Greatest Britons – Captain James Cook

The latest in the Greatest Britons series by Louise Scott looks at the life of Captain James Cook.

Early Life

James Cook was born in the village of Marton, in the (then) North Riding of Yorkshire on 27th October 1728. He was the son of Scotsman James Cook, who was a farm worker, and his mother was a local woman called Grace. He was one of five children.

The Cook family moved to Airey Holme Farm at Great Ayton (also in North Riding of Yorkshire), and James attended school, his school fees being paid by his father’s employer Thomas Skottowe. He attended school for five years before beginning to work for his father in 1741 (his father had, by now, been promoted to a farm manager).

When he had spare time, James would head up Roseberry Topping, a distinctive hill in North Yorkshire. The climbing gave him his first taste for adventure and exploring, and this would stay with him for life.
In 1745, James moved to Staithes, a small fishing village near Whitby. Here he was apprenticed in a grocery/haberdashery business, but would gaze through the shop window and out towards the sea. He lasted eighteen months in this job, proving totally unsuitable for shop work, so his employer – William Sanderson – took him to Whitby and introduced him to prominent ship owners John and Henry Walker. They were involved in the coal trade, and they took James on as an apprentice working on their ships delivering coal along the English coast. The first ship he worked on was the Freelove. He spent several years on this job sailing between the Tyne and the Thames.

James would study algebra, trigonometry, geometry, astronomy and navigation during the course of his apprenticeship, all of them useful tools for one day commanding his own ship.

After completing his apprenticeship, he worked on trading ships in the Baltic, and in 1752 he was promoted to the rank of Mate (who is the officer in charge of navigation) aboard Friendship. He was put in charge of Friendship in 1755, but around a month later he volunteered for service in the Royal Navy. At that time, Britain was re-arming itself for what became the Seven Years’ War.

In the Navy he was at the bottom of the hierarchy, and needed to work his way back up, but James realised that his career would advance quicker in military service. He began as an able seaman aboard HMS Eagle but was soon promoted to Master’s Mate. Within two years of joining the Navy, he passed the master’s exam, allowing him to navigate and control a ship of the King’s fleet.

Family

He married Elizabeth Batts, who was the daughter of the innkeeper at the Bell Inn in Wapping, on 21st December 1762 in St Margaret’s Church, Barking. They had six children, and James lived in east London when he was not on duty at sea.

Navy Career

James was master of Pembroke during the Seven Years’ War and was involved in the siege of Quebec City. He displayed his talent for surveying and for designing maps by mapping a large part of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege, and this enabled General Wolfe to carry out a stealth attack on the Plains of Abraham.

During the 1760s James mapped the Newfoundland coast, and he spent five seasons in the area, producing the first large scale accurate maps of the Newfoundland coastline. This brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society.

The First Voyage

James was hired by the Royal Society in 1766 to observe and record the transit of Venus across the Sun. He was to travel to the Pacific to carry out the observations and was commissioned as a Lieutenant commanding the HM Bark Endeavour – a Whitby-based collier ship which had good storage capacity.

He left England in 1768 and sailed round Cape Horn, heading west across the Pacific, arriving in Tahiti on 13th April 1769. The observations were to be made on 3rd June, and in the meantime a small fort and observatory were built. They are now known as Point Venus.Charles Green, who was assistant to the Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne, was to make the observations. The aim was to get measurements which could enable the calculation of the distance between Venus and the Sun. After this had been achieved, then it would be possible to work out the distances between other planets based on their orbits.James wrote, on the day the observations were made: “Saturday 3 rd This day prov’d as favourable to our purpose as we could wish, not a Clowd was to be seen the Whole day and the Air was perfectly clear, so that we had every advantage we could desire in Observing the whole of the passage of the Planet Venus over the Suns disk: we very distinctly saw an Atmosphere or dusky shade round the body of the Planet which very much disturbed the times of the contacts particularly the two internal ones. D r 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…”

The measurements found by the observers were widely varied and the result was not as conclusive or accurate as previously hoped for.

After completing the astronomical observations, the next part of the voyage involved heading to the southern continent of “Terra Australis”. By discovering the riches of this continent on a voyage to map the transit of Venus, Britain could lay claim to the lands before any other European power.With the assistance of a navigator from Tahiti – Tupaia – James Cook reached New Zealand on 6th October 1769. They were only the second Europeans to reach the country, more than a century after Dutchman Abel Tasman. The entire New Zealand coastline was mapped, with only some minor errors. Cook Strait, separating North and South Island, bears his name to this day.After mapping New Zealand, Endeavour headed west towards what was then Van Dieman’s Land (and is now Tasmania), but prevailing northerly winds pushed them in a more northerly direction until one day land was sighted. This was named Point Hicks, in the south east of Australia.

They sailed northwards along the coast and came to an extensive inlet. On 29th April, James Cook and his crew first set foot in Australia. Initially it was given the name “Stingaree Bay” after the many stingrays there, later changed to “Botanist Bay” and then to its better known name of Botany Bay.

