"No man ever did more to alter and correct the map of the earth," writes Percy Adams in his new introduction, than James Cook, the Scotch-born British naval commander who rose from humble beginnings to pilot three great eighteenth-century voyages of discovery in the then practically unchartered Pacific.
Captain James Cook, FRS, RN, was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer, ultimately rising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy. Cook was the first to map Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean during which he achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands as well as the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.
