Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival 2026

During 1772-1775, Captain James Cook on the HMS Resolution circumnavigated Antarctica for the first time. Because his cruise determined latitude and longitude from the Kendell K1 clock combined with sextant observations, Cook's data described the spatial distribution of Antarctic icebergs and sea ice. His insistence that the ship be kept scrupulously clean and the men offered varieties of food meant that only two of his 112 men died, none from scurvy. The ship carried an artist, William Hodges, where his iceberg drawings will be compared with our photographs. Although the Resolution came within 100 km of Antarctica and crossed the Antarctic circle three times, it did not find land. In its furthest south, it was the first ship to reach Pine Island Bay, which was filled with massive icebergs and is now known to contain the outflow of the critical Thwaites Glacier. Comparison of Cook’s 250-year-old observations of iceberg and sea ice with ours shows that although there is less sea ice now, the iceberg distributions are about the same.