3.88 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



A day- 

 labourer's 

 boy. 



Whitby 

 coal-boats. 



The Royal 

 Navy, 1755. 



thirty-nine, so much as five shillings a day, without 

 the smallest help from birth, education, or influence. 

 These facts show that, in the navy of the late eighteenth 

 century, the career was not wholly closed to talent. But 

 they show, far more distinctly, how extraordinary was 

 the talent which opened the career. 



As one might, perhaps, have inferred from his 

 works, James Cook was Yorkshire by birth and 

 Scotch by ancestry. His grandfather was a Kirk-elder, 

 and the kirk-elder's son migrated to Yorkshire. " God 

 send you Grace," said his mother, and God sent 

 him a wife of that name. In a tiny two-roomed cot- 

 tage in the tiny village of Marton, James was born 

 in October 1728. The Register of Baptism described 

 him as " James, the son of a day-labourer." Later, 

 the day-labourer rose to be a " hind " or bailiff ; and, 

 later still, he was a builder, so well-lettered that he 

 was able to carve his and his wife's initials on a house he 

 built in 1755. He died in 1778, ending life as he began, for 

 the Register of Deaths described him as a " day-labourer." 



As for son James, he went to school and learned 

 reading, writing, and arithmetic ; I doubt that he ever 

 got Dampier's power in Latin. Local tradition afterwards 

 told that, as a birds'-nester, he had shown " a resolute 

 adherence to his own plans"; which we easily believe. 

 Then he helped his father in farm work, was perhaps 

 a stable-boy for a short time, served customers in a grocer's 

 shop in a fishing village for eighteen months, and in 1746 

 became " prentice " in a big coal-shipping business at 

 Whitby. For nine years he made voyages in coal-boats, 

 getting loving acquaintance with the type of ship which, 

 he afterwards said, was by far the best fitted for the business 

 of exploration. His advance was rapid, and in 1755 he 

 was offered the position of " Master." He declined. 

 In that year the first shot was fired in the war that made 

 Canada and India parts of the Empire. Experienced 

 seamen were scarce in the Royal Navy. Cook saw the 

 tide in his affairs, and volunteered, " having a mind to 

 try his fortune that way." 



