Captain James Cook (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was the British explorer, navigator, and captain in the Royal Navy who named the Hawaiian Islands the Sandwich Islands. Cook made detailed maps of places he visited including three voyages to the Pacific Ocean. He achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.It was on his last trip (1776 - 1779) while Cook was in command of HMS Resolution that he came to that island chain. The voyage was ostensibly planned to return to Tahiti. Additionally, the trip's principal goal was to also locate a Northwest Passage around the American continent. After stopping at Tahiti, Cook traveled north and in 1778 became the first European to begin formal contact with the Hawaiian Islands. After his initial landfall in January 1778 at Waimea harbour, Kauai, Cook named the archipelago the "Sandwich Islands" after the fourth Earl of Sandwich—the acting First Lord of the Admiralty.It was also in the Hawaiian Islands that Cook met his death in 1779 at the hands of local natives. About 1840 these islands began to be called the Hawaiian Islands.

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