James Cook was born to a family of Yorkshire farmers on November 7, 1728. It’s odd then, that Cook would go on to join the Royal Navy and become one of the best explorers and navigators in British history.
Cook had only five years of schooling, where he was seen as a decent, but not remarkable, student. When he was 16, Cook became a “shop boy” at a grocer and fabric shop in the seaside town of Staithes. In this, Cook was a complete failure, and in less than two years he had moved on to the nearby port town of Whitby. There he met Quaker brothers John and Henry Walker, who were in the business of shipping coal along the English coast. Cook apprenticed with them, and found that he loved it. Where he had once been indifferent in school, he now quickly absorbed all the algebra, geometry, astronomy and other skills needed to one day command his own ship.
In 1755, Cook volunteered for the Royal Navy as the Seven Years’ War began. He quickly rose up the ranks, especially once his skills as a mapmaker became known. Cook, serving in North America in the war, made some of the first contemporary charts of Canadian waters, maps that allowed General James Wolfe to launch several successful raids during the conflict.
After the war, the Royal Society hired him to sail to Tahiti in 1766 to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun (two other adventurers were sent to other spots on the globe; it was hoped that by triangulation they would be able to accurately measure the distance to the Sun). Once this was complete, Cook opened a packet of “secret orders” he had been given back in England: he was to locate the terra australis incognita (“unknown southern land”) once and for all, and claim it in the name of Great Britain. That Cook did, reaching a bay so teeming with wildlife that he named it “Botany Bay”. Thus, on that day in 1770, modern Australia was born.
Continue reading “Fear and Loathing in the Pacific”
