By a very strange coincidence, three different James Cooks were employed by the Royal Navy on the North America Station in the early 1760s.  All of them were masters at some point and all carried out surveys and drew charts.  Two of them, including the famous Cook, may have even met in St. John’s Harbour, Newfoundland in October 1762.

James Cook #1 is the famous Captain Cook.  From 1759 until 1762, Cook #1 was master of HMS Northumberland, the flagship of Alexander, Lord Colvill, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  During this time Cook surveyed Halifax Harbour and produced sailing instructions for the Nova Scotian coast thereabout.  The French attacked Newfoundland in 1762 and Cook was part of the force that went to recapture the island.  From then until 1767, Cook #1 was occupied in surveying Newfoundland.

James Cook #2 was commissioned as a lieutenant in 1760.  He had been master of HMS Mercury but he was now posted to HMS Gosport, one of the other ships based in Halifax under Lord Colvill.  After the fall of St. John’s, Captain John Jervis brought the Gosport into the harbour and Cook #2 is recorded as having brought communications across to the Northumberland where Cook #1 was master.  Cook #2 then moved to the West Indies where he took part in actions to carry dispatches across the Yucatan peninsula, which formed the basis of a small book (Remarks on a Passage from the River Balise, in the Bay of Honduras, to Merida; The Capital of the Province of Jucatan in the Spanish West Indies.  London, 1769).  During the 1770s, he was back in Britain where he produced a chart of Fowey Harbour in Cornwall, published in 1779.  He disappeared from the Navy lists in 1800.

James Cook #3 is known from three charts published in London in 1766 by Emmanuel Bowen.  He arrived at Halifax in October 1762 as master of HMS Mars, just weeks after the other two Cooks had left that port.  He was based there until April 1763 and used the time to survey Halifax Harbour.  On his return to Britain, Cook #3 transferred to the Alarm and sailed to Jamaica.  In 1764, he was at Port Royal, South Carolina, which he also surveyed.  However, in August 1765, he was court-martialled for disobedience (apparently taking too much effort and time on surveying) and was dismissed in January 1766.  Cook #3 returned to America where he had acquired land.  He became a land surveyor and several of his plans of the Carolinas and Florida remain.  Cook #3, however, disappears from the record in 1776.

John Robson

For further reading see:
Black, Jeannette D.  "Two many Cooks", in The Map Collector, 1986, no.34, pp.10-15.
 

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 36, volume 27, number 3 (2046).