The first Pacific voyage

Cook's first voyage (1768-71) was a collaborative venture under the auspices of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. The original intention was to organise a scientific voyage to observe the transit of the planet Venus from Tahiti, and this was supplemented by instructions to search for the great southern continent, Terra Australis Incognita, whose location had intrigued and baffled European navigators and projectors since the 16th century.

Captain Cook's voyage around New Zealand and the east coast of Australia © With Lieutenant Cook (as he was at that time) sailed the botanist Joseph Banks, the astronomer Charles Green, and a small retinue of scientific assistants and artists. Cook's ship, the Endeavour, was a bluff-bowed Whitby collier chosen for her strength, shallow draught, and storage capacity. Although the ship was to change, the type did not; the Resolution of the second and third voyages was of the same build, and even came from the same shipyard as the Endeavour, to whose qualities, wrote Cook, 'those on board owe their Preservation. Hence I was enabled to prosecute Discoveries in those Seas so much longer than any other Man ever did or could do.'

Cook sailed first to Tahiti to carry out those astronomical observations that were the initial reason for the voyage, before turning south where, his instructions told him, 'there is reason to imagine that a Continent or Land of great extent, may be found.' After reaching latitude 40°S, without sight of land, he sailed west to New Zealand, whose coasts he charted in a little over six months to show that they were not part of a southern continent.

From there Cook pointed the Endeavour towards the unexplored eastern parts of New Holland (the name given by the Dutch to Australia in the 17th century). Cook sailed north along the shores of present-day New South Wales and Queensland, charting as he went. After a hair-raising escape from the dangers of the Great Barrier Reef he reached the northern tip of Australia at Cape York, where he annexed the east coast on the grounds that it was terra nullius, no person's land.

He then sailed through the Torres Strait, so settling the dispute as to whether New Holland and New Guinea were joined. With only one ship Cook had put more than 5,000 miles of previously unknown coastline on the map. The twin islands of New Zealand, the east coast of Australia and the Torres Strait had at last emerged from the mists of uncertainty.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/captaincook_01.shtml

By Professor Glyn Williams
Last updated 2011-02-17

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