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set off along the west coast for Queen Charlotte Sound. On 18 May
she was reunited with her sister ship.
The men of the
Resolution
found their colleagues of the
Ad-
venture
comfortably settled for the winter. The ship was securely
anchored. A shore camp had been set up and even gardens planted.
Good relations had been established with the locals, who came every
day to barter food. It all looked very cosy and Cook's sailors must
have looked forward to a prolonged rest. Even their workaholic cap-
tain could not contemplate more Antarctic wanderings at this sea-
son of the year. If they thought thus they were in for a rude shock.
Certainly there could be no question of returning to the high latit-
udes, but Cook was not prepared to idle away the winter. The island
chains of Polynesia still presented puzzles in need of solution and he
was under orders to reassert the British presence at Tahiti. On 7 June
the two ships launched out due eastwards into the dirty weather of
the South Pacific winter.
For almost six weeks they were driven by south-west and
north-west gales, between 40° and 47°S, towards the heart of that
large area shown on the charts as an empty space and where some
geographers still believed a southern continent was located. They
were almost half-way to South America before Cook ordered a
change of course to the north. What a welcome the warmth and light
airs of the Tropics must have been and with what eagerness the men
must now have begun to look forward to the delights of Tahiti. It
had so far been a very hard voyage and now, to make matters worse,
scurvy and dysentery had made their appearance. Yet, only on the
Adventure,
where, at one time, a third of the crew were ill, was the
situation serious. Cook's few scurvy cases were put on a special diet
and the disease was checked. Nothing could more clearly vindicate
Cook's rigid stance on food and hygiene. It also demonstrates one of
the problems of a two-ship expedition. However dedicated a second-
in-command might be (and Tobias Furneaux of the
Adventure
was a
