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Captain Cook Research Paper

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Captain James Cook and the Discovery of Hawaii On January eighteenth between 1492 and 1865, according to on-this-day.com, there were two important historical events in America: Captain James Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands in 1778 and Thomas Jefferson sought authorization for the first official exploration by the U.S. government in 1803. I did not know anything about either of these two topics, so given these choices, I picked Captain James Cook discovering Hawaii because it was what I found more interesting. Captain James Cook, as a pioneer explorer was a very respected man from everywhere, even the places that were tense with Britain at the time (“10 Things You May Not Know About Captain James Cook” 2018). He was a very popular expeditioner …show more content…

After becoming a farmer, he temporarily worked at a grocery store. When he turned 17, he moved to the coast and settled in Whitby, England where he became a coal merchant. Before he was twenty, he began to work on a ship called “Freelove” which was a cargo ship traveling from Whitby to London. He then enlisted in the Royal Navy and quickly ranked up before he was twenty years old. After this, he went on several expeditions for three years with his crew around the world. He earned fame and honor in Britain for two of his voyages and was dubbed “the first navigator in Europe” by a member of the House of the Lords. (“On This Day: Captain Cook Discovers the Hawaiian Islands” 2011). As said previously, he was so revered that even Britain’s enemies respected him; he took his journeys when Britain was at war with the U.S., Spain, and France but his reputation as a pioneer explorer allowed him to travel the seas. (“Captain James Cook” 2018, “On This Day: Captain Cook Discovers the Hawaiian Islands” …show more content…

His first expedition was on August 26, 1768 and the purpose of this was to observe the planet Venus while it passed the earth and sun (which was a very rare event that was only visible in the southern hemisphere); he did this to help astronomers calculate the distance of the sun from the Earth. His second expedition was a secret mission from the British government and a hidden military agenda; this was a sealed order instructing him to find the “Great Southern Continent,” (currently Antarctica) which was an undiscovered landmass that was believed to be somewhere near the bottom of the globe. He had to take two ships called the Adventure and the Resolution. To travel there, he had to go below seventy degrees latitude, which was the furthest any European has explored. However, he did not find it because he had to go back due to ice and weather conditions. Although he did not find the “Great Southern Continent,” he did make an accomplishment while he was there—he was the first to cross the Atlantic Circle. The U.K. National Archives wrote, “James Cook left Britain a great legacy of knowledge about foreign lands, solved the question of the southern continent and provided a map of much of the Pacific for those that followed him… His exploration of places that were formerly unknown in Britain, and his territorial claims, made a major contribution to the growth of the British empire.” This expedition was what he was

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