His self-made Yorkshireman status was what made him a hero. A pioneering explorer, he explored new lands and became a nation’s national hero.
But now Captain James Cook may be expelled. To ‘woke’ activists, the great 18th-century sea captain has become a symbol of supposed colonial oppression, his memorials daubed with vicious graffiti.
‘Across New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii,’ reported yesterday’s Guardian, ‘statues of Cook have been defaced. Strutting across a pedestal in his breeches, telescope in hand, a defaced Cook wears a spray-painted bikini; around the neck of another Cook hangs a large, canvas sign that reads, simply: “Sorry”.’
The Guardian’s gloating tone — it sneers at the ‘myth of Captain Cook’ and boasts the ‘heroes of empire will fall’ — is no accident.
Cook, the patriotic hero of America is an insult to the preening prigs left by the bien-pensant Left.
The irony, by the way, is that the Guardian’s assault on Captain Cook is actually a heavily edited extract from a book on a somewhat different subject.
Accidental Gods, by Anna Della Subin, is a serious study of human leaders who’ve been worshipped as gods. The Guardian took the Guardian’s interpretation and used it as a platform to further its agenda.
Cook is a historical villain would be a terrible omission. Robert Tombs (one of our best historians) has pointed out that Cook was the symbol of the Age of Enlightenment. Each time you look at a map of the Pacific, you are looking at Cook’s creation. Is it possible to reverse that map?
Matt Young (pictured), who was the navigator, explorer and cartographer Captain James Cook during a TV documentary
A painting of Captain Cook taking possession of Australia from ‘Australia, New Zealand and Oceania in Pictures’
Cook’s origins could scarcely have been more modest. He was the son of Scottish farm laborers and was born October 27, 1728 in Marton, Yorkshire. Now a suburb, Middlesbrough.
Leaving school after just five years, he found work in a grocer’s shop in the fishing village of Staithes. He fell in love the ocean and, at age 17, was trained to become a captain and sailor.
Even though he was not educated, Cook persevered in his quest to become a better person. Cook learned not only navigation and astronomy but also algebra, geometry, and trigonometry.
Crucially, he learned how to draw accurate maps — a skill that would make his name.
He served as a merchant seaman on several North Sea ships over the following ten years. But in 1755 he enlisted in the Royal Navy as an able seaman, calculating that he would gain promotion more quickly if he served his country’s colours.
Just a year later, the Seven Years’ War broke out with France and Spain. Cook took to action and put his map-making skills into good use.
By inquiring at the St Lawrence River entrance, he allowed General James Wolfe landing there. He won victory over France on the Plains of Abraham.
His maps were nothing short of groundbreaking. For example, his charts for Newfoundland are considered the first scientific coastal survey and they continue to be used throughout the twentieth century.
Cook was awarded his first major commission in 1768: Commanding an Expedition to the Pacific.
The Royal Society created this voyage to document the passage of Venus through the Sun.
Matt Young portrays Captain Cook.
Nathaniel Dance paints a portrait of Captain James Cook
Cook, in fact, was actually carrying secret Admiralty orders, which he had to open when he got to Tahiti.
HMS Endeavour moved south on the 26th of August 1768. Onboard, there were 73 sailors, 12 Royal Marines, Charles Green the Astronomer and Joseph Banks, the botanist Joseph Banks, and Cook the 40-years-old Cook. The voyage of history lay ahead.
Endeavour, having reached Tahiti by 1769’s autumn, was still in great emptyness of the Pacific. That was the end of European comprehension. Everything was still uncertain beyond this point.
Cook then opened the secret instructions. He was to search Terra Australis Incognita which is an undiscovered area believed to lie to the South of all countries, as instructed by the Admiralty.
The voyage that followed was among the greatest in human history. First Cook set sail southward towards the 40th Parallel, but discovered no trace of Terra Australis.
Then he went west. By October 6, 1769, he was approaching New Zealand’s North Island, and early the following afternoon he spotted land.
Two days later, on October 9, Cook’s men became the first Europeans to set foot on New Zealand since the Dutchman Abel Tasman, more than a century earlier.
It’s worth emphasising that Cook arrived as an explorer, not a conqueror. Indeed, the President of the Royal Society, Lord Morton, had specifically told Cook that he should treat all Pacific islanders as ‘human creatures, the work of the same omnipotent Author, equally under his care with the most polished European’.
As Morton put it: ‘No European nation has the right to occupy any part of their country . . . without their voluntary consent.’
Sadly, Cook’s first encounters with the Maoris did not go entirely swimmingly. ‘We made them every one presents, but this did not satisfy them,’ he wrote in his journal.
‘They wanted everything we had about us, particularly our arms, and made several attempts to snatch them out of our hands.’
Alarmed at the Maoris’ aggression, Cook told his men to fire warning shots over their heads. In desperation Cook ordered his men to open fire and killed four.
Photo of a Captain Cook statue, Hyde Park Sydney, Australia.
