Navigator, born in Marton, North Yorkshire, N England, UK. He spent several years as a seaman in North Sea vessels, then joined the navy (1755), becoming master in 1759. He surveyed the area around the St Lawrence River, Quebec, then in the Endeavour carried the Royal Society expedition to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun (176871). He circumnavigated New Zealand and charted parts of Australia, landing in Botany Bay in 1770. In his second voyage he sailed round Antarctica (17725), and discovered several Pacific island groups. Thanks to his dietary precautions, there was only one death among the crew. His third voyage (17769) aimed to find a passage round the N coast of America from the Pacific; but he was forced to turn back, and on his return voyage was killed by natives on Hawaii.
For other uses, see James Cook (disambiguation).James Cook FRS RN (October 27, 1728 (O.S.) – February 14, 1779) was an English explorer, navigator and cartographer. Ultimately rising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy, Cook made three voyages to the Pacific Ocean, achieving the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia, the European discovery of the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation and mapping of Newfoundland and New Zealand.
After service in the British merchant navy as a teenager, he joined the Royal Navy in 1755, seeing action in the Seven Years' War, and subsequently surveying and mapping much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec. This allowed General Wolfe to make his famous stealth attack on the Plains of Abraham, and helped to bring Cook to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society at a crucial moment both in his personal career and in the direction of British overseas discovery, and led to his commission as commander of the HM Bark Endeavour and the first of his three Pacific voyages in 1766.
Cook accurately charted many areas and recorded several islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time.
Cook died in Hawaii in a fracas with Hawaiians during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific in 1779.
Early life
James Cook was born in relatively humble circumstances at Marton in North Yorkshire, which today is within the town of Middlesbrough. Cook was one of five children born to a local woman and a Scottish immigrant farm labourer, Grace and James Sr. As a child, Cook moved with his family to Airey Holme farm at Great Ayton, where he was educated at the local school (now a museum), his studies financed by his father's employer.
In 1745, when he was 16, Cook left home to be apprenticed in a grocery/haberdashery in the fishing village of Staithes. According to legend, Cook first felt the lure of the sea while gazing out of the shop window. Cook was taken on as a merchant navy apprentice in their small fleet of vessels plying coal along the English coast.
For this new apprenticeship, Cook applied himself to the study of algebra, trigonometry, navigation, and astronomy, skills he would need one day to command his own ship.
His three-year apprenticeship completed, Cook began working on trading ships in the Baltic Sea. Cook saw that his career could advance more quickly in military service.
Family life
Cook married Elizabeth Batts, the daughter of one of his mentors, on December 21, 1762. When not at sea, James Cook settled in the East End of London.
Cook's surveying skills were put to good use in the 1760s, mapping the jagged coast of Newfoundland. Cook surveyed the northwest 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. they also gave Cook his mastery of practical surveying, achieved under often adverse conditions, and brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society at a crucial moment both in his personal career and in the direction of British overseas discovery.
Cook's huge achievements can be attributed to a combination of excellent seamanship, his superior surveying and cartographic skills, courage in exploring dangerous locations to confirm the facts (e.g. dipping into the Antarctic circle repeatedly and exploring around the Great Barrier Reef), ability to lead men in adverse conditions, and boldness both with regard to the extent of his explorations and his willingness to exceed the instructions given to him by the Admiralty.
First voyage (1768-1771)
In 1766, the Royal Society hired Cook to travel to the Pacific Ocean to observe and record a transit of Venus across the Sun. Cook was commissioned as a Lieutenant and given command of HM Bark Endeavour. On the day of the transit observation, Cook recorded:
"Saturday 3 Solander observed as well as M r Green and my self, and we differ'd from one another in observeing the times of the Contacts much more than could be expected..."
Disappointingly, the separate measurements of Green, Cook and Solander varied more than the anticipated margin of error.
Once the observations were completed, Cook then departed in order to execute the second purpose of his voyage: namely, to search the south Pacific for signs of the postulated southern continent of Terra Australis, acting on additional instructions from the Admiralty. The Royal Society, and especially Alexander Dalrymple, believed that it must exist, however Cook had his own personal doubts on the subject. With the help of a Tahitian named Tupaia, who had extensive knowledge of Pacific geography, Cook managed to reach New Zealand on 6 October, 1769, becoming only the second European in history to do so (after Abel Tasman over a century earlier, in 1642). Cook mapped the complete New Zealand coastline, making only some minor errors (such as calling Banks Peninsula an island, and thinking Stewart Island/Rakiura was part of the South Island). He also discovered Cook Strait, which separates the North Island from the South Island, and which Tasman had not seen. However, they were forced to maintain a more northerly course owing to prevailing gales, and sailed onwards until one afternoon when land was sighted, which Cook named Point Hicks. Cook calculated that Van Diemen's Land ought to lie due south of their position, but having found the coastline trending to the southwest, recorded his doubt that this landmass was connected to it. In his journal, Cook recorded the event thus:
"the Southermost Point of land we had in sight which bore from us W1/4S I judged to lay in the Latitude of 38°..0' S° and in the Longitude of 211°..07' W Hicks was the first who discover'd this land".
