James Cook (1728-1779), navigator and explorer rose from humble beginnings as a farmer’s son to become the most famous seaman of his time. He discovered and charted New Zealand and the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.
He started as an apprentice on a collier, transporting coal to and from Whitby, and it was a Whitby ship that he chose to take on his three great voyages of exploration. During these voyages, he dispelled the myth of the existence of a great continent. He accurately charted and explored the whole coastline of New Zealand and the eastern coast of Australia, and was the first navigator to explore the Antarctic region.
On his final voyage, he searched for the mythical North West Passage between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans across northern Canada.
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But on his first great voyage of exploration, it was an astronomer that he was sent to Tahiti, to observe the transit of Venus across the sun.
He also experimented successfully with combating scurvy, a disease caused by lack of vitamin C, among his sailors. He did this by giving his men fresh vegetables and fruit to eat on their long sea voyages. His paper on the subject won him the Society Gold Medal.
During most of his time in the Pacific, Cook got on well with the local people, but due to a misunderstanding over a missing boat, he was killed. He was mourned not only by his crew but by the people of Hawaii who gave him a chief’s funeral.
HMS Endeavour and HMS Resolution the ships on which he made his three Pacific voyages were both former collier ships built at Whitby.
Cook took command of Endeavour in 1768, for his first voyage during which he mapped the east coast of Australia and circumnavigated New Zealand. Resolution was used for his second and third voyages and became the first ship to cross the Antarctic Circle in