Captain Cook’s Pacific Adventure

Captain Cook

James Cook was a very successful sailor. He was born in Yorkshire on October 27th 1729. He grew up on a farm. At the age of 26, he volunteered to join the Royal Navy. He served in the war in Quebec. After the war, he mapped the coast of Newfoundland. His map making skills were very good. This was part of the reason he was chosen to command the voyage to the Pacific.

It was predicted that a Transit of Venus would occur in 1769. So in 1967, the Royal Society and the Admiralty decided to organise a voyage to Tahiti to observe the Transit of Venus.

Many scientists around the world thought that if they could measure how long it took for Venus to travel across the face of the Sun, they could calculate how far away the Earth was form the Sun. To do this, they needed measurements from Tahiti.

The Admiralty also decided to conduct a secret mission at the same time. This was to search for the Great Southern Continent. It was hoped that if they could establish a port there, it would provide Britain with greater trading power. At the time, the British were behind in world exploration and wanted to catch up and they thought that this would happen if they found the Great Southern Continent. They also wanted to expand their empire and not be overtaken by other countries such as Spain and Portugal.

James Cook was chosen to command the voyage because of his skills as a sailor, naval surveyor, cartographer and astronomer. Cook displayed plenty of leadership skills along the way. In particular, his calmness when the Endeavour got stuck on the reef gave his crew confidence that they would survive. He also trusted his fellow crew members like when he agreed for one of the ship’s midshipman to do fothering on the ship, even though he had only seen it been done once before.

To make sure that the goals of the voyage could be completed successfully, he took ninety-three other people with him. Each of them were on the ship for different reasons. This included cooks (to cook food), botanists (to record any new plants/animals that they saw), artists (to make drawings of the places the went), astronomers (to view the transit of Venus), a doctor, surgeons, a carpenter (to make repairs on the ship when needed), a sail maker (to make sails), servants, an armourer (in charge of fighting materials eg. guns), a boatswain (in charge of rigging, anchors, cables, ship’s boats etc.), a quarter master (in charge of signals, navigation equipment), and lots of able bodied seaman who needed skills in many areas because they helped with any jobs that needed to be done.