The Cook Foundation

The Cook Foundation was founded by two of the legendary sea Captain’s descendants, Phillip Edward Johnson and Daisy Joel to further study the life, line and legacy.

“Cook,” says Johnson, “didn’t just discover Australia; rather he altered our very notions of time, space and reality. His frustration with the classic forms of geographical representation, as well as the wider lacks of scientific thought, is well documented. This essential doubt is part of a strong tradition, and one that has been carried over through the generations.”


Gabriel Ewart Cook

When Gabriel Ewart Cook was asked to speak at the opening of the Greenwich Observatory’s Greenwich Meridian Line regarding his grandfather’s achievements, he made an unexpectedly damning speech, condemning the line as a falsity, claiming that a new “real” meridian would be discovered “A true definition of all beginnings and all endings as dictated by the science of our very human souls.”


A length of copper, once belonging to Gabriel Ewart Cook, is now in the possession of the Foundation. He kept the length of copper, which is the same dimensions of that which denotes the prime meridian at Greenwich, in the hope that some day the new meridian would be discovered, and he would be able to put this in place.

Maps in the possession of the Foundation are marked as “The Island of the New Meridian.” Though these maps are from the family archives, kept in sea chests under the Captains lock and key, it is uncertain whether it was he or one of his ship mates that made these maps. Though they bear some of Cook’s markings, the territories marked out do not seem to relate to any geographical area on the surface of the Earth.

Our team of researchers have been looking into the link between Cook’s Island and his grandson’s New Meridian. It seems almost implausible that Gabriel Ewart could have latched onto the idea of the new meridian without prior knowledge of the maps, which suggests that some of his apparently bizarre theories could have been taken from the Captain himself. It is possible that at the height of some psychological malady or fever upon the high seas, Cook noted down his stipulations as to the location of a new Meridian, and that his skills as cartographer helped him to come to an understanding of his delusion. Dr. Frances Dmitri of Nottingham University is certain that for Cook, map-making represented a way of interpreting the world around him and that if he found himself mentally lost, he would certainly attempt to make sense of things through cartography. The recently unearthed maps are thought to have been produced under this mind state, but we can not be certain how they relate to Gabriel Ewart Cook’s insistence.