A tale of two James’.
What does this guy:
Captain James Cook
…have in common with this guy:
Two things:
Let me explain.
Captain James was probably just another ruffian salty with poor hygiene and bad teeth. But you know what the catalyst to his fame was? And by extension what turned muddy old Britain into an empire?
These:
You see, the thing holding back Captain Jamie from extended ocean going voyaging was a nasty disease called scurvy. We know now that Jamie was dead eager to get out there and bring nasty European diseases to natives in faraway lands and upon arrival announce, “By George it’s nice and lush here, we’ll take it.”
And so when Scottish physician James Lind figured out via controlled experiments that, in fact, a diet including vitamin C rich foods cured this pesky disease, the advantage presented to sailors was enormous. After all, those poor sods used to routinely lose up to 60% of their crews to scurvy on voyages.
Imagine setting out knowing such odds.
Da Gama, for instance, lost 116 if his 170 crew, and Magellan 208 of his 230. You’d have better odds skulling a bottle of Absolut and then playing chicken with Mack trucks on a freeway.
It took the Brits about 40 years to put this knowledge to good use, but it has been argued by historians to have been a catalyst to the founding of the British Empire. At the time, there were plenty other countries who could quite easily have stacked up some lemon juice in the hull, set sail, and begun Britain into an empire. But they didn’t.
Isn’t that amazing? The bloody British Empire owes its fortunes to the humble lemon. And, by golly, old Jamie Cook took advantage of that didn’t he? And the rest, as they say, is now history.
And this brings me to the other Jamie.
You see, Jamie (the old Brit Jamie), used something quite revolutionary at the time to alter the course of history and become a major player in it.
