One of the most significant parts of Rost’s analysis had to
do with Cook’s
astronomical observations' errors. He called attention to suspicious
revisions
done to them between the first edition of My Attainment of
the Pole and subsequent
ones, which could not be explained away as typographical.  The revisions
as presented in the third edition gave the same,
required
results as those in the first, while neatly correcting a fatal internal
mathematical
error the originals contained that would have brought into question the
observer's
basic competence with navigational instruments. Rost deduced
from this that Cook had intentionally adjusted the observations to
correct
this fatal error.
The astronomer Dennis Rawlins has
concluded that the mistake
of making the difference between the semi-diameter of the sun in a
double-limb
reading half what it should have been indicates that Cook’s
ability with
a sextant was negligible.
Many other curiosities result from a
close examination of the technical
aspects of Cook’s narrative. To mention just one,
Cook tried to prove
he knew he was at the Pole by the constancy of the length of a
man’s shadow
throughout any given day. He illustrated this concept by a
“shadow
dial.” A sharp-eyed
reviewer noticed his mistake: that the
diagram shows the shadow coming back to the same position after twelve
hours,
not twenty-four.
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