A Cook Films, Ferns Productions, South Pacific Pictures and December Films production. Dr Huw Lewis-Jones from the University of Cambridge and Professor Andrew Lambert of Kings College, London provide an insight into how the Royal Navy at that time used patronage as a way of promotion and how extraordinary it was that Cook advanced himself through the ranks based on his cartographic skill and navigational talent.Ĭaptain Cook – Obsession and Discovery is a Film Australia National Interest Program. Within two years he had been promoted to ships’ master. The clip reveals that Cook’s instincts were sound. Vanessa Collingridge relates that Cook’s reason for joining the navy was that he “had a mind to try his fortune”. The second, Thornton’s own theory that Cook was encouraged by a local landowner to join the navy and secure land for his father, common practice so that other young men in the area would not be press ganged into the navy. The first, the accepted historic approach, that with war with France looming, there were excellent opportunities for promotion through the ranks of the Royal Navy. Instead Cook chose to join the Royal Navy in the lowest rank of able seaman, a decision that was to have profound consequences for Cook’s career and the history of the world.Ĭliff Thornton offers two theories as to why Cook chose this path. At the age of 18 Cook underwent an eight year apprenticeship as a mariner and in 1755 was offered the position of ships’ master by John Walker, to whom he had been apprenticed. In this excerpt the narrator of the series, Vanessa Collingridge, discusses Cook’s entry into the Royal Navy with Cliff Thornton, President of the Captain Cook Society. Cook made three epic voyages around the world. James Cook Joins the Navy is an excerpt from A Likely Lad, the first episode of the 4 x one-hour series _ Captain Cook – Obsession and Discovery, produced in 2007.Ĭaptain James Cook FRS RN (Octo– February 14, 1779) was an English explorer, navigator and cartographer.
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