga. In addition, he also discovered New Caledonia and the islands of Palmerston, Norfolk and Niue. He returned to England on July 29, 1775.
Cook and his fleet
Cook’s third and final voyage set sail from England on July 12, 1776. The goal this time was to examine the North Pacific and find a passage around North America to the Atlantic Ocean. After rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Cook crossed the Indian Ocean to New Zealand. From there it was sailed to Tahiti. Later they continued sailing. On Christmas Eve they saw an island. He named this island "Christmas Island". Sailing further north, he discovered the Hawaiian Islands. In February 1778 they sighted what is now the Oregon coast and returned north, crossing the Bering Sea and Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean. Later, he returned to Hawaii because he could not find an eastward passage. There, on February 14, 1779, he was killed by local Aboriginals.
Captain Cook
Author: Journey in Dreams
James Cook (October 27, 1728 - February 14, 1779) United Kingdom Explorers and navigators. He made three expeditions to the Pacific and explored the Pacific coastline. He was also a map maker, the inventor of the longitude gauge for navigation, and the first sea captain to discover a cure for scurvy. Often called Captain Cook.
According to records, New Zealand and Australia in the southern hemisphere were first discovered by James Cook. Today, the strait between the North Island and South Island of New Zealand is named Cook Strait (COOK STRAIT) after him. There is also an archipelago in the South Pacific named after him, the Cook Islands.
Life
1720s and 1730s - Born in Yorkshire, England in 1728, he was a Scottish immigrant.
1740s - Started working as a sailor on ships, but only worked in the waters near Britain.
1750s - Joined the British Royal Navy and was sent to North America to participate in the Anglo-French War.
1760s - Cook began his 20-year expedition and died in Hawaii in 1779. The cause of death is still unknown. It is believed that he was killed after a conflict with the native Hawaiians. During his three long expeditions, the accompanying painters John Webber and William Hodges left many precious nautical drawing records.
The First Expedition
Cook began his first expedition in 1768. On August 26 of that year, he set sail from Plymouth, England, crossed the entire Atlantic Ocean, passed through Brazil, then went south around Cape Horn, the southernmost tip of South America, and entered the Pacific Ocean, arriving in the South Pacific in April of the following year (1769). Tahiti, then sailed west to what is now New Zealand. After exploring the South Island and North Island, we continued west to Australia. Then it went north through Java and the Indian Ocean, and then started its return journey from the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, arriving in Britain in 1771.
The Second Expedition
In 1772, Cook left England again and headed to the South Pacific. This time he went in the opposite direction, from west to southeast, around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, across the Antarctic Circle, and arrived in New Zealand. Then he spent a lot of time exploring the islands in the middle of the triangle formed by Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii in the South Pacific, including Easter Island, Tonga, and the New Hebrides. Hebrides, New Caledonia and Norfolk Island. Then via South America, the Atlantic Ocean, and returned to England in 1775.
In the history of human exploration, Cook was the first person to circumnavigate the earth from west to east and confirm the existence of the Antarctic Continent.
The Third Expedition
On July 12, 1776, Cook once again traveled from west to east, preparing to explore the North Pacific. He circled the Cape of Good Hope, passed through the Indian Ocean, Australia, and New Zealand, and then continued To the north, from Tahiti to the north, we discovered the islands of Oahu, Kui and Niihau; today's Hawaiian Islands. In February 1778, he headed east to the Oregon coast of North America and headed north to explore the Arctic Ocean. It is known that they passed through the Bering Sea and Bering Strait, but were unable to cross the Arctic Ocean, so they had to return south to Hawaii. Cook died in Hawaii on February 14. On October 4 of the following year (1780), his ship "The Endeavor" returned to England.
Today in Melbourne and Canberra, Australia, Cook’s cabin and a huge 137-meter-high fountain named after him are still preserved.
Story: Captain Cook's indissoluble bond with the "Transit of Venus"
About every 120 years or so, a black spot will cross the sun. This inky black dot is almost a perfect circle, but it is not an ordinary black dot, because not everyone can see this black dot. As one of the greatest navigators and explorers in history, James Cook, the world-famous Captain Cook, also had an indissoluble bond with the transit of Venus.
Captain Cook was ordered to go on an expedition
On August 12, 1782, Captain Cook led the "Endeavour" to weigh anchor from the British port city of Plymouth and sail towards Tahiti. go. Tahiti is an island in the South Pacific that was "discovered" by Europeans just a year ago. It was desolate and undeveloped. At that time, even the mapmakers may not have known whether a continent existed in that corner of the earth.
For Cook, that voyage was no less difficult than modern exploration of the moon or Mars. He wanted to lead the "Endeavour" to sail across the vast ocean of thousands of miles, looking for a piece of land with a radius of only 20 miles. At that time, they did not have navigation equipment like the Global Positioning System (GPS) or even an accurate watch. No. During the voyage, dangerous storms will suddenly appear without warning (and this is indeed the case). Some unknown life forms are also waiting in the depths of the ocean. Cook fully expected that half of the crew on board might not be able to return to England.
