How Captain Cook described the weather on Antarctica voyage

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Journal tells of ‘an unusual Snow white brightness’ as explorer’s ship made its way through icy islands

James Cook is already within the Antarctic Circle on 28 January 1774, in “a gentle breeze of Wind, attended by a thick Fogg and snow and then Showers of Snow and Sleet. Continued our course to the South till 11 o’Clock PM, when falling in with Some Ice Islands, and the fog being very thick we hauled the wind to the Eastward.”

Within an hour, say the Journals of Captain Cook, edited for the Hakluyt Society by JC Beaglehole, HMS Resolution is heading south again. At 4am on 30 January he perceives “the Clowds to the south near the horizon to be of an unusual Snow white brightness which denounced our approach to field ice, soon after it was seen from the Mast-head and at eight o’Clock we were close to the edge of it which extended East and West in a streight line far beyond our sight”.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MxzCzm

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