-
 British
explorer and navigator
- Popularly known
as "Captain Cook," James Cook was a legendary explorer whose
epic voyages prompted the Royal Navy to dub him a man of "genius
and capacity."
The son of a Yorkshire farmhand, he was apprenticed to a shipowner
at age 18 and worked on coalboats in the North Sea. In 1755 he joined
the Royal Navy, and was quickly promoted to become a master.
The first of his great Pacific voyages was a scientific expedition
on which he became the first person to chart New Zealand and the east
coast of Australia. On later voyages he sailed along the edge of Antarctica,
proving that a speculated southern continent existed only as an ice
mass, and crossed the Antarctic Circle.
He also discovered several Pacific island groups, and searched for
a northeast passage between the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans.
Cook set new standards of health and lost few of his crew; he brought
a scientific approach into exploration; most of all, he changed the
map of the world. Killed by natives in Hawaii, his explorations led
the way for the colonization of the Pacific.
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