James Cook

James Cook
James Cook (born

October 27, 1728, TABLE OF CONTENTS
Marton-in-Cleveland,
Yorkshire, England— Introduction
died February 14, 1779, Early life

Kealakekua Bay, Voyages and discoveries
Hawaii) was a British
naval captain, navigator,
James Cook: Pacific voyages
and explorer who sailed the seaways and coasts of Canada (1759
James Cook's three Pacific voyages. and 1763–67) and conducted three expeditions to the Pacific
Ocean (1768–71, 1772–75, and1776–79), ranging from the
Antarctic ice fields to the Bering Strait and from the coasts of North America to Australia and New Zealand.
Early life
James Cook was the son of a farmhand migrant from Scotland. While Cook was still a child, his father
became the foreman on a farm in a neighbouring village. Young James early showed signs of an inquiring and
able mind, and his father’s employer paid for his schooling in the village until he was 12 years old. His early
teens were spent on the farm where his father worked, but a brief apprenticeship in a general store in a coastal
village north of Whitby brought him into contact with ships and the sea.
At the age of 18, in 1746, he was apprenticed to a well-known Quaker shipowner, John Walker of Whitby, and
at 21 was rated able seaman in the Walker collier-barks—stout, seaworthy, slow 300- and 400-tonners mainly
in the North Sea trade. When the ships were laid up for refitting (done by the apprentices and crews) at
Whitby during the worst months of winter, Cook lived ashore and studied mathematics by night. The Whitby
barks, constantly working North Sea waters off a dangerous and ill-marked lee shore, offered Cook splendid
practical training: the young man who learned his seamanship there had little to fear from any other sea.
Promoted to mate in 1752, Cook was offered command of a bark three years later, after eight years at sea.
Advancement of this nature opened up a career that would have satisfied most working seamen, but instead
Cook volunteered as able seaman in the Royal Navy. The navy, he was sure, offered a more interesting career
for the competent professional seaman, and greater opportunity than in the North Sea barks. Tall, of striking
appearance, Cook almost immediately caught the attention of his superiors, and with excellent power of
command, he was marked for rapid advancement.
After advancing to master’s mate and boatswain, both noncommissioned ranks, he was made master of HMS
Pembroke at the age of 29. During the Seven Years’ War between Great Britain and France (1756–63), he saw
action in the Bay of Biscay, was given command of a captured ship, and took part in the siege of Louisbourg,
Île Royale (now in Nova Scotia), and in the successful amphibious assault against Quebec. His charting and
marking of the more difficult reaches of the St. Lawrence River contributed to the success of Maj. Gen. James
Wolfe’s landing there. Based at Halifax during the winters, he mastered surveying with the plane table.
Between 1763 and 1768, after the war had ended, he commanded the schooner Grenville while surveying the
coasts of Newfoundland, sailing most of the year and working on his charts at his base in England during the
winters. In 1766 he observed an eclipse of the Sun and sent the details to the Royal Society in London—an
unusual activity for a noncommissioned officer, for Cook still rated only as master.
Voyages and discoveries
In 1768 the Royal Society, in conjunction with the Admiralty,
was organizing the first scientific expedition to the Pacific, and
the rather obscure 40-year-old James Cook was appointed
commander of the expedition. Hurriedly commissioned as
lieutenant, he was given a homely looking but extremely sturdy
Whitby coal-hauling bark renamed HMS Endeavour, then four
2 of 2 years old, of just 368 tons and less than 98 feet (30 metres) long.
Cook’s orders were to convey gentlemen of the Royal Society
James Cook: brass sextant
and their assistants to Tahiti to observe the transit of the planet
Brass sextant used by James Cook.
Venus across the Sun. That done, on June 3, 1769, he was to find
the southern continent, the so-called Terra Australis, which
philosophers argued must exist to balance the landmasses of the Northern Hemisphere. The leader of the
scientists was the rich and able Joseph Banks, aged 26, who was assisted by Daniel Solander, a Swedish
botanist, as well as astronomers (Cook rating as one) and artists. Cook carried an early nautical almanac and
brass sextants but no chronometer on the first voyage.
Striking south and southwest from Tahiti, where his predecessors

