We had another fascinatingly informative virtual gathering of Captain Cook fans from many parts of the world.  We had 31 participants from Australia, New Zealand, UK and Belgium, as well as the usual crew from Canada and the USA.  

We were very honoured to have as our guest speaker James Barnett originally from Alaska, but now residing in Oregon.  The topic of his talk was “Captain Cook and the Northwest Passage”. 

Along with Dave Nicandri, James Barnett had co-authored the book Arctic Ambitions:  Captain Cook & the Northwest Passage.¹ James is also the author of Captain Cook in Alaska and the North Pacific,²  and is co-editor of Enlightenment and Exploration in the North Pacific, 1741-1805.³  His wealth of know­ledge was truly evident throughout the presentation, with old maps showing the changes as various explorers searched for the Northwest Passage, and filled in large areas that had been blank.  His anecdotes and illustrations made it all extremely interesting.

From the time of Cabot and Hudson through to Drake, Vizcaino & Aguilar, Bering, Quadra, Cook and Vancouver, finding a passageway across the top of the world was the common goal in order to facilitate trade and commerce between Europe and the Far East.  In the early 1800s, the British Admiralty offered a prize of £20,000 to the first person to discover such a passage.  In today’s money that would equal over £4 million.  In the process, many assumptions that explorers had made about how the map should or might look were discarded in favour of what they were actually seeing.  Initially, California was thought to be an island, and a large inland sea was on the map.  Under Peter the Great, the Russians sent Bering to find where the separation between Asia and North America was.  Now that strait bears Bering’s name.   Quadra made it as far north as Haida Gwaii, then turned around.  Captain Cook was given the order to not explore any inlets along the west coast until he reached latitude 65° north.  Cook was disgusted with the map he was supposed to follow as it was so inaccurate.  He ended up trading maps with the Russian explorer Izmailov.

Cook made it all the way through the Bering Strait to Siberia, and met the indigenous people there.  He and his men avoided getting scurvy by eating walrus meat.  Apparently, it tasted awful.  However, he told his men that it tasted as sweet as marmalade. 

Among the later explorers who came after Cook was George Vancouver.  He explored every inlet as he did not want to miss anything.  In addition, Alexander Mackenzie explored overland from east to west, disproving the idea that an inland passage existed. 

At long last, the first European to traverse the entire Northwest Passage (partly by sled over ice) was Irish explorer Robert McClure from 1850 to 1854.  The first successful navigation of the passage entirely by sea was achieved by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen from 1903 to 1906.

The meeting was followed by a question-and-answer session with even more information being shared.  We look forward to the next West Coast CCS meeting in November.

Randy Komar

References

1. Barnett, James K. and David L. Nicandri (eds.).  Arctic Ambitions: Captain Cook and the Northwest Passage.  University of Washington Press.  2015. 
2. Barnett, James K.  Captain Cook in Alaska and the North Pacific.  Todd Communications.  2008. 
3. Haycox, Stephen, James Barnett and Caedmon Liburd (eds.).  Enlightenment and Exploration in the North Pacific, 1741-1805.  University of Washington Press.  1997. 

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 42, volume 48, number 2 (2025).