HMS Resolution (Cook) Totally Explained

Everything about Hms Resolution Cook totally explained

HMS Resolution was a sloop of the Royal Navy, and the ship in which Captain James Cook made his second and third voyages of exploration in the Pacific. She impressed him enough that he called her "the ship of my choice", and "the fittest for service of any I've seen." Resolution began her career as the North Sea collier Marquis of Granby, launched at Whitby in 1770, and purchased by the Royal Navy in 1772. She was originally to be renamed Drake, but fearing this would upset the Spanish, she was instead renamed Resolution. She was fitted out at Deptford with the most advanced navigational aids of the day, including a Gregory Azimuth Compass, ice anchors and the latest apparatus for distilling fresh water from sea water. Twelve light 6-pounder guns and twelve swivel guns were carried. At his own expense Cook had brass door-hinges installed in the great cabin. Resolution cost the Admiralty £4,151. It was originally planned that the naturalist Joseph Banks and an appropriate entourage would sail with Cook, so a heightened waist, an additional upper deck and a raised poop deck were built to suit Banks. However, in sea trials the ship was found to be top-heavy, and under Admiralty instructions the offending structures were removed. Banks subsequently refused to travel under the resulting "adverse conditions" and was replaced by Johann Reinhold Forster and his son, George. The conversion had cost a further £6,565.
   When she sailed from Plymouth on July 13, 1772 with HMS Adventure, her complement totaled 112, including 20 volunteers who had sailed on Cook's first voyage in HMS Endeavour in 1768–1771.
   On his first voyage Cook had calculated longitude by the usual method of lunars but on her second voyage the Board of Longitude sent a highly qualified astronomer, William Wales, with Cook and entrusted him with a new marine chronometer, the K1, recently completed by Larcum Kendall, together with three chronometers made by John Arnold. Kendall's K1 was remarkably accurate and was to prove to be most efficient in determining longitude on board Resolution.
   On January 17, 1773, Resolution was the first ship to cross the Antarctic Circle and crossed twice more on the voyage. The third crossing, on February 3, 1774, was the most southerly penetration, reaching latitude 71°10′ South at longitude 106°54′ West. Resolution thus proved Alexander Dalrymple's Terra Australis Incognita to be a myth. On Cook's third voyage, Resolution crossed the Arctic Circle on August 17, 1778, and again crossed it on July 19, 1779, under the command of Charles Clerke after Cook's death.
   In 1780, Resolution was converted into an armed transport and sailed for the East Indies in March 1781. She was captured by the Sphinx of de Suffren's squadron on June 9, 1782. After the action at Negapatam on 6 July 1782, Resolution was sent to Manila for wood, biscuit and rigging, and to press any seaman she found there. She sailed on July 22, 1782 and was never seen again.
   On June 5, 1783 de Suffren wrote that Resolution had last been seen in the Sunda Strait, and that he suspected she'd either foundered or fallen into the hands of the English. An item from the Melbourne Argus, February 25, 1879, said that she ended her days as a Portuguese coal-hulk at Rio de Janeiro, but this has never been confirmed. Viscount Galway, a Governor-General of New Zealand, owned a ship's figurehead described as that of Resolution, but a photograph of it doesn't agree with the figurehead depicted in Holman's famous watercolour of her.

General characteristics

Lower deck length: 110 ft 8 in (33.73 m)
Keel: 93 ft 6 in (28.50 m)
Maximum beam: 35 ft (11 m)
Draft: 13 ft (4.0 m)

Further Information

Get more info on 'Hms Resolution Cook'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://hms_resolution__cook.totallyexplained.com">HMS Resolution (Cook) Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.