Botany Bay was promoted as a suitable place to establish an outpost but when the first British settlers arrive din 1788, they found the place unsuitable and moved a few miles further north, to a place called Sydney Cove, thus establishing the town (and later city) of Sydney.

James made contact with local Aborigines on landing in Australia. Two local men came to the boat, ignoring the offer of gifts. A shot was fired over their heads, and, as this wounded the older man, resulted in spears being thrown at the ship’s crew, who were unhurt. Two more rounds were fired at the Aborigines, who then ran away, but Cook went to the huts and found several children there. He left gifts of beads to show friendship.

They then sailed north, mapping the coastline along the way. The ship ran aground near the Great Barrier Reef on 11th June 1770, causing serious damage and a delay of around seven weeks whilst repairs were carried out. Encounters with local Aborigines were generally peaceful, and it is here that the word “kangaroo” first came into the English language.

After the ship had been repaired, it continued along its way, passing the point of Cape York Peninsula and sailing through the Torres Strait. Cook landed on Possession Island on 22nd August 1770, claming the entire coastline (which he later named New South Wales) for Britain.

The Endeavour then headed home, calling at the island of Savu, then continuing to Batavia for repairs. After rounding the Cape of Good Hope they stopped at St Helena and, on 10th July 1771, they came in sight of England, sailing up the English Channel, passing Beachy Head at 06:00 on 12th July. That afternoon Cook went ashore at Deal.After returning home, his journals were published and he found himself a hero amongst the scientific community. His son George was born five days before he left for his second voyage.

The Second Voyage

Before the second voyage, he was promoted from Master to Commander. Again he was commissioned by the Royal Society to look for the Terra Australis. He had already shown the New Zealand was not part of a larger landmass to the south and his charting of eastern Australia showed the island to be the size of a continent. The Royal Society still believed that there was a large continent to the south, even when presented with evidence to the contrary.

For the second voyage, the HMS Resolution was used. The ship circumnavigated the globe at a southern latitude, becoming among the first to cross the Antarctic Circle on 17th January 1773. On this voyage South Georgia was surveyed and mapped, being claimed for Britain. The ship sailed close to the Antarctic mainland but then turned north to Tahiti to get supplies. In 1774, Cook landed on the Friendly Islands, Easter Island, Norfolk Island, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. This laid to rest the myth of the Terra Australis continent.

After returning from this voyage, James Cook was promoted to Captain. He was given an honorary retirement from the Royal Navy, made a Fellow of the Royal Society and given the Copley Gold Medal. He longed to return to sea, however, and planned a third voyage, this time to find the Northwest Passage. He travelled to the Pacific and hoped to sail east to the Atlantic, whilst a simultaneous voyage would travel in the opposite direction.

The Third Voyage

On this voyage, Cook was in command of HMS Resolution and Captain Charles Clerke was in command of HMS Discovery. In 1778, Cook became the first European to visit Hawaii. He made landfall at Waimea Harbour on Kauai and named the islands “Sandwich Islands” in honour of the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who was the acting First Lord of the Admiralty.

After visiting Hawaii, Cook sailed northeast, exploring the west coast of North America. He mapped the coast from California all the way to the Bering Strait, and he identified what became Cook Inlet in Alaska.

The Bering Strait was impassable, even though Cook made a few attempts to sail through it. He returned to Hawaii in 1779, sailing round the islands for eight weeks and then making landfall at Kealakekua Bay on the island of Hawaii. He stayed for a month and then headed off to resume his exploration of the North Pacific. A short while after leaving the foremast of Resolution broke, and they returned to Kealakekua Bay for repairs. However, quarrels broke out between Cook’s men and the Hawaiians and, on 14th February some locals took control of one of the small boats. Thefts were common in the islands of the Pacific, and Cook would have taken hostages until the stolen items were returned. He attempted to take the King of Hawaii – Kalaniopu’u – hostage, being prevented by the islanders, and Cook’s men retreated to the beach. As Cook had his back turned, helping to launch the boats, he was clubbed on the head and stabbed to death as he fell into the sea. His body was taken away by the Hawaiians.

Cook’s body was retained by local chiefs and elders, and the flesh was cut off his bones and roasted. Some remains were eventually returned for a burial at sea.

Remembering Captain James Cook

Captain James Cook has an extensive legacy. The place where he was born, in Marton, is now the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum. The house where he lodged in Whitby, owned by his employers the Walkers, is now the Captain Cook Memorial Museum.The Endeavour River and the Endeavour Space Shuttle took their names from the ship used on his first voyage.

He accurately charted areas of the Pacific which other Europeans had never seen before.

He was the first to conclude that the Polynesian people of the South pacific had originated in Asia, a theory which has since been proved correct.

The site where he was killed in Hawaii is marked by a white obelisk and a small amount of land.

The Cook Islands in the South Pacific are named after him.

And in Middlesbrough a primary school and a shopping square bear his name.