COOK, JA.MES (1728-1779), English naval captain and explorer, was born on Oct. 28, 1728, at Marton village, Cleveland, Yorkshire, where his father was first an agricultural labourer and then a farm bailiff. At 12 years of age he was apprenticed to a haberdasher at Staithes, near Whitby, and afterwards to Messrs. Walker, shipowners, of Whitby, whom he served for years in the Norway, Baltic and Newcastle trades.
In 1755, having risen to be a mate, Cook joined the royal navy, and after four years' service was, on the recommendation of Sir Hugh Palliser, his commander, appointed master suc cessively of the sloop "Grampus," of the "Garland" and of the "Solebay," in the last of which he served in the St. Lawrence. He was employed also in sounding and surveying the river, and he published a chart of the channel from Quebec to the sea. In 1762 he was present at the recapture of Newfoundland, and was employed in surveying portions of this coast (especially Placentia Harbour) ; in 1763, on Palliser becoming governor of Newfound land, Cook was appointed "marine surveyor of the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador"; this office he held till 1767; and the volumes of sailing directions he now brought out (1766-68) showed remarkable abilities. At the same time he began to make his reputation as a mathematician and astronomer by his observa tion of the solar eclipse of Aug. 5, 1766, at one of the Burgeo Islands, near Cape Ray, and by his account of the same in the Philosophical Transactions (vol. lvii. pp. 215-216).
In 1768 Cook was appointed to conduct an expedition, sug gested by the revival of geographical interest now noticeable, and resolved on by the English Admiralty at the instance of the Royal Society, for observing the impending transit of Venus, and prose cuting geographical researches in the South Pacific Ocean. For these purposes he received a commission as lieutenant (May 25), and set sail in the "Endeavour," of 37o tons, accompanied by several men of science, including Sir Joseph Banks (Aug. 25). On April 13, 1769, he reached Tahiti, where he observed the transit on June 3. From Tahiti he sailed in quest of the great continent then supposed to exist in the South Pacific, explored the Society Islands, and thence struck to New Zealand, whose coasts he cir cumnavigated and examined with great care for six months, chart ing them for the first time with fair accuracy, and especially observing the channel ("Cook Strait") which divided the North and South Islands. His attempts to penetrate to the interior, however, were thwarted by native hostility. From New Zealand he proceeded to "New Holland" or Australia, and surveyed with the same minuteness and accuracy the whole east coast. New South Wales he named after a supposed resemblance to Glamorganshire; Botany Bay, sighted on April 28, 177o, was so called by the naturalists of the expedition. On account of the hostility of the natives his discoveries here also were confined to the coast, of which he took possession for Great Britain. From Australia Cook sailed to Batavia, satisfying himself upon the way that (as Torres had first shown in 1607) New Guinea was in no way an outlying part of the greater land mass to the south.
Arriving in England, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, on June 12, 177r, Cook was made a commander, and after was appointed to command another expedition for examining and determining once for all the question of the supposed great south ern continent. With the "Resolution" of 462 tons, the "Adven ture" (Captain Furneaux) of 33o tons, and 193 men, he sailed from Plymouth on July 13, 17 7 2 ; he touched at the Cape of Good Hope, and striking thence south-east (Nov. 22) passed the Antarctic Circle (Jan. 16, 1773), repassed the same, and made his way to New Zealand (March 26) without discovering land. From New Zealand he resumed his "search for a continent," working up and down across the South Pacific, and penetrating to 67° 31' and again to 71° io' S., with imminent risk of destruction from floating ice, but with the satisfaction of disproving the pos sibility of the disputed continent in the seas south-eastward of New Zealand. He made for Easter Island, the exact position of which he determined, for the first time, with accuracy; noticing and describing the gigantic statues which Roggewein, the first discoverer of the island, had made known. In the same manner he accomplished a better determination and examination of the Marquesas, as well as of the Tonga or Friendly Islands, than had yet been made ; and after a stay at Tahiti to rest and refit, crossed the central Pacific to the "New Hebrides," as he renamed Quiros's "Southern Land of the Holy Spirit" (a name preserved in the modern island of Espiritu Santo), called by Bougainville the "Great Cyclades" (Grandes Cyclades), whose position, extent, divisions and character were now verified as never before. Next followed the wholly new discoveries of New Caledonia, Norfolk Island, and the Isle of Pines. Another visit to New Zealand, and yet another examination of the far southern Pacific, which was crossed from west to east through the whole of its extent, from south Australia to Tierra del Fuego, were now undertaken by Cook before he finally closed his work in refutation of the Ant arctic continent, as previously understood, on this side of the world. The voyage closed with a rapid survey of the "Land of Fire," the rounding of Cape Horn, the rediscovery of the island no named Southern Georgia, the discovery of Sandwich Land, the crossing of the South Atlantic (here also exploding the great Terra Australis delusion), and visits to the Cape of Good Hope, St. Helena, Ascension, Fernando Noronha and the Azores. The voyage (reckoning only from the Cape of Good Hope and back to the same) had covered considerably more than 20,000 leagues, nearly three times the equatorial circumference of the earth ; it left the main outlines of the southern portions of the globe sub stantially as they are known today; and it showed a possibility of keeping a number of men for years at sea without a heavy toll of lives. Cook only lost one man out of 118 in more than i,000 days ; he had conquered scurvy.
