James Cook Totally Explained

Everything about Captain Cook totally explained

Captain James Cook FRS RN (27 October 1728 (O.S.) – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer. Ultimately rising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy, Cook was the first to map Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean during which he achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands as well as the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.
Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years' War, and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec. This allowed General Wolfe to make his famous stealth attack on the Plains of Abraham, and helped to bring Cook to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society. This notice came at a crucial moment both in his personal career and in the direction of British overseas exploration, and led to his commission in 1766 as commander of HM Bark Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages.
Cook accurately charted many areas and recorded several islands and coastlines on Europeans' maps for the first time. His achievements can be attributed to a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, courage in exploring dangerous locations to confirm the facts (for example dipping into the Antarctic circle repeatedly and exploring around the Great Barrier Reef), an ability to lead men in adverse conditions, and boldness both with regard to the extent of his explorations and his willingness to exceed the instructions given to him by the Admiralty. As a child, Cook moved with his family to Airey Holme farm at Great Ayton, where he was educated at the local school (now a museum), his studies financed by his father's employer. At 13 he began work with his father, who managed the farm. Cook's Cottage, his parents' last home and which he may have visited, is now in Melbourne having been moved brick by brick from England.

Family life

Cook married Elizabeth Batts (1742-1835), the daughter of Samuel Batts, keeper of the Bell Inn, Wapping and one of his mentors, on December 21, 1762 at St. Margaret's Church, Barking, Essex. The couple had six children: James (1763-1794), Nathaniel (1764-1781), Elizabeth (1767-1771), Joseph (1768-1768), George (1772-1772) and Hugh (1776-1793). When not at sea, Cook lived in the East End of London. He attended St. Paul's Church, Shadwell, where his son James was baptised.

Start of Royal Navy career

During the Seven Years' War, as master of Pembroke (his second command, after Solebay), Cook participated in the siege of Quebec City before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759. He showed a talent for surveying and cartography and was responsible for mapping much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege, allowing General Wolfe to make his famous stealth attack on the Plains of Abraham.
Cook's surveying skills were put to good use in the 1760s, mapping the jagged coast of Newfoundland. Cook surveyed the northwest 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’s five seasons in Newfoundland produced the first large-scale and accurate maps of the island’s coasts; they also gave Cook his mastery of practical surveying, achieved under often adverse conditions, and brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society at a crucial moment both in his personal career and in the direction of British overseas discovery.
Following on from his exertions in Newfoundland, it was at this time that Cook wrote, he intended to go not only:

"... farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it's possible for a man to go."

First voyage (1768–71)

Royal Society hired Cook to travel to the Pacific Ocean to observe and record the transit of Venus across the Sun. On 23 April he made his first recorded direct observation of indigenous Australians at Brush Island near Bawley Point, noting in his journal "...and were so near the Shore as to distinguish several people upon the Sea beach they appear'd to be of a very dark or black Colour but whether this was the real colour of their skins or the C[l]othes they might have on I know not." On April 29 Cook and crew made their first landfall on the mainland of the continent at a place now known as Kurnell, which he named Botany Bay after the unique specimens retrieved by the botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander. He continued northwards, and a mishap occurred when Endeavour ran aground on a shoal of the Great Barrier Reef, on June 11. The ship was badly damaged and his voyage was delayed almost seven weeks while repairs were carried out on the beach (near the docks of modern Cooktown, at the mouth of the Endeavour River).

Second voyage (1772–75)

