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IMPACT Article: Captain Cook, Science, and Luck
February 6, 2009 | Posted by admin
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Captain Cook, Science, and Luck
By Eric Fitch
I grew up a fan of the fictional exploits of Captain James T. Kirk and although I maintain my status as a Trekkie, in more recent years I have come to admire the life and works of Captain James Cook FRS RN. This admiration was reinforced by things I learned and places I visited while recently being in Hawai’i. James Cook has gone down in history as one of the greatest explorers of all time. He was also a skilled surveyor, mapmaker, and enough of a scientist that he was hired to do three great exploratory expeditions to the Pacific and inducted as a fellow by the British Royal Society (of Science). The nominal reason for his first voyage was to take observations of the Transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. As side endeavors he mapped the coast of New Zealand and the southeastern coast of Australia.
His second voyage under Royal Society charter was to find the mythical Terra Australis, the great southern continent. He both succeeded and failed in this enterprise in that he mapped the rest of the Australian coast determining its continental status. He went back to Britain with this information having found a new continent, but not where it was supposed to be. Ironically, or perhaps unluckily, he almost had two continental discoveries under his belt. Unsatisfied that Australia was the Terra Australis he kept sailing south, discovering several islands and island chains along the way. He turned back just short of where he would have been able to see Antarctica because the ship was running short on supplies.
Cook’s third and last voyage’s main mission was to find the fabled Northwest Passage; an ice-free route north or through North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Unfortunately for Cook, before modern climate change, it didn’t exist. He made multiple attempts along Pacific North America mapping coasts from California to Alaska and the Inlet that bears his name.
Exhausted and low on supplies, he set sail back for islands earlier charted but unexplored. The islands called Hawai’i by its inhabitants, but which he named the Sandwich Islands – not early product placement but in honor of his benefactor the Earl of Sandwich – were seen as a place where he could get fresh water and provisions. Cook was doubly fortunate to arrive and land on the “Big Island” when he did. It was during Makahiki, the festival of Lono, the Hawai’ian god of fertility, music, rain, and peace. Cook arrived just as Lono was supposed to return. It is believed that Cook and his crew were welcomed because of the mistaken belief that he was Lono, and unlike Dr. Raymond Stantz from Ghost Busters, he knew what to say when asked if he was a god! He stayed for the month. He was treated well, able to provision the ship, and like good guests (gods?), he and his crew left. Cook’s luck ran out soon after. The mast of the Resolution broke and Cook was forced to return to Kealakekua Bay. This pretty much ruined the illusion of deity because (1) the festival of Lono was over and he wouldn’t arrive during another god’s month and (2) a god wouldn’t allow his ship to get so fouled up. Things went from bad to worse and eventually Cook was killed.
I reflected on this on my flight from Kauai to Oahu. How these green gems of islands in an endless beautiful but undrinkable body of water could support the lives and livelihoods of so many people over time. That they were fought over by nations and peoples that in some ways continues through today (e.g., the `Iolani Palace was briefly taken over by a nationalist/separatist group while I was there). Why? In large part because these are places in the middle of the Pacific where fresh water and food are found naturally and in abundance, or at least they were historically. Hawai’i has become a land where the prime driver of the economy is no longer agriculture, but tourism. All of the Hawai’ian Islands are currently under some level of water stress from extremely dry to extreme drought. Although the Islands all receive large amounts of rainfall, population pressure, alteration of ground cover, and abandonment of some past conservation techniques have all contributed to these shortfalls. What is sad is that unlike the indigenous water management knowledge that was lost during the periods of European imperialism, much of the knowledge of the Hawai’ian peoples remains. One need look no further than the University of Hawai’i-Manoa’s Cooperative Extension Service online publications. The wisdom of past practices and the adapted techniques of today for capturing and wisely using the abundant rainfall are nicely summarized in two publications: “Managing Hawaii’s Watersheds” and “Guidelines on Rainwater Catchment Systems for Hawai’i”: both accessible on-line at http:// www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/ctahr2001/PIO/.
Captain Cook was a skilled navigator, explorer, scientist, and leader, but he had to rely on luck as well as skill to boldly go forth. Though his skills and leadership were at times tested, it was his luck that fatally failed him. As seen in the diminishing water resources of all our lands, including the Paradise of the Pacific, it is high time we started relying on our skills and start conserving precious freshwater resources before our luck, like Cook’s, runs out.
Editor’s Note: Additional articles may be found in AWRA’s bi-monthly magazine IMPACT.
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