Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In the Cape Verde Islands the pirates seized a fine Danish,
36-gun ship and in her they put to sea early in the New Year (1684).
They were immediately caught in the Doldrums. Occasional thun-
derstorms would arise but afterwards 'the wind would shuffle
mid equatorial spell was broken and Cook set course for Magellan's
Strait. But the violence of the prevailing westerlies prevented him
wearing into the channel. He stood to the south with the wind on his
starboard beam and quarter carrying him far from the land. For a
week the ship was driven on and on into the region of bitter cold. She
was in 60°S before a shift in wind direction allowed a long tack to
the north-west. Then, on St Valentine's Day, the full fury of the Horn's
weather fell upon her. Seventeen non-stop days of rain-soaked tem-
pests, veering between SW and WSW, lashed her back towards the
land. All this time Cook and his men had no sight of sun, moon or
stars and therefore no means of fixing their longitude. Daily they ex-
pected to catch a fleeting glimpse through the spray of some too-
near craggy foreland or to distinguish the ominous crash of break-
ers from the cacophony of wind and wave. But when the weath-
er cleared and astronomical calculations were again possible they
found that they were in the South Sea. It had been an appalling pas-
sage, especially as some of the men were too ill with scurvy to work.
The only positive aspect of the experience was that twenty-three
barrels of rain water had been collected.
Cook made directly for an island well known to all the buccan-
eers who preyed on the Pacific seaboard; a place of deep harbours,
timbered hillsides and abundant sweet water; a place where they
were impervious to Spanish attack because '50 men in [the anchor-
three hundred miles off the coast. Its first Spanish discoverer, who
had conferred his own name upon it, had tried unsuccessfully to col-
onise the island. All he had achieved was to make Juan Fernandez
