Captain Cook and the Voyage of Endeavour

James Cook by Nathaniel Dance, c. 1775
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

1728-1779

“You know how Captain Cook discovered the Great Barrier Reef?” our driver asked as we sped north from Cairns on the Captain Cook Highway in far north Queensland, Australia.  The last rays of the sun disappeared over the rainforest to our left while the Coral Sea to our right was turning a pale purple. “He ran into it!” I replied.  It’s easy to imagine Cook’s ship, Endeavour, plying these waters on Cook’s first voyage in 1770 because the coastline looks much like it did then.  Of course, the impenetrable rainforest, which rises dramatically from the water’s edge as it climbs the Great Dividing Range, must help keep this place as wild as it is.  “That’s right!  He ran aground just north of here near Cape Tribulation and had to put in to shore for repairs. ” Tributes, memorials, and reminders of Captain Cook can be found all over this area - all over the eastern coast of Australia, for that matter.  For good reason: Captain James Cook was the first European to see it.

Captain Cook statue
in Sydney, Australia

James Cook was an Englishman born February 27^th, 1728, the son of a Yorkshire laborer.  Clearly not happy as an apprentice to a grocer, Cook went to sea at age 18 and spent the next nine years aboard coal carriers in the North Sea.  During these years, he studied mathematics, trigonometry, astronomy and navigation in his spare time.  At age 27, he joined the Royal Navy as an able seaman even though it meant climbing the ranks all over again.  However, he quickly distinguished himself during the North American campaign of the Seven Years' War (aka the French and Indian War) by charting the mouth of the St. Lawrence River which contributed to the capture of Quebec.  After the war, Cook commanded a schooner and charted the coast of Newfoundland with such detail that his maps were used for centuries.

Cook’s big break would come as a result of the western world’s obsession with the mythical Southern Continent.  The ancient Greeks had postulated that a vast continent in the southern hemisphere would have to exist to counterbalance the land masses of the northern hemisphere.  Cartographers had added this undiscovered continent to their maps for millennia and well into the 18^th century.   Dutch explorer Abel Tasman had discovered Tasmania, the northern tip of New Zealand, and the northwest side of Australia over one hundred years before but, by the middle of the 18^th century, most of the South Pacific was still a big blank on the map.  The Royal Society in London asked the government to send an expedition to Tahiti to observe the transit of the planet Venus across the sun. The Admiralty saw this as an excellent opportunity to explore the southern seas as well.  The Royal Society expected Alexander Dalrumple, a Fellow of the Royal Society to head the expedition.  Instead, in an affront to the privileged and educated classes, the Royal Navy chose Cook instead and quickly promoted him to the commissioned rank of Lieutenant.

Replica of Endeavor in Cooktown Harbor.  Photo: John Hill

For the voyage, Lieutenant Cook selected a Whitby collier, the same class of stoutly-built ships he had sailed as a teen, and rechristened her Endeavour.   On August 26^th, 1768, the Endeavour sailed from Plymouth with 94 people including botanist/zoologist Joseph Banks and Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander.  They arrived in Tahiti in April 1769, made their observations of Venus in June, then headed south in search of the Southern Continent.  Cook circumnavigated New Zealand, proving that it was not a peninsula, then headed west to explore the eastern coast of New Holland, or as we call it today, Australia.  The Endeavour first sighted Australia on April 19^th, 1770, near the 38^th parallel in modern-day Victoria.  Heading north, Cook named all the geographical features they found while Banks and Solander cataloged the unusual flora and fauna of this strange continent. The naturalists were so overwhelmed by the plants and animals around a large bay that Cook named it Botany Bay.  Disaster struck on June 11^th when the Endeavor ran into a reef, seriously damaging the hull.  Had the Endeavour not been a Whitby collier, it probably would have sunk.  Cook was able to get the ship into a river mouth near modern-day Cooktown where they spent seven weeks making repairs.   After passing through the Torres Strait at the northern extreme of Australia, Cook claimed all the land he had just explored for England on August 22^nd.  The Endeavour crossed the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and arrived in England July 12, 1771, just under three years after its departure.

The Death of Captain James Cook by Johann Zoffany

Captain Cook took two more historic voyages.  First, he circumnavigated the globe at a very high southern latitude to prove once and for all the Southern Continent wasn’t there - at least not one that wasn’t bound in ice. Confronted by mountains of ice, Cook concluded that “I will not say it was impossible anywhere to get in among this Ice, but I will assert that the bare attempting of it would be a very dangerous enterprise.”   On this voyage, he came within 75 miles of the Antarctic coast but did not see it.  On his third voyage, he discovered the Hawaiian Islands, explored the northwest coast of North America, and searched in vain for the long-sought Northwest Passage through the Bering Strait.  Returning to Hawaii, Cook was killed by natives in a skirmish over a stolen longboat on February 14, 1779.  He was 50 years old.

As an explorer, Captain Cook’s legacy includes the discovery of thousands of miles of coastline, hundreds of far-flung islands, and the more difficult non-discovery of the great southern continent.  But as a leader, Cook has an even greater legacy: he found a cure for scurvy, the plague of long sea voyages.  He experimented with oranges, lemons, sauerkraut and other foods.  He insisted on cleanliness of his crew and their quarters.  As a result, his three-year-long first voyage didn’t lose a single man to scurvy.  The Royal Society awarded Captain James Cook their highest honor, the Copley Medal, for his efforts to preserve the health of his men on long voyages.  It’s no surprise that there are so many statues around the world honoring this intrepid, humane man. 

Boorstin, Daniel J., The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself.  Random House. 1983. pp278-289.

Cook, James., Captain Cook's Journal During his First Voyage Round the World made in HM Bark "Endeavour" 1768-71.  1893.