4:28pm Thursday 8th May 2008
By Gazette Reporter
A NEW exhibition exploring Captain Cook's voyage to the Arctic has opened in Whitby.
The town's Captain Cook Memorial Museum has acquired six drawings by John Webber, official artist on the voyage, which will be one of the many highlights of the display.
Not many people remember Captain Cook as an Arctic explorer. Yet this was the purpose of his Third Voyage, to search for the North West Passage.
Cook's ships probed twice beyond the Bering Strait before being forced back by the ice.
The exhibition focuses on the second probe after Cook's death, when the expedition visited Kamchatka in eastern Siberia. There they met native peoples, experienced a volcanic eruption, travelled by dog-sledge and were welcomed by the Russian governor, despite initial suspicions of rivalry.
Cook's death was not allowed to interfere with the expedition. Its purpose was pursued with persistence, courage and endurance.
The exhibition tells the story with loans of pictures, most of which have never been seen in public before, from the British Library and the National Maritime Museum, and rare material from the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology and the Scott Polar Research Institute, added to these is the flora and fauna - walrus, fur seal, golden eagle, birds and berries - which characterise Arctic life.
Cook expert, Professor Glyn Williams, said: "They didn't know what to expect in Russia, and were surprised by their warm reception from the Governor.
"The pictures in the exhibition wonderfully evoke Siberian landscapes and peoples, and their way of life at the time."
The exhibition, Smoking Coasts and Ice-bound Seas, Cook's Voyage to the Arctic', runs until October 31 and is open daily, 9.45am to 5pm. Admission is adult £4, child £3, senior £3.50, family £10.50.
© Copyright 2001-2010 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.gazetteherald.co.uk