In 1755, within a month of being offered command of this vessel, he volunteered for service in the Royal Navy, when Britain was re-arming for what was to become the Seven Years' War. After passing his examinations in 1752, he soon progressed through the merchant navy ranks, starting with his promotion in that year to mate aboard the collier brig Friendship. His three-year apprenticeship completed, Cook began working on trading ships in the Baltic Sea. Elizabeth Cook, wife and for 56 years widow of James Cook, by William Henderson, 1830 As part of his apprenticeship, Cook applied himself to the study of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, navigation and astronomy – all skills he would need one day to command his own ship. 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. Cook was taken on as a merchant navy apprentice in their small fleet of vessels, plying coal along the English coast. Their house is now the Captain Cook Memorial Museum. The Walkers, who were Quakers, were prominent local ship-owners in the coal trade. Īfter 18 months, not proving suited for shop work, Cook travelled to the nearby port town of Whitby to be introduced to Sanderson's friends John and Henry Walker. Historians have speculated that this is where Cook first felt the lure of the sea while gazing out of the shop window. In 1745, when he was 16, Cook moved 20 miles (32 km) to the fishing village of Staithes, to be apprenticed as a shop boy to grocer and haberdasher William Sanderson. Cooks' Cottage, his parents' last home, which he is likely to have visited, is now in Melbourne, Australia, having been moved from England and reassembled, brick by brick, in 1934. For leisure, he would climb a nearby hill, Roseberry Topping, enjoying the opportunity for solitude. Despite not being formally educated he became capable in mathematics, astronomy and charting by the time of his Endeavour voyage. In 1741, after five years' schooling, he began work for his father, who had been promoted to farm manager. In 1736, his family moved to Airey Holme farm at Great Ayton, where his father's employer, Thomas Skottowe, paid for him to attend the local school. He was the second of eight children of James Cook (1693–1779), a Scottish farm labourer from Ednam in Roxburghshire, and his locally born wife, Grace Pace (1702–1765), from Thornaby-on-Tees. James Cook was born on 7 November 1728 ( NS) in the village of Marton in the North Riding of Yorkshire and baptised on 14 November (N.S.) in the parish church of St Cuthbert, where his name can be seen in the church register. Whilst there is controversy over Cook's role at the forefront of British colonialism and the violence associated with his contacts with indigenous peoples, he left a legacy of scientific and geographical knowledge that influenced his successors well into the 20th century, and numerous memorials worldwide have been dedicated to him. In 1779, during Cook's third exploratory voyage in the Pacific, tensions escalated between his men and the natives of Hawaii, and an attempt to kidnap chief Kalaniʻōpuʻu led to Cook's death. He displayed a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, physical courage, and an ability to lead men in adverse conditions. He surveyed and named features, and recorded islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time. He mapped lands from New Zealand to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean in greater detail and on a scale not previously charted by Western explorers. In these voyages, Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe. This acclaim came at a crucial moment for the direction of British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in 1768 as commander of HMS Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages. Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec, which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. He saw action in the Seven Years' War and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St.
He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.Ĭook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755.
Captain James Cook FRS (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, cartographer and naval officer famous for his three voyages between 17 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular.
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