But Cook knew that this risk was worth it, because this voyage would not only search for continents, but also observe the rare transit of Venus. Cook wrote in the logbook: "At 2 o'clock in the afternoon (August 12, 1782), we weighed anchor and sailed away. There were only 94 people on board." Joseph Bank, a young British botanist on the "Endeavor" Si's thoughts were more romantic. He wrote: "We leave Europe and sail towards heaven. I don't know how long it will take, maybe forever." Their mission was to reach Tahiti before 1769 and then settle on the island. , to build an observatory to observe the transit of Venus, hoping to calculate the size of the solar system through observations of the transit of Venus. It was in order to realize this scientific wish that the Royal Academy provided funding for Cook's trip.
The scale of the solar system was one of the most important problems in science in the 18th century, similar to the current problems of the nature of dark matter and dark energy. In Cook's time, astronomers only knew of the six planets orbiting the sun, but did not discover Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto. In addition, they only know the relative distance between these planets. Taking Jupiter as an example, its distance from the sun is five times that of the earth, but how far apart are they? Their absolute distance was unknown at the time.
But Venus holds the key to the mystery. Sir Edmund Halley realized this in 1716. Because Venus occasionally crosses the Sun as seen from Earth.
It moves slowly across the sunspot like an inky black disk. Halley deduced that if the start and end times of the transit of Venus were observed from different places on the Earth, astronomers would be able to use the principle of parallax to calculate the distance between the Earth and Venus, and then measure the size of the remaining stars in the solar system. .
But the problem is that the transit of Venus is really rare. It occurs about 4 times every 243 years. The pattern of this astronomical phenomenon is usually 8 years, 121.5 years, 8 years, 105.5 years, and so on. Halley himself never had the opportunity to see the transit of Venus during his lifetime. An international team of researchers calculated the transit time of Venus in 1761, but their calculations were mostly inaccurate due to weather and other factors. If Cook and others had failed to observe the transit of Venus in 1769, all astronomers on Earth would have died before the next transit in 1874.
A brutal sea journey
Cook's expedition is often compared to a space exploration mission. Tony Horwitz wrote in "Blue Latitudes" about Cook's travels: "The mission of Endeavor is not only a journey of discovery, it is also a laboratory for testing the latest theories and technologies, and its importance can be Comparable to today's spaceships."
The crew of Endeavor, in particular, were the guinea pigs in the Navy's battle against "the scourge of navigation" - scurvy. to do experiments). The human body can only store about 6 weeks worth of vitamin C. Once this vitamin C is used up, sailors will generally feel fatigue, and even have gum decay and bleeding. In the 18th century, it was common for some ships to have half their crews die from scurvy. The Endeavor was loaded with a variety of food for experiments, and Cook forced the crew to eat things like pickles and wort. Anyone who refused to eat would be whipped.
In fact, according to Horwitz, in those days any Cook would whip his crew on an average of several days. By the time they arrived in Tahiti in 1769, Cook and his crew had been sailing westward for eight months, a time equivalent to the time it takes modern astronauts to travel to Mars. When the Endeavor sailed to Cape Horn, five crew members had already lost their lives, and another desperate sailor committed suicide by jumping overboard during the 10 weeks the Endeavor subsequently sailed in the Pacific. Because the Endeavor was sailing at an angle toward Tahiti, it was extremely vulnerable to storms. In addition, the Endeavor was not connected to any "control center" and had no satellite weather images to warn of the approaching storm in advance. The voyage was full of dangers. However, Cook was ingenious. He used an hourglass to navigate, used a knotted rope to measure the speed of Endeavor, used a sextant and almanac, and estimated the position of Endeavor by observing the stars. It's both clever and dangerous.
Remarkably, they finally reached Tahiti on April 13, 1769, about 2 months before the transit of Venus. Cook wrote in his log: "Only a few of our men were on the disabled list at this time... The crew were generally in excellent health, largely due to the eating of pickles." However, Cook and his crew were unhappy with the situation. Tahiti was very foreign, probably like Mars to us now. But you don't need a "space suit" to survive on Tahiti. On the contrary, the island is quite comfortable and has the necessities needed for human life. The residents of the island are also very friendly and eager to trade with Cook. Banks considered it "the truest picture of Arcadia...the ideal home of one's imagination." However, Tahiti's flora, fauna, customs and habits were completely different from those in England, and this difference It's almost astonishing. The crew of the Endeavor were both intoxicated and intrigued.
Not many observational records remain
No wonder Cook and Banks described the transit of Venus on June 3, 1769, the day it finally occurred. Only a few words. Using special telescopes brought from England, they observed that Venus had become a small black spot, slowly passing through the dazzling solar disk, but this phenomenon could not compare with the charm of Tahiti itself. Banks's logbook describes the transit of Venus that day in 622 words, of which no more than 100 words are devoted to Venus.
