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James Cook



There were two more continents to be discovered - Australia and The Antarctic.

The last of the big discoverers is the British map-maker and sailor Sir James Cook (1728-1799), the first from the Old World to go to Australia, New Zealand and the Hawaiian islands. He was a middle-class man from England who took part in the Seven-year war and the siege of Quebec. He had a lot of experience before he dedicated 11 years of his life to exploring the Pacific. He made 3 big journeys. For navigation, Cook excessively used the sextant, and made very accurate maps. The famous astronomer Charles Green helped him with the longitude measurements. Cook took in his crew scientists like botanists (on the first voyage as many as 3000 plant species were studied), even painters who returned with a lot of evidence from these unexplored parts of the planet.