James Cook Trivia
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59 free James Cook trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This James Cook trivia quiz covers the farm labourer's son who became the greatest navigator of the eighteenth century. The easy questions cover the basics: the ship of his first voyage, the country whose east coast he charted, the bay where he first landed in Australia, the islands where he died and the animal he saw at the Endeavour River. From there it moves through his apprenticeship on Whitby colliers, the charts of the St Lawrence that helped Wolfe take Quebec, the exploded powder horn, the transit of Venus, the surfing Tahitians, Tupaia the priest, the reef that nearly sank the Endeavour and the deaths at Batavia. The harder end covers the second voyage: the Resolution and Adventure, melting icebergs for water, the first crossing of the Antarctic Circle, the pufferfish liver, the dog made into soup, the ten men of the Adventure eaten in Queen Charlotte Sound, the K1 chronometer and the Copley Medal for beating scurvy. Then the third: Kerguelen's message in a bottle, the goat on Mo'orea, the Sandwich Islands, Nootka Sound, the ice at 70 degrees north, the god Lono, the stolen cutter, the attempt to kidnap a king and the scar that identified his hands. Every answer was checked against Cook's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Australia and Ferdinand Magellan quizzes are natural companions.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The cottage of Cook's parents was shipped from England in 1934 and rebuilt in which Australian city?
Melbourne
Melbourne. A local businessman bought the cottage for the city's centenary, and every brick was numbered and packed into cases and barrels, along with cuttings of the ivy from its walls.
Q 02In which county was James Cook born in 1728?
Yorkshire
Yorkshire. His father, a Scottish farm labourer, worked his way up to farm foreman at Great Ayton, where the boy had a few years at the village school before joining him in the fields.
Q 03Before he went to sea, the teenage Cook was apprenticed in Staithes to which trade?
Grocer and haberdasher
Grocer and haberdasher. He lasted about eighteen months behind the counter before his employer helped him swap the shop for an apprenticeship with a Whitby shipowner.
Q 04Cook's diary boast of going 'farther than any other man has been before me' resembles the opening of which TV series?
Star Trek
Star Trek. Cook wrote the line in 1774, after pack ice had stopped him farther south than any ship had sailed, nearly two centuries before the Enterprise set out 'where no man has gone before'.
Q 05What did Cook turn down in 1755 to join the Navy as an able seaman?
Command of the collier Friendship
Command of the collier Friendship. Starting again at the bottom paid off fast: within weeks the Navy had made him a master's mate, and two years later he qualified as a ship's master.
Q 06Cook's charts of the St Lawrence helped which general mount his night attack on Quebec in 1759?
James Wolfe
James Wolfe put his army ashore above the city in the dark and won on the Plains of Abraham, but he was shot as the French line broke and died on the field.
Q 07Which coast did Cook spend five seasons charting in the 1760s, before his Pacific voyages?
Newfoundland
Newfoundland. His charts set a new standard and stayed in use for about a century, and the skill they showed brought him to the Admiralty's notice just as it needed a commander for the Pacific.
Q 08How did Cook badly injure his right hand in August 1764?
A powder horn exploded
A powder horn exploded in his hand, leaving a deep scar between thumb and fingers. Fifteen years later that scar let his crew recognise his remains.
Q 09Which astronomical event did Cook observe on the 1766 Grenville survey, drawing the Royal Society's attention?
A solar eclipse
A solar eclipse. An astronomer set Cook's timings against the same eclipse watched from Oxford to work out his longitude, and the result was printed by the Royal Society.
Q 10What was the publicly stated goal of Cook's first voyage?
To observe a transit of Venus
To observe a transit of Venus from Tahiti, so astronomers could work out the distance to the Sun. Secret orders then sent Cook south to look for an unknown continent.
Q 11What was HMS Endeavour called before the Navy bought and renamed her?
Earl of Pembroke
Earl of Pembroke. She was a plain Whitby coal ship, picked for her big hold and a flat, sturdy hull that could take the ground, which is what saved her crew when she struck a reef.
Q 12Though remembered as Captain Cook, what rank did Cook hold when he sailed the Endeavour to the Pacific?
Lieutenant
Lieutenant. He was a warrant officer until the spring he sailed and was hurriedly commissioned for the voyage; he was made a captain only after his second Pacific voyage.
Q 13Which wealthy young naturalist sailed on the Endeavour, paying for seven others to join him?
