“This great improvement, by which the most remote parts of the terrestrial globe are brought so sasily within our reach, would nevertheless have been of comparatively little utility had not those happy means been discovered for preserving the lives and health of the officers and seamen engaged in such distant and perilous undertakings; which were so peacefully practiced by Captain Cook, the first great discoverer of this salutary system, in all his latter voyages around the globe.  But in none have the effect of his wise regulations, regimen and discipline been more manifest than in the course of the expedition of which the following pages are designed to treat.  To an unremitting attention, not only to food, cleanliness, ventilation, and an early administration of antiseptic provisions and medicines, but also to prevent as much as possible the chance of indisposition, by prohibiting individuals from carelessly exposing themselves to the influence of climate, or unhealthy indulgences in times of relaxation, and by relieving them from fatigue and the inclemency of the weather the moment the nature of their duty would permit them to retire, is to be ascribed the preservation of the health and lives of sea-faring people on long voyages.”

“Those benefits did not long remain unnoticed by the commercial part of the British nation.  Remote and distant voyages being now no longer objects of terror, enterprises were projected and carried into execution, for the purpose of establishing new and lucrative branches of commerce between Northwest America and China; and parts of the coast of the former that had not been minutely examined by Captain Cook became now the general resort of the persons thus engaged.”

The special zeal and consistency with which Cook is defended by the English navigators who knew him and were competent to judge of the scope of his achievements is due in part to the venom of his assailants.  The historian of the Sandwich Islands, Sheldon Dibble, says:  “An impression of wonder and dread having been made, Captain Cook and his men found little difficulty in having such intercourse with the people as they chose.  In regard to that intercourse, it was marked, as the world would say, with kindness and humanity.  But it cannot be concealed that here and there at this time, in the form of loathsome disease, was dug the grave of the Hawaiian nation; and from so deep an odium it is to be regretted that faithful history cannot exempt even the fair name of Captain Cook himself, since it was evident that he gave countenance to the evil.  The native female first presented to him was a person of some rank; her name was Lelemahoalani.  Sin and death were the first commodities imported to the Sandwich Islands.”