The Character of Captain James Cook
Captain Cook’s friend and ship’s surgeon David Samwell gives us his impressions of the great explorer.
1776-1779
King George III 1760-1820
By Nathaniel Dance-Holland (1735-1811), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Captain James Cook, painted by Nathaniel Dance-Holland (1735-1811) in 1775 or 1776, shortly before his third and final journey. As Samwell notes, Cook should be remembered not only for opening our horizons to new lands, but for showing other navigators how to keep crews in good health over vast distances and for many months at sea. His interactions with the inhabitants of remote lands were friendly and mutually beneficial, but the hasty temper which Samwell hints at (possibly exacerbated by illness or mental strain) was his undoing at Hawaii in 1779, when a petty argument over stolen ship’s stores escalated fatally.
Introduction
Welsh poet and doctor David Samwell was Captain James Cook’s surgeon on his third voyage, aboard HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery. Samwell accompanied him from Plymouth in 1776 to Hawaii, where he saw the impulsive Cook killed in an altercation over stolen stores on February 14th, 1779.
abridged
HIS constitution was strong, his mode of living temperate.* He had no repugnance to good living; he always kept a good table, though he could bear the reverse without murmuring. He was a modest man, and rather bashful; of an agreeable lively conversation, sensible and intelligent.
In his temper he was somewhat hasty, but of a disposition the most friendly, benevolent, and humane. His person was above six feet high, and though a good-looking man, he was plain both in address and appearance. His hair, which was a dark brown, he wore tied behind. His face was full of expression, his nose exceedingly well-shaped, his eyes, which were small and of a brown cast, were quick and piercing; his eyebrows prominent, which gave his countenance altogether an air of austerity.
He was beloved by his people, who looked up to him as to a father, and obeyed his commands with alacrity. The confidence we placed in him was unremitting; our admiration of his great talents unbounded; our esteem for his good qualities affectionate and sincere.
Before joining the Royal Navy in 1755, Cook was a merchant seaman in the Baltic and prior to that an apprentice to John and Henry Walker, who operated collier ships out of Whitby. They were Quakers who encouraged him to study mathematics, astronomy and of course navigation, and they helped to lay the foundations of Cook’s self-discipline. None of this, however, stopped him meeting and marrying Elizabeth Batts, daughter of the keeper of the Bell Inn, Wapping, in 1762.
