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Photo from Alaska.org
The statue of Captain Cook overlooking Knik Arm, Resolution Park, Anchorage. |
setting the timer and I hit the cook button instead and it ran for 20 minutes with nothing in it. A look at the book today informed me that more than a couple of minutes like that and it will shorten the unit's life. I can confirm that now.
So, naturally the microwave was in mind today, especially as
I went shopping for a new one. As might be deduced, I am not totally familiar
with them. Years ago a friend and fellow sailor said he couldn't understand how
Captain Cook got all the way around the world without a microwave. Now I
understand.
It's a long drive to the store with plenty of time to think
and I went with Captain Cook. While I don't claim to be a Cook historian, I did
a lot of studying of him when I was working up a spiel for the tour boat I drove for six years. Cook and
I had navigated the same waters and in fact he and some of his crew, including William Bligh and George Vancouver, who
returned later named many of the geographical features that I pointed out to the
tourists.
Prince William Sound where we operated (Cook named it
Sandwich Sound after the earl who helped finance his expeditions) is noted for
its relatively calm waters. There was only one spot on our trip that could storm up into
any kind of rough. Leaving the Columbia Glacier we had to cross the southern
end of Valdez Arm which is one of the few places in the Sound open to ocean
waves. At times we could hit five
or six footers in there and as they were on the beam, it made the passengers very uncomfortable.
I had a scheme there. If it was calm I gave a short talk
about Cook's explorations in the Sound. But if it was rough, I had a talk about
Cook that could go on for an hour. I would give it in a low monotone thinking
one of two things would happen.
Either people would listen intently taking their minds off the rough
water, or it would put them to sleep.
Either way they could make the passage with the least discomfort. It
usually worked.
I would go so far as to tell them the story of the sauerkraut
where after learning from German sailors, Cook forced his officers to eat the
foul stuff and forced them to like it in order to get the common sailors to eat
it. This was part of the reason Cook or his crew made three circumnavigations losing only one person to
scurvy, and that fellow likely already had it when he was impressed off another ship in the Indian
Ocean.
With all of Cook's accomplishments, that little expanded
vignette should give you an idea of how long and how dull that talk could be.
Despite purposely making his story dull, I greatly admired all that Cook
managed to do over his lifetime, from guiding the British Navy up the St.
Lawrence to attack Quebec to being the first to figure accurate longitude and
to chart many parts of the world unknown at the time. Today Cook's charts still
hold up for their accuracy. Mind you this was in the late 1700s.
I thought so much of him that when I attempted or raise the
money for a boat I could single-hand on the big ocean I planned to name it the
Captain James Cook. To me it sounded like a grand name to use on the radio when
entering some harbor where he had been. In time I had to reduce my dream to a
smaller boat which I intended to call Just Jimmy.
There is a statue of the Great Navigator hard by the shore
of Knik Arm in Anchorage looking out over the water, sextant in hand, the way he
must have stood on the deck of his ships exploring Alaska's coast so many years
ago. One amazing man. But how he did it all without a microwave, well, who
knows. Can you cook sauerkraut in a microwave?
This is my favorite biography of Cook: The Life of Captain James Cook by J.C. Beaglehole
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