James Cook
James Cook was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer, and cartographer who led three voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans between 1768 and 1779. He completed the first recorded circumnavigation of the main islands of New Zealand, and led the first recorded visit by Europeans to the east coast of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands.
Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager before enlisting in the Royal Navy in 1755. He first saw combat during the Seven Years' War, when he fought in the Siege of Louisbourg. Later in the war he surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the Siege of Quebec. In the 1760s he mapped the coastline of Newfoundland and made important astronomical observations which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. This acclaim came at a pivotal moment in British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in 1768 as commander of for the first of his three voyages.
During these voyages he sailed tens of thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas, mapping coastlines, islands, and features across the globe in greater detail than previously chartedincluding Easter Island, Alaska, and South Georgia Island. He made contact with numerous indigenous peoples, and claimed several territories for the Kingdom of Great Britain. Renowned for exceptional seamanship and courage in times of danger, he was patient, persistent, sober, and competent, but sometimes hot-tempered. His contributions to the prevention of scurvy, a disease common among sailors, led the Royal Society to award him the Copley Gold Medal.
In 1779, during his second visit to Hawaii, Cook was killed when a dispute with Native Hawaiians turned violent. His voyages left a legacy of scientific and geographical knowledge that influenced his successors well into the 20th century. Numerous memorials have been dedicated to him worldwide.
Early life
James Cook was born on 7 November 1728 in the village of Marton, located in the North Riding of Yorkshire, approximately from the sea. He was the second of eight children of James Cook, a Scottish farm labourer from Ednam in Roxburghshire, and his wife, Grace Pace, from Thornaby-on-Tees. In 1736, his family moved to Airey Holme farm at Great Ayton, where his father's employer, Thomas Skottowe, paid for Cook to attend a school run by a charitable foundation. In 1741, after five years of schooling, he began work for his father who had been promoted to farm manager.In 1745, when he was 16, Cook moved to the fishing village of Staithes to be apprenticed as a shopboy to grocer and haberdasher William Sanderson. After 18 months, Cook, proving not suited for shop work, travelled to the nearby port town of Whitby and was introduced to Sanderson's friends John and Henry Walker. The Walkers were prominent local ship-owners in the coal trade.
Cook was taken on as a merchant navy apprentice in the Walkers' small fleet of vessels, plying coal along the English coast. His first assignment was aboard the collier Freelove, and he spent several years on this and various other coasters, sailing between the Tyne and London. As part of his apprenticeship, Cook applied himself to the study of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, navigation and astronomy – all skills needed to command a ship.
Upon completing his three-year apprenticeship, Cook began working on merchant ships in the Baltic Sea. After obtaining his mariner licence in 1752 he was promoted to the rank of and began serving on the collier brig Friendship. He served as mate on the Friendship for two and a half years, visiting ports in Norway and Netherlands, learning to navigate in shallow waters along the east coast of Britain, and traversing the Irish Sea and the English Channel.
Royal Navy
At the age of 26, Cook was offered a promotion to captain of Friendship, but he declined and instead joined the Royal Navy at Wapping on 17 June 1755. He entered the navy when Britain was expanding its naval forces in anticipation of the conflict that became known as the Seven Years' War. Cook's first posting was two years aboard, serving as able seaman and master's mate under Captain Joseph Hamar and, later, Captain Hugh Palliser. In October and November 1755 he took part in Eagles capture of one French warship and the sinking of another. Following the death of Eagles boatswain, Cook was unofficially promoted to fill that role in January 1756. His first command was in March 1756 when he was briefly in charge of Cruizer, a small cutter attached to Eagle. In June 1757, Cook passed his master's examinations at Trinity House, Deptford, qualifying him to navigate and handle a ship of the King's fleet. He then joined the sixth-rate frigate HMS Solebay as ship's master under Captain Robert Craig.Seven Years' War
During the Seven Years' War, Cook served in North America as master aboard the fourth-rate Navy vessel. With others in Pembrokes crew, he took part in the major amphibious assault that captured the Fortress of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia from the French in 1758.The day after the fall of Louisbourg, Cook met an army officer, Samuel Holland, who was using a plane table to survey the area. The two men had an immediate connection through their interest in surveying, and Holland taught Cook the methods he was using. They collaborated on developing preliminary charts of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River, with Cook writing the accompanying sailing directions. Cook's first map to be engraved and printed was of Gaspé Bay, drawn in 1758 and published in 1759. The integration of Holland's land-surveying techniques with Cook's hydrographic expertise enabled Cook, from that point forward, to produce nautical charts of coastal regions that significantly exceeded the accuracy of most contemporary charts.
