The navigator James Cook and the southern seas
Introduction
James Cook is in his own right one of the greatest navigators of all time. A true adventurer who as a member of the British Navy navigated several times by the Pacific Ocean, creating the first maps of certain areas of the world. And that is why its name is intimately linked to sites such as New Zealand, Tahiti, New Caledonia, Australia, Hawaii and even the Antarctic Ocean thing. In fact there are ports, mountains or bays with their name in those latitudes. And even on the moon there is some geographical accident in his honor.
Developing
In these convulsive days that has generated the pandemic of the Coronavirus, we want to make you know the world of travel in another way. For example discovering the lives and adventures of great travelers from other times. We have already done it with Marco Polo and others. And now it is the turn of the great navigator James Cook. We hope that following your steps will make you much more bearable these long hours of confinement.
The origins of James Cook
The English James Cook was born in 1728 being part of a very humble family and with few links with the sea. However, the family moved to a fishing village, and soon Cook embarked as an apprentice in ships that transported coal on the British coast. And after a few years, then he went to other merchant naves that walked the Baltic Sea. Obviously given his talent and mood, he soon prospered and in 1755 he was already commanders of a ship.
Income into the Royal Navy
Immediately after the merchant navy left and enrolled in the British royal army. There soon he participated in different missions that, for example, took him to Canada, specifically to Quebec, to the mouth of the San Lorenzo River and to Pananova, where he demonstrated his innate skills for cartography. So after that period, his famous scientific expeditions were to be commissioned later.
James Cook’s first trip
The first of those great trips lasted three years. Between 1768 and 1771. A trip for the one who embarked on his most emblematic ship the HMB endeavor. And the purpose had to do with astronomy. He had to travel from England, navigate throughout the Atlantic, cross the Cape Horn to move to the Pacific and reach Tahiti. And I also had to map neither more or less than the transit of the planet Venus on the sun.
Knowing that does not seem strange that one of the modern space ferries Endeavor was baptized in his honor. While there was a second goal for this trip. And it was to reach the so -called Terra Australis, that is, Australia, known by Dutch and Spaniard Navigators of the past, but totally unexplored.
Cook would arrive in New Zealand and the cartography. Later he arrived on the island of Tasmania. And finally he toured part of the Australian coast. Until the great coral barrier reached, where his ship was very damaged. A time they took to establish contacts with the aborigines and collect flora samples that marveled on their return to England.
Second trip
James Cook’s second trip also lasted three years, between 1772 and 1775, and now he was aimed to discover in greater detail Australia. And for this we wanted to confirm its extension to the south. So this time they first sailed beyond the Antarctic Polar Circle and turned the world around the ship HMS Resolution.
And although he failed to define Australia as he had entrusted. The truth is that it was very close to Antarctica, passed through Easter Island and scientifically improved the use of a stopwatch to measure the geographical length. That is why on his return he rose in the military ranks and was granted retirement in Greenwich.
conclusion
However, his adventurous spirit did not allow him to stay on land for a long time. He embarked again in 1776 at the HMS Resolution. On this trip to Tahiti, he would become the first European that stepped on the Hawaii archipelago. That did it in a first reception of the most pleasant. However, when months later the expedition returned to Hawaiian land, things were very different. In fact they were attacked and James Cook himself died in combat. It was the end of a life full of travel, discoveries, science and adventures.
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