Cook (James)

After the first circumnavigation of the globe, made by our illustrious compatriot Ferdinand Magellan, it was the second voyage around the world, that of the great English navigator James Cook, that rendered the most signal services to science and did most to widen geographical knowledge.

On his first voyage of circumnavigation, Cook left the coast of England on 26 August 1768 in command of the English Royal Navy ship Endeavour. On 13 September following she anchored in the harbour of Funchal, setting sail on the 19th for Rio de Janeiro.

Captain Cook was shown great hospitality in this city by the English consul Cheap and by the governor and captain-general João António de Sá Pereira.

Aboard the Endeavour were the naturalists Joseph Banks and Dr Daniel Solander, who were charged with carrying out various scientific studies. During the few days they spent in Madeira they conducted a number of investigations into several branches of natural history, assisted by Dr Heberden, a distinguished English physician then living in Funchal.

The account of this voyage of Cook’s refers to various interesting aspects of our customs, convents and churches, means of transport, wine trade, etc. Cook and the two scholars of the expedition were greatly struck by a chapel they visited in the Convent of St Francis (São Francisco), whose walls were literally covered with human shin bones, thigh bones and skulls. Other visitors also refer to this macabre chapel with great astonishment, but it was not a unique case, for in other convents in Europe there were likewise chapels whose walls were lined with human remains.

Issues 462, 463 and 466 of the former Heraldo da Madeira (‘Madeira Herald’) printed a translation of the account of Cook’s voyage, which is well worth reading.

Cook returned to Madeira in 1772, on his second voyage to the southern seas, this time in command of the Resolution, and reached the port of Funchal on 29 July. The expedition’s naturalists were Johann Reinhold Forster and his son João Jorge, who observed 96 plants, some of them cultivated, during the three days they spent on the island. The narrative of this expedition records that there was at that time a prodigious number of Black and mixed-race people in Madeira, some free, others slaves.

Forster relates that the ships of Captain Cook’s first expedition bombarded the Ilhéu fortress (Fortaleza do Ilhéu) in 1768 over an insult to the British flag. However, neither Hawkesworth’s narrative nor the official documents of the time mention this incident, which, if it did occur, did not affect the good relations then existing between Portugal and England.

Captain Cook made a third voyage in 1776, but without calling at Madeira, and died on one of the islands of the Sandwich archipelago in a fight with the islanders.