The Project Gutenberg EBook of Captain Cook, by W.H.G. Kingston

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Title: Captain Cook
His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries

Author: W.H.G. Kingston

Release Date: March 5, 2008 [EBook #24755]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAIN COOK ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Captain Cook, his Life, Voyages and Discoveries, by W.H.G. Kingston.

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This book is not a series of fictitious adventures of the great Captain
Cook, the eighteenth century navigator and explorer, but a
straightforward statement of his life and achievements. It is therefore
more of a biography than an adventure book for boys. However, the man
was so great that his biography can indeed be read as a well-written
book of adventures.

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CAPTAIN COOK, HIS LIFE, VOYAGES AND DISCOVERIES, BY W.H.G. KINGSTON.

CHAPTER ONE.

CAPTAIN COOK--HIS LIFE, VOYAGES, AND DISCOVERIES.

EARLY TRAINING.

Among all those Englishmen who, from a humble origin, have risen to an
honourable position, Captain James Cook is especially worthy of record.
His parents were of the peasant class--his father having commenced life
as a farm-labourer, and his mother being a cottager's daughter.
Probably, however, they were both superior to others of the same
station, as the husband, in process of time, became farm-bailiff to his
employer--a Mr Thomas Skottowe. This was about the year 1730, and the
farm of which he had the management was called Airy-Holme, near Ayton,
in Yorkshire. Not far from this place, at the village of Marton, near
Stockton-upon-Tees; his son James was born, on October 27, 1728. James
was one of nine children, all of whom he survived, with the exception of
a sister who married a fisherman at Redcar.

The father of this family spent the latter years of his life with his
daughter at Redcar, and was supposed to have been about eighty-five
years old at the time of his death; so that he must have had the
satisfaction of seeing his son rising in his profession, though proba