Well, Captain Cook is pretty interesting too, and his death is a nice entree into one of the great historian feuds of recent times. God, I love historian feuds! INTRO So Captain Cook was born in 1728. He was a sailor and eventually a British naval officer who saw action in the Seven Years' War, which you will no doubt remember from last week. But he's best known for his three voyages of exploration and scientific discovery that took place in the Pacific Ocean. The first was between 1768 and 1771, the second between 1772 and 1775, and the third between 1776 and 1780, although on the last one, Cook's journey ended in 1779 because he died. And as you can see from the map, Cook pretty much owned the Pacific.