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captain james cook s adventures by piper macneall

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my childhood i was born on the 27th october in 1728 in a village called marton-in-cleveland yorkshire england my father was scottish and my mother was from thornaby-on-tees in yorkshire i lived in a mud brick house and was the second oldest of eight children as well as myself there was mary mary jane christiana margaret william and john four died during childhood john died when he was 23 only margaret christiana and i lived well into adulthood my family was poor and i had a hard childhood i lived much of my young life in the towns of staithes and whitby close to the sea i grew up on a farm and went to the local school my school was great ayton which my dad s employer paid me to attend at 17 years of age i was apprenticed to a shopkeeper i was then apprenticed to a collier named john walker who was a very kind man and worked on a coal transport ship the ship travelled from newcastle to london and then onto the north and baltic seas a painting by george washington brownlow of captain cook as a child with his sisters.

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my life as an explorer on the farm where i grew up there was a very steep hill called rosebery topping at the top of the hill was my playground from there you could look out over the farm and all the way to sea it was from there that i saw the water for the very first time and where i decided at a very young age to make a career at sea i joined the royal navy as an able seaman in 1755 at the age of twenty seven i was soon made a mate and within four years i was promoted to master of hms pembroke after the seven year war ended in 1763 i studied maths to help learn the science of navigation i then spent four years exploring and mapping the coast of what is now called canada my maps of the coast were published and were considered to be important and accurate my first major discovery was in 1766 when i saw a solar eclipse and used it to work out the longitude of newfoundland i returned to england in 1767 and was made a lieutenant in the royal navy in 1769 the planet venus was expected to travel between the sun and the earth the royal society wanted this rare event observed from lots of different places around the globe this is the reason that i went to tahiti then in 1775 at age 47 after my voyage to australia i became a captain in the royal navy.

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life at sea in march 1768 the british admiralty bought the earl of pembroke which was built in whitby and was a collier bark for the trip organised by the royal society of london to observe the transit of venus in 1769 the boat was renamed the endeavour bark and it was not a ship as is often thought but a bark i was chosen to lead the trip life at sea was hard and dangerous the ship was our home for the three years our living space was very small the main deck of the ship was where the ordinary crew had to live officers and the non-crew members of the ship had small cabins diet and disease on the ship we ate pickled cucumbers pickles soup and stale bread as well as occasional meat from animals that were killed onboard the ship.

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scurvy was a big problem due to a lack of fresh food the illness is caused by not having enough vitamin c in your diet it can cause blurred vision very bad joint pain swollen gums and your teeth fall out you can die from scurvy i was one of the first people to decide to feed the crew sauerkraut the german name for a dish of sour cabbage and lime juice to fight scurvy more than just eating citrus i made the crew eat as much fresh food and clean water as we could find every time we went ashore we got as much fresh fruit and as many different foods as we could this was a good way to stop depression as well as scurvy it was only in 1795 after a lot of medical research that lime juice rations started to be used regularly by the royal navy cleanliness i expected high standards from my crew and made them wash regularly and exercise on the open deck as well as keeping their sleeping areas to a high standard i also insisted on a ship that was dry and disinfected officers were often surprised when they joined my ship by my very high standards but they soon learned the best way to do it there was a saying that on my ships `it was always sunday which means that everyone had on their best clothes and were shiny clean my command the voyage on the endeavour was the first time i had a large crew i learned a lot about being the boss of nearly 100 men i also did not get to choose my own crew though five of the crew ­ peter flower thomas hardman william howson john charlton and isaac smith had been on the grenville with me when we mapped newfoundland i think i was respected by my crew although i had to occasionally whip someone if they tried to desert because desertion was not tolerated it was considered a very mild punishment compared to most punishments given by other commanders i only whipped men if i had to and it was rare i think i was very tolerant of my crew i had learnt a lot from being the apprentice of john

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walker who was a good commander but kind and taught me how to get the most out of men without being cruel if i was hard on anyone it was myself one of my crew said there is general agreement that the captain s temper was rather short though his anger was short-lived too this is a fair description of me i insisted on having three watches instead of the usual two so that the crew would not become over-tired i was also a very fair with everyone getting the same amount of food whether they were a lieutenant or a servant even when we were getting low i also gave my cabin to the sail maker when he could not work on deck because the conditions were so bad my crew among my crew were the botanists joseph banks and daniel solander there was also an astronomer and an artist named sydney parkinson the cabin boy was called isaac smith he was the first european to step onto what is now known as new south wales there was also a ship s surgeon and his son named nicholas he was the first crew member to catch sight of the islands of new zealand my crew were the best men to i could have hoped to sail with i wrote in my letter to the admiralty on 23 october 1770 they have gone through the fatigues and dangers of the whole voyage with that cheerfulness and allertness that will always do honour to british seamen

