Planisfero Cassini / Cook 1788
Item C04 - 98 x 72 cms - Price R5,450
In 1714 the British government offered a prize of 20,000 pounds (a huge sum in those days) to the first person to construct a clock capable of measuring longitude to within half a degree at the end of a voyage from England to Jamaica. (In those days the voyage took 6 weeks and the required accuracy in longitude amounts to 48 km in position at the latitude of Jamaica.) The prize was won by John Harrison for his 'chronometer'. In 1761 one of his chronometers was found to be only 5.1 seconds slow after 81 days of rough sailing. A chronometer carried by Captain James Cook on his second voyage (1772-1775) lost just 8 minutes in 3 years.
This map is one of many produced by generations of cartographers from the famous Cassini family. In addition, both the first and second voyages of Captain Cook are shown. As a result of his navigational skills (aided by Harrison's chronometer) Cook was able to add significantly to the then known locations and outlines of the lands adjoining the Pacific Ocean.
There were only three major mistakes in Cook's charting which he did not himself detect. The delineation of the Banks Peninsula (in the South Island of New Zealand) as an island; of Stewart Island as a peninsula, and his failure to determine the fact that Tasmania was an island. This illustrates the explorer's difficulty in distinguishing between a strait and a gulf or deep bay when he is unable or reluctant to keep close inshore.
A great deal of the plotting was delegated by Cook to his officers, as was some of the surveying. The journal of his last voyage contains this passage "I had several young men amongst my sea-officers who, under my direction, could be usefully employed in constructing charts, in taking views of the coasts... and in drawing plans of the bays and harbours in which we should anchor".
There are some references to this practice in the journals. In June 1770 he "sent some of the young gentlemen to take a plan of the harbour". In December 1774 Lieutenants Pickersgill and Clerke charted Christmas Sound to the west of Cape Horn, and in January 1777 Henry Roberts (masters mate) charted Adventure Bay in Tasmania. Cook told the Admiralty that the charts of the Second Voyage were "constructed partly from my own observations and partly from Mr. Gilberts my master. The views are all by Mr. Hodges".
After Cook's death, William Bligh, who was sailing master of the Resolution, claimed that he was responsible for the survey of the Friendly Islands and for all the surveys carried out after Cook's death, including those of the Sandwich Islands. Cook anticipated modern practice in naming his discoveries by using, whenever possible, the place names used by the natives. This sometimes proved difficult but he made good use of a Tahitian who was on board the Endeavour, as an interpreter and also of a vocabulary of eight dialects which had been compiled by William Anderson, the surgeon in Resolution. In a few cases he did use English place names.
With his death in February 1779, the world lost someone who has been described as "the greatest seaman-explorer the world has known. A man who aimed at perfection in all that he undertook, and who established certainties where hitherto there had been doubts". In closing one can do no better than consider some of the words inscribed on Cook's monument at Chalfont-St-Giles in Buckinghamshire
"To the memory of Captain James Cook, the ablest and most renowned navigator this or any other country has produced".