Shortly after his return, Cook was promoted from Master to Commander. Then once again he was commissioned by the Royal Society to search for the mythical Terra Australis. On his first voyage, Cook had demonstrated by circumnavigating New Zealand that it wasn't attached to a larger landmass to the south; and although by charting almost the entire eastern coastline of Australia he'd shown it to be continental in size, the Terra Australis being sought was supposed to lie further to the south. Despite this evidence to the contrary Dalrymple and others of the Royal Society still believed that this massive southern continent should exist.
   Cook commanded HMS Resolution on this voyage, while Tobias Furneaux commanded its companion ship, HMS Adventure. Cook's expedition circumnavigated the globe at a very high southern latitude, becoming one of the first to cross the Antarctic Circle on January 17, 1773. He also surveyed, mapped and took possession for Britain of South Georgia explored by Anthony de la Roché in 1675, and navigated the South Sandwich Islands. In the Antarctic fog, Resolution and Adventure became separated. Furneaux made his way to New Zealand, where he lost some of his men following a fight with Māori, and eventually sailed back to Britain, while Cook continued to explore the Antarctic, reaching 71°10'S on 31 January 1774.
   Cook almost encountered the mainland of Antarctica, but turned back north towards Tahiti to resupply his ship. He then resumed his southward course in a second fruitless attempt to find the supposed continent. On this leg of the voyage he brought with him a young Tahitian named Omai, who proved to be somewhat less knowledgeable about the Pacific than Tupaia had been on the first voyage. On his return voyage, in 1774 he landed at the Friendly Islands, Easter Island, Norfolk Island, New Caledonia, and Vanuatu. His reports upon his return home put to rest the popular myth of Terra Australis.
   Another accomplishment of the second voyage was the successful employment of the Larcum Kendall K1 chronometer, which enabled Cook to calculate his longitudinal position with much greater accuracy. Cook's log was full of praise for the watch and the charts of the southern Pacific Ocean he made with its use were remarkably accurate - so much so that copies of them were still in use in the mid 20th century.
   Upon his return, Cook was promoted to the rank of Captain and given an honorary retirement from the Royal Navy, as an officer in the Greenwich Hospital. His fame now extended beyond the Admiralty and he was also made a Fellow of the Royal Society and awarded the Copley Gold Medal, painted by Nathaniel Dance-Holland, dined with James Boswell and described in the House of Lords as "the first navigator in Europe".). After a month's stay, Cook got under sail again to resume his exploration of the Northern Pacific. However, shortly after leaving the Big Island, the foremast of the Resolution broke and the ships returned to Kealakekua Bay for repairs. It has been hypothesized that the return to the islands by Cook's expedition wasn't just unexpected by the Hawaiians but unwelcome because the season of Lono had recently ended; in any case, tensions rose and a number of quarrels broke out between the Europeans and Hawaiians. On February 14 at Kealakekua Bay, some Hawaiians took one of Cook's small boats. Normally, as thefts were quite common in Tahiti and the other islands, Cook would have taken hostages until the stolen articles were returned. The Hawaiians dragged his body away. Four of the Marines with Cook were also killed and two wounded in the confrontation.
   Some scholars suggest that Cook's return to Hawaii outside the season of worship for Lono, which was synonymous with 'peace', and thus in the season of 'war' (being dedicated to Kū, god of war) may have upset the equilibrium and fostered an atmosphere of resentment and aggression from the local population. Coupled with a jaded grasp of native diplomacy and a burgeoning but limited understanding of local politics, Cook may have inadvertently contributed to the tensions that ultimately conspired in his demise.
   The esteem in which he was nevertheless held by the Hawaiians resulted in his body being retained by their chiefs and elders (possibly, as some claim, for partial human consumption, though this remains contentious) and the flesh cut and roasted from his bones. This was a similar burial ritual reserved for the chiefs and highest elders of the society. Some of Cook's remains, disclosing some corroborating evidence to this effect, were eventually returned to the British for a formal burial at sea following an appeal by the crew.
   Clerke took over the expedition and made a final attempt to pass through the Bering Strait. Following the death of Clerke Resolution and Discovery returned home in October 1780 commanded by John Gore, a veteran of Cook's first voyage, and Captain James King. Cook's account of his third and final voyage was completed upon their return by King.

Cook's protégés

A number of the junior officers who served under Cook went on to distinctive accomplishments of their own.

William Bligh, Cook's sailing master, was given command of HMS Bounty in 1787 to sail to Tahiti and return with breadfruit. Bligh is most known for the mutiny of his crew which resulted in his being set adrift in 1789. He later became governor of New South Wales, where he was subject of another mutiny — the only successful armed takeover of an Australian colonial government.
George Vancouver, one of Cook's midshipmen, later led a voyage of exploration to the Pacific Coast of North America from 1791 to 1794.
George Dixon sailed under Cook on his third expedition, and later commanded an expedition of his own.

Legacy

Cook's 12 years sailing around the Pacific Ocean contributed much to European knowledge of the area. Several islands such as Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) were encountered for the first time by Europeans, and his more accurate navigational charting of large areas of the Pacific was a major achievement.
   To create accurate maps, latitude and longitude need to be known. Navigators had been able to work out latitude accurately for centuries by measuring the angle of the sun or a star above the horizon with an instrument such as a backstaff or quadrant. But longitude was more difficult to measure accurately because it requires precise knowledge of the time difference between points on the surface of the earth. Earth turns a full 360 degrees relative to the sun each day. Thus longitude corresponds to time: 15 degrees every hour, or 1 degree every 4 minutes.
   Cook gathered accurate longitude measurements during his first voyage due to his navigational skills, the help of astronomer Charles Green and by using the newly published Nautical Almanac tables, via the lunar distance method — measuring the angular distance from the moon to either the sun during daytime or one of eight bright stars during nighttime to determine the time at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and comparing that to his local time determined via the altitude of the sun, moon, or stars. On his second voyage Cook used the K1 chronometer made by Larcum Kendall, which was the shape of a large pocket watch, 13 cm (5 inches) in diameter. It was a copy of the H4 clock made by John Harrison, which proved to be the first to keep accurate time at sea when used on the ship Deptford's journey to Jamaica, 1761-1762.
   There were several artists on the first voyage. Sydney Parkinson was involved in many of the drawings, completing 264 drawings before his death near the end of the voyage. They were of immense scientific value to British botanists.
   The first tertiary education institution in North Queensland, Australia was named after him, with James Cook University opening in Townsville in 1970. Numerous other institutions, landmarks and place names reflect the importance of Cook's contribution to knowledge of geography. These also include the Cook Islands, the Cook Strait, and Cook crater.
   The site where he was killed in Hawaii is marked by a white obelisk and about 25 square feet of land around it's chained off. This land, though in Hawaii, has been given to the United Kingdom. Therefore, the site is officially a part of the UK., shopping square and Claes Oldenburg public artwork, the Bottle 'O Notes, while the James Cook University Hospital, a teaching hospital in Marton, was also named after him. Marton is also the location of the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum. The Royal Research Ship RRS James Cook was built in 2006 to replace the RRS Charles Darwin in the UK's Royal Research Fleet.
   His contributions were recognized during his era. In 1779, when the American colonies were at war with Britain in their war for independence, Benjamin Franklin wrote to captains of American warships at sea, recommending that if they came into contact with Cook's vessel, to:

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