COOK.

CHAPTER VIII.

Life of Cook previous to his First Voyage.

Birth and Parentage of Cook.-His Education. His Indentures with a Draper.-Apprenticeship on board a Collier.-Volunteers into the Navy. -Appointed Master of the Mercury.- His Services at Quebec.-Hairbreadth Escape.-He first studies Euclid.-His Marriage.-Made Marine Surveyor of Newfoundland and Labrador.-Communicates an Observation of an Eclipse to the Royal Society-History of the Transits of Venus.-Predicted in 1629 by Kepler.-Discovery and Observation of Horrox.-First Appreciation of its Uses.-Professor James Gregory. -Dr. Edmund Halley.-His Exhortation to future Astronomers.Transit of 1761.-Preparations for that of 1769.-Proposal to send a Ship with Observers to the South Sea.-Cook promoted to the Rank of Lieutenant, and appointed to conduct it.-His Choice of a Vessel.-Sir Joseph Banks determines to join the Expedition.-Preparations and Instructions for the Voyage.

JAMES COOK was the son of humble parents. His father, also named James, and supposed, from his dialect, to be a Northumbrian, was a labourer or farm-servant, and his mother was of the same rank. Both of them were highly esteemed by their neighbours for their integrity, temperance, and industry. They appear to have resided, first at the village of Morton, in the North Riding of Yorkshire; afterward at Marton in Cleveland, a small place in the same county, situated between Gisborough and Stockton-upon-Tees. Here, in a mudcottage, every vestige of which has long been swept away, the subject of this memoir was born on the 27th of October, 1728. He was one of nine children, none of whom survived their parents, excepting himself and a daughter, of whose Estory nothing is recorded but that she was married to a fishe man at Redcar, and that her home became the abode of he father in the latter part of his life, which was extended to the long term of nearly eighty-five years.

Cook was taught his letters by the village schoolmistress, Dame Walker. When he was eight years old, his father was

appointed hind, head servant, or bailiff, on the farm of Airy Holme, the property of Thomas Scottowe, Esq., near Great Ayton, at the foot of Roseberry Topping; and in the school of this place, at the expense of his father's employer, he learned writing and the rules of arithmetic.

sea.

At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed to a draper, in the fishing-town of Staiths, about ten miles north of Whitby; but this employment little accorded with the bent of his disposi tion, which now developed itself in a strong passion for the A quarrel having occurred between him and his master, his indentures were given up, and he bound himself for seven years to Messrs. John and Henry Walker, owners of two vessels in the coal-trade. These worthy Quakers early appreciated his good conduct and great anxiety to acquire skill in his profession; and after he had served on board the Freelove, and for a short time in another ship, they promoted him to be mate of the Three Brothers. Promises were made to him of further preferment; but to these, as his thoughts were already turned to a loftier sphere, he seems to have given little heed. Mr. John Walker, one of his employers, remarked, that "he had always an ambition to go into the navy."* It was not observed by those who knew him at this period, that he was anywise distinguished for talent; but no one can doubt that his active mind was then laying the foundations of future emmence, or that much of the skill in practical navigation which he afterward displayed was acquired in that admirable nursery of seamen-the coasting-trade.

Early in 1755, on the commencement of hostilities with France, there was an active impressment in the Thames. Cook, then in his twenty-seventh year, happened to be in a vessel on the river, and was at first desirous to conceal himself; but, after some hesitation, he resolved to go into the service, and proceeded to Wapping, where he entered as a volunteer on board the Eagle of sixty guns, Captain Hamer. Shortly afterward, Captain Hugh Palliser succeeded that officer; and quickly discerning the young man's superior seamanship, afforded him every encouragement, rated him quarter-master, and from that time continued to be his steady pa

* Memoir of Cook, by Edward Hawké Locker, Esq., in the "Gallery of Greenwich Hospital" (London, 1831), part i. With the amiable Quakers, his first friends, Cook "maintained a correspondence to the last year of his existence.""

tron. Letters in his favour from friends in Yorkshire among whom was Mr. Osbaldeston, the parliamentary representative of Scarborough-arrived in the course of a few months, and his commander obtained for him a warrant as master of the Mercury frigate, dated the 15th of May, 1759. In allusion to similar commissions for the Grampus and the Garland, both rendered abortive by unforeseen circumstances, Dr. Kippis remarks, "These quick and successive appointments show that his interest was strong, and that the intention to serve him was real and effectual."*

The Mercury received orders to join the fleet, which, under Sir Charles Saunders, was in co-operation with General Wolfe, at that time engaged in the siege of Quebec. A combined attack on the fortified position at Montmorency and Beauport had been concerted; but it was necessary, in the first place, to procure accurate soundings of the St. Lawrence, between L'Ile d'Orléans and the shore on which the French army lay. This, a service of great danger, which could only be performed during the night, was, on the recommendation of Captain Palliser, intrusted to Cook, who discharged it in the most complete manner. He had scarcely achieved his task when he was discovered by the enemy, who launched a number of canoes filled with Indians to surround and cut him off. He instantly made for the British encampment, but was so closely pursued that the savages entered the stern of his barge as he leaped from the bow under the protection of the English sentinels. The boat was carried off in triumph; but Cook was able, in the words of one of his biographers, "to furnish the admiral with as correct a draught of the channel and soundings as could have been made after our countrymen were in possession of Quebec." There was reason to suppose that before this period he was entirely ignorant of drawing, having seldom or never handled a pencil; and if this conjecture be well founded, it affords a striking proof of his capacity and perseverance. Not long afterward he was employed to make a survey of the whole river below Quebec; and his chart was executed with such skill and exactness that it was immediately published by orders of the Admiralty.t

* Biographia Britannica (2d edition), vol. iv., p. 101.

