Captain cook biography
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The Ages of
Exploration
Introduction
Captain James Cook is known for his extensive voyages that took him throughout the Pacific. He mapped several island groups in the Pacific that had been previously discovered by other explorers. But he was the first European we know of to encounter the Hawaiian Islands. While on these voyages, Cook discovered that New Zealand was an island. He would go on to discover and chart coastlines from the Arctic to the Antarctic, east coast of Australia to the west coast of North America plus the hundreds of islands in between.
Biography
Early Life
James Cook was born on October 27, in the village Marton-in-Cleveland in Yorkshire, England. He was the second son of James Senior and Grace Cook. His father worked as a farm laborer. Young James attended school where he showed a gift for math.1 But despite having a decent education, James also wound up working as a farm laborer, like his father. At 16, Cook became an apprentice of
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Captain James Cook ( - )
Portrait of Captain James Cook, by John Webber ©Cook was an 18th century explorer and navigator whose achievements in mapping the Pacific, New Zealand and Australia radically changed western perceptions of world geography. As one of the very few men in the 18th century navy to rise through the ranks, Cook was particularly sympathetic to the needs of ordinary sailors.
James Cook was born on 27 October in a small by near Middlesbrough in Yorkshire. His father was a farm worker. At the age of 17, Cook moved to the coast, settling in Whitby and finding work with a coal merchant. In , Cook enlisted in the Royal Navy, serving in North amerika where he learnt to survey and chart coastal waters.
In , the planet Venus was due to pass in front of the Sun, a rare event visible only in the southern hemisphere. The British government decided to send an expedition to observe the phenomenon. A more secret motive was to search for the fabled southern contin
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What were James Cook's beginnings?
Cook was born in the small Yorkshire village of Marton on the 27 October to a humble rural family. Marked out early on from his siblings and peers, the young Cook received a good education thanks to the patronage of the local Lord of the Manor.
At 17, he worked for a shopkeeper in Staithes near Whitby. Here he decided that a life at sea was what he wanted and he became apprenticed to a firm of Whitby coal shippers. At the age of 18, he first went to sea. His ship, the Freelove, lugged Tyne coal down to London before the return trip to Whitby.
A promising merchant seaman
He worked hard at mathematics and at astronomy, which was very important for navigators. He was soon offered command of a merchant ship the Friendship. A solid and, for someone of his background, somewhat remarkable career in the merchant navy seemed assured. For reasons debated to this day he turned instead to the Royal Navy, took a demotion from his rank as maste