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my journey to australia in 1768 i led a three year voyage to the pacific to look at the movement of venus between the sun and the earth i was also given secret instructions to search for the great southern continent ­ a continent that was believed to exist but had not yet been found we left from plymouth in england on august 1768 with more than 100 men aboard the endeavour we travelled past madeira in portugal in september then spent the rest of the year crossing the atlantic ocean to rio de janiero in brazil and sailing down to tierra del fuego tierra del fuego we landed at tierra del fuego and made contact with the native people i was not very impressed with the people and wrote in my diary at the time that they were perhaps as miserable a set of people as are this day upon earth our botanist joseph banks took some plant specimens two of his servants thomas richmond and george dorlton died from exposure to the snow and cold weather there joseph commented on the very different style of houses of the fuegan s they seemed to be made without any effort being made he wrote in his journal huts or wigwams of the most unartificial construction imaginable indeed no thing bearing the name of a hut could possibly be built with less trouble they consisted of a few poles set up and meeting together at the top in a conical figure these were covered on the weather side with a few boughs and a little grass on the lee side about one eighth part of the circle was left open and against this opening was a fire made we then sailed south around cape horn and into the pacific ocean tahiti tahiti had been discovered by samuel wallis in 1767 we landed there in april 1769 in matavai bay.

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it was in matavai bay that i set up the base of fort venus and undertook the first part of my project which was the observation of the transit of venus on 3rd june 1769 the crew had a good time with the tahitians and went back to the islands many times my crew and i had a very warm welcome by the people of the pacific islands and tahiti before arriving i had set many strict rules that my crew had to follow like this one to endeavour by every fair means to cultivate a friendship with the natives and to treat them with all imaginable humanity when i was ready to leave two of my crew ran away because they were in love with two tahitian girls i soon found them and got them back appearances of venus by capt cook i sailed around the island of tahiti past the society islands in august 1769 i took along with us a tahitian priest called tupaia and taiata his servant tupaia helped me speak with the polynesian people his knowledge of the area helped me draw a map of the pacific islands he told me how far the other islands were from tahiti the polynesian s had excellent knowledge of the area and were good mariners new zealand i led the endeavour in search of the southern continent from august-october 1769 without success before going west to new zealand the first time we met the native maori people of new zealand they were violent they did fierce dances or hakas trying to threaten us and challenge the crew on the ship some of the maoris died when the crew fired guns after a while we gained their trust and were able to trade for fresh supplies chart of new zealand by james cook

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i was the first to chart the coast of new zealand correctly i followed the coast all the way around new zealand which went again abel tasman s belief that new zealand was part of the southern continent we were there from october 1769 to march 1770 i found that new zealand had two major islands they are the north island te ika a maui and the south island te wai pounamu new holland when we left new zealand going west we were trying to get to van diemen s land ­ what is now called tasmania the winds didn t push us far enough south but we soon saw a different and much larger land mass we had sailed to point hicks now cape everard in new holland instead arriving on 20 april 1770 new holland would one day come to be known as the continent of australia we sailed north along the coast of new holland i carefully charted and named the east coast of new holland from april to august 1770 on the 29th april we landed in botany bay just south of where 18 years later the first european settlement in australia would be built as we continued up the coast unfortunately the endeavour struck the great barrier reef on 10th june and was badly damaged it took nearly two months to fix the ship during this time we saw our first kangaroo and shot it australia cooktown where captain james cook beached the bark endeavour

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my adventures on australian land none of the places we visited had man-made ports or harbours where we could tie up the boats so we would anchor the ship in natural harbours and my crew would use smaller boats to row ashore botany bay i eventually found a landing place on 29th april 1770 we called it stingray bay because of all the seafood we ate there but i later renamed it botany bay in my journal i recorded my first impression at day light in the morning we discovered a bay which appeared to be tolerably well sheltered from all winds into which i resolved to go with the ship and with this view sent the master in the pinnace to sound the entrance while we kept turning up with the ship having the wind right out a sketch of botany bay by james cook as we near the shore we noticed a group of natives cooking around a camp fire when we tried to land the group threw curved sticks at us at which point we left to find a safer place to land when we found a different landing spot there were two natives who seemed ready to meet us forty armed men i tried to gain their respect but i was not lucky this time one of my men shot a musket which frightened the natives slightly then one of the men fired a shot at one of the native s legs he then ran into his hut and

