“A DESCENDANT OF COOK.”

Otago Witness, Issue 3005, 18 October 1911, Page 84

“A DESCENDANT OF COOK.”

(By F. J. 8., in the Sydney Mail.)

Romantic interest in tlie Mawson Polar expedition lias been heightened by the following press statement: — “It is perhaps a happy augury for the success of the first Australian scientific expedition to the Antarctic that one of its members should include a direct descendant of that intrepid explorer, Captain Cook.” That one of the members of the first Australian scientific expedition to the Antarctic “includes” a direct descendant of Captain Cook is a somewhat cannibalistic assertion, which revives a humorous old story. When it was mooted in the town of Hull, from the port of which Cook often sailed when mate and captain of a collier, to erect a monument to the great circumnavigator, a sailor of Hawaiian origin strongly supported the proposition. It was pointed out to him that only the countrymen of Cook had a right to move in. the matter; whereupon the descendant of a dusky race of Kamehamehas claimed a closer relationship with the dead hero than anybody else in the world ; the blood of the old mariner flowed in his veins, for had not his grandfather eaten a portion of Captain Cook? The extract cited means probably that one of the members of the expedition, etc., “is” a direct descendant of Captain Cook. Unfortunately for this statement, Captain Cook left no direct descendants. He was married only once, and all of Ids six children died without- heirs. He was, moreover, a man of pure and even rigid morality, and no aspersion has been cast upon his fidelity as a husband. Here is a brief statement of the facts of Cook’s married life. On December 21, of the year 1762, “Jaimes Cook, of the parish of St. Paul, Shadwell, in the County of Middlesex, bachelor, and Elizabath Batts, of the pariah of Barking, in the County of Essex, spinster, "were married in this church by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s license,” and the entry in the parish register of St. Margaret’s, Barking, Essex, is signed by

George Downing, vicar, of Little Watering. Cook was then just entering upon his thirty fifth year of life, and his bride was just 20 years old. She belonged to a highly respectable middle class family, connected with various manufacturers and industries. Charles Smith, her grandfather, was a currier, carrying on business in Bermondeey. His son, Charles, was a shipping agent in the Customhouse. His daughter Mary married, first, one John Batte, who was in business at Wapping, and, secondly, John Blackburn, in business .at Shadwell. Mrs Cook's first cousin, Charles Smith, became a very successful manufacturer of watches and clocks. His house and factory were in. Bunhill row. His eldest son "Isaac, who accompanied Captain Cook in his first and second voyages, and was the first Englishman to land in eastern Australia, subsequently retired with the rank of Admiral. His second son, Charles, of Merton Abbey, possessed considerable property in Merton and elsewhere. Cook and his bride went to live in Shadwell, where Mrs Cook's mother, then Mrs Blackburn, resided. Afterwards the newly-married pair removed to the Mile End road. In April, 1763, about four months after his marriage, Cook left England for North American waters and surveyed the islands of Miquelon and St. Pierre, which had been ceded to the French by the Treaty of Peaoe, and were about to be occupied by them. During his absence in Canada his eldest son, James, was born, and was the longest jived of all his children.

James, the son of the great circumnavigator, was bom in 1763, and died in 1794, aged 31 years, just 15 years after the death of his illustrious father. After her double bereavement of husband and second eon, a period of rest and calm descended on Mrs Cook, and for 13 years of comparative happiness she saw her eldest son feom time to time (a gallantand active oificer, always on service). La 1793 her youngest son died, and only five weeks later another blow fell upon the hapless Avoman, already bereaved of husband and five out of her six children. James, her eldest, the hope of her heart and the prop of her declining years, who had, in the autumn of 1793, been promoted to the ■ rank of commander, was, while with his ship at Poole, in Dorsetshire, appointed to the command of the Spitfire sloop of war. On January 24, 1794, he received from Captain Yeo, commanding officer of the station, his letters and orders to take command without delay. He started immediately in an open boat, manned by sailors returning from leave, to sail from Poole to Portsmouth. It was in the afternoon. His boat was rather crowded; there was a strong ebb tide and a fresh.wind; it was growing dark. This was- the -last seen of James Cook, the younger, bom in 1763, while his famous father was absent surveying the islands (preparatory to French occupation) of Miquelon and St. Pierre.'

Early in 1764, Cook, having performed his Canadian mission, and returned to England, his constant friend and patron, Sir- Hugh Palliser, having been appointed Governor and commodore of Newfoundland and Labrador, offered him an appointment as marine surveyor of those shores. A schooner, the Grenville, was placed under his command, and in April he sailed for his station. Every autumn he returned to England/ and every spring he went out again. This is proved by the dates of his children's births. Nathaniel, his second" son, was bom in 1764, and, like his brother James, entered the service of the Royal navy of England. The news of the great circumnavigator's death reached his unhappy widow in the first week of October, 1780. In the same week her son Nathaniel went down on board the Thunderer in a hurricane off Jamaica, and the news reached her before the end of the year. Nathaniel was but a youth, agd only 16. Cook's work of surveying _the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador lasted till. 1767, in the autumn, of which year be returned to England, his work in America completed.. His daughter, Elizabeth, born in 1766, lived to reach her fifth year Cook was himself now a man 39 years of age; and he had been at sea for five and twenty years. In 1768 his son Joseph was born, and died in the same year. On August 26, Cook sailed from Plymouth in the barque Endeavour, on that first great voyage which resulted, among other famous happenings, in the discovery of the- eastern coast of Australia. On June 12, 1771, the Endeavour anchored in the Downs, and a year later Cook's fourth son and fifth child, George, was born, to die, like- his immediate predecessor, the unlucky navigator's offspring, Joseph, in the year of his nativity. Cook's youngest son and sixth child, Hugh, was born in the very year his. . father set forth from Plymouth Sound on his third l fatal voyage. Cook kit Plymouth on July 11, 1776, having already buried three children, for little Elizabeth died in 1771, before her father's return from his first great voya.ge. Hugh, the youngest of his three'surviving boys, was sent to Cambridge, where he entered at Christ's College in July, 1793, going into residence in October. Two months later he was attacked by soarlet fever, and died on December 21 in his eighteenth year. A portrait of this unfortunate youth, in the possession of Canon Bennett shows, says Sir Walter Besant, a face of very remarkable beauty and delicacy, with none of ""the severity which belonged .to that of his father.

Five weeks after Hugh's death Mrs Oook received news of the death of her eldest sen James, already referred to. This unfortunate officer never reached the iship to the command of which he had been appointed. Wttiaifc happened will never now be known. Hie body, with a wound on the head and stripped of all his money and valuables, was found on ihe beach at the back of the Isle of Wight; the boat was also found broken up, but no trace 'of any of the crew was discovered. Perhaps they were drowned; or,' perhaps, they murdered the captain, made for the island, laid his body on the beach, broke up the boat, and dispersed.

The body of James Cook, the younger, was brought over to Portsmouth and taken to Cambridge, where it was laid in the same grave with the remains of his brother Hugh. Overwhelmed by this final blow, the unhappy widow of Captain Cook (himself murdered at Haw-aii on February 14, 1779) was prostrated with an illness of mind and body which kept her to her house for two years. When she recovered she asked her cousin, Admiral Isaac Smith (the first man to land on. Australia’s eastern coast), who was an unmarried man, to reside with her. They took a house together at CHapham, where she continued to°live until her death, in 1835, being then 93 years of age. By her own request she was buried with her two sons in the centre aisle of St. Andrew’s Church, Cambridge. AM of Cook’s children were cut off in youth or in infancy, and no descendant'now survives of England’s greatest navigator. ,