† Besides these important duties, if we could trust the companion of hia last voyage, Cook was employed in others of still greater consequence "At the siege of Quebec," it is said, "Sir Charles Saunders committer

His merits now began to attract general attention, and, on the 22d of September, 1759, Lord Colville appointed him master of his own ship, the Northumberland, in which he remained on the Halifax station during the winter. He must have long felt the difficulties under which he laboured from his defective education; and we learn that he now took advantage of a little leisure, afforded by the season, to instruct himself in the branches of science most necessary to his profession. "It was here, as I have often heard him say," writes Captain King, "that, during a hard winter, he first read Euclid, and applied himself to the study of mathematics and as tronomy, without any other assistance than what a few books and his own industry afforded him."* He accompanied his lordship to Newfoundland in September following; aided in its recapture from the French; and by the diligence which he exhibited in surveying the harbour and heights of Placentia, secured the favourable notice of the governor of the island.

He returned to England about the close of the year; and, on the 21st December, 1762, married Miss Elizabeth Batts, at Barking in Essex-a woman of an amiable and generous disposition, from whose society, however, he was quickly called away.t

to his charge the execution of services of the first importance in the naval department. He piloted the boats to the attack of Montmorency; conducted the embarcation to the heights of Abraham; examined the pas sage and laid buoys for the security of the large ships in proceeding up the river."-Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, for making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere (2d edition, London, 1785), vol. iii., p. 47. For this statement no other authority has been observed than that of Captain King, whose sketch of Cook's life is meager and defective. No allusion is made to it in the minute narrative of Doctor Kippis; and, as he wrote from the information of Sir Hugh Palliser and other friends of our naviga tor, his silence must be regarded as conclusive. The passage, indeed, ap pears to be a vague exaggeration of the real services of Cook, to which, it should be noted, there is no other reference made by Captain King.

* Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, vol. iii., p. 47. Captain King places this event under the year 1785; but, as he mentioned that Cook was at that time master of the Northumberland, the date of his appointment to that vessel shows that it must have been in the succeeding winter. At the time when the future discoverer thus began his second education he was in his thirty-first year.

↑ An absurd story is told by some of the biographers of Cook, that he "was godfather to his wife; and at the very time she was christened, had determined, if she grew up, on the union which afterward took place between them." This tale, as we were assured by the late Mr. İsaac Cragg-Smith, a relative of Mrs. Cook, is without the slightest foundation; the two families were at the time unacquainted-the one residing in the

In the beginning of 1763 Captain Graves, who, during Cook's visit, had been governor of Newfoundland, was again appointed to that office; and being desirous to procure accurate surveys of the colony, he made proposals to our navigator, which were willingly accepted. Towards the close of the year he returned home; but his stay on this occasion was as short as on the former, for his old friend, Sir Hugh Palliser, being selected to superintend that settlement, and Cook having agreed to resume his situation, he was, on the 18th of April, 1764, nominated marine surveyor. In the discharge of this duty he continued four years, occasionally returning to England, and spending the winter there. The manner in which he executed his commission called forth the highest approbation. He explored the interior of the country more fully than had been hitherto done, making several valuable additions to geography; and the charts which he afterward published were distinguished by unusual correctness. During this period also, he furnished evidence of his success in the study of practical astronomy, by "An Observation of an Eclipse of the Sun at the Island of Newfoundland, August 5, 1766, with the longitude of the place of observation deduced from it," communicated to the Royal Society by Dr. J. Bevis, and read 30th April, 1767. It occupies only two pages in the Transactions, and is evidently a report drawn up by the doctor-Cook having probably been in England when he imparted his notes to that gentleman. This is consistent with the remark of Dr. Kippis, who speaks of the year 1767 as "the last time that he went out upon his station of marine surveyor of Newfoundland."*

suburbs of the metropolis, the other in Yorkshire, where Cook, then only thirteen years old, was serving his apprenticeship.

* In Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica, in Chalmers' Biographical Dictionary, and in some other memoirs of Cook, there is attributed to him an octavo pamphlet, which was published in the year 1759, under the title of "Remarks on a Passage from the River Balise, in the Bay of Hondu ras, to Merida, the Capital of the Province of Yucatan, in the Spanish West Indies, by Lieutenant Cook." This journey he is said to have performed in 1765, with despatches from the admiral on the Jamaica station to the Governor of Yucatan, relative to the logwood cutters in the Bay of Honduras. But at that time, as has been stated, he was engaged in his survey of Newfoundland; and in 1769, when the tract appeared, he was in the South Sea. In reply to inquiries made in regard to this pamphlet, Mr. Isaac Cragg-Smith, after consulting with Mrs. Cook, assured us she was entirely ignorant of it, and that her husband had never been in the Bay of Honduras.