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8The Importance of Discovery

The history of my surname, Furneaux, has a number of interesting explorers in its past. Notable is Captain Tobias Furneaux (August 21, 1735—September 18, 1781; Figure 8.1), who accompanied Captain James Cook on his second voyage to the South Pacific. Tobias was captain of the HMS Adventure, while Cook captained the Resolution. That voyage resulted in the discovery of a number of island groups, especially the Furneaux Group of islands near Tasmania. Cook is known as “the Circumnavigator,” as it is thought that he was the first man to circumnavigate the world in both directions. (Coincidentally, I’ve ended up living not far from the family home of Tobias in the southern UK county of Devon. However, it is not a coincidence that we named our son Tobias!)

Figure 8.1 Captain Tobias Furneaux (August 21, 1735—September 18, 1781)

Although the so-called Age of Discovery ran from the 1400s to the 1600s, it is rather typical that it was predominantly focused on discovering America rather than other equally nice areas of the world. America, of course, had been discovered by the indigenous peoples millennia before Christopher Columbus set foot ashore, but they hadn’t put a flag in the ground and so it didn’t count. Columbus did have a flag and so by the rule of “finders keepers” Europeans “discovered” it. As the flag bearers had also discovered gunpowder, ...