James cook biography short
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Captain James Cook Biography
Early Life and Career
James Cook was born October 27, , in Yorkshire, England. He was the son of a Scottish farmhand. When he was about 18, he was offered an apprenticeship as a merchant seaman. Cook later joined the British navy and mastered navigation, charting, and mapmaking as a cartographer. His skills impressed those in the upper ranks of the English navy. At age 29, he was given a ship to chart Newfoundland off the coast of Canada. Unlike many explorers, Cook took measures to keep his crew healthy such as requiring daily baths, keeping the ship very clean, and bringing fresh fruit and lots of sauerkraut to prevent scurvy, which killed many sailors.
Three Expeditions
In , Cook commanded the HMB Endeavour (ship) for the first scientific expedition to the Pacific Ocean. He visited Tahiti to observe the planet Venus passing between the Earth and sun to help astronomers calculate the distance of the sun from Earth. He discovered and charted
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What were James Cook's beginnings?
Cook was born in the small Yorkshire village of Marton on the 27 October to a humble rural family. Marked out early on from his siblings and peers, the young Cook received a good education thanks to the patronage of the local Lord of the Manor.
At 17, he worked for a shopkeeper in Staithes near Whitby. Here he decided that a life at sea was what he wanted and he became apprenticed to a firm of Whitby coal shippers. At the age of 18, he first went to sea. His ship, the Freelove, lugged Tyne coal down to London before the return trip to Whitby.
A promising merchant seaman
He worked hard at mathematics and at astronomy, which was very important for navigators. He was soon offered command of a merchant ship the Friendship. A solid and, for someone of his background, somewhat remarkable career in the merchant navy seemed assured. For reasons debated to this day he turned instead to the Royal Navy, took a demotion from his rank as maste
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Captain James Cook ( - )
Portrait of Captain James Cook, by John Webber ©Cook was an 18th century explorer and navigator whose achievements in mapping the Pacific, New Zealand and Australia radically changed western perceptions of world geography. As one of the very few dock in the 18th century navy to rise through the ranks, Cook was particularly sympathetic to the needs of ordinary sailors.
James Cook was born on 27 October in a small village near Middlesbrough in Yorkshire. His father was a farm worker. At the age of 17, Cook moved to the coast, settling in Whitby and finding work with a coal merchant. In , Cook enlisted in the Royal Navy, serving in North America where he learnt to survey and chart coastal waters.
In , the planet Venus was due to resehandling in front of the Sun, a rare event visible only in the southern hemisphere. The British government decided to send an expedition to observe the phenomenon. A more secret motive was to search for the fabled southern contin