60 free James Cook trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 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 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many voyages of exploration to the Pacific did James Cook lead?
Three
They ran from 1768 to 1779; he never lost a ship on any of them.
Q 02In which county was James Cook born in 1728?
Yorkshire
His father was a Scottish farm labourer; the village of Marton lay about eight miles from the sea.
Q 03To what trade was 16-year-old Cook first apprenticed, unsuccessfully, in Staithes?
Grocer and haberdasher
After 18 months he moved to Whitby and joined the Walker brothers' coal ships.
Q 04What was the name of the collier on which Cook served his first assignment as a merchant navy apprentice?
Freelove
He carried coal between the Tyne and London and studied navigation and astronomy on the side.
Q 05What did Cook decline in 1755 in order to join the Royal Navy as an able seaman?
Command of the collier Friendship
He enlisted at Wapping on 17 June 1755 as Britain armed for the Seven Years' War.
Q 06Cook's charts of the St Lawrence helped which general mount his night attack on Quebec in 1759?
James Wolfe
He had learned land-surveying from army officer Samuel Holland after the fall of Louisbourg.
Q 07Which coast did Cook spend five seasons charting in the 1760s aboard HMS Grenville?
Newfoundland
His charts were more accurate than those the Royal Navy made a century later.
Q 08How did Cook badly injure his right hand in August 1764?
A powder horn exploded
The scar later identified his remains in Hawaii.
Q 09Which astronomical event did Cook observe on the 1766 Grenville survey, drawing the Royal Society's attention?
A solar eclipse
Comparing his timings with Oxford's gave a longitude difference he used in his sailing directions.
Q 10What was the publicly stated goal of Cook's first voyage?
To observe the 1769 transit of Venus from Tahiti
Secret orders also told him to search for Terra Australis and claim lands for Britain.
Q 11What was HMS Endeavour called before the Navy bought and renamed her?
Earl of Pembroke
A Whitby collier, she had a big hold, a shallow draught and could be beached for repairs.
Q 12How old was Cook when he was chosen to command the Endeavour in May 1768?
39
He sat his lieutenant's exam the very next day; the rank was needed to command a ship with her armament.
Q 13Which wealthy 25-year-old naturalist sailed on the Endeavour, paying for seven others to join him?
Joseph Banks
He later became President of the Royal Society and promoted the Australian colony.
Q 21How long was the Endeavour stuck on the Great Barrier Reef in June 1770?
27 hours
Six cannons went overboard, and the crew fothered the leak with a sail before beaching her for seven weeks.
Q 22Which animal did Cook see for the first time while the ship was being repaired at the Endeavour River?
A kangaroo
One was killed and Banks documented the species; the local Guugu Yimithirr mostly kept away.
Q 23Where did Cook claim the whole surveyed east coast of Australia for Britain?
Possession Island
He then turned west through the Torres Strait.
Q 14What did Cook and his crew become the first Europeans to witness on Tahiti in May 1769?
Surfing
He also composed his first anthropological essay that voyage, on the Haush of Tierra del Fuego.
Q 15Which Tahitian priest joined the Endeavour and enabled Cook to talk with the Māori?
Tupaia
He also explained Polynesian navigation and helped Cook chart the South Pacific islands.
Q 16What did Cook leave on the Hawaiian island of Niʻihau in 1778, as he did on many islands?
A pair of pigs and pumpkin, melon and onion seeds
He planted gardens and left breeding livestock across the Pacific for islanders and future British visitors.
Q 17Where in New Zealand did Cook first land in October 1769?
Poverty Bay
The first two days' encounters with the Māori turned violent and several were shot dead.
Q 18What did Cook establish about New Zealand on his first voyage?
That a strait divided the North and South Islands
He circumnavigated both main islands and mapped almost the whole coastline.
Q 19Which headland on the Australian coast did the Endeavour sight on 19 April 1770?
Point Hicks
It was named for his second lieutenant, Zachary Hicks; the crew were the first Europeans on the east coast.
Q 20Where did Cook make his first landfall on the Australian continent, on 29 April 1770?
Botany Bay
Two Gweagal men opposed the landing and one was wounded with small shot; the crew stayed a week.
Q 24At which Dutch port did the Endeavour stop for repairs in October 1770, sparking a deadly outbreak?
Batavia
Seven died there and 23 more on the way home, mostly of dysentery and malaria.
Q 25How many crew did Cook lose to scurvy on his first circumnavigation?
None
He gave the crew wort and fresh food and made them wash and air their bedding; the Royal Society gave him the Copley Medal.
Q 26Which two ships did Cook take on his second voyage?
Resolution and Adventure
Tobias Furneaux commanded the Adventure; both were Whitby colliers like the Endeavour.
Q 27Why did the naturalist of the first voyage withdraw from the second?
His demands for ship modifications clashed with the Admiralty
He was replaced by the German naturalists Johann Reinhold Forster and his son Georg.
Q 28What experiment did Cook perform with icebergs in November 1772?
Melting blocks of ice into fresh drinking water
It proved a ship could resupply from sea ice.
Q 29On 17 January 1773 Cook's crews became the first recorded Europeans to cross what?
The Antarctic Circle
He came within 75 miles of Antarctica the next day without ever sighting it.
Q 30What was the most southerly latitude the Resolution reached, in January 1774?
71°10′S
Impenetrable pack ice stopped her; Cook wrote that no man in his situation would have thought of going further.