This was largely because Banks was recounting his breakfast conversation with Tahiti's King Tallo and the King's sister Noona and the visit to him by "three beautiful ladies" later that day Make a record. Banks said of Venus: "I went to the observatory with King Tallo, Noona and several of their main entourages to observe with colleagues. We let them watch Venus cross the sun and let them watch it. They understood the purpose of our visit. Afterwards, they left, and I went with them." Whether King Tarlow or Banks was impressed by the transit of Venus, Banks has no record of it.
Cook's description is a little more detailed: "It was a day that was as expected, with clear skies and perfect conditions for observation. We had all the advantages we could have hoped for in observing the entire transit of Venus: we The atmosphere or hazy shadow around Venus can be seen very clearly, but this also interferes with our ability to see the precise timing of Venus' contact with the sun. "Hazy shadows around Venus" have been a big problem.
Intense sunlight passing through Venus' atmosphere blurred the edges of the planet's disk, reducing Cook's accuracy in timing Venus transits. It is for this reason that the transit time of Venus measured by Cook does not match some data from astronomer Charles Green on the Endeavor spacecraft. The transit time of Venus they observed differed by about 42 seconds.
Both Cook and Green observed the "black drop effect." As Venus approaches the edge of the Sun—the most critical moment in calculating the timing of Venus' transits—a dark region on one side of the Sun's edge appears to slowly touch Venus. You can also demonstrate the "black drop effect" by bringing your thumb and index finger very close together: hold the two fingers in front of your eyes, and then gradually reduce the distance between them. Just before the two fingers touch together, you will see a dark band in the small gap between the fingers. "It's just two blurry gradients from bright to dark," John Westphal wrote to Sky & Telescope this month. "The black drop effect" (like Venus) Atmospheric blurring) makes it difficult for astronomers to pinpoint when Venus' transit begins and ends.
The "black drop effect" was a problem not just for Cook in Tahiti, but for all observers around the world. In fact, even though astronomers around the world have made great efforts, they (including Cook) observed the transit of Venus in 1769 at 76 observation points on the earth, but it was not very accurate because it was not very accurate. To measure the size of the solar system. It wasn't until astronomers used photography in the 19th century to record a series of photos of the transit of Venus that they calculated the size of the solar system.
Observation became a "little thing"
Cook did not pay too much attention to those things at the time because he still had many things to do. A secret order from the British Royal Navy ordered him to leave Tahiti immediately after observing the transit of Venus and search for mainland or large land between Tahiti and New Zealand. For much of the next year, Endeavor sailed the South Pacific in search of a continent.
Some scientists in the 18th century claimed that in order to balance the relative decrease in land caused by the rapid population growth in the northern hemisphere, humans must find continents suitable for human habitation. At that time, the crew of the "Endeavor" did not even see land for nearly two months. Even Cook speculated that there may not be unexplored lands or unknown "southern hemisphere lands." During his journey, Cook met the brave New Zealand Maori and Australian Aboriginals, and discovered thousands of miles of New Zealand and Australian coastlines. The "Endeavor" also collided with Australia's Great Barrier Reef and almost sank.
Later, Cook stayed in Jakarta for 10 weeks to overhaul the Endeavour. At that time, seven sailors died of scurvy. Jakarta is densely populated and disease spreads everywhere. Cook originally planned to leave there as soon as possible, but it was delayed for too long due to ship repairs. As a result, 38 people, including astronomer Charles Green, sailed with the "Endeavor" (later joined by 8 people) from the beginning. Deaths, most from diseases contracted in Jakarta. Horwitz wrote: "'Endeavor's 40 percent casualty rate was not unusual at the time. In fact, Cook was later praised for his unusual concern for the crew's health."
< p>On July 11, 1771, the "Endeavor" returned to the British port of Deal. The surviving crew traveled around the globe, documenting thousands of species of plants, insects, and animals, encountering several new races, and never gave up in their search for a continent. This was an epic voyage. Observing the transit of Venus became a "little thing" in Cook's expedition. Due to being overly intoxicated with the customs and customs of Tahiti and affected by the "black drop effect", he observed The results were not ideal. But it was because of that voyage that people associated Venus with Cook. In fact, perhaps the best reason we can say to observe this transit of Venus is because of James Cook.Now, we will see this once-in-a-century astronomical phenomenon again, so don’t miss it. On the 8th of this month, Venus will transit the sun again. At that time, we can learn about the transit of Venus through the Internet or radio, or we can set up a telescope and observe it in person. Watching Venus's inky disk slowly pass by the Sun can transport you back to a different time and place: Tahiti in 1769, a time when parts of the Earth were still unexplored.
Would you miss such an opportunity? (Compiled by Ren Qiuling)