Captain Cook'S Voyages eBook

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Distinguished as this country is, and ever has been, for its able navigators, it acquires no inconsiderable accession of fame from boasting of the name of Cook, whose three principal voyages we are now about to detail in an unbroken series.

This able and most amiable man was born at Marton, in Cleveland, a village about four miles from Great Ayton, in Yorkshire, on the 27th of October, 1728. His father, who lived in the humble station of a farmer''s servant, married a woman in the same sphere of life with himself; and both were noted in their neighbourhood for their honesty, sobriety, good conduct, and industry, qualities which ever reflect a lustre on the humblest ranks.

When our navigator was about two years old, his father removed to Great Ayton, and was appointed to superintend a considerable farm known by the name of Airyholm, belonging to Thomas Scottowe, Esq.

As the father long continued in this trust, the son naturally followed the same employment, as far as his tender years would admit. His early education appears to have been slight; but at the age of thirteen we find him placed under the tuition of one, Mr. Pullen, who taught school at Ayton, where he learned the rudiments of arithmetic and book-keeping, and is said to have shown a remarkable facility in acquiring the science of numbers.

About the beginning of the year 1745, when young Cook was seventeen years old, his father bound him apprentice to William Sanderson, for four years, to learn the grocery and haberdashery business, at a place called Snaith, a populous fishing town about ten miles from Whitby, and while here, according to Mr. Sanderson''s account, he displayed a maturity of judgment, and a quickness in calculations far beyond his years. But as he evinced a strong partiality for a maritime life (a predilection strengthened by the situation of the place, and the company with which, perhaps, he associated), on some trivi