James Cook

James Cook was a British navigator, cartographer, and Royal Navy officer known for three Pacific voyages between 1768 and 1779. Born to a farm labourer in Yorkshire, he apprenticed in the coastal coal trade at Whitby before joining the Navy in 1755. He charted the Saint Lawrence River and Newfoundland, then commanded expeditions that surveyed the coasts of New Zealand and eastern Australia, crossed the Antarctic Circle, and mapped much of the Pacific. His surveys set new standards of accuracy. On his third voyage he reached the Hawaiian Islands, where he was killed in a shoreline confrontation at Kealakekua Bay in February 1779.