Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England Captain Cook, his Life, Voyages and Discoveries, by W.H.G. Kingston. ________________________________________________________________________ This book is not a series of fictitious adventures of the great Captain Cook, the eighteenth century navigator and explorer, but a straightforward statement of his life and achievements. It is therefore more of a biography than an adventure book for boys. However, the man was so great that his biography can indeed be read as a well-written book of adventures. ________________________________________________________________________ CAPTAIN COOK, HIS LIFE, VOYAGES AND DISCOVERIES, BY W.H.G. KINGSTON. CHAPTER ONE. CAPTAIN COOK--HIS LIFE, VOYAGES, AND DISCOVERIES. EARLY TRAINING. Among all those Englishmen who, from a humble origin, have risen to an honourable position, Captain James Cook is especially worthy of record. His parents were of the peasant class--his father having commenced life as a farm-labourer, and his mother being a cottager's daughter. Probably, however, they were both superior to others of the same station, as the husband, in process of time, became farm-bailiff to his employer--a Mr Thomas Skottowe. This was about the year 1730, and the farm of which he had the management was called Airy-Holme, near Ayton, in Yorkshire. Not far from this place, at the village of Marton, near Stockton-upon-Tees; his son James was born, on October 27, 1728. James was one of nine children, all of whom he survived, with the exception of a sister who married a fisherman at Redcar. The father of this family spent the latter years of his life with his daughter at Redcar, and was supposed to have been about eighty-five years old at the time of his death; so that he must have had the satisfaction of seeing his son rising in his profession, though probably he little thought of that son as establishing a fame which would be handed down in history.