The ship's log recorded that land was sighted at 6 a.m. Thursday April 19, 1770. Cook's log used the nautical date, which, during the eighteenth century, assigned the same date to all ship's events from noon-to-noon, first p.m. and then a.m. That nautical date began twelve hours before the midnight beginning of the like-named civil date. Furthermore, Cook did not adjust his nautical date to account for circumnavigation of the globe until he had traveled a full 360° relative to the longitude of his home British port, either toward the east or west. A later survey done in 1843 ignored or overlooked Cook's earlier naming of the point, giving it the name Cape Everard.
The Endeavour continued northwards along the coastline, keeping the land in sight and Cook charting and naming landmarks as he went. It was here, on April 29, that Cook and crew made their first landfall on the continent, at a place now known as Kurnell. At first Cook bestowed the name Stingaree (Stingray) Bay to the inlet after the many such creatures found there; Instead, Phillip shortly thereafter gave orders to relocate to a harbour a few kilometres to the north, which Cook had named Port Jackson but had not further explored.
At Cook's original landing contact was made with the local Australian Aborigine inhabitants. They ignored gifts from Cook. He came back with other men and threw spears at Cook's men, although they did no harm. The adults had left, but Cook found several Aboriginal children in the huts, and left some beads with them as a gesture of friendship.
Cook continued northwards, charting along the coastline.
Once repairs were complete the voyage continued, eventually passing by the northern-most point of Cape York Peninsula and then sailing through Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, earlier navigated by Luis Vaez de Torres in 1604. Having rounded the Cape, Cook landed on Possession Island on 22 August, where he claimed the entire coastline he had just explored (later naming the region New South Wales) for the British Crown.
At that point in the voyage, Cook had lost not a single man to scurvy, a remarkable and practically unheard-of achievement in 18th century long-distance sea-faring. Adhering to Royal Navy policy introduced in 1747, Cook persuaded his men to eat foods such as citrus fruits and sauerkraut.
The means by which he persuaded his crew, described here, are illustrative of Cook's leadership qualities.
Cook then visited the island of Savu, staying for three days before continuing on to Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies, to put in for repairs. Batavia was known for its outbreaks of malaria, and before they returned home in 1771, many in Cook's crew would succumb to the disease and other ailments such as dysentery, including the Tahitian Tupaia, Banks's Finnish secretary and a fellow scientist Herman Spöring, astronomer Charles Green, and the illustrator Sydney Parkinson. Cook had named the Spöring Island on the coast of New Zealand to honor Herman Spöring and his work on the voyage.
The Endeavour, his ship on this first voyage, would later lend its name to the Space Shuttle Endeavour, as well as the Endeavour River.
Cook's journals were published upon his return, and he became something of a hero among the scientific community. Banks even attempted to take command of Cook's second voyage, but removed himself from the voyage before it began.
The south-Pacific routes of Captain James Cook's voyages.Second voyage (1772-1775)
Shortly after his return, Cook was promoted from Lieutenant to Commander (correctly "Master and Commander"). On his first voyage, Cook had demonstrated by circumnavigating New Zealand that it was not attached to a larger landmass to the south;
Cook commanded HMS Resolution on this voyage, while Tobias Furneaux commanded its companion ship, HMS Adventure. Cook's expedition circumnavigated the globe at a very high southern latitude, becoming one of the first to cross the Antarctic Circle on January 17, 1773, reaching 71°10' south. Furneaux made his way to New Zealand, where he lost some of his men following a fight with the Māori, and eventually sailed back to Britain, while Cook continued to explore the Antarctic.
Cook almost discovered the mainland of Antarctica, but turned back north towards Tahiti to resupply his ship.
Another accomplishment of the second voyage was the successful employment of the K1 chronometer which facilitated accurate measurement of longitude.
Upon his return, Cook was promoted to the naval rank of Captain and given an honorary retirement from the Royal Navy (as an officer in the Greenwich Hospital). But Cook could not be kept away from the sea. Cook would travel to the Pacific and hoped to travel east to the Atlantic, while a simultaneous voyage would travel the opposite way.
Third voyage (1776-1779)
On his last voyage, Cook once again commanded HMS Resolution, while Captain Charles Clerke commanded HMS Discovery. After returning Omai, Cook travelled north and in 1778 became the first European to visit the Hawaiian Islands, which, in passing and after initial landfall in January 1778 at Waimea harbor, Kauai, he named the "Sandwich Islands" after the 4th Earl of Sandwich, the acting First Lord of the Admiralty.
