It was known in after years that Cook's body had been instantly cut up; the flesh was burnt, as was the custom with great chiefs and many of the bones were preserved with great honour in a Morai dedicated to Rono.
It seems clear that Cook's death was due to a revulsion of feeling on the part of some of the natives, who no longer believed in his divine character, but that many regarded the outrage with horror. When the first Europeans came to reside on the island, and learnt the story from the native side, they found universal regret prevailing at this untoward occurrence.
Cook left officers imbued with his own noble sentiments. No general attack was made in revenge for what they saw was the result of misunderstanding, although they were ignorant of the exact circumstances which led, first to the uncommon and extraordinary veneration with which he had been treated, and then to the sudden change in the native behaviour.
It was found necessary to fire on the natives who prevented the watering party from working, and some of the sailors on this duty burnt some houses; but before the ships left, friendly relations were again established, and many natives visited them.
After Cook's remains had been committed to the sea, the prosecution of the voyage was determined upon, although Captain Clerke was in the last stage of consumption, and as soon as the Resolution's mast could be repaired, the two vessels once more departed, on February 22nd, 1779.
Cook's intentions were carried out as if he had still been in command. The remainder of the Sandwich Group was mapped, and the ships proceeded once more to the north. Calling at Petropavlovsk in Avatcha Bay, Kamtchatka, they again passed through Bering Strait, and sought in vain for a passage either to the north-east or north-west, being everywhere baffled by dense masses of ice. Captain Clerke at last abandoned the struggle, and repassed Bering Strait on his way south on August 1st.
On August 22nd Captain Clerke died.
This officer had accompanied Captain Cook in all his voyages, and had also circumnavigated the globe in the Dolphin with Captain Byron before. No man had seen more of the Pacific, and he proved himself, during his short period of command, a worthy successor of Cook.
Captain Gore, who had been with Cook on his First Voyage, now succeeded, King being put as Commander into the Discovery, and the two ships made the best of their way home, via Macao and the Straits of Sunda, arriving at the Nore on October 4th, 1780, after an absence of four years and two months. During the whole of this voyage not the slightest symptom of scurvy appeared in either ship, so completely were Cook's precautions successful.
Cook had six children. Three died young. Of the others, all boys, the eldest, James, entered the Navy, and lived to be a Commander, when, in 1794, he was drowned. The second, Nathaniel, also in the Navy, was lost in a hurricane in 1780. The third died when at Cambridge. They none of them lived to be married, and no descendant of the great navigator has perpetuated his race.
Of Cook's private life during his brief intervals at home we know nothing. A man rising from the ranks, and of his reserved character, would have but few friends, when he had such short time to make them in his new sphere. He lived at Mile End when at home, but after his death his widow removed to Clapham, living there for forty years, at first with her cousin, Isaac Smith, who had served with Cook in the Endeavour and Resolution. She died in 1835, at the great age of ninety-three.
Of Cook's character, none could be a better judge than Captain King, who writes as follows, after describing his death:--
"Thus fell our great and excellent commander. After a life of so much distinguished and successful enterprise, his death, as far as regards himself, cannot be considered premature, since he lived to finish the great work for which he seems to have been designed. How sincerely his loss was felt and lamented, by those who had so long found their general security in his skill and conduct, and every consolation in their hardships in his tenderness and humanity, it is neither necessary nor possible for me to describe. The constitution of his body was robust, inured to labour, and capable of undergoing the severest hardships. His stomach bore without difficulty the coarsest and most ungrateful food. Indeed, temperance with him was scarcely a virtue, so great was the indifference with which he submitted to every kind of self-denial. The qualities of his mind were of the same hardy, vigorous kind with those of his body. His understanding was strong and perspicacious. His judgment in whatever related to the service he was engaged in quick and sure. His designs were bold and manly, and both in the conception and in the mode of execution bore evident marks of a great original genius. His courage was cool and determined, and accompanied by an admirable presence of mind in the moment of danger. His manners were plain and unaffected. His temper might, perhaps, have been justly blamed as subject to haughtiness and passion, had not these been disarmed by a disposition the most benevolent and humane. Those intervals of recreation, which sometimes unavoidably occurred, and were looked for by us with a longing that persons who have experienced the fatigues of service will readily excuse, were submitted to by him with a certain impatience whenever they could not be employed in making further provision for the more effectual prosecution of his designs."
This is a pretty complete picture, and of a great man; a man who had before him continually his duty, and who had in an eminent degree the capacity to carry it out.
Though, under his determination to do this, he drove his people hard; though he tried them with his irascibility; their conviction of his greatness, their confidence in his leadership and in his justice, led them to love him. He had no sympathy with the ordinary foibles and weaknesses of his men. The charms of Tahiti, the paradise of the sailor, were no charms for him; he hardly notices the attractive ladies of that island; the attractions of the place to him were the abundance of provisions, as a means of fitting his expedition for further exploration and hardship. The strongest proof of his capacity as a commander is the devotion of his officers. Those who know the Navy know how difficult it is for any man who rises from the ranks to be successful in command. But Cook was a gentleman born; he had the intuition of great minds for fitting themselves to every position to which they may rise, and there is never a whisper of disinclination to submit to the rule of the once collier boy, the son of a labourer.
His intelligence is remarkably shown in his greatest triumph, the suppression of scurvy. That it should be left to a man of little education to discern the combination of means by which this enemy of long voyages could be conquered, is the most remarkable thing about this remarkable man. He himself notices the disinclination of the sailor to any new article of food, especially when not particularly palatable; but he soon found the means to induce them to understand that their lives greatly depended upon these rather nasty messes. Sour krout; the unsavoury portable soups of that day; the strange greens that Cook insisted on hunting up at every land he visited, and boiling with their ordinary food; the constant washing between decks; the drying below with stoves, even in the hottest weather; the personal baths; the change of wet clothing; the airing of bedding, were all foreign and repugnant to the notions of the seamen of the day, and it required constant supervision and wise management to enforce the adoption of these odd foods and customs.
It is evident that it is to Cook's personal action the success was due. Wallis and Byron had anti-scorbutics, but they suffered from scurvy; Furneaux, sailing with Cook in the second voyage, under precisely similar circumstances, suffered from scurvy. It was only in Cook's ships, and in the Discovery, commanded and officered by men who had sailed with Cook, and seen his methods, that exemption occurred.
Cook did more, incomparably more, than any other navigator to discover new lands. This was only accomplished by dint of hard work; and yet his men suffered less than in any ships, British or foreign, or similar expeditions. Though his tracks were in new and unknown waters, we never hear of starvation; he always manages to have an abundant supply of water.
The completeness and accuracy of his accounts and charts are no less remarkable.
M. de La Perouse, one of the foremost of the great French navigators, told Captain Phillip, the founder of the Colony of New South Wales, that "Cook had left him nothing but to admire." This was all but literally true; wherever Cook went he finished his work, according