Captain James Cook

Captain James Cook

Done By: Mouj A. & Shoug H.

On April 29, 1770, the British HM Bark Endeavor became the first European vessel to reach the east coast of Australia after it landed at Botany Bay near modern day Sydney.

At the helm was James Cook, a taciturn mariner who would go on to circumnavigate the globe twice and explore everything from the Bering Strait and the islands of the South Pacific to the treacherous ice floes surrounding Antarctica.

Cook’s three voyages of discovery helped fill in many of the blank spots on Europeans’ world maps, but his mistreatment of natives in Hawaii eventually led to an untimely death.

Cook first rose to prominence as a cartographer during the Seven Years’ War, when his detailed charts of the Saint Lawrence River helped the British pull off a surprise attack against French-held Quebec.

In the early 1760s, he was given a ship and tasked with charting the island of Newfoundland off the coast of Canada. The map he produced was so accurate that it was still in use in the 20th century.

He won command of his first round-the-world voyage in part because he could be trusted to navigate in uncharted territory and bring home precise maps of the lands he discovered.

Cook’s first voyage

Cook’s career as an explorer began in August 1768, when he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant and left England and given command of the bark Endeavour with nearly 100 crewmen in tow.

Their journey was ostensibly a scientific expedition—they were charged with sailing to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus across the face of the sun—but it also had a hidden military agenda.

He was instructed to sail to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus in 1769 and also to ascertain whether a continent existed in the southern latitudes of the Pacific Ocean. The expedition, which included a party of scientists and artists, left Plymouth in August 1768 and sailed to Brazil and around Cape Horn, reaching Tahiti in April 1769.

After the astronomical observations were completed, Cook sailed south to 40°S, but failed to find any land. He then turned west and circled New Zealand, proving it was a pair of islands and not connected to a larger landmass.

From New Zealand he sailed to New Holland, which he first sighted in April 1770. He charted the eastern coast, naming prominent landmarks and collecting many botanical specimens at Botany Bay. The expedition nearly ended in disaster when the Endeavour struck the Great Barrier Reef, but it was eventually dislodged and was careened and repaired at Endeavour River.

From there it sailed around Cape York through Torres Strait to Batavia, in the Dutch East Indies. In Batavia and on the last leg of the voyage one-third of the crew died of malaria and dysentery. Cook and the other survivors finally reached England in July 1771.

Cook's Second voyage

In 1772 Cook, who had been promoted to the rank of captain, led a new expedition to settle once and for all the speculative existence of the Great Southern Continent by ‘prosecuting your discoveries as near to the South Pole as possible’.

The sloops Resolution and Adventure left Sheerness in June 1772 and sailed to Cape Town. The ships became separated in the southern Indian Ocean and the Adventure sailed along the southern and eastern coasts of Van Diemen’s Land before reuniting with the Resolution at Queen Charlotte Sound in New Zealand.

The ships explored the Society and Friendly Islands before they again became separated in October 1773. The Adventure sailed to New Zealand, where 10 of the crew were killed by Maori, and returned to England in June 1774.

The Resolution sailed south from New Zealand, crossing the Antarctic Circle and reaching 71°10’S, further south than any ship had been before. It then traversed the southern Pacific Ocean, visiting Easter Island, Tahiti, the Friendly Islands, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Norfolk Island and New Zealand.

In November 1774 Cook began the homeward voyage, sailing to Chile, Patagonia, Terra del Fuego, South Georgia and Cape Town. The expedition reached England in July 1775.

Cook's Third voyage

A year later Cook left Plymouth on an expedition to search for the North West Passage. His two ships were HMS Resolution and Discovery, the latter commanded by Charles Clerke.

They sailed to Cape Town, Kerguelen Island in the southern Indian Ocean, Adventure Bay in Van Diemen’s Land, and Queen Charlotte Sound in New Zealand. They then revisited the Friendly and Society Islands.

Sailing northwards, Cook discovered the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and reached the North American coast in March 1778. The ships followed the coast northwards to Alaska and the Bering Strait and reached 70°44’N, before being driven back by ice.

They returned to the Sandwich Islands and on 14 February 1779 Cook was killed by Hawaiians at Kealakekua Bay. Clerke took over the command and in the summer of 1779 the expedition again tried unsuccessfully to penetrate the pack ice beyond Bering Strait.

Clerke died in August 1779 and John Gore and James King commanded the ships on the voyage home via Macao and Cape Town. They reached London in October 1780.