Bay of Islands and Bonne Bay on Cook’s General Chart of the Island of Newfoundland (1775)<\/span><\/p>\n The story of James Cook begins in the village of Marton in Yorkshire, England, where in 1728 he was born the second of eight children to a Scottish farm labourer and his Yorkshire wife.\u00a0 In 1736 his family moved to nearby Great Ayton where his father\u2019s employer paid for his schooling.\u00a0 In 1745 at the age of 16, Cook moved to the ocean, first to the fishing village of Staithes and 18 monthes later to the seaport of Whitby, where he worked for John and Henry Walker as merchant navy apprentice.\u00a0 His training included algebra, geometry, trigonometry and astronomy.\u00a0 After three years of plying the east coast of England, Cook began working on trading ships in the Baltic Sea and in 1755 volunteered for service in the Royal Navy, just one year before the outbreak of the Seven Years War.\u00a0 In 1757 Cook passed his Master\u2019s examination and was soon headed to Canada as Master of the 64-gun HMS Pembroke.<\/strong><\/p>\n Whitby after Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1826<\/p>\n As Master of a Royal Navy vessel, Cook was responsible for sailing the ship as directed by the Captain, whose primary role was carrying out the Navy\u2019s strategy and tactics while engaging the enemy.\u00a0 The Master\u2019s primary duty was navigation, which required determining the vessel\u2019s position, speed and direction, while observing the weather and setting the sails.\u00a0 The Master was also responsible for making charts, fitting out the vessel and stowing the hold, as well as docking and undocking the ship at port.<\/strong><\/p>\n Portrait of James Cook by William Hodges (c. 1775-76), official artist on Cook’s Second Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1772-74)<\/span><\/p>\n A year after arriving in Canada and taking part in the successful attack on the fortress of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, Cook met Royal Navy Engineer Samuel Holland who taught him the latest techniques in surveying and map making, including use of the plane table.\u00a0 Soon after during the summer of 1759, Cook played a major role in surveying the St. Lawrence River in preparation for the assault on Quebec, where Major General James Wolfe and his forces defeated the French on the Plains of Abraham.\u00a0 In recognition of his role in the victory, Cook was promoted to Master of the 70-gun Northumberland, flagship of Commander-in-Chief Lord Colville.\u00a0 For the next three years he honed his new skills while stationed in Halifax.\u00a0 They were put to use again in July 1762 when a last French attempt to secure bargaining power in the peace treaty to end the Seven Years\u2019 War led to an attack on St. John\u2019s and other ports on Newfoundland\u2019s Avalon Peninsula.\u00a0 Northumberland took part in the combined fleet that successfully forced the French out of Newfoundland waters, with Cook producing charts of Placentia and St. John\u2019s harbours and the fishing ports of Harbour Grace and Carbonear.<\/strong><\/p>\n With the French defeat in North America, Great Britain acquired new territories which required surveying and mapping.\u00a0 After being impressed by the quality of Cook\u2019s work on the Avalon Peninsula, Governor Thomas Graves urged the Admiralty to commission Cook to continue surveying the coasts of Newfoundland and the newly acquired Labrador.\u00a0 The Admiralty agreed and in the summer of 1763 Cook became the Surveyor of Newfoundland, beginning with the south coast islands of St Pierre and Miquelon which were soon to be handed over to the French under the Treaty of Paris.\u00a0 Cook then surveyed the Strait of Belle Isle (1763-64), south coast between the Burin Peninsula and Cape Anguille (1765-66) and the west coast between Cape Anguille and Point Ferolle (1767), when he penetrated up the Humber River as far as Deer Lake in the first official attempt to delineate the inland topography of the island.\u00a0 In autumn of each year Cook would return home to his family in London where he would spend the winter completing the previous summer\u2019s charts and sailing directions, then prepare for the next summer\u2019s exploration and surveys.<\/strong><\/p>\n To save time and reduce dependency on British Navy vessels, Governor Graves provided Cook with a New England schooner re-rigged as a brig, with square sails better suited to inshore maneuvers.\u00a0 Cook\u2019s role as its commander, navigator and surveyor combined with his knowledge of astronomy ( in 1766 Cook scientifically observed an eclipse of the sun near Burgeo) brought him to the attention of the British Admiralty and Royal Society when they were planning an expedition to the Pacific Ocean to witness the Transit of Venus and search for the fabled southern continent.\u00a0 In April 1768 while working on his \u2018Chart of the West Coast of Newfoundland\u2019, Cook accepted the position of commander of HMS Endeavour and readied the bark for an August departure.\u00a0 His surveying assistant Michael Lane continued his work in Newfoundland and together they produced the \u2018General Chart of the Island of Newfoundland’.<\/strong><\/p>\n Mid section of Cook’s Chart of the West Coast of Newfoundland, including Geopark region<\/span><\/p>\n Cook\u2019s contribution to the British Empire were many and included victory in North America during the Seven Years War, creation of highly accurate charts for the Newfoundland fishery, expansion of the empire into the Pacific Ocean and Northwest North America, and health and dietary innovations for the British Navy.\u00a0 According to his monument near Admiralty Arch, London: \u201cCaptain James Cook, Circumnavigator of the globe and explorer of the Pacific Ocean, he laid the foundations of the British Empire in Australia and New Zealand, charted the shores of Newfoundland, and traversed the ocean gates of Canada both east and west.\u201d\u00a0 Cook\u2019s contribution to Newfoundland also included the designation of many place names and the cartographic delineation of the island, to be \u201ccoloured in\u201d by generations of geologists, from J. B. Jukes to Alexander Murray, James Howley, Harold Williams, Robert Stevens and their esteemed colleagues at the Newfoundland & Labrador Geological Survey.<\/strong><\/p>\n Route 450 on the South Shore of the Bay of Islands is named Captain Cook’s\u00a0Trail<\/em> in honour of James Cook.\u00a0 James Cook Heritage Trail<\/em> in Blow Me Down Provincial Park and Cape Blow Me Down Trail<\/em> in York Harbour were named in 2017 to commemorate the 250th Anniversary of Cook’s surveying and charting the West Coast of Newfoundland, including the Bay of Islands and Bonne Bay.<\/strong><\/p>\n To learn more about James Cook in Newfoundland, check out the below documents from our information archive<\/strong><\/p>\n or visit\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>our James <\/a>Cook 250 Anniversary website<\/a>.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/caboxgeopark.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Cook-Map-of-Geopark-Region.jpg\")
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