To Our Readers
AS kids, we used to joke about the guy who bought George Washington's hatchet, the one he used to chop down the cherry tree. It was in excellent condition, since it had gotten five new handles and three new heads. History visits Aloha Tower
That story came to mind when I went aboard H.M. Bark Endeavour at Aloha Tower last week. The Endeavour is a replica of the ship Lt. James Cook commanded in 1768 to 1771 on his first, immensely successful, voyage of discovery. The original began life as a lowly collier, built to haul coal.
Cook had learned to sail on similar ships and appreciated their virtues -- sturdiness, seaworthiness and the ability to carry lots of stuff. Her blunt, bulbous lines betray the fact that, despite the romantic spread of sails and rigging above her stubby hull, Endeavour was essentially a seagoing truck.
The purpose of Cook's voyage on Endeavour was scientific. He was to observe the transit of Venus across the sun from Tahiti and to find a continent geographers believed existed in the South Pacific. In the process, he made great strides in navigation, natural science, scurvy prevention and charting a world unknown to Western man.
It was years later, in 1779, that the navigator met his fate at Kealakekua Bay during his third voyage of discovery -- aboard Resolution, successor to Endeavour. Cook's final mission was to find a Northeast Passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic. He found Hawaii and his namesake Cook Islands, but no passage.
Despite her electric lights, inflatable life rafts and diesel engines, the Endeavour replica faithfully recaptures the look and feel of the original. En route to Australia where she was built, the floating museum is to leave tomorrow for Kauai, the next waypoint on a two-year circumnavigation.
Endeavour was an 18th-century starship, with Cook as Captain Kirk and Joseph Banks as Mr. Spock. As the familiar line goes, her three-year mission was to go where no (European) man had gone before. Accomplishing that, she changed history.
John Flanagan is editor and publisher of the Star-Bulletin.
To reach him call 525-8612, fax to 523-8509, send
e-mail to publisher@starbulletin.com or write to
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802.