y, and the two ships made
the best of their way home, via Macao and the Straits of Sunda, arriving
at the Nore on October 4th, 1780, after an absence of four years and two
months. During the whole of this voyage not the slightest symptom of
scurvy appeared in either ship, so completely were Cook's precautions
successful.

Cook had six children. Three died young. Of the others, all boys, the
eldest, James, entered the Navy, and lived to be a Commander, when, in
1794, he was drowned. The second, Nathaniel, also in the Navy, was lost
in a hurricane in 1780. The third died when at Cambridge. They none of
them lived to be married, and no descendant of the great navigator has
perpetuated his race.

Of Cook's private life during his brief intervals at home we know
nothing. A man rising from the ranks, and of his reserved character,
would have but few friends, when he had such short time to make them in
his new sphere. He lived at Mile End when at home, but after his death
his widow removed to Clapham, living there for forty years, at first with
her cousin, Isaac Smith, who had served with Cook in the Endeavour and
Resolution. She died in 1835, at the great age of ninety-three.

Of Cook's character, none could be a better judge than Captain King, who
writes as follows, after describing his death:--

"Thus fell our great and excellent commander. After a life of so much
distinguished and successful enterprise, his death, as far as regards
himself, cannot be considered premature, since he lived to finish the
great work for which he seems to have been designed. How sincerely his
loss was felt and lamented, by those who had so long found their general
security in his skill and conduct, and every consolation in their
hardships in his tenderness and humanity, it is neither necessary nor
possible for me to describe. The constitution of his body was robust,
inured to labour, and capable of undergoing the severest hardships. His
stomach bore without difficulty the coarsest and most ungrateful food.
Indeed, temperance with him was scarcely a virtue, so great was the
indifference with which he submitted to every kind of self-denial. The
qualities of his mind were of the same hardy, vigorous kind with those of
his body. His understanding was strong and perspicacious. His judgment in
whatever related to the service he was engaged in quick and sure. His
designs were bold and manly, and both in the conception and in the mode
of execution b