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came back out with a shield i made many further attempts to be friendly to the natives but we never had any close contact i guess we shouldn t have shot them in the first place the people i kept a detailed journal of all the people on the lands we visited i wrote down notes about their appearance dress and customs as well as their beliefs and activities the people we met on new holland were different to those we had met from the pacific islands and maori people they had darker skin the colour of dark chocolate they were a normal height and had thin arms and legs with mostly black hair they were attractive enough with soft and nice sounding voices most of them painted their faces and bodies with a white paint portrait of an australian aborigine they were nearly totally naked both men and women the clothes they did wear had been dyed and made themselves they wore clothes made of animal fur they had shell necklaces and hoops around their arms which seemed to be made out of hair the men had a bone as thick as a finger and about 3 to 4 inches long which went through the bridge of their nose joseph banks wrote they were all of them clean limn d active and nimble cloaths they had none not the least rag those parts which nature willingly conceals being exposed to view compleatly uncovered tupaia could not speak to them as they did not have the same language they were very afraid of us and did not want to trade their tools we watched a group fishing at botany bay on 26 april 1770 joseph wrote their canoes a piece of bark tied together in pleats at the ends and kept extended in the middle by small bows of wood was the whole embarkation which carried one or two people paddling with paddles about 18 inches long one of which they held in either hand

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their boats were very simple unlike ours which were much larger had more details and compartments australian aborigines in bark canoes botany bay april 1770 the weapons of the aborigines were very simple but could still hurt us they had darts which were pointed at one end with barbs made out of either wood sharks teeth or the stings of rays they were able to throw the dart with just one hand they used a long thin stick of wood which had a hook on the end holding the dart and they threw them using these they were very good at hitting their target almost as well as we can with a musket their shields unlike ours are made out of wood two of the natives of new holland one thing that i noticed about the aborigines was that they didn t have nice clothes shoes or houses to live in they didn t have warm baths or toilets and they had to hunt for their food they appeared to be happy the way they were these people may truly be said to be in the pure state of nature and may appear to some to be the most wretched upon the earth but in reality they are far happier than we europeans wooden shield used by the aboriginals i went out with the intention of observing the natives in their environment and trying not to make war and take over their land this was not always the way i acted though flora and fauna sketch by sydney parkinson i searched the country for a couple of miles inland two of my scientists joseph banks and daniel solander made collections of trees and plants the botanists were happy because they found plants birds and animals that had never been seen before no one who studies nature had ever collected so many different types of plants and animals in such a brief period our first impression was of

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small hills covered in trees and plants of all different sizes and species joseph banks my ship s chief scientist wrote the country rose this morning in gentle sloping hills which have the appearance of the highest fertility every hill seemed clothed with trees no mean size there were lots of flowers and different plants so we called it botany bay i gave the wider area the name of new south wales because it reminded me of the south coast of wales native animals we saw a lot of different animals the crew and i were the first europeans to see the kangaroo marsupial an animal that we thought was some sort of dog it didn t lean on four legs but instead only leaned on two and it jumped i thought it was a deer or a hare because it jumped and had big ears i also thought it was a grey hound because of the shape of the body it looked liked nothing we had in england i wrote about it in my journal an animal something less than a grey hound it was of a mouse colour very slender made and swift of foot the full size of a grey hound and shaped in every respect like one with a long tail in short i should have taken it for a wild dog but for its walking or running in which it jumped like a hare or a deer the fore legs were 8 inch long and the hind 22 its progression is by hoping or jumping 7 or 8 feet at each hop upon its hind legs only for in this it makes no use of the fore which seem to be only designed for scratching in the ground excepting the head and ears which i thought was something like a hare s it bears no sort of resemblance to any european animal i ever saw we left the botany bay area on 6th may 1770 when we where a good distance away from the unfriendly natives near the tip of cape york on possession island i hoisted the union flag so everyone knew the whole of the east coast of new holland was a british possession.

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upon my return from australia most of the deaths onboard the endeavour occurred on the return trip on the journey to australia two men drowned two others died from exposure to the cold and another died of natural causes in 1970 one man deserted on the way back to england we went to batavia java to repair our ship we had been very lucky until then with most of the crew being healthy and not getting scurvy unfortunately on the way back over thirty of my crew died travelling through the east indies from dysentery and typhoid it spread quickly through the crew because they had small close sleeping areas the trip back to england was via cape town south africa we arrived back in kent england in july 1771 on my return i was given a promotion to the job of captain i then went to map the great south land on another two trips in 1772 to 1775 i took the ships resolution and adventure sailing around the southern ocean part we confirmed that there was no unexplored southern continent other than new holland map of the three routes taken by james cook

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news article

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