Elizabeth Cook's loss & legacy

On the life of Elizabeth Cook, wife of famed explorer Captain James Cook, after his death in Hawaii in 1779:

'More tragedy followed: she was to see all her surviving sons die in succession. Nathaniel was lost at sea aged sixteen in 1780. Her youngest, Hugh, destined for the church, caught scarlet fever at Cambridge University and died in 1793 aged seventeen. James, her eldest, drowned aged thirty-one in 1794. His boat overturned as he was returning to his ship. He had been advised to wait for calmer weather but the achievements of his father put pressure on him to act boldly. At this point, Elizabeth burned all Cook's letters. Some thought it was because nothing else could efface painful memories. Yet perhaps she was determined to keep something of her husband to herself; she had already lost so much to public service. 

Elizabeth went to live in Clapham, sharing a house with her cousin, Admiral Isaac Smith, who had sailed with Cook on his first voyage. The admiral retired from the navy in his fifties, having contracted hepatitis in the East Indies. Later he inherited property in Merton [Merton Abbey], after which the two of them spent winters in Clapham and summers in Merton. Elizabeth lived in an age when the tittle-tattle of provincial ladies could break a reputation. She guarded her respectability. Every Thursday at 3 p.m. she held a sedate dinner party for her friends; she fasted on the anniversaries of the deaths of her husband and three sons, spending these days meditating and reading the Bible. She lived to be ninety-three and always wore mourning and the ring with her husband's hair in it. She treasured the coffin-shaped memento containing locks of his hair that the crew of his final voyage had made for her. She hoarded the curiosities that Cook had brought home, but in old age gave many items away as marks of esteem. Her physician of later years received the superior edition of Cook's second voyage awarded her by the Admiralty.

To the end, she guarded her husband's reputation. When pressed to comment on reports of him being severe and reserved, she always emphasized his benign qualities as a husband and father. In accordance with her wishes, she was buried in Great St Andrews, Cambridge, near two of her sons. In an eleven-page will, she bequeathed £60,000 to relations, friends and charities. Cook's gold Copley medal went to the British Museum. She left money to the Royal Maternity Charity; she knew about childbirth in difficult circumstances. In some ways, her life was typical of women who married sailors - seeing her husband at rare intervals, having (and burying) children in his absence, and outliving him after his sudden death in service. In other respects, she is highly unusual a diffident public figure who became wealthy, pensioned and a resource for folk who wanted to know about Cook'.

- Margarette Lincoln, Trading in War: London's Maritime World in the Age of Cook & Nelson, New Haven Conn., 2018, p.132-3.

See also:

History: A cure for scurvy, 16 June 2013

History: The tyranny of distance, 1 February 2011

History: Nauticalia in Plymouth, 12 April 2007