(7 November 1728 –
14 February 1779)
Izradio:Franko Stjepić
About James Cook...
 Captain James Cook was a British explorer, navigator and
cartographer
 He ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy
 Cook made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making
three voyages to the Pacific Ocean
...
 During the journey he achieved the first European contact
with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian
Islands
 Also he was the first who recorded the circumnavigation of
New Zealand
Early life
 Cook was born in the village of Marton in Yorkshire
 He was baptised in the local church of St. Cuthbert
 His name can be seen in the church register
 He was the second of eight children
Education
 In 1736, his family moved to Airey Holme farm at Great Ayton
 He met his father´s employer, Thomas Skottowe
 Thomas Skottowe paid for him to attend the local school
First job
 He attended school for five years
 After the five years in 1741 he began to work for his father
 His father was promoted to farm manager
 He didn´t seem to like the job
Family
 Cook married Elizabeth Batts (1742–1835), the daughter of
Samuel Batts, keeper of the Bell Inn
 The wedding was on 21 December 1762 at St. Margaret's
Church in Barking, Essex
 The couple had six children: James (1763–94), Nathaniel
(1764–81), Elizabeth (1767–71), Joseph (1768–68), George
(1772–72) and Hugh (1776–93)
 Cook has no direct descendants—all his children either predeceased him or died without having children of their own
The scent of the sea
 In 1745, when he was 16, Cook moved 20 miles (32 km) to the
fishing village of Staithes
 He apprenticed as a shop boy to grocer and haberdasher
William Sanderson
 Some say that this is where Cook first felt the lure of the sea
while gazing out of the shop window
...
 After 18 months, not proving suitable for shop work, Cook
travelled to the nearby port town of Whitby
 He was introduced to friends of Sanderson's, John and Henry
Walker
 Cook was taken on as a merchant navy apprentice in their
small fleet of vessels , plying coal along the English coast.
The begining
 His first assignment was aboard the collier Freelove, and he
spent several years on this and various other coaster
 He sailed between the Tyne and London
 As part of his apprenticeship, Cook applied himself to the
study of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, navigation and
astronomy
 All these skills he would need one day to command his own
ship.
Early career start
 His three-year apprenticeship completed, Cook began
working on trading ships in the Baltic Sea
 After passing his examinations in 1752, he soon progressed
through the merchant navy ranks
 Starting with his promotion in that year to mate aboard the
collier brig Friendship
Royal Navy
 In 1755, within a month of being offered command of this
vessel, he volunteered for service in the Royal Navy
 Despite the need to start back at the bottom of the naval
hierarchy
 Cook realised his career would advance more quickly in
military service and entered the Navy at Wapping on 7 June
1755
...
 Cook's first posting was with HMS Eagle, sailing with the
rank of master's mate
 In October and November 1755 he took part in Eagle's
capture of one French warship and the sinking of another
 Following which he was promoted to boatswain in addition
to his other duties
...
 In June 1757 Cook passed his master's examinations at Trinity
House, Deptford
 This qualified him to navigate and handle a ship of the King's
fleet
 He then joined the frigate HMS Solebay as master under
Captain Robert Craig
Seven Year´s War
 During the Seven Years' War, he served in North America as
master of Pembroke
 In 1758, he took part in the major amphibious assault that
captured the Fortress of Louisbourg from the French
 after this he participated in the siege of Quebec City and
then the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759
Cook´s real profession
 Cook showed a talent for surveying and cartography
 He was responsible for mapping much of the entrance to the
Saint Lawrence River during the siege
 This allowed General Wolfe to make his famous stealth
attack on the Plains of Abraham
 Cook's aptitude for surveying was put to good use mapping
the jagged coast of Newfoundland in the 1760s
...
 His 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
 Cook got the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society at
a crucial moment both in his career and in the direction of
British overseas discovery
The first voyage (1768-71)
 In 1766, the Royal Society engaged Cook to travel to the
Pacific Ocean to observe and record the transit of Venus
across the Sun
 At the age of 39, he was promoted to lieutenant and named
as commander of the expedition
 The expedition sailed from England in 1768, rounded Cape
Horn and continued westward across the Pacific to arrive at
Tahiti on 13 April 1769
...
 However, the result of the observations was not as conclusive
or accurate as had been hoped
 Once the observations were completed, Cook opened the
sealed orders which were additional instructions from the
Admiralty
 For the second part of the voyage he had to search the south
Pacific for signs of the postulated rich southern continent
TerraAustralis (a mythical large continent)
...
