Abstract
THE bicentenary of the birth of the great navigator Captain James Cook is to be celebrated in the Cleveland district of Yorkshire on Sept. 8 and 9. Cook was born in the village of Marton, Yorkshire, on Oct. 27, 1728, and though as a boy he was apprenticed to a haberdasher near Whitby, he gained his first experience at sea in a Whitby collier. At the age of 27 he joined the Navy as a volunteer, and as such soon, attracted attention. He was present at the capture of Quebec, surveyed the St. Lawrence from Quebec to the sea, and was made marine surveyor of Newfoundland and Labrador. His three great voyages of exploration occupied the years 1768–1771, 1772–75, and 1776–79. The primary object of the first was to observe the transit of Venus of 1769 at Tahiti; that of the second to discover the boundaries of the lands of the Antarctic; that of the third to discover a passage from the North Pacific to the North Atlantic. His work not only added immensely to geographical knowledge, but it whetted the public appetite for further discoveries. He did more than any other explorer to extend our knowledge of the Pacific and the Southern Ocean, and an interesting feature of the forthcoming celebrations will be the presence of the High Commissioners of New Zealand and Australia.
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[News and Views]. Nature 122, 248–252 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/122248d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/122248d0