James Cook
James Cook charted more of the world's coastline accurately than any other single person and was killed in Hawaii in 1779. Born in 1728 in a Yorkshire village to a farm labourer, he was apprenticed to a shopkeeper, moved to the coal trade out of Whitby, and learned his seamanship in flat-bottomed colliers in the North Sea — the type of vessel he later chose for all three of his voyages, because it could be beached for repair. He joined the Royal Navy as an ordinary seaman at twenty-seven and made his name surveying the St Lawrence before the assault on Quebec, and then charting Newfoundland so well that his charts stayed in use for two centuries. The first voyage of 1768 was scientific in its stated purpose: to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti, which combined with observations elsewhere would give the distance from the earth to the sun. Sealed orders then sent him south to look for the great southern continent that geographers assumed must exist. He charted the whole of New Zealand and the eastern coast of Australia, claiming the latter for Britain at Botany Bay on instructions that required the consent of the inhabitants, which was not obtained. The second voyage crossed the Antarctic Circle three times and disposed of the southern continent as imagined. The third looked for a north-west passage from the Pacific and found the Bering Strait blocked by ice. He is often credited with defeating scurvy, though his own conclusions about which remedy worked were wrong. He was stabbed in the surf at Kealakekua Bay after trying to take a chief hostage over a stolen boat.
- Lived: 1728 CE – 1779 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: explorer, navigator, cartographer, royal_navy_captain
