CAPTAIN JAMES COOK was an English adventurer,

navigator, and cartographer who lived from October 27, 1728 (O.S.) until
February 14, 1779. Cook, who eventually attained the rank of Captain in the
Royal Navy, made three trips to the Pacific Ocean, establishing the first
recorded European contact with Australia's eastern coastline, discovering the
Hawaiian Islands, and circumnavigating and mapping Newfoundland and New
Zealand for the first time.

He served in the British merchant navy as a young man before joining the Royal
navy in 1755

On his three voyages Captain James Cook established the salient features of the
Pacific, the vast ocean that extended over one-third of the world's surface and
contained 25,000 islands. As James King, a lieutenant on his third voyage put it, at
last 'the Grand bounds of the four Quarters of the Globe are known'