Fun Facts about Captain Cook by Tica

Here are some other interesting facts you might not know about Captain James Cook and his explorations:

• There was a goat on board the Endeavour, that was a very experienced traveler, having already circumnavigated the globe once. The goat's job was to provide fresh milk for the crew.

• Cook's wife Elizabeth outlived not only her husband, but all of her six children.

• It took a year for news of James Cook's death to reach England. Marie Antoinette, then queen of France, was said to have wept upon hearing the news.

• By the time of his death in 1779, Cook had traveled to all the island chains in the South Pacific and had crossed both the Arctic and Antarctic Circles. He was the first person to sail across the Antarctic Circle.

• James Cook might have been the original inventor of "portable soup", vegetable soup that was boiled down and reduced to a powder that could be reconstituted aboard ship. He also invented "carrot marmalade", hoping that it would prevent scurvy. It did not.

• Cook had a number of junior officers who later became famous in their own right, including William Bligh, deposed captain of the HMS Bounty and a one time governor of New South Wales, and George Vancouver who sailed the Resolution to explore Puget Sound and the waters of the Pacific Northwest.

• "Have a Captain Cook." is an Australian slang term meaning "Have a look."

Sources: Tica's Research on Captain Cook. A bibliography is available if you need it.