James Cook's Third Voyage (1776-1780): Hawaii and the Arctic

James Cook’s third voyage (1776–1780) was a British naval expedition with HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery that searched for a Northwest Passage from the Pacific, made the first known European contact with Hawaii and charted the north-west coast of North America as far as the Bering Strait. The voyage found no passage through the Arctic ice, and Cook was killed in Hawaii in February 1779. Even so, its charts and reports reshaped European knowledge of the North Pacific and opened the region to traders and rival empires.

Background: the Northwest Passage

For more than two centuries European navigators had hoped to find a sea route around the north of America that would shorten the voyage to Asia. Attempts from the Atlantic side had failed, and in 1775 Parliament extended a reward of £20,000 to naval ships that found a passage north of latitude 52°.

The Admiralty decided to try from the Pacific. Cook, who had returned from his second voyage in 1775 and was offered a comfortable post at Greenwich Hospital, volunteered to lead it. A second task was to take home Mai, a young man from Ra’iātea who had lived in London for two years.

Ships and crew

Cook commanded the Resolution again, while Charles Clerke, a veteran of both earlier voyages, commanded the Discovery. The two ships carried about 190 men. William Bligh, later of the Bounty, was master of the Resolution, and George Vancouver served as a midshipman on the Discovery. The artist John Webber and the surgeon-naturalist William Anderson recorded the places and people met.

The Resolution sailed from Plymouth on 12 July 1776. Clerke, delayed by debts in London, followed on 1 August, and the ships met at Cape Town in November.

Across the South Pacific

The ships called at the remote Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean in December 1776, then at Adventure Bay in Tasmania and Queen Charlotte Sound in New Zealand early in 1777. Contrary winds delayed the voyage north, and Cook spent nearly three months in the Tongan islands, missing the Arctic summer of 1777.

The expedition reached Tahiti in August 1777. Mai was settled on the island of Huahine with a house, livestock and European goods. Several observers noted that Cook was more irritable and harsh on this voyage, punishing thefts with severity that shocked some of his own officers.

Hawaii and the north-west coast

Sailing north from the Society Islands, the ships sighted O’ahu on 18 January 1778 and anchored off Waimea on Kaua’i two days later. The islands had been settled by Polynesian voyagers centuries before, as told in the Polynesian settlement of Hawaii, but had no recorded contact with Europeans. Cook named them the Sandwich Islands.

In March 1778 the ships reached the coast of present-day Oregon and then spent about a month at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island, refitting and trading with the Mowachaht people. Moving north along the coast of Alaska, Cook explored Prince William Sound and the long inlet now called Cook Inlet, hoping in vain that it led to a passage.

At Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands, the British met Russian fur traders, whose presence followed the Second Kamchatka Expedition of Vitus Bering.

The Arctic and the return to Hawaii

In August 1778 the ships passed through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean. On 18 August they were stopped by a solid wall of pack ice at about 70°44′ North, near a headland Cook named Icy Cape. The crews killed walruses for food as the ships worked along the ice edge, a scene Webber recorded.

With winter approaching, Cook crossed to the Siberian coast and then sailed south to spend the winter in Hawaii, intending to try again in 1779. In late November 1778 he reached Maui and the island of Hawai’i, which he spent about seven weeks circling before anchoring in Kealakekua Bay on 17 January 1779.

There Cook was welcomed with great ceremony during the Makahiki festival. After leaving on 4 February, the ships were forced back by a broken foremast, and on 14 February Cook was killed in a clash at the water’s edge, described in the article on the death of Captain Cook.

After Cook

Charles Clerke took command and, in spite of advanced tuberculosis, carried out the orders. The ships called at Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka, where Russian officials gave generous help, and in July 1779 tried the Bering Strait again, but ice stopped them at a similar latitude.

Clerke died off Kamchatka on 22 August 1779 and was buried at Petropavlovsk. John Gore took command of the Resolution and James King of the Discovery. The ships sailed home by Japan, Macau and the Cape of Good Hope.

At Canton, sailors sold sea otter pelts obtained on the American coast for extraordinary prices. Britain was by now at war with France, Spain and the American colonies, but Benjamin Franklin, as American representative in France, had asked American ships not to molest Cook’s expedition because of its scientific value. The ships reached Stromness in Orkney in August 1780 and the Nore, at the mouth of the Thames, on 4 October 1780.

Key people

Charles Clerke (1741–1779) had sailed with John Byron and on both of Cook’s earlier Pacific voyages. He knew he was dying of tuberculosis, probably caught while held in a debtors’ prison before sailing, yet he pressed on with the Arctic search.

James King (1750–1784), second lieutenant of the Resolution and an educated astronomer, completed the third volume of the official account. John Webber (1751–1793) produced hundreds of drawings that gave Europeans their first images of Hawaii, Nootka Sound and Alaska.

William Bligh (1754–1817) made many of the voyage’s charts as master of the Resolution; his later command of HMS Bounty made him famous for other reasons. John Ledyard (1751–1789), an American marine, published his own account in 1783 and tried to interest investors in the fur trade.

Consequences and legacy

The voyage produced the first reliable charts of much of the north-west coast of America and showed that no navigable passage existed in the latitudes searched. The official account, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, appeared in 1784 with Webber’s engravings and sold out quickly.

Its reports of sea otter profits launched the maritime fur trade, drawing British, American, Spanish and Russian ships to the coast and contributing to the Nootka Crisis of 1789–1790. George Vancouver’s expedition of 1791–1795 later completed the survey of the coast. For Hawaiians, the voyage began a period of rapid change, including the arrival of foreign diseases and weapons that shaped the rise of the Hawaiian kingdom.

Timeline

• 1776, 12 July: The Resolution sails from Plymouth; the Discovery follows on 1 August.
• 1777, August: The ships reach Tahiti; Mai is later settled on Huahine.
• 1778, 18–20 January: Cook sights O’ahu and lands at Waimea, Kaua’i.
• 1778, March–April: The ships refit at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island.
• 1778, 18 August: Pack ice stops the ships at about 70°44′ North near Icy Cape.
• 1779, 17 January: The ships anchor in Kealakekua Bay, Hawai’i.
• 1779, 14 February: Cook is killed at Kealakekua Bay.
• 1779, 22 August: Charles Clerke dies off Kamchatka.
• 1780, 4 October: The ships reach the Nore at the mouth of the Thames.

Why it matters

Cook’s third voyage completed the outline of the Pacific on European maps, linking Hawaii, the American north-west and the Arctic. It ended the hope of an easy Northwest Passage, launched a global fur trade and marked the start of sustained contact between Hawaii and the wider world.