James Cook

James Cook was a British Royal Navy officer and navigator who led three major voyages of exploration into the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779, producing some of the most accurate and influential charts of the era through his rigorous use of celestial navigation and, on later voyages, one of the first marine chronometers, which allowed unusually precise determination of longitude at sea. On his first voyage he circumnavigated and charted the coastline of New Zealand and became the first European to chart the eastern coast of Australia, claiming it for Britain, a claim that led directly to British colonization of the continent. His voyages also mapped much of the Pacific island world in far greater detail than before and included the first recorded European contact with the Hawaiian Islands, in 1778. He was killed in February 1779 in a violent confrontation with Native Hawaiians at Kealakekua Bay, during a dispute that escalated after his crew attempted to take a Hawaiian chief hostage over a stolen ship's boat. Cook's voyages are regarded among the most consequential in the history of European exploration of the Pacific, reshaping European geographic knowledge of the region while also opening the way for the colonization that followed.