The History of Exploration

Since the earliest times, people have explored their surroundings. They have crossed the hottest deserts, climbed the highest mountains, and sailed the widest seas. They have struggled through steamy jungle to find an unknown plant and brought back weird¹ creatures from the ocean floor. All explorers have in common the human trait of curiosity². However, curiosity was not the only reason for many journeys of discovery. Explorers always had more practical reasons for setting out, for example to search for land or treasure.

Some hoped to find valuable trade or new routes to countries that produced the goods they wanted. There is a saying that “trade follows the flag”. In other words when explorers find new lands, traders will soon follow. However, it would be better to say that “the flag follows trade”! It was the search for trade and trade routes that resulted in³ Europe’s discovery of all the world’s oceans and continents during the 15^th and 16^th centuries. The famous voyages of explorers, such as Columbus and Magellan, arose from desire of Europeans to find a sea route to the markets of the Far East, where valuable goods like silk and spices could be bought. Columbus did not set out to discover a new continent. He was hoping to reach China and Japan, and died insisting that he had done so. Magellan did not intend to sail around the world. He was hoping to find a new route for trade with the Moluccas⁴, or Spice Islands.

Some were missionaries, who felt a duty to convert people to their own religion. Unlike many other religions, Christianity claims to be universal⁵. Sincere Christians therefore believed it was their duty to convert other people to Christianity. European expeditions to the Americas included priests, whose job was not only to hold services for the European members of the expedition, but also to convert the local people.

Some were fishermen or miners or merchants, looking for a better living. One of them was Marco Polo, who made his famous journey to the East in 1271. There were many Europeans travelling across Asia, but Marco’s journey was unique because he stayed in the vast Mongol Empire for 20 years. On his return to Europe he wrote a splendid book describing all that he had seen.

All explorations and discoveries have opened the world. Thanks to the determination of generations of explorers, there is almost no place on Earth that is still unknown and unnamed. We know what lies in the ocean’s depths, and at the top of the highest mountain. Maps chart the dry rocks of the world’s deserts and the glaciers of the coldest polar regions. Even the Earth’s gravity has not stopped explorers from heading out into space⁶. As distant places have become more familiar, the nature of exploration has changed. The challenge is no longer to discover the world’s wild places. Today, a new adventure in exploration is beginning. Explorers are trying to understand the Earth and its climate, and the living things that inhabit its surface. Scientists hope to learn more about the Earth’s geology and origins by studying and measuring the tiny shifts⁷ of the bare rocks on mountaintops.

We are finding out about the surroundings of the Earth itself. Now that the Moon has been visited, space scientists today are concentrating on building space stations closer to Earth (highly accurate photographs from the “eyes in the sky” – satellites – help scientists to map the world’s most remote regions, to look for mineral resources, and to track the spread of pollution⁸ and crop disease⁹) and sending space probes to find out more about regions of space much farther away. Spacecraft travelling through the solar system have sent back news of other planets and one day men and women will follow them.

For millions of years, the Earth’s natural systems have lived in delicately balanced harmony¹⁰. Exploration itself does little to upset this balance. But when people move into newly discovered areas they cause permanent changes. The explorers of the past showed our ancestors the wonders of the Earth. The duty of explorers today is to discover how to preserve these wonders for future generations.

Captain Cook

In the 18^th century Europeans knew very little about the South Pacific. Many did not believe it was an ocean at all and thought instead that the region contained a giant southern continent, which stretched across the South Pole and reached as far north as the tropics. The Solomon Islands, New Zealand, and possibly even Australia were all considered part of this huge land mass. Two nations – Great Britain and France – took the lead¹ in exploring the South Pacific, but it was an Englishman, Captain James Cook, who solved the mystery of the Southern continent for ever.

The famous navigator was born in Yorkshire in 1728, and he spent his boyhood and learnt his seamanship there. James Cook joined the Royal Navy in 1755 at the age of 27 after serving 10 years in merchant² ships. Although he joined the Navy at a low level, he was a skilled navigator and pilot and gained rapid promotion³. However, he did not become an officer until 1768, when he was appointed to lead the expedition to the Pacific.

James Cook made three voyages from the British Isles to the South Seas. When he had to choose a ship to sail around the world, he chose a Whitby collier⁴ and renamed it the Endeavour. Colliers were built to carry coal, so the Endeavour was neither beautiful nor fast, but she was tough⁵. There was enough room on board for stores and a crew of 94 men, including the wealthy young naturalist, Joseph Banks and his team of scientists.

On his first voyage, in 1768, Cook sailed to Tahiti, New Zealand and the east coast of Australia. To prove this fact his team displayed the British flag on the shore and carved a brief inscription⁶ on a nearby tree.

Captain Cook first stepped ashore on April 29^th, 1770. There was a great variety of plants in the vicinity⁷ of his landing area, and that’s why he called the place Botany Bay. At Botany Bay, Joseph Banks and the other naturalists collected hundreds of plants they had never seen before. Cook’s crew were the first Europeans to see an Australian Kangaroo. They were totally confused by it and couldn’t decide what kind of animal it might be. It was the colour of a mouse, the size of a deer and it jumped like a hare. In the end they decided it must be “some kind of stag”⁸. That part of Australia resembled the coastline of Glamorgan and Cook gave it the name of New South Wales. After that he continued his voyage of exploration and discovered that New Guinea was completely separate from Australia. Cook’s charts of the region, showing the Solomon Islands, New Zealand’s North and South Islands, and the east coast of Australia, proved they were separate countries rather than a single continent.

On his second voyage, in 1772, James Cook sailed due⁹ south into Antarctic waters, and guessed correctly that there was an area of frozen land around the South Pole. Approaching Antarctica he crossed the Antarctic Circle twice. The famous navigator never actually saw Antarctica, the real Southern continent, though he was very close to it several times. “Ice mountains”, as he called the icebergs, prevented him from sailing closer to it. His crew chipped chunks¹⁰ of ice from the icebergs to use as drinking water. Cook felt sure the ice stretched all the way to the South Pole, and wrote in his journal that he could think of no reason why any man should want to sail in these cold and dangerous waters again.

On his third voyage, in 1776, Captain Cook sailed to the North Pacific looking for an inlet that would lead him to the Arctic Ocean. On the way, he found Hawaii by chance. Cook came across the Hawaiian Islands, which he named the Sandwich Islands. He spent the winter there getting to know the islands and their inhabitants, who were very friendly. In spring he left to explore the coast of North America but had to return to Hawaii to repair a broken mast. This time the islanders did not welcome the strangers so warmly, perhaps because they were short of food. A quarrel began when some of the islanders stole one of the ship’s boats. A short scuffle¹¹ broke out on the beach and Cook was stabbed¹² to death. He died in 1779.

Whitby Museum contains many souvenirs from Cook’s voyages, and there are also scale models of his ships – Endeavour and Resolution, both of which were built right here in Whitby’s shipyards. A splendid life-size figure of the great sailor and explorer stands facing the sea on the West Cliff above the harbour.