Titans of History

CAPTAIN COOK

1728–1779

The ablest and most renowned Navigator this or any country hath produced.

Sir Hugh Palliser’s monument to Captain Cook, erected at Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, after the news of Cook’s death reached Europe

James Cook was responsible for exploring and charting boundless areas of the Pacific hitherto unknown to Europeans. A creative captain as well as a fine navigator, he devised a diet for his crews rich in vitamin C, thereby preventing the outbreaks of scurvy that usually afflicted those on long voyages. It was curiosity and ambition as well as science that drove Cook to fulfill his desire to voyage not only “farther than any man before me, but as far as I think it is possible for a man to go.”

Cook’s achievements were remarkable given his beginnings. The son of a Yorkshire farm laborer, as a lad he was apprenticed to a grocer. This did not satisfy his restless spirit, and he set off for the port of Whitby. Here he signed on to serve on a merchantman and spent a number of years sailing on colliers up and down the east coast of England. Having acquired the rudiments of navigation, in 1755 he volunteered for the Royal Navy and rose swiftly through the ranks. During the Seven Years’ War Cook achieved renown as a hydrographic surveyor, and his work charting the St. Lawrence River and the coast of Canada was critical to subsequent British victories. His surveys and sailing directions concerning Newfoundland were used for well over a century.

Cook’s observations of the solar eclipse of 1766 so impressed the Royal Society that, jointly with the Admiralty, it commissioned him to make a voyage to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus—and also to explore and claim for Britain the undiscovered southern continent known as Terra Australis. The belief in the existence of such a continent—covering not only the South Pole but also extending far to the north into the Indian Ocean and the Pacific—had been held by geographers since the time of Aristotle. Cook’s discoveries conclusively put the myth to rest: in circumnavigating New Zealand for the first time (1769), discovering Australia’s east coast (1770) and sailing through the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, Cook showed these lands to be separate entities. But the furtherance of science was only one of Cook’s aims; he also claimed for King George III many of the lands he discovered—such as New South Wales and Hawaii (which he called the Sandwich Isles in honor of his patron, the Earl of Sandwich). During his second voyage (1772–5), he achieved the first circumnavigation of the Antarctic, and in so doing became the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle.

The scale of Cook’s achievement owes much to his brilliant and fearless seamanship. Cook consistently continued his explorations when all others would have turned back. His navigation skills were considerable, and he also had the vision to draw on the knowledge of the two Tahitians he employed on his voyages. Boundlessly tenacious, Cook was never content with what he had achieved. He invariably extended his voyages, and his willingness to exceed the orders given to him by the Admiralty was rewarded by the discoveries he made.

Cook’s maps and charts were often the first accurate depictions of the coasts he explored: he completed the outlines of Newfoundland, the northwest coast of North America, New Zealand and Australia. His use of the K1 chronometer, which by keeping time more precisely enabled him to measure longitude more accurately, was ground-breaking, and his results are remarkable for their accuracy, given the frequently adverse conditions in which he worked and the limitations of the instrumentation available to him.

Cook’s pioneering work on the prevention of scurvy earned him a medal from the Royal Society, who were also impressed by the scientific achievements of his expeditions, in particular the records of new flora and fauna made by the scientists he took with him. Cook—praised in the House of Lords as “the first navigator in Europe”—was elected a fellow of the Royal Society and awarded a captainship and honorary retirement by the Royal Navy. This last, however, he accepted only on the condition that he could still make further voyages. For, despite having a wife and a succession of children, Cook’s life lay at sea.

In 1776 he set sail for the South Seas once again. During this voyage, Cook determined to make an attempt to break though the apparently impassable Arctic ice and find a route back to Europe to the north of Canada. While waiting for spring to arrive, Cook wintered in Hawaii, and here he became caught up in a disagreement with the islanders. In the resulting skirmish, Cook, who had initially been deified by the Hawaiians as the incarnation of their god, Lono, was killed. His body, according to custom, was stripped of flesh, which was then burned—or possibly eaten. His bones were distributed among various chiefs and only handed back to Cook’s men after protracted negotiations. His remains were buried at sea, as was only fitting, the sea having been his whole life. The map of the Pacific was his legacy.