Cook, James

I

Introduction

Cook, James (1728-1779), British naval officer, cartographer, and explorer, famous for his three great voyages of exploration in the Pacific Ocean and North American coastal waters.

Cook, popularly called Captain Cook, was born in Marton-in-Cleveland, England, the son of a farm labourer. At the age of 18 he was apprenticed to a firm of shipwrights at Whitby, and taught himself mathematics and astronomy. In 1755, with England on the verge of war with France (Seven Years’ War), Cook enlisted in the British Royal Navy. His skills as a seaman and navigator brought him to the attention of Sir Hugh Palliser. Cook's charts of the St Lawrence River helped the British victory at Quebec in September 1759, and when Palliser became Governor of Newfoundland, Cook was employed to carry out coastal surveys of the North Atlantic coastal waters off Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. In July 1766, in command of the Grenville, he observed the solar eclipse off the coast of Newfoundland. His observations were considered sufficiently important to be published by the Royal Society of London in 1768.

II

First Pacific Voyage

As a result, Cook was invited to lead a joint Royal Society and Royal Naval expedition to the recently discovered island of Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun, an astronomical event which would enable mathematicians to calculate the distance between the Earth and the Sun, and so enable a more accurate determination of longitude. They were also keen for him to confirm or disprove the existence of a Great Southern Continent, long-predicted by geographers since ancient times. The belief in a huge southern continent stemmed from the ancient Greeks, who believed that such a land mass was necessary to “balance” the great continents of the northern hemisphere. On August 26, 1768, Cook and a crew of 94 sailors, marines, and scientists (including the botanist Joseph Banks), set sail from Plymouth in the Endeavour, a converted Whitby collier. They reached Tahiti safely by way of Rio de Janeiro, Tierra del Fuego, and Cape Horn, and completed their observations of the transit according to plan on June 3, 1769. Cook then proceeded south-westwards in search of the southern continent, calling in at other islands of the Tahiti group, which he collectively named the Society Islands. He reached the North Island of New Zealand on October 7, 1769. By March 1770, Cook had circumnavigated both North and South Islands, taking formal possession of them both for Britain, and accurately charting 3,860 km (2,400 mi) of coast. He had demonstrated that New Zealand comprised two islands separated by a passage, now named Cook Strait, and showed that they were not part of some larger southern continent. Although he did not have a chronometer on this voyage to determine longitude absolutely, Cook's maps of the New Zealand coast were so accurate that they remained in use well into the 19th century.

With the southern winter approaching, Cook headed for home hoping to locate Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and New Holland (as Australia was then known), but severe storms drove them northwards and they came upon the south-east coast of the Australian mainland. They continued northwards and on April 28, 1770, reached a large natural harbour which became known as Botany Bay because of the great abundance of plant species, previously unknown to Europeans, that were catalogued there by Banks and Daniel Solander. From here they continued northwards, charting 3,220 km (2,000 mi) of the eastern coast of Australia and claiming it for Britain under the name of New South Wales. While sailing between the coast and the Great Barrier Reef, the Endeavour was holed by the reef and, despite repairs, was leaking badly when they rounded the Cape York Peninsula and headed into the Torres Strait. They landed at Batavia (Jakarta) on Java for repairs, where 30 of Cook's men died of dysentery contracted ashore. They reached the Cape of Good Hope in the spring of 1771 and sailed via St Helena in the South Atlantic before arriving in England in July 1771. The circumnavigation of the globe had taken three years, but despite Cook's extensive charts, the Admiralty was still not convinced that a Great Southern Continent did not exist.

III

Second Voyage

In 1771 Cook was promoted to the rank of commander, and on July 11, 1772, set sail from Plymouth in command of two ships, the Resolution and the Adventure. He planned to circumnavigate the globe as far south as possible from the Cape of Good Hope, a route which would force him to come into contact with any large southern continent. They made a brief survey of plants and animals around Cape Town, before making the first recorded crossing of the Antarctic Circle on January 17, 1773. Soon afterwards the Resolution and Adventure were separated and the icy conditions made it impossible to penetrate further south. They headed towards New Zealand and the Cook Strait for a pre-arranged rendezvous. Sailing east across the Pacific, the two ships spent July to October 1773 exploring the islands between New Zealand and the mid-Pacific in a wide circle. Cook landed on the islands that he named the Hervey Islands, but which were later named the Cook Islands, and on Tonga in what he named the Friendly Islands. In a storm off New Zealand, the two ships were separated again and the Adventure returned to England.

Now in the Resolution alone, Cook again set out from New Zealand, in December, 1773, heading south into Antarctic waters, twice crossing the Antarctic Circle and reaching a record latitude of 71° 11' south. Ice forced him north again and during 1774 he charted many islands previously visited by the Portuguese and Dutch explorers including the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), the Marquesas, and Easter Island, and made the first European landings on several other Pacific islands, including New Caledonia and Niue. After a final return to New Zealand, Cook set out for home in November 1774. Entering the South Atlantic, he discovered the South Sandwich Islands and South Georgia. He stopped briefly at Table Bay, South Africa, having completed the circumnavigation of Antarctica, although he never sighted the continent; he returned to Britain in July 1775. Cook was made a Fellow of the Royal Society and was awarded the Copley Medal for scientific achievement. His three-year expedition had proved that no Asia-sized southern continent existed, only the great ice mass of the Antarctic region; although Cook never landed on Antarctica, he probably realized from rock fragments in icebergs that a land mass of some sort lay even further to the south. The voyage was also notable for the remarkable health record maintained by the crew. Cook's insistence on proper hygiene and a diet including lime juice and sauerkraut greatly reduced the number of scurvy cases during the expedition.

IV

Third Voyage

Cook was expected to retire to a position as director of Greenwich Hospital, but instead set off again in July 1776 to find a Pacific entrance to the North West Passage, which was thought might link the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans through the Arctic waters across the top of North America. The Hudson's Bay Company, keen to find new markets and trade routes, instigated the expedition. In the Resolution and the Discovery, Cook sailed into the Pacific via the Cape of Good Hope, Kerguelen, Tasmania, and New Zealand, charting the Cook Islands, and revisiting the Friendly Islands and Tahiti. In the early part of 1778 Cook headed north of the equator for the first time in his Pacific voyages. He made the first European sighting and landing on an island group he named the Sandwich Islands, now known as Hawaii, and documented the people, plants, and animals of the islands. By March 1778, continuing north-westwards, the two ships had reached the coast of North America off present-day Oregon and headed north to Vancouver Island, where they made contact with the Nootka people.

Cook searched in vain for a North West Passage, charting the western coastline to Alaska, where he entered the bay now called Cook Inlet, then continued—threading his way through the Aleutian Islands, as far north as the Bering Strait, which he passed through before ice forced him back around the area of Icy Cape at 70° 44', his most northerly point. He returned to the Sandwich Islands during the winter of 1778-1779, surveying the islands of Hawaii and Maui. On February 14, 1779, he was killed during a skirmish with islanders following the theft of a boat. Resolution and Discovery continued the voyage under Captain Charles Clerke. They sailed to Kamchatka, then continued through the Bering Strait again, charting its Siberian coast. Clerke also died, and the ships returned home via the Indian Ocean, arriving back in England in August 1780.