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Hall of Explorers
James Cook
Charted the Pacific, New Zealand and eastern Australia
- 1728 – 1779
- Explorers · 8 of 13
Hall of Explorers
Charted the Pacific, New Zealand and eastern Australia
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Captain James Cook (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) 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 HMS Endeavour for the first of his three voyages.
During these voyages, Cook sailed tens of thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas, mapping coastlines, islands, and features across the globe in greater detail than previously charted – including 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.
James Cook was born on 7 November 1728 in the village of Marton, located in the North Riding of Yorkshire, approximately 8 miles (13 km) 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 working for his father who had been promoted to farm manager.
In 1745, when he was 16, Cook relocated 20 miles (32 km) to Staithes, a fishing village, 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, carrying coal along the English coast. His first assignment was aboard the collier Freelove. He spent several years aboard her 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 mate 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 the Netherlands, learning to navigate in shallow waters along the east coast of Britain, and traversing the Irish Sea and the English Channel.
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 HMS Eagle, 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 Eagle's capture of one French warship and the sinking of another. Following the death of Eagle's 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.
During the Seven Years' War, Cook served in North America as master aboard the fourth-rate Navy vessel HMS Pembroke. With others in Pembroke's 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 St. 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 charts – particularly 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.
As the Seven Years' War came to a close, Cook was tasked with charting the rugged coast of Newfoundland. He was appointed master of HMS Grenville, 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 (or local) 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.
Cook's achievements in North America – hydrographic and astronomical – were 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 (undiscovered southern land) exist? And were there yet-undiscovered cultures or lands in the central Pacific?
The Treaty of Paris – signed when the Seven Years' War ended in 1763 – enabled 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.
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 objectives – outlined in secret orders – were 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 1768 – based on the recommendation of Hugh Palliser – Cook, aged 39, was selected by the Admiralty to lead the voyage. The next day he took his examination for the rank of lieutenant – a 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 (laid on her side for repairs), 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.
The expedition departed England on 25 August 1768 and headed south to round Cape Horn into the Pacific. They made a stop in Tierra del Fuego, where Cook composed his first anthropological essay, detailing his observations of the indigenous Haush people. Banks went ashore with several members of his party to collect botanical specimens. During the overnight excursion, his two black servants, Thomas Richmond and George Dorlton, froze to death.
The ship continued westward across the Pacific, arriving at Tahiti on 13 April 1769, where the observations of the transit of Venus were made. In May, Cook and some of his crew observed Tahitians surfing – becoming the first Europeans to witness the practice.
In June, two incidents happened that recurred in various forms throughout Cook's voyages: Tahitians were offended when some of his crew took rocks – to use as ship's ballast – from a sacred marae without permission. In a separate event, Tahitians took various items from the crew, prompting Cook to seize 22 canoes – many of which did not belong to the individuals responsible – as ransom until the stolen property was returned.
In July, two marines deserted by taking local wives and going into hiding, intending to remain on the island. In response, Cook detained a Tahitian chief as a hostage to compel the local community to locate and return the deserters. Cook then sailed from Tahiti to the nearby island of Huahine, then to Raiatea where he claimed Raiatea-Taha'a and the islands of Huahine, Borabora, Tupai, and Maupiti for Britain, naming them the Society Islands.
As directed by his secret orders, Cook began his search for the postulated southern continent of Terra Australis. He sailed to New Zealand and – in October 1769 – landed at Poverty Bay near the Tūranganui River. With the aid of Tupaia, a Tahitian priest who had joined the expedition, Cook was the first European to communicate with the Māori. However, encounters with them on the first two days turned violent, the British shooting several dead. Cook's approach to interactions with the Māori was to offer greetings and exchange gifts, in an attempt to establish friendly relations. But if his crew was threatened, he often ordered a quick and decisive use of force, despite his instructions from the Royal Society.
Text from the Wikipedia article “James Cook”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.