Cook before he finally closed his work in refutation of the Antarctic continent, as previously understood, on this side of the world. The voyage closed with a rapid survey of the “Land of Fire,” the rounding of Cape Horn, the rediscovery of the island now named Southern Georgia, the discovery of Sandwich Land, the crossing of the South Atlantic (here also exploding the great Terra Australis delusion), and visits to the Cape of Good Hope, St Helena, Ascension, Fernando Noronha and the Azores. The voyage (reckoning only from the Cape of Good Hope and back to the same) had covered considerably more than 20,000 leagues, nearly three times the equatorial circumference of the earth; it left the main outlines of the southern portions of the globe substantially as they are known to-day; and it showed a possibility of keeping a number of men for years at sea without a heavy toll of lives. Cook only lost one man out of 118 in more than 1000 days; he had conquered scurvy.
The discoverer reached Plymouth on the 25th of July 1775, and his achievements were promptly, if meanly, rewarded. He was immediately raised to the rank of post-captain, appointed a captain in Greenwich hospital, and soon afterwards unanimously elected a member of the Royal Society, from which he received the Copley gold medal for the best experimental paper which had appeared during the year.
Cook’s third and last voyage was primarily to settle the question of the north-west passage, practically abandoned since before the middle of the 17th century, but now taken up again, as a matter of scientific interest, by the British government. The explorer, who had volunteered for this service, was instructed to sail first into the Pacific through the chain of the newly discovered islands which he had recently visited, and on reaching New Albion to proceed northward as far as latitude 65° and endeavour to find a passage to the Atlantic. Several ships were at the same time fitted out to attempt a passage on the other side from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Sailing from the Nore on the 25th of June 1776 (Plymouth, July 12), with the “Resolution” and “Discovery,” and touching at the Cape of Good Hope, which he left on the 30th of November, Cook next made Tasmania and thence passed on to New Zealand and the Tonga and Society Islands, discovering on his way several of the larger members of the Hervey or Cook Archipelago, especially Mangaia and Aitutaki (March 30th-April 4th, 1777); some smaller isles of this group he had already sighted on his second voyage, September 23rd, 1773. From Tahiti, as he moved north towards the main object of his expedition, he made a far more important discovery, or rather rediscovery, that of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, the greatest and most remarkable of the Polynesian archipelagos (early February 1778). These had perhaps first been seen by the Spanish navigator Gaetano in 1555; but their existence had been kept a close secret by Spain at the time, and had long been forgotten. Striking the west American coast in 44° 55′ N. on the 7th of March following, he made an almost continuous survey of the same up to Bering Straits and beyond, as far as 70° 41′, where he found the passage barred by a wall, or rather continent, of ice, rising 12 ft. above water, and stretching as far as the eye could reach. The farthest point visible on the American shore (in the extreme north-west of Alaska) he called Icy Cape. On his way towards Bering Straits he discovered and named King George’s (“Nootka”) and Prince William’s Sound, as well as Cape Prince of Wales, the westernmost extremity of North America, never yet seen by English navigators, but well known to Russian explorers, who probably first sighted it in 1648; he also penetrated into the bay afterwards known as Cook’s Inlet or River, which at first seemed to promise a passage to the Arctic Seas, to the south-east of the Alaska peninsula. Cook next visited the Asiatic shores of Bering Straits (the extreme north-east of Siberia); returning to America, he explored Norton Sound, north of the Yukon; touched at (Aleutian) Unalaska, where he met with some Russian-American settlers; and thence made his way back to the Hawaiian group, which he had christened after his friend and patron Lord Sandwich, then head of the British admiralty (January 17th, 1779). Here he visited Maui and Hawaii itself, whose size and importance he now first realized, and in one of whose bays (Kealakekua) he met his death early in the morning of the 14th of February 1779. During the night of the 13th, one of the “Discovery’s” boats was stolen by the natives; and Cook, in order to recover it, made trial of his favourite expedient of seizing the king’s person until reparation should be made. Having landed on the following day with some marines, a scuffle ensued which compelled the party to retreat to their boats. Cook was the last to retire; and as he was nearing the shore he received a blow from behind which felled him to the ground. He rose immediately, and vigorously resisted the crowds that pressed upon him, but was soon overpowered.
Had Cook returned from his third voyage, there is ground for believing King George would have made him a baronet. Distinguished honours were paid to his memory, both at home and by foreign courts, and a pension was settled upon his widow. But in his life a very inadequate share of official reward was dealt out to the man who not only may be placed first among British maritime discoverers, but also gave his country her title, and so her colonies, in Australasia. As a commander, an observer and a practical physician, his merits were equally great. Reference has been made to his survey work and to his victory over scurvy; it must not be forgotten that along with a commanding personal presence, and with sagacity, decision and perseverance quite extraordinary, went other qualities not less useful to his work. He won the affection of those who served under him by sympathy, kindness and unselfish care of others as noteworthy as his gifts of intellect.
See the Account of a Voyage round the World in 1769–1771, by Lieut. James Cook, in vols. ii. and iii. of Hawkesworth’s Voyages (1773); the Voyage towards the South Pole and round the World ... in ... 1772–1775, written by James Cook ... (1777); a Voyage to the Pacific Ocean ... in 1776–1780, vols. i. and ii. written by Cook (1784); also the Narrative of the Voyages round the World performed by Captain James Cook, by A. Kippis, D.D., F.R.S. (1788), long the standard life of the navigator, but now superseded by Arthur Kitson’s Captain James Cook, the Circumnavigator (1907). (C. R. B.)
COOK, THOMAS (1808–1892), English travelling agent, was born at Melbourne in Derbyshire on the 22nd of November 1808. Beginning work at the age of ten, he was successively a gardener’s help and a wood-turner at Melbourne, and a printer at Loughborough.
At the age of twenty he became a Bible-reader and village missionary for the county of Rutland; but in 1832, on his marriage, combined his wood-turning business with that occupation. In 1836 he became a total abstainer, and subsequently became actively associated with the temperance movement, and printed at his own expense various publications in its interest, notably the Children’s Temperance Magazine
(1840), the first of its kind to appear in England. In June 1841 a large meeting was to be held at Loughborough in connexion with this movement, and Cook was struck with the idea of getting the Midland Counties Railway Company to run a special train from Leicester to the meeting. The company consented, and on the 5th of July there were carried 570 passengers from Leicester to Loughborough and back at a shilling a head. This is believed to be the first publicly-advertised excursion train ever run in England—private “specials,” reserved for members of institutes and similar bodies, were already in use. The event caused great excitement, and Cook received so many applications to organize similar parties that he henceforward deserted wood-turning, while continuing his printing and publishing. The summers of the next three years were occupied with excursions like the first; but in 1845 Cook advertised a pleasure-trip on a more extensive scale, from Leicester to Liverpool and back, with opportunities for visiting the Isle of Man, Dublin and Welsh coast. A Handbook of the Trip to Liverpool was supplied for the use of travellers. In the previous year Cook had entered into a permanent arrangement with the Midland Railway Company to place trains at his disposal, for which he should provide the passengers. A trip to Scotland followed, and the excursionists were received in Glasgow with music and salute of guns.
The next great impetus to popular travel was given by the Great Exhibition of 1851, which Cook helped 165,000 visitors to attend. On the occasion of the Paris exhibition of 1855 there
