James Cook

Biography written by Katelyn Humiston

James Cook (1728–1779) was a celebrated British maritime explorer and cartographer. He is best known for his captaincy of the HMS Endeavor and Resolution in three expeditions to the South and North Pacific; circumnavigation of the globe; and exploration of Hawai’i, which was previously unknown to Europeans. He charted the coastlines of modern-day New Zealand, Australia, and Pacific islands, including Easter Island and Tasmania. He was also a Royal Navy officer during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and mapped the northeast Atlantic seaboard—most notably Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence—to advance British naval strategy.

Cook was born on October 27, 1728, in Yorkshire, England, to Grace and James Cook. James Sr. was a land laborer, and James Jr. assisted his father in his work. The Lord of the Manor of Great Ayton recognized young James’ work ethic and financially supported his early education. Seeing a future beyond landed labor, Cook apprenticed with a shopkeeper in 1745 and shipowner John Walker the following year. The latter opportunity gave him maritime experience in Western European ports.¹ On June 17, 1755, Cook volunteered for the Royal Navy.²

Cook’s naval service began patrolling the English Channel on the HMS Eagle. After a promotion to master in 1757, he traveled to the North Atlantic on the HMS Pembroke.³ He participated in the 1758 Siege of Louisbourg and met mapmaker Lieutenant Samuel Holland, an integral meeting for encouraging growth in Cook’s surveying skills. In preparation for the 1759 Siege of Quebec, Holland and Cook created maps under Captain John Simcoe’s direction for the Royal Navy.⁴ One of Cook’s maps, dated 1759–1761, is A Plan of the River St. Laurence from Green Island to Cape Carrouge. After the French defeat at Quebec, Cook boarded the HMS Northumberland in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and assisted in the retaking of Newfoundland from the French in 1762.

Between 1762 and 1768, Cook divided his time between England and Newfoundland, where he continued to gain significant surveying and mapmaking experience.⁵ Upon the Northumberland’s return to England, Cook married Elizabeth Batts on December 21, 1762.⁶ The couple had six children; Elizabeth, who lived to be ninety-three, survived all her children and her husband.⁷ Shortly after his marriage, Cook sailed back to Newfoundland as an official king’s surveyor on the HMS Antelope with the Newfoundland governor, Thomas Graves.⁸ From 1763 to 1766, Cook produced numerous charts and drawings of Newfoundland.⁹ One map, dated 1765, is A Chart of the Sea-coast of Newfoundland between St. Laurence and Point May.

In May 1768, Cook was promoted to lieutenant in the Royal Navy and led the HMS Endeavour to the South Pacific, where he and his crew explored the coastlines of New Zealand and Australia.¹⁰ Cook kept detailed journals of his voyages and recorded thousands of miles of coastline. On May 30, 1770, while sailing along present-day Queensland, Australia, he noted, “This inlet which I have named Thirsty Sound by reason we could find no fresh water.”¹¹ Much fanfare greeted Cook and his crew when the Endeavour returned to England.

In 1772, Cook again left home in command of the HMS Resolution, and retraced his route to New Zealand and Tahiti before plotting other South Pacific islands that he and his crew had not yet visited. In search of a supposed “Southern Continent,” he voyaged across the Antarctic Circle before sailing back to England in 1775, unsuccessful.¹² Cook soon after embarked on his final voyage, departing in June 1776 on the Resolution to locate a northwest passage by way of the North Pacific. The crew were the first Europeans to encounter the Hawaiian Islands, which Cook labeled the Sandwich Islands, after the Lord of the Admiralty.¹³ Cook then sailed north along the coasts of modern-day Oregon and Alaska. In mid-1778, it became clear that discovering a northwest passage was unlikely.¹⁴ Cook and his crew returned to the Hawaiian Islands on November 26, 1778, and occupied Kealakekua Bay.¹⁵ Following a series of alleged thefts and heightened tensions between Cook’s crew and local Indigenous people, the crew accused Native Hawaiians of stealing a shore boat. Cook was killed in a skirmish on February 14, 1779.¹⁶

James Cook’s maritime and cartographic legacy has persisted from the eighteenth century to the present. He earned King George III’s esteem with an appointment to post-captain in 1775.¹⁷ A French naval officer, Joseph Bernard Marquis de Chabert, even consulted Cook’s maps and listed him as a contributor to Chabert’s 1775 A Chart of the Banks of Newfoundland.¹⁸ His Newfoundland and Gulf of St. Lawrence maps from the Seven Years’ War are still used today.¹⁹ Cook’s renowned voyages, which covered some 200,000 miles, facilitated the growth of imperialism and British colonialism in the South Pacific.

Banner image: detail from Nathaniel Dance, Captain James Cook, c.1775-1775 © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Greenwich Hospital Collection.

Bibliography

Barnett, James K. Captain Cook in Alaska and the North Pacific. Anchorage: Todd Communications, 2008.

Hough, Richard. Captain James Cook: A Biography. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995.

Journal of Capt. Cook’s Voyage in H.M.S. Endeavour, 1768–1771. National Library of Australia.

Macarthur, Antonia. His Majesty’s Bark Endeavor: The Story of the Ship and Her People. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1997.

McLynn, Frank. Captain Cook: Master of the Seas. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.

Kindred, Sheila Johnson. “James Cook: Cartographer in the Making 1758–1762.” Journal of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society 12 (2009): 54–81.

Pritchard, J.S. “CHABERT DE COGOLIN, JOSEPH-BERNARD DE, Marquis de CHABERT.” In Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. 5. University of Toronto/Université Laval, 1983–. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/chabert_de_cogolin_joseph_bernard_de_5E.html.

Robson, John. Captain Cook’s War and Peace: The Royal Navy Years, 1755–1768. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2009.