James Cook

James Cook joined the merchant navy as a teenager, then enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1755, seeing combat in the Seven Years' War and earning notice for his survey work along the St. Lawrence River and Newfoundland's coast. His mapping skill and astronomical observations caught the eye of the Admiralty and Royal Society at the exact moment Britain was pushing into the Pacific, landing him command of HMS Endeavour in 1768 for the first of three voyages that would carry him tens of thousands of miles across uncharted ocean. Over the next decade he mapped coastlines and islands — Easter Island, A…