From there, he travelled east to explore the west coast of North America, eventually landing near the First Nations village at Yuquot in Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island, although he unknowingly sailed past the Strait of Juan de Fuca. He explored and mapped the coast from California all the way to the Bering Strait, on the way discovering what came to be known as Cook Inlet in Alaska. Cook became increasingly frustrated on this voyage, and perhaps began to suffer from a stomach ailment; (It has also been suggested that Cook had been exhibiting irrational behavior since early in the voyage).
Cook returned to Hawaii in 1779. After sailing around the archipelago for some eight weeks, Cook finally made landfall at Kealakekua Bay, on what is now the 'Big Island' of Hawaii. There is some discussion by recent historians that Cook's arrival coincided by quirk of fate with a season of worship for the Polynesian god Lono, (Makahiki). Indeed the form of Cook's ship HMS Resolution (more particularly the mast formation, sails and rigging) resembled certain significant artifacts that formed part of the season of worship. Similarly, Cook's clockwise route around the islands before making landfall resembled the processions that took place in a clockwise direction around the island during the Lono festivals. For these reasons the arrival, it is thought, led to Cook's (and to a limited extent, his crew's) initial deification by the natives, who treated him with great reverence as possibly an incarnation of Lono himself.
Eventually, after a month's stay, Cook got under sail again to resume his exploration of the Northern Pacific. The return to the islands by Cook's expedition was unexpected on the part of the Hawaiians and as the season of Lono had recently ended, tensions rose and a number of quarrels broke out between the two camps. On February 14 at Kealakekua Bay, some Hawaiians stole one of Cook's small boats. Normally, as thefts were quite common in Tahiti and the other islands, Cook would have taken hostages until the stolen articles were returned. However, his stomach ailment and increasingly irrational behaviour led to an altercation with a large crowd of Hawaiians gathered on the beach when Cook went ashore to retrieve the goods. In the ensuing skirmish, shots were fired at the Hawaiians but their woven war shields protected them, and Cook's men had to retreat to the beach. As Cook turned his back to help launch the boats, he was struck on the head by the villagers and then stabbed to death as he fell on his face in the surf.
It is thought that Cook's return to Hawaii outside the season of worship for Lono -- which was synonymous with 'peace' -- and thus in the season of 'war' (being dedicated to Kū, god of war) may have upset the equilibrium and fostered an atmosphere of resentment and aggression from the local population. Coupled with a jaded grasp of native diplomacy and a burgeoning but limited understanding of local politics, Cook may have inadvertently contributed to the tensions that ultimately conspired in his demise. Indeed some of Cook's remains, disclosing some corroborating evidence to this effect, were eventually returned to the British for a formal burial at sea following an appeal by the crew. Cook's account of his voyage was completed by Captain James King.
Cook's protégés
A number of the junior officers who served under Cook went on to distinctive accomplishments of their own.
William Bligh, Cook's sailing master, was given command of HMS Bounty in 1787 to sail to Tahiti and return with breadfruit. George Vancouver, one of Cook's midshipmen, later led a voyage of exploration to the Pacific Coast of North America from 1791 to 1794. George Dixon sailed under Cook on his third expedition, and later commanded an expedition of his own.Legacy
James Cook's 12 years sailing around the Pacific Ocean contributed much to European knowledge of the area.
Cook obtained accurate longitude measurements during his first voyage due to his navigational skills, the help of astronomer Charles Green and by using the newly published Nautical Almanac tables, via the lunar distance method—measuring the angular distance from the moon to either the sun during daytime or one of eight bright stars during nighttime to determine the time at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich and comparing that to his local time determined via the altitude of the sun, moon, or stars. On his second voyage Cook used the K1 chronometer made by Larcum Kendal, which was the shape of a large pocket watch, 13 cm (5 inches) in diameter. Cook's second expedition included the artist William Hodges, who produced notable landscape paintings of Tahiti, Easter Island, and other locations.
Cook was accompanied by many scientists, whose observations and discoveries added to the importance of the voyages.
Ever the observer, Cook was the first European to have extensive contact with various people of the Pacific.
The first tertiary education institution in North Queensland, Australia was named after the discoverer, with James Cook University opening in Townsville in 1970. Numerous other institutions, landmarks and place names reflect the importance of Cook's contribution to knowledge of geography.
Tributes abounding, too, back at 'home' in post-industrial Middlesbrough, England, include a primary school, shopping square and Claes Oldenburg public artwork, the Bottle 'O Notes, while the James Cook University Hospital, a teaching hospital in Marton, was also named after the local explorer. Marton is also the location of the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum. The Royal Research Ship RRS James Cook was built in 2006 to replace the RRS Charles Darwin in the UK's Royal Research Fleet.
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