Actually it was Lieutenant James Cook when he went on his first voyage. Cook went to sea very early in life on Coal boats before joining the British Navy. Because he was "a Nobody" socially in a society that greatly valued Class, till then he had never made it past Lieutenant in the Royal British Navy, and even though he was 40 at the time, was unlikely to ever progress past that because he was from the lower classes.
Eventually talent and oppotunity won out and he got his chance to change world History, but even then He was only commissioned to a low class ship the Endeavour which itself had been a former Coal ship before being refitted for a scientific Journey to Tahiti.
James Cook navigated and circumnavigated the world and discovered that the fabled great southern land didn’t really exist but that Australia and New Zealand did. I believe he mapped the locations of some 40 Islands in his short period as an explorer extraordinaire.
However one of his greatest achievements was in the treatment and cure for scurvy. Despite the fact that a scurvy cure was known some 150 years before Captain Cook made it famous, it was only seen as one possible cure of many possible cures. None to date had proved totally effective until Cook proved that Sauerkraut was an effective cure.
But even there, Cook had his problems in getting his crew to stick to a diet including sauerkraut. Many in his crew didn’t like it and he even had to publicly flog some of his crew to force others to continue eating it.
It was such a problem that at one stage he took it off the regular crew’s diet and kept it strictly for the Officers. Thus ironically making it now desirable to the rest of the crew.
However he got his crew to eat it, he did, and as a result he never lost even one single man to scurvy. An unheard of thing of that time as ships often lost up to 40% of their crews on long voyages.
Due to the success of his initial voyage Cook got to make more and although he only lived another 9 years or so before being murdered on his last voyage, he greatly changed the Map of the world and the lives of sailors everywhere.
As I thought of this, a few thoughts came to mind.
1. Never despise anyone just because you think they are lowlier than you. All have something to contribute to society.
2. Never despise yourself. You can usually find a way to rise above your circumstances if you try and are prepared to wait a bit and work at it along the way.
3. Never despise older methods because they sound funny, weird or come from a foreign source. (Like sauerkraut!)
4. Never give up on possible cures or new ways, just because they don’t “suit” your Current tastes. Not all bad tasting things are in fact harmful to you, just like, not all good tasting things are good for you.
5. In same vein, there is a time and place for everything, even sauerkraut. But that doesn’t mean you have to eat the same thing all the time. Variety is also the spice of life
6. Your time at the top may be short, or cut short like Cooks, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be life changing and beneficial to others long after you have gone does it? Captain James Cook is still remembered fondly today especially in Australia and New Zealand.
7. Finally, at the risk of offending all sauerkraut lovers here, it is yet again a reminder that just because a thing isn’t to your own personal liking or taste doesn’t meant that you don’t need it. Yes when better and easier methods of getting certain vitamins to sailors were found, Sauerkraut went by the board. But in its time it saved many lives even if people had to be forced or tricked into eating it initially.
So while you may never circumnavigate the globe or discover any unknown lands, it just may be that you can rediscover some old discoveries that have slipped through the cracks and reintroduce them to the world again.
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