Arguably the greatest navigator and explorer in British history, Captain James Cook’s voyages in the eighteenth century helped open up the Pacific basin to European trade and conquest. (© North Wind Picture Archives)
The son of a Yorkshire laborer, he worked as a farmer’s boy and grocer’s assistant before finding employment in the coal trade off the east coast of England.
In 1755, at the age of twenty-seven, Captain James Cook joined the British navy as an able seaman. His charting of Newfoundland brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and at the age of thirty-nine he was elevated from the ranks to take command of an important expedition: to discover whether or not a large continent existed in the South Pacific.
The Pacific had, of course, been “discovered” centuries before by non-Europeans. But in the two and a half centuries since Ferdinand Magellan first rounded Cape Horn, Oceania gradually encroached on the European consciousness. Cook’s expeditions were the culmination of this process.
Arguably the greatest navigator and explorer in British history, Captain James Cook’s voyages in the eighteenth century helped open up the Pacific basin to European trade and conquest. (© North Wind Picture Archives)
His first voyage (August 1768 to July 1771) in the HMS Endeavour, resulted in the establishment of an observatory in Tahiti to make observations of the planet Venus (which passed across the face of the Sun in 1769). The expedition then explored the coasts of New Zealand and eastern Australia. The Union Jack was unfolded on Botany Bay and “New South Wales” was claimed for King George III.
Cook’s second voyage (July 1772 to July 1775), on board the HMS Resolution and accompanied by the HMS Adventure, extensively explored the southern Pacific. On January 17, 1773, they became the first boats to cross the Antarctic Circle, as they made three attempts to find a southern continent. The Adventure, commanded by Tobias Furneaux, returned to England with a Polynesian from Tahiti named Omai, who came as an object of fascination to Europeans: a living example of the “noble savage.”
After the second expedition, the British Admiralty wished to explore the North Pacific and to discover whether a northwest passage existed across the north polar seas. Omai also had to be returned to Tahiti (with a swag of European commodities, including firearms). Cook set out on his third voyage in July 1776, again on the Resolution. Arriving in Tahiti in August 1777, the British explorers discovered that the Spanish had claimed the island and had attempted to convert the inhabitants to Christianity.
Cook then proceeded to Hawaii, where a boat was stolen. Determined to seize a hostage to force a return of the boat, Cook became involved in an affray with the local inhabitants of Kealakekua Bay and was mortally stabbed in the back on February 14, 1779. The expedition arrived back in England (by way of the Cape of Good Hope) in October 1780. Thereafter, Cook’s “Death in Arcadia” became a potent artistic image.
A wider audience celebrated the European exploration of the Pacific in the pantomime Omai, or a Trip around the World, brought to the Covent Garden Stage by David Garrick in 1785. This pantomime created a wide public interest in the exotic South Seas and reinforced the British self-image of a proud trading and naval power. Geographical exploration led naturally to curiosity about the flora and fauna of the Pacific and the culture and commodities of its inhabitants.
A large trade in collector’s items and commodities from the Pacific developed. Whaling ships soon began to visit the Pacific islands, as did evangelists from the London Missionary Society, who established an export trade in coconut oil. Small settlements of Europeans sprang up, and a scramble for colonies began. Money began to replace barter.
Cook was accompanied on his first voyage by a group of scientists and artists including Joseph Banks, who later became president of the Royal Society. Banks brought back with him an exotic Australian bird, the kookaburra. Banks also engaged a number of artists and engravers to complete and prepare for publication many of the maps and drawings, including a portrayal of what—to European eyes—was an astonishing looking creature: the kangaroo.
The expansion of trade increased British wealth—it also exacerbated the need to protect that wealth from overseas rivals and domestic criminals. British jails were becoming increasingly overcrowded, and in 1779, the year of Cook’s death, Banks suggested that Botany Bay might be a suitable destination for British convicts. This idea gained momentum in 1781, following the British defeat in American War of Independence.
The “First Fleet” left England in May 1787 for this penal colony, arriving in what would soon be called Sydney Harbor on January 26, 1788. Over the next eight decades, approximately 160,000 men, women, and children were transported to Australia. When the last convict ship arrived in Fremantle in January 1868, the colony’s population had grown to over 1.5 million (Aboriginal inhabitants were not counted in the Australian census until 1966).
In the century after Cook left Plymouth on his first expedition, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific islands became integrated into the world economy. He was arguably the most important explorer of his age: in Charles Darwin’s phrase, he added a hemisphere to the “civilized” world.
Robert Leeson
See also: British Empire.
Gaines, Ann. Captain Cook Explores the Pacific in World History. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2002.
Thomas, Nicholas. Cook: The Extraordinary Voyages of Captain James Cook. New York: Walker, 2003.