Captain James Cook FRS (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy. Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. Cook was attacked and killed in 1779 during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific while attempting to kidnap the Island of Hawaii’s monarch, Kalaniʻōpuʻu.
About James Cook in brief
Captain James Cook FRS (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy. Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. Cook was attacked and killed in 1779 during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific while attempting to kidnap the Island of Hawaii’s monarch, Kalaniʻōpuʻu, in order to reclaim a cutter stolen from one of his ships. 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. He was the second of eight children of James Cook, a Scottish farm labourer from Ednam in Roxburghshire, and his locally born wife, Grace Pace, from Thornaby-on-Tees. 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. Cook’s 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. 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.
Despite not being formally educated he became capable in mathematics, astronomy and charting by the time of his Endeavour voyage. He displayed a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, physical courage, and an ability to lead men in adverse conditions. Cook married Elizabeth Batts, daughter of Samuel Bell, keeper of the Innts, in December 1755, and they had one daughter, Samuel Batts Wapping, who was born in January 1760. Cook and his wife had one son, Samuel Wapping Cook, who died in childbirth in 1801. The couple had two children, Samuel and Elizabeth, who were born in March 1761 and March 1762, respectively, and had a son, James James Cook Cook, born in April 1762. Cook died in a shipwreck off the coast of New South Wales in November 1779. He is buried in Staithes, near Whitby, where he had been apprenticed as a shop boy to a grocer and haberdasher William Sanderson in 1745. His father had been promoted to farm manager in 1741, after five years’ schooling, he began work for his father, who had beenpromoted to farmmanager. Cook worked on trading ships in the Baltic Sea in 1752, and soon progressed through the merchant navy ranks, starting with his mate aboard the brig Friendship. Within a month of being offered command of this vessel, he volunteered for service in the Seven Years’ War.
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This page is based on the article James Cook published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
