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From: jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (Brian or James)
Subject: Re: wooden ships
Message-ID: <1990May29.132320.11566@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Owner of Many System Processes)
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <1990May22.041549.6888@utzoo.uucp> <1990May22.131441.1701@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <1990May24.182621.14527@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <2961@softway.oz>
Date: Tue, 29 May 90 13:23:20 GMT
Lines: 51

In article <2961@softway.oz> thos@softway.oz (Thomas Cohen) writes:
>In article <1990May24.182621.14527@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> phil@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Phil Gustafson) writes:
>>In article <1990May22.131441.1701@watdragon.waterloo.edu> jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (Brian or James) writes:
>>
>>[British are inept explorers.]
>>
>That's not all he wrote...
>
>Besides, some of them were actually quite good, 
>for example Capt. James Cook. (admittedly getting 
>killed and eaten by Hawaiian natives was hardly 
>the high point of his career).
>But how do you draw the distinction between 'navigators'
>and 'explorers'?.
>
>Enuff, on with space.
>

	My critique of the British was mainly about their failure to
adapt to the climates they found in their travels. Thin, tight clothing
is not the ideal gear for the Arctic, unless your goal is to set records
for frostbite deaths. It's worth noting that they had one or two other foibles.
Captains going on long voyages had to pay for citrus fruits out of their
own pockets. I guess the Powers That Were didn't consider scurvy deaths
bad enough to budget money for food suppliments.

	On another note... 
The Hawaiians Did NOT Eat Captain Cook!!! This slander has been repeated for 
some centuries now. They definitely killed him. They may have used his
remains for raw tool materials, but cannibalism is not part of the Hawaiian
culture [My grandfather, born in Hawaii, was told that only the folks
down around Fiji eat each other. This is slander, too]. Pop was also
told that pre-european Hawaii was chronically short on non-wood or 
stone resources, and that it was considered a major insult to be used
as a source of bone [I have dim memories of hip bones [?] being used
for fishing hooks, but, alas, my mempry is dim...] and the boiling of
Cook's body probably was related to this. Damned if I can remember if
he said Cook ended up as tools or was safely disposed of such that
he would not be tooled. Cook had some admirers among the Hawaiians.
[I'd like to add that my paternal family *just* missed the revolution
in which the Hawaiian Royal Family was deposed in 1880 or so. We
keep moving to places the US annexes].
							JDN