Excerpt from Voyages Round the World
Cook"s First Voyage.
"The interests of science and the acquisition of geographical knowledge entered largely into the motives of the circumnavigations [we have] related. But the first expedition of importance, fitted out wholly for scientific objects, was that entrusted to the command of the celebrated Captain James Cook. This great navigator was born of humble parents: his father was an agricultural labourer, whose steady conduct was at length rewarded by his employer with the situation of hind or under-steward. As he had nine children, and his means were slender, he was unable to assist materially their individual exertions to procure a livelihood. James, when thirteen years of age, was apprenticed to a shopkeeper at Straiths, a fishing town not far from Whitby; but the predilection of young Cook for the sea was soon manifested with that strength of inclination which is sure to accompany peculiar talents. He engaged himself for seven years with the owners of some ships employed in the coal trade; and, when the period of his engagement was expired, he was promoted by his employers to the rank of mate of one of their vessels. The coal trade of England, being chiefly carried on near a singularly dangerous coast, where unceasing vigilance is required on the art of the seamen, constitutes the est school of practical mariners in the world. Cook, who obeyed his own inclinations when he turned sailor, profited, no doubt, in the highest degree, from the opportunities which his coasting voyages afforded him of becoming acquainted with the practical part of navigation. At length, being in the Thames in 1755, when impressments were carried on to a great extent, he resolved to anticipate the impending necessity, and offered himself to serve on board the Eagle, a man-of-war of 60 guns.
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