Joseph Banks
Q 21What did Cook's crew throw overboard to float the Endeavour off the Great Barrier Reef?
Her cannons
Her cannons: six went over the side with the ballast, and she floated off about a day later, leaking badly. The crew slowed the leak by hauling a sail packed with oakum and wool under the hull.
Q 22Which animal did Cook see for the first time while the ship was being repaired at the Endeavour River?
A kangaroo
A kangaroo. The crew wrote down a local name for it, probably the Guugu Yimithirr word for one large kind, and it has been the English word for the animal ever since.
Q 23At which Dutch port did the Endeavour stop for repairs in October 1770, sparking a deadly outbreak?
Batavia
Joseph Banks went on to lead the Royal Society, and it was his advice to Parliament that sent Britain's first convict fleet to the coast he had explored with Cook.
Q 14Which pastime did the Endeavour's naturalist watch Tahitians enjoy in May 1769, leaving an early European description of it?
Surfing
Surfing. He stood for half an hour watching ten or twelve islanders ride the breakers on the stern of an old canoe, in a sea where he thought no European boat could have landed.
Q 15Which Polynesian priest joined the Endeavour in 1769 and enabled Cook to talk with the Māori?
Tupaia
Tupaia found that the Māori understood his own language, so he spoke for Cook all around New Zealand. He fell ill on the way home and died before he could see England.
Q 16What did Cook leave on the Hawaiian island of Niʻihau in 1778, as he did on many Pacific islands?
A breeding pair of pigs
A breeding pair of pigs. Cook's ships carried livestock and garden seeds to hand out along the way, in the hope that islanders would raise new herds and crops from them.
Q 17Where in New Zealand did Cook first land in October 1769?
Poverty Bay
Poverty Bay. Cook chose the name as he sailed out because the place 'afforded us no one thing we wanted': clashes in which several Māori were shot had ended any hope of trade.
Q 18Cook's 1769 landing in New Zealand was the first known European visit since which Dutch navigator sighted it in 1642?
Abel Tasman
Abel Tasman never set foot ashore and saw only the west coast. Cook sailed right round, found the strait that splits the country into two main islands, and mapped almost all of it.
Q 19Which headland, named for the officer who spotted it, was the Endeavour's first sight of Australia in 1770?
Point Hicks
Point Hicks honours Zachary Hicks, the officer who was first to see the land. He never told the story at home: he died of consumption on the voyage back to England.
Q 20Where did Cook make his first landfall on the Australian continent, on 29 April 1770?
Botany Bay
Botany Bay. Cook first named it for the stingrays his men caught, then changed his mind when the ship's naturalists came back loaded with plants new to science.
Batavia, now Jakarta. Cook's crew sailed in healthy after two years at sea, and fever and dysentery picked up in the port went on to kill about thirty of them.
Q 24Which food did Cook coax his reluctant crew into eating on the Endeavour?
Sauerkraut
Sauerkraut. The men refused it until Cook had it served daily at the officers' table and let the crew help themselves; within a week it was so popular that he had to ration it.
Q 25Which island did Cook visit in 1774, half a century after a Dutch captain named it for the feast he arrived on?
Easter Island
Easter Island. Cook picked out its giant statues by telescope before he anchored, but the water was bad and food scarce, so he sailed on within days.
Q 26Why did the first voyage's naturalist withdraw from Cook's second?
A row over changes to the ship
A row over changes to the ship: the extra deck and cabin built for his party made her top-heavy, the dockyard cut them away again, and he quit rather than accept less room.
Q 27Which Pacific island group did Cook name the Friendly Islands?
Tonga
Tonga. When Cook first landed there, a cheering crowd met his boats without a weapon among them, and people threw bales of cloth aboard without waiting for anything in return.
Q 28In January 1773 Cook's crews became the first recorded Europeans to cross what?
The Antarctic Circle
The Antarctic Circle. Pack ice turned the ships back that same evening, and in three voyages Cook never once set eyes on the continent that lay beyond it.
Q 29Which sealer beat Cook's farthest south in 1823, in the sea now named after him?
Weddell
James Weddell, hunting for seals in an unusually mild season, sailed three degrees past Cook's 71°10′S. Cook had turned back at solid pack ice, judging any attempt to go farther rash.
Q 30What did the Forsters sacrifice to make soup for the bedridden Cook in February 1774?
Their pet dog
Their pet dog. With no other fresh meat aboard it went into the pot, and Cook wrote that he drew strength from food 'which would have made most people in Europe sick'.