![]() There is controversy over Cook's role as 'an enabler of colonialism', and the violence associated with his contacts with indigenous peoples. He displayed a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, physical courage, and an ability to lead men in adverse conditions.Ĭook was attacked and killed in 1779 during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific while attempting to kidnap the ruling chief of the island of Hawaiʻi, Kalaniʻōpuʻu, in order to reclaim a cutter taken from one of his ships after his crew took wood from a burial ground. He surveyed and named features, and recorded islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time. He mapped lands from New Zealand to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean in greater detail and on a scale not previously charted by Western explorers. In these voyages, Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe. This acclaim came at a crucial moment for the direction of British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in 1766 as commander of HMS Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages. Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec, which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. He saw action in the Seven Years' War and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.Ĭook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. ![]() ![]() James Cook FRS (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 17 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. ![]()
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