Thread: Captain Cook had GPS Steering

Was Captain Cook really the talented navigator that we have been taught?

A recent study of his ship’s contents archived in the climate controlled museum fascility at Cambridge University has turned up some documents that up to now have previously been lying dormant.
The bundle or roll of documents has, over the years, been overlooked by previous researchers. They may have been discounted for being mundane lists of typical life on a Naval ship of the late 1700s. In amongst the papers were rosters for the sailors doing mundane day to day tasks that go on during a long ocean voyage.
The researchers came across time and time again of a mention of steering with the aid of GPS. Could this be true? Could Captain Cooks success in global navigation been attributed to some form of GPS? No it can’t be true, the technology is only a recent invention.
The initial researchers who came across the reoccurring note about GPS and steering prompted some leading experts in the field of Maritime voyages in early history to assemble to once and for all go over the papers that were often written in the good Captains own hand writing. He had a distinctive style that was quite different to his piers at the time. At the Royal Academy of Naval Recruits, James Cook often had to stay back after classes were finished to “brush up” on his hand writing skills. As one of his lecturers commented on a paper that he was marking that belonged to James Cook said that his scrawl was reminiscent of a half trained spider whose feet had been dipped in ink and allowed to stroll across the page.
The panel of top notch experts in the field of ocean voyages of discovery, specifically around mid to late 1700s were all too familiar with Captain Cooks writings as he was quite a prolific writer of all sorts of matters not necessarily confined to his ship’s log. They went through the documents in question combing the details pertained in them and came to the realisation that he actually did rely on GPS for the steering of the good ship Endeavour.
The entries were not confined to a singular instance but were seen to be used extensively throughout the Voyage from beginning to end. The entries would be recorded as something like “12^th December 1769, 3pm, GPS steering heading 47 degrees to north of east”. These recordings were written regularly in the Ship’s Log which added significant importance to the reference due to the fact that the Log could not be changed by any body at all. Once it was entered in the Log it was there for austerity.
Further study and investigation into the newly found facts took the panel and other researchers many hours of work looking at all the written literature that Endeavour had on board her.
Then finally all the information that was to hand came to one singular conclusion that Captain Cook did rely heavily on GPS steering during his Voyage of discovery that included the discovery and mapping of Australia as well as New Zealand with further mapping of some island of the South Pacific. There were 4 seamen that were trust worthy enough to pilot the ship through, which was otherwise, uncharted waters. One man in particular may have been a favourite of our dear Captain. His name was Paul Selwyn. This name was something of a mystery to the researchers because there was no official notation that he was even on board the ship during the Voyage, until one of the most junior researchers alerted the Panel that there was a Gordon Paul Selwyn on the original Manifest. He apparently was named after his father, whom he did not get along with and was also the reason that Mr Selwyn joined the Navy in the first place. Because of his dislike for his father he much preferred to be called by his middle name which was Paul. So Paul Selwyn was on rosters to steer the ship, but when it came to entering the notations in the Log, the good Captain, being always wanting to do things to the letter would enter the Compass heading when a fresh sailor would take the wheel and so would enter GPS steering with a bearing of so many degrees North or what ever.
So the official wording coming out of the Cambridge University was that Captain James Cook while on the Endeavour did use GPS.