Captain James Cook in Atlantic Canada

Jerry Lockett’s biography of the great explorer Captain James Cook delves into two related mysteries, the first how a seaman with so little formal education achieved such distinction as an explorer and map maker, the second how his years in Atlantic Canada—between 1758 and 1767 he was in the region most of the time—would mould the man who became Captain Cook.

 

Lockett begins by re-establishing Cook’s extraordinary legacy, the great scope of his explorations in the Pacific and his achievements in mapping. One of his New Zealand charts was so accurate it did not need to be resurveyed until 1996. The author then takes the reader on a journey detailing Cook’s genuinely humble upbringing, as the son of a Yorkshire farm labourer.

 

Lockett wisely avoids imposing too many theories upon Cook’s motivations but rather lets his narrative, richly laced with social insights—and in particular, comparisons between merchant shipping and the navy—suggest a wealth of possibilities. An apprentice to Quaker ship-owner John Walker, Cook may have found Quaker ideals “integrity, sobriety, plain speaking” rubbing off on him, Lockett suggests.

 

And the young Cook needed a cool head. The North Sea coal trade, upon by which Cook was employed for Walker, was a dangerous one, requiring navigation through treacherous shoals. Ships were frequently preyed upon by unprincipled pilot boatmen.

 

In 1755 Cook made a momentous and surprising decision. He turned down a command in the merchant marines for a lowly post in the navy, a move that Lockett examines from every social and historical angle. Imminent war with France saw the navy bulging with ambitious young seaman; in terms of pay, work load, rations, a patriotic calling and opportunities of advancement and learning, the move was in fact a far sighted one.

 

In war-torn Nova Scotia Cook met and struck up a friendship with military surveyor Samuel Holland who explained the workings of a surveying tool, the plane table. In Newfoundland he met engineer officer Joseph F. W. Des Barres, whose ability to map and draw accurately was likely a great influence on Cook.

 

The 1763 Treaty of Paris meant the British navy urgently needed to map newly acquired territories. Cook soon became involved in a major survey of western Newfoundland. Within this chapter Lockett explains the uses of the various surveying tools—plane table, theodolite, telescopic quadrant—and we have a tangible sense of the slow emergence of a man who would become a master surveyor.

 

The illustrations are telling, and we see Cook’s work, including a plan of Halifax Navy Yard overlooked in other biographies. But one of the strengths of this well-researched and thought-provoking biography is that the Atlantic Canadian angle comes through in an unforced manner, and within a full context of both his subject and the times. —Paul Butler