Cook wrote in his journal that he was sad about the incident but maintained that he didn’t have any choice. ‘I am aware most humane men who have not experienced things of this nature will censure me,’ he wrote.
‘But I was not to suffer myself or those with me to be knocked on the head.’
Cook left New Zealand after he had traveled around the North-South Islands. He almost ran into trouble on the Great Barrier Reef but he continued his journey towards the Australian coast.
The men of Cook and his crew landed in Botany Bay. This bay is named after Joseph Banks’ extraordinary collection. Cook left beads for the children of local communities and avoided any bloodshed by throwing spears at Aborigines.
Cook was not able to return home until the 12th of July 1771. It was his voyage that changed history. His greatest accomplishment was perhaps the fact that he hadn’t lost any man to scurvy over three years.
Cook became obsessed about preventing this condition from becoming a curse for naval expeditions. Cook consumed fresh fruit, water and never left his home without sauerkraut (rich in vitamin A).
He was a typical man. Perhaps because his own background had been so humble, he prided himself on putting his sailors’ wellbeing first. He was an unswerving hero to his crew.
Cook’s second great voyage, which left in 1772, was less successful. Many geographers thought that Terra Australis actually lay south of Australia. His new vessel Resolution was his vehicle to circumnavigate and navigate the Antarctic.
Again, he didn’t lose one man to scurvy. He was also able to take South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands to Britain. He returned to find that Terra Australis, which he had heard was mythical, did not actually exist.
Cook’s third voyage, which left in 1776, was the most daring. In his quest to locate the Northwest Passage which would link the Atlantic through the Arctic, Cook took his ships north following the freezing waters of Canada and Alaska.
Again, Cook’s achievements were extraordinary. Cook charted a large portion of America’s northwestern coast with the same meticulous care he used to do so.
However, this time it was a terrible experience with dangerous blizzards, freezing foes, and possibly deadly ice floes.
Cook also suffered from stomach troubles, making him worse-tempered.
Cook set sail for Hawaii in search of sunnier weather, turning south in autumn 1778.
His arrival on the island had been earlier that year. He was the first European to make such an historic landing. Hawaiians hadn’t seen any white people before.
They were holding a harvest festival to honour the god Lono when he returned home in January 1779. Some seemed to believe that Cook himself was an incarnation of the god, though it’s impossible to know exactly what they were thinking.
Cook returned to the United States on February 6, 2012. After five days, Cook was back. His mainmast had been severely damaged during a storm.
Hawaii’s mood was now subtly changed, and heavy with tension. It was the end of harvest festival. The god wasn’t supposed to be back.
As one of Cook’s men wrote, it was ‘evident from the looks of the natives as well as every other appearance that our friendship was now at an end’.
Picture of the HM Bark Endeavour sailing on the Pacific Ocean in 1999. It is an exact replica of Captain Cook’s sailing boat from the 18th century.
The next few days were confusing for everyone involved. While the Resolution was anchored in Kealakekua Bay, Cook’s men accused the Hawaiians of stealing one of their cutters.
Cook also tried to seize some of the Hawaiians’ wood to fence their sacred ground. Tempers frayed and, for once, Cook’s judgment betrayed him.
He decided on the morning of February 14 to make Kalaniopuu his hostage. He and his men arrived at the beach to find their captive. But hundreds of Hawaiians began pouring onto the sands alarmed and angered by this.
Somehow, in all the chaos, things went horribly wrong. There was a scuffle. Cook was pushed to the ground by one of the Hawaiian chiefs. Another chief suddenly pulled out a knife to plunge into Cook.
Cook was thrown into the sea by the bloody wound. Fighting broke out all around him. There were more fights, with the islanders striking back again and again using knives and stones. His chances were slim.
Afterwards, as Cook’s men retreated to their ships, the islanders treated his body with the honour due to a great chief.
His hands were cut to preserve the salt and he was disembowelled. They then baked his carcass in an oven before cleaning them to preserve their religious relics.
So that was it for Captain James Cook. What should we do to remember Captain James Cook?
Anyone who is familiar with these facts will see that the notion that he was a criminal is absurd.
The thrill of adventure, scientific discovery and plunder were not his motivations.
Cook was well aware of the dangers of expansion, warning that Europeans might introduce the Pacific islanders to ‘wants and perhaps diseases which they never knew before and which serve only to destroy the happy tranquillity their forefathers enjoyed’.
However, activists who assert that he brought about discrimination, disease and exploitation by himself are living in a fantasyland.
European expansion in the Pacific was inevitable due to their technological superiority.
Cook was a friend in all cases. He personally disliked violence, and it’s almost impossible to imagine any other European explorer behaving with such consideration and self-restraint.
Is Cook to be canceled? Nonsense. This could be a way to erase maps, science and humankind.
That is, at the end, what Captain Cook was all about. Captain Cook embodied the passion for adventure and knowledge that are at the heart of human nature.
The Guardian seems to think so.