In January 1773, the Resolution and Adventure were
entering the far Southern latitudes, looking for the landmass that the
French navigator Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier had called Cape
Circumcision. Cook was instructed to find out if this island was part of an undiscovered southern continent. The
landmass had been incorrectly charted and in fact the first landing on
the island, now re-christened Bouvet Island, didn't occur until 1822.
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| 'A view of the ice islands, seen the 9th Jan. 1773' After William Hodges |
On Saturday the 9th January 1773, George Forster wrote;
'in the morning, we saw a large island of ice, surrounded with many
small broken pieces, and the weather being moderate we brought to,
hoisted out the boats, and sent them to take up as much of the small ice
as they could. We piled up
the lumps on the quarter-deck, packed them into casks, and after dinner
melted them in the coppers, and obtained about thirty days water, in the
course of this day, and in the latitude of 61o 36'
south…A picturesque view of some large masses of ice, and of our ships
and boats employed in watering from small ice, is inserted in Captain
Cook's account of this voyage.'
