Produced by Sue Asscher <asschers@bigpond.com>
1907
In publishing a popular edition of my work, Captain James Cook, R.N.,F.R.S., it has, of course, been necessary to condense it, but care hasbeen taken to omit nothing of importance, and at the same time a fewslight errors have been corrected, and some new information has beenadded, chiefly relating to the disposition of documents.
I must not omit this opportunity of thanking the Reviewers for theextremely kind manner in which they all received the original work—amanner, indeed, which far exceeded my highest hopes.
James Cook, the Circumnavigator, was a native of the district ofCleveland, Yorkshire, but of his ancestry there is now very littlesatisfactory information to be obtained. Nichols, in his Topographer andGenealogist, suggests that "James Cooke, the celebrated mariner, wasprobably of common origin with the Stockton Cookes." His reason for thesuggestion being that a branch of the family possessed a crayon portraitof some relation, which was supposed to resemble the great discoverer. Hemakes no explanation of the difference in spelling of the two names, andadmits that the sailor's family was said to come from Scotland.
Dr. George Young, certainly the most reliable authority on Cook's earlyyears, who published a Life in 1836, went to Whitby as Vicar about 1805,and claims to have obtained much information about his subject "throughintercourse with his relatives, friends, and acquaintances, including oneor two surviving school companions," and appears to be satisfied thatCook was of Scotch extraction. Dr. George Johnston, a very carefulwriter, states in his Natural History of the Eastern Borders, that in1692 the father of James