The discoverer reached Plymouth on July 25, 1775, and his achievements were promptly, if meanly, rewarded. He was im mediately raised to the rank of post-captain, appointed a captain in Greenwich hospital, and soon afterwards unanimously elected a member of the Royal Society, from which he received the Copley gold medal for the best experimental paper which had appeared during the year.
Cook's third and last voyage was primarily to settle the question of the north-west passage, practically abandoned since before the middle of the 17th century, but now taken up again, as a matter of scientific interest, by the British government. The explorer, who had volunteered for this service, was instructed to sail first into the Pacific through the chain of the newly discovered islands which he had recently visited, and on reaching New Albion to proceed northward as far as latitude 65° and endeavour to find a passage to the Atlantic. Several ships were at the same time fitted out to attempt a passage on the other side from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Sailing from the Nore on June 25, 1776 (Plymouth, July 12), with the "Resolution" and "Discovery," and touching at the Cape of Good Hope, which he left on Nov. 3o, Cook next made Tasmania and thence passed on to New Zealand and the Tonga and Society Islands, discovering on his way several of the larger members of the Hervey or Cook Archipelago, especially Mangaia and Aitutaki (March 30—April 4, 17 7 7) ; some smaller isles of this group he had already sighted on his second voyage, Sept. 23, 1773. From Tahiti, as he moved north towards the main object of his expedition, he made a far more important discovery, or rather rediscovery, that of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, the greatest and most remarkable of the Polynesian archipelagos (early Feb. 1778). These had perhaps first been seen by the Spanish navigator Gaetano in 1555; but their existence had been kept a close secret by Spain at the time, and had long been for gotten. Striking the west American coast in 55' N. on March 7 following, he made an almost continuous survey of the same up to Bering Straits and beyond, as far as 7o° 41', where he found the passage barred by a wall, or rather continent, of ice, rising 12 ft. above water, and stretching as far as the eye could reach. The farthest point visible on the American shore (in the extreme north-west of Alaska) he called Icy Cape. On his way towards Bering Straits he discovered and named King George's ("Nootka") and Prince William's Sound, as well as Cape Prince of Wales, the westernmost extremity of North America, never yet seen by English navigators, but well known to Russian explorers, who probably first sighted it in 1648 ; he also penetrated into the bay afterwards known as Cook's Inlet or River, which at first seemed to promise a passage to the Arctic Seas, to the south-east of the Alaska peninsula. Cook next visited the Asiatic shores of Bering Straits (the extreme north-east of Siberia) ; returning to America, he explored Norton Sound, north of the Yukon ; touched at (Aleutian) Unalaska, where he met with some Russian American settlers; and thence made his way back to the Hawaiian group, which he had christened after his friend and patron Lord Sandwich, then head of the British admiralty (Jan. Here he visited Maui and Hawaii itself, whose size and importance he now first realized, and in one of whose bays (Kealakekua) he met his death early in the morning of Feb. 14, 1779. During the night of the 13th, one of the "Discovery's" boats was stolen by the natives; and Cook, in order to recover it, made trial of his favourite expedient of seizing the king's person until reparation should be made. Having landed on the following day with some marines, a scuffle ensued which compelled the party to retreat to their boats. Cook was the last to retire ; and as he was nearing the shore he received a blow from behind which felled him to the ground. He rose immediately, and vigorously resisted the crowds that pressed upon him, but was soon overpowered.
Had Cook returned from his third voyage, there is ground for believing King George would have made him a baronet. Dis tinguished honours were paid to his memory, both at home and by foreign courts, and a pension was settled upon his widow. But in his life a very inadequate share of official reward was dealt out to the man who not only may be placed first among British maritime discoverers, but also gave his country her title, and so her colonies, in Australasia. As a commander, an observer and a practical physician, his merits were equally great. Reference has been made to his survey work and to his victory over scurvy ; it must not be forgotten that along with a commanding personal presence, and with sagacity, decision and perseverance quite extra ordinary, went other qualities not less useful to his work. He won the affection of those who served under him by sympathy, kindness and unselfish care of others as noteworthy as his gifts of intellect.