Abstract
A MONG navigators of all ages, Capt. James Cook stands without a rival. Born amidst humble surroundings and apparently destined to occupy but an obscure station, by the force of natural ability and character and the cultivation of his talents, he raised himself to the highest rank among naval explorers, adding immensely to geographical knowledge and planting the British flag on two of its finest possessions. Cook was born at Marton, in the Cleveland district of Yorkshire, on Oct. 27,1728, two hundred years ago. His father was but an agricultural labourer and farm bailiff, and Cook himself, as a boy of thirteen or fourteen years, was apprenticed to a shopkeeper near Whitby. But as on many another, the sea exercised a fascination which could not be resisted, and his youth and early manhood were spent in trading vessels of the east coast, and in the course of time he rose to be a mate. The North Sea was his high school and university; his study, the cabin of a collier.
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The Bicentenary of Capt. Cook. Nature 122, 484–486 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/122484a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/122484a0