FELLOW OF ROYAL SOCIETY.

On 29th February 1776, Captain James Cook was unanimously elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and his certificate of election was signed by no less than twenty-six of the Fellows. He was formally admitted on 17th March, on which date a paper written by him, on the means he had used for the prevention and cure of scurvy, was read. That he valued his success in dealing with this disease, which, at that time, even in voyages of very moderate length was the most terrible danger to be encountered, is plainly set forth in his Journal of the voyage. He says:

"But whatever may be the public judgment about other matters, it is with real satisfaction and without claiming any merit but that of attention to my duty, that I can conclude this account with an observation which facts enable me to make, that our having discovered the possibility of preserving health amongst a numerous ship's company, for such a length of time in such varieties of climate and amidst such continued hardships and fatigues, will make this voyage remarkable in opinion of every benevolent person, when the disputes about a Southern Continent shall have ceased to engage the attention and to divide the judgment of philosophers."

During his early days at sea it was no unusual thing for a man-of-war to be short-handed through scurvy after a cruise of a few weeks, and in a voyage across the Atlantic as many as twenty per cent of the crew are known to have perished. To give some of his own experiences in the Navy: On 4th June 1756, H.M.S. Eagle arrived in Plymouth Sound, after cruising for two months in the Channel and off the French coast, and Captain Pallisser reported landing 130 sick, buried at sea 22, and since his arrival in port his surgeon and 4 men had died, and both his surgeon's mates were very ill; this out of a complement of 400!

Boscawen, sailing from Halifax for Louisberg in 1758, left several ships behind on account of scurvy, one being the Pembroke, of which Cook was Master; she had lost 29 men crossing the Atlantic, but she was able to rejoin before the others as they were in a worse plight. Wolfe reported to Lord George Sackville that some of the regiments employed at Louisburg had "300 or 400 men eat up with scurvy." Of the Northumberland when at Halifax, Lord Colville wrote that frozen (fresh) beef from Boston kept his men healthy when in port, "but the scurvy never fails to pull us down in great numbers upon our going to sea in spring."

Having had such experiences Cook appears to have made up his mind to fight the dreadful scourge from the very first, and though the popular idea is that he only turned his mind to it during the second voyage, it is very evident that on the Endeavour he fought it successfully, and it is most probable would have laid claim to victory had it not been for the serious losses incurred through the malarial fever and its usual companion, dysentery, contracted at Batavia. In proof of this reference may be made to the report of Mr. Perry, surgeon's mate, and, after Mr. Monkhouse's death, surgeon on board. He states they rounded the Horn with the crew "as free from scurvy as on our sailing from Plymouth," i.e. after five months. He reports FOR THE WHOLE OF THE VOYAGE, FIVE CASES OF SCURVY, "three in Port at New Holland, and two while on the Coast of New Zealand, not a man more suffered any inconvenience from this distemper." He was one of the five cases, but, at the same time, it must not be understood that no others developed symptoms of scurvy, only they were so closely watched and at once subjected to such treatment that the disease was not able to gain the upper hand. Cook wrote to the Secretary to the Admiralty immediately after his arrival at Batavia, saying, "I have not lost one man from sickness." He means here, as elsewhere in his Journals, "sickness" to be taken as scurvy, and at that time he had lost only seven men: two of Mr. Banks's servants from exposure; three men drowned; Mr. Buchan, a fit, probably apoplectic; and one man, alcoholic poisoning. He arrived at home with a total loss of forty-one, including Tupia and his boy; thirty-two of these deaths were from fever and dysentery, and 2, Mr. Hicks and Sutherland, from consumption.