 On 23 April he made his first recorded direct observation of
indigenous Australians at Brush Island near Bawley Point
 On 29 April Cook and crew made their first landfall on the
mainland of the continent at a place now known as the
Kurnell Peninsula
 he named Botany Bay after the unique specimens retrieved
by the botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander
...
 It is here that James Cook made first contact with an
Aboriginal tribe known as the Gweagal
 After his departure he continued northwards
 The voyage was delayed almost 7 weeks because of the
damage that one of the ships got by ranning aground on a
shoal of the Great Barrirer Reef
End of the first voyage
 Once repairs were complete the voyage continued, sailing
through Torres Strait
 On 22 August he landed on Possession Island, where he
claimed the entire coastline he had just explored as British
territory
 He returned to England via Batavia (Indonesia- where many
in his crew succumbed to malaria) the Cape of Good Hope
and the island of Saint Helena, arriving on 12 July 1771
The second voyage (1772-75)
 Shortly after his return from the first voyage, Cook was
promoted in August 1771, to the rank of commander
 In 1772 he was commissioned to search for the hypothetical
Terra Australis
 On his first voyage he proved by circumnavigating that New
Zealand wasn´t attached to a larger landmass
...
 Cook commanded HMS Resolution on this voyage
 Cook's expedition circumnavigated the globe at a very high
southern latitude
 Becoming one of the first to cross the Antarctic Circle on 17
January 1773
...
 On this leg of the voyage he brought with him a young
Tahitian named Omai
 proved to be somewhat less knowledgeable about the Pacific
than Tupaia had been on the first voyage
End of the second voyage
 He then resumed his southward course in a second fruitless
attempt to find the supposed continent
 On his return voyage, in 1774 he landed at the Friendly
Islands, Easter Island, Norfolk Island, New Caledonia, and
Vanuatu
 Upon his return, Cook was promoted to the rank of captain
and given an honorary retirement from the Royal Navy, but
they couldn´t keep him away from the sea
The third voyage (1776-79)
 On his last voyage, Cook once again commanded HMS
Resolution
 The voyage was planned to return Omai to Tahiti
 But this is what the general public believed, as he had
become a favourite curiosity in London
 Principally the purpose of the voyage was an attempt to
discover the famed Northwest Passage
...
 After returning Omai, Cook travelled north and in 1778
became the first European to visit the Hawaiian Islands
 In January 1778 passing and after initial landfall at Waimea
harbour, Kauai, Cook named the archipelago the "Sandwich
Islands" after the fourth Earl of Sandwich – the acting First
Lord of the Admiralty
...
 He unknowingly sailed past the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and
soon after entered Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island
 He anchored near the First Nations village of Yuquot
 There they spent about a month and discovered a Nuu-chahnulth village
 They traded their metal for their goods
...
 After leaving, Cook explored and mapped the coast all the
way to the Bering Strait, on the way identifying what came
to be known as Cook Inlet in Alaska
 The Bering Strait proved to be impassable, although he
made several attempts to sail through it
 Cook returned to Hawaii in 1779. After sailing around the
archipelago for some eight weeks, he made landfall at
Kealakekua Bay
...
 Cook's arrival coincided with the Makahiki, a Hawaiian
harvest festival of worship for the Polynesian god Lono
 Coincidentally the form of Cook's sails and rigging,
resembled certain significant artefacts that formed part of
the season of worship
 Similarly, Cook's clockwise route around the island of Hawaii
before making landfall led to the missundertand that Cook is
an incarnation of Lono
Cook´s death
 After a month's stay, Cook got under sail again to resume his





exploration of the Northern Pacific
However the ships foremast broke so they needed to return
This was unpleasent and the people didn´t welcome them
Some tribesmen stole Cook´s small boat and some other
things
Cook wanted to get it all back, so he intended to take the
Hawaiian King as a hostage
The Hawaiian prevented it
...
 As Cook and his men wnet back to the ship Hawaiians
attacked them
 They killed two of Cook´s men and stabed Cook to death
Legacy
 Several islands such as Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) were
encountered for the first time by Europeans
 His more accurate navigational charting of large areas of the
Pacific was a major achievement
 Cook succeeded in circumnavigating the world on his first
voyage without losing a single man
 He discovered many thing and helped the greater
acomplishment of science