As Major-General James Wolfe's advance on Quebec progressed in 1759, Cook and other ships' masters took soundings, marked shoals, and updated chartsparticularly around Quebec. This information enabled Wolfe to mount a stealthy nighttime attack by transporting troops across the river, leading to victory in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.
Newfoundland
As the Seven Years' War came to a close, Cook was tasked with charting the rugged coast of Newfoundland. He was appointed master of, and spent five seasons producing charts. He surveyed the north-west stretch in 1763 and 1764, the south coast between the Burin Peninsula and Cape Ray in 1765 and 1766, and the west coast in 1767. Cook employed local pilots to point out the rocks and hidden dangers.Cook severely injured his right hand in August 1764 when a powder horn he was carrying exploded. In July 1765, Cook experienced the first of several ship groundings he faced during his career: Grenville struck an uncharted rock, and cargo had to be unloaded before she could be refloated.
While in Newfoundland, Cook precisely recorded apparent time of the start and end of the solar eclipse of 5 August 1766. He sent the results to the English astronomer John Bevis, who compared them with the same data from an observation of the eclipse carried out in Oxford and calculated the difference in longitude between the two locations. The results were communicated to the Royal Society in 1767 and the longitude position obtained was used by Cook in his printed sailing directions for Newfoundland.
At the end of the 1767 surveying season, while HMS Grenville was returning to her home port of Deptford, Cook encountered a storm at the entrance to the Thames. He anchored Grenville off the Nore lighthouse and prepared the ship to ride out the weather. An anchor cable snapped, causing the ship to run aground on a shoal. Despite efforts to refloat her, Cook and his crew were forced to abandon ship. They returned when the storm abated, lightened and rerigged the ship, and continued into Deptford.
Exploration of the Pacific Ocean
Cook's achievements in North Americahydrographic and astronomicalwere noticed by the Admiralty, and came at a pivotal moment in British overseas exploration. Europeans had started exploring the Pacific Ocean in the early 16th century, and by the mid-18th century they had charted much of the ocean's perimeter, and were actively engaged in trade with the Philippines, Spice Islands, and Mexico. Yet vast regions of the ocean remained largely unexplored by Europeans, including the coastlines of Canada and Alaska, much of the southern Pacific, and the central oceanic expanse. Several major questions persisted: Did a North-West Passage connect the North Pacific with the North Atlantic? Did the hypothesised continent of Terra Australis Incognita exist? And were there yet-undiscovered cultures or lands in the central Pacific?The Treaty of Parissigned when the Seven Years' War ended in 1763enabled the Royal Navy to redirect resources from warfare to exploration. Britain soon dispatched several explorers to the Pacific Ocean, including John Byron, Samuel Wallis, and Philip Carteret. They returned with accounts of Tahiti, and reported sightings of Terra Australis setting the stage for Cook's first voyage.
First voyage (17681771)
Cook's first scientific voyage was a three-year expedition to the south Pacific Ocean aboard HMS Endeavour, conducted from 1768 to 1771. The voyage was jointly sponsored by the Royal Navy and Royal Society. The publicly stated goal was to observe the 1769 transit of Venus from the vantage point of Tahiti. Additional objectivesoutlined in secret orderswere searching for the postulated Terra Australis and claiming lands for Britain.In early 1768, the Admiralty asked the shipwright Adam Hayes to select a vessel for the expedition; he chose the merchant collier Earl of Pembroke, which the Royal Navy renamed Endeavour. On 5 May 1768based on the recommendation of Hugh PalliserCook, aged 39, was selected by the Admiralty to lead the voyage. The next day he took his examination for the rank of lieutenanta rank which was required to command a ship armed with the number of guns planned for Endeavour.
Like most colliers, Endeavour had a large hold, a sturdy construction that would tolerate grounding, was small enough to be careened, and had a shallow draught that enabled navigating in shallows. Upon completion of the first voyage, Cook wrote: "It was to these properties in her, those on board owe their Preservation. Hence I was enabled to prosecute Discoveries in those Seas so much longer than any other Man ever did or could do." When selecting ships for his second voyage in 1772, Cook chose the same type of ship, from the same shipbuilder.
The Admiralty authorised a ship's company of 73 sailors and 12 marines. Cook's second lieutenant was Zachary Hicks, and his third lieutenant was John Gore, a 16-year naval veteran who had already circumnavigated the world twice aboard HMS Dolphin. Also on the ship were astronomer Charles Green and 25-year-old naturalist Joseph Banks. Banks provided funding for seven others to join the journey: the naturalists Daniel Solander and Herman Spöring, the artists Alexander Buchan and Sydney Parkinson, two black servants, and a secretary.