had sailed west and west-northwest with the favouring trade
winds, Cook found and charted all of New Zealand, a difficult
job that took six months. After that, instead of turning before the
west winds for the homeward run around Cape Horn, he crossed
the Tasman Sea westward and, on April 19, 1770, came upon the
HMS Endeavour southeast coast of Australia. Running north along its 2,000-mile
(3,200 km) eastern coast, surveying as he went, Cook
Replica of the HMS Endeavour, the
ship sailed by James Cook on his first successfully navigated Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef—since
voyage to the Pacific in 1768–71. reckoned as one of the greatest navigational hazards in the world
—taking the Coral Sea and the Torres Strait in his stride. Once
the bark touched on a coral spur by night, but it withstood the impact and was refloated. After the Endeavour
was grounded on the nearby Queensland coast and repaired, Cook sailed it back to England. He stopped
briefly at Batavia (modern Jakarta) for supplies, and, although the crew had been remarkably healthy until
then, 30 died of fever and dysentery contracted while on land. None of the crew, however, died of scurvy (a
dietary disease, caused by a lack of ascorbic acid, that notoriously decimated the crews of ships on lengthy
voyages in the 18th century). This was because, in addition to ensuring cleanliness and ventilation in the
crew’s quarters, Cook insisted on an appropriate diet that included cress, sauerkraut, and a kind of orange
extract. The health in which he maintained his sailors in consequence made his name a naval byword.
Back in England, he was promoted to commander and presented
to King George III, and soon he began to organize another and
even more ambitious voyage. The success of the expedition of
Joseph Banks and his scientists (which established the useful
principle of sending scientists on naval voyages—e.g., Charles
Darwin in the Beagle, T.H. Huxley in the Rattlesnake, and J.D.
James Cook Hooker with Sir James Ross to the Ross Sea in the Antarctic)
stimulated interest not only in the discovery of new lands but in
Capt. James Cook claiming what is
now New South Wales, Australia, for the new knowledge in many other scientific subjects. The wealth
Great Britain (1770), from an of scientifically collected material from the Endeavour voyage
engraving after a painting by J.A. was unique. Cook was now sent out with two ships to make the
Gilfillan, 19th century.
first circumnavigation of and penetration into the Antarctic.
Between July 1772 and July 1775 Cook made what ranks as one
of the greatest sailing ship voyages, again with a small former
Whitby ship, the Resolution, and a consort ship, the Adventure.
He found no trace of Terra Australis, though he sailed beyond
latitude 70° S in the Antarctic, but he successfully completed the
first west–east circumnavigation in high latitudes, charted Tonga
John Webber: View of Huahine and Easter Island during the winters, and discovered New
Caledonia in the Pacific and the South Sandwich Islands and
View of Huahine, watercolour by John
Webber, 1776–80. Webber was an South Georgia island in the Atlantic. He showed that a real Terra
artist who sailed with James Cook on Australis existed only in the landmasses of Australia, New
his third voyage to the Pacific. Zealand, and whatever land might remain frozen beyond the ice
rim of Antarctica. And, once again, not one of his crew died of
scurvy. Back in England, he was promoted to captain at last, elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and
awarded one of its highest honours, the gold Copley Medal, for a paper that he prepared on his work against
scurvy.
There was yet one secret of the Pacific to be discovered: whether there existed a northwest passage around
Canada and Alaska or a northeast one around Siberia, between the Atlantic and Pacific. Although the passages
had long been sought in vain from Europe, it was thought that the search from the North Pacific might be
successful. The man to undertake the search obviously was Cook, and in July 1776 he went off again on the
Resolution, with another Whitby ship, the Discovery. This search was unsuccessful, for neither a northwest
nor a northeast passage usable by sailing ships existed, and the voyage led to Cook’s death. In a brief fracas
with Hawaiians over the stealing of a cutter, Cook was slain on the beach at Kealakekua by the Polynesians.
Cook’s voyaging left him comparatively little time for family life. Although Cook had married Elizabeth Batts
in 1762, when he was 34 years old, he was at sea for more than half of their married life. The couple had six
children, three of whom died in infancy. The three surviving sons, two of whom entered the navy, had all died
by 1794.
Cook had set new standards of thoroughness in discovery and seamanship, in navigation, cartography, and the
care of men at sea, in relations with indigenous peoples both friendly and hostile, and in the application of
science at sea. And he had peacefully changed the map of the world more than any other single man in history.
Alan John Villiers
Citation Information
Article Title: James Cook
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 19 April 2024
URL: https://www.britannica.comhttps://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Cook
Access Date: October 17, 2024

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James Cook (born

died February 14, 1779, Early life

Striking south and southwest from Tahiti, where his predecessors

Alan John Villiers

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