Captain James Cook RN - Birth - Wednesday October 27th 1728

 

Captain James Cook RN

Wednesday, October 27, 1728. :   Captain James Cook, who charted Australia's eastern coastline, is born. 

     James Cook was born at Marton in North Yorkshire, on 27 October 1728. He was the son of a farm labourer, and held no great ambitions, being apprenticed in a grocer/haberdashery when he was 16. Lack of aptitude in the trade led his employer to introduce Cook to local shipowners, who took him on as a merchant navy apprentice. Here he was educated in algebra, trigonometry, navigation, and astronomy, which later set Cook up to command his own ship.

After working his way up to positions of greater responsibility and experience, Cook was chosen in 1768 to command the Endeavour on the Royal Society's voyage to the Pacific to observe and record the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun. Following this, Cook's next orders were to search the south Pacific for Terra Australis Incognita, the great southern continent that many believed must extend around the southern pole. He came across New Zealand, which Abel Tasman had discovered in 1642, and spent some months there, charting the coastline. Nearly a year later, Cook set sail west for New Holland, which was later to become Australia

Refloating HMS Endeavour off a Coral Reef – 1770

Just before midnight on 11 June 1770, HMB Endeavour — Lieutenant James Cook in command — struck coral on what we now call Endeavour Reef, off the coast near modern Cooktown. She was surveying the east coast after leaving Botany Bay and Port Jackson behind. The crew lightened ship — stores, ballast, and six carriage guns went overboard — and got her off on the rising tide around 12 June.

They nursed the leaky bark north and into the mouth of the river Cook named the Endeavour River, on Guugu Yimithirr country. There she was careened and patched for weeks before sailing on toward Torres Strait. Cannons recovered from the reef in 1969–70 now sit in museums – including one at the Australian National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour.