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The 'First voyage of James Cook' was the initial voyage of James Cook. He was hired by the Royal Society to observe the transit of Venus in Tahiti. It took place between 1768 and 1771, during which time he had sailed around the world, charted much of the New Zealand coastline, and discovered the eastern coast of Australia.

Contents

Background

Tahiti

New Zealand

Australian coast

Botany Bay

Endeavour River

Possession Island

Voyage home

Notes

External links

Background

In 1766, the Royal Society hired Cook to travel to the Pacific Ocean to observe and record the transit of Venus across the Sun. Cook was commissioned as a Lieutenant and given command of HM Bark ''Endeavour'', a Whitby collier vessel of the type he had begun his career with, and ideal in terms of storage capacity, strength and the shallow draught which were essential for extended voyages in reef-strewn oceans and archipelagos.^[1]

Tahiti

He sailed from England in 1768, rounded Cape Horn and continued westward across the Pacific to arrive at Tahiti on April 13 1769, where the observations were to be made. The transit was scheduled to occur on June 3, and in the meantime he commissioned the building of a small fort and observatory at what is now known as Point Venus.
The astronomer appointed to the task was Charles Green, assistant to the recently-appointed Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne. The primary purpose of the observation was to obtain measurements that could be used to calculate more accurately the distance of Venus from the Sun. If this could be achieved, then the distances of the other planets could be worked out, based on their orbits. On the day of the transit observation, Cook recorded:

''"Saturday 3 ^rd This day prov'd as favourable to our purpose as we could wish, not a Clowd was to be seen the Whole day and the Air was perfectly clear, so that we had every advantage we could desire in Observing the whole of the passage of the Planet Venus over the Suns disk: we very distinctly saw an Atmosphere or dusky shade round the body of the Planet which very much disturbed the times of the contacts particularly the two internal ones. D ^r Solander observed as well as M ^r Green and my self, and we differ'd from one another in observeing the times of the Contacts much more than could be expected..."''

Disappointingly, the separate measurements of Green, Cook and Solander varied by more than the anticipated margin of error. Their instrumentation was adequate by the standards of the time, but the resolution still could not eliminate the errors. When their results were later compared to those of the other observations of the same event made elsewhere for the exercise, the net result was not as conclusive or accurate as had been hoped.

New Zealand

Once the observations were completed, Cook opened the sealed orders for the second part of his voyage: to search the south Pacific for signs of the postulated rich southern continent of ''Terra Australis'', acting on additional instructions from the Admiralty.^[2] The Royal Society, and especially Alexander Dalrymple, believed that it must exist and that Britain's best chance of discovering it and claiming its fabled riches before any other rival European power managed to do so would be by using Cook's Transit of Venus mission (on an inconspicuous small ship such as the Endeavour) as a cover.
Cook, however, had his own personal doubts on the continent's existence. With the help of a Tahitian named Tupaia, who had extensive knowledge of Pacific geography, Cook managed to reach New Zealand on 6 October 1769, leading only the second group of Europeans to do so (after Abel Tasman over a century earlier, in 1642). Cook mapped the complete New Zealand coastline, making only some minor errors (such as calling Banks Peninsula an island, and thinking Stewart Island/Rakiura was part of the South Island). He also identified Cook Strait, which separates the North Island from the South Island, and which Tasman had not seen.

Australian coast

He then set course westwards, intending to strike for Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania, sighted by Tasman) in order to establish whether or not it formed part of the fabled southern continent. However, they were forced to maintain a more northerly course owing to prevailing gales, and sailed onwards until one afternoon when land was sighted, which Cook named Point Hicks. Cook calculated that Van Diemen's Land ought to lie due south of their position, but having found the coastline trending to the southwest, recorded his doubt that this landmass was connected to it. This point was on the southeastern coast of the Australian continent, and in doing so his expedition became the first recorded Europeans to have encountered its eastern coastline. In his journal, Cook recorded the event thus:

''"the Southermost Point of land we had in sight which bore from us W1/4S I judged to lay in the Latitude of 38°..0' S° and in the Longitude of 211°..07' W ^t from the Meridion of Greenwich. I have named it Point Hicks, because Leuit ^t Hicks was the first who discover'd this land".''

The ship's log recorded that land was sighted at 6 a.m. on Thursday 19 April 1770. Cook's log used the nautical date, which, during the 18th century, assigned the same date to all ship's events from noon to noon, first p.m. and then a.m. That nautical date began twelve hours before the midnight beginning of the like-named civil date. Furthermore, Cook did not adjust his nautical date to account for circumnavigation of the globe until he had traveled a full 360° relative to the longitude of his home British port, either toward the east or west. Because he traveled west on his first voyage, this a.m. nautical date was the morning of a civil date 14 hours slow relative to his home port (port−14h). Because the southeast coast of Australia is now regarded as being 10 hours fast relative to Britain, that date is now called Friday, April 20.^[3]
The landmark of this sighting is generally reckoned to be a point lying about half-way between the present-day towns of Orbost and Mallacoota on the southeastern coast of the state of Victoria. A survey done in 1843 ignored or overlooked Cook's earlier naming of the point, giving it the name Cape Everard. On the 200th anniversary of the sighting, the name was officially changed back to Point Hicks.

Botany Bay

''Endeavour'' continued northwards along the coastline, keeping the land in sight with Cook charting and naming landmarks as he went. A little over a week later, they came across an extensive but shallow inlet, and upon entering it moored off a low headland fronted by sand dunes. It was here, on April 29, that Cook and crew made their first landfall on the continent, at a place now known as Kurnell. This date does not need adjustment because it occurred during the afternoon (p.m.) on April 29 in the ship's log, but was the afternoon of the civil date of April 28 14 hours west of port, which is now a civil date 10 hours east of port, 24 hours later, hence a modern civil date of April 29. At first Cook bestowed the name ''Stingaree'' (Stingray) ''Bay'' to the inlet after the many such creatures found there; this was later changed to ''Botanist Bay'' and finally ''Botany Bay'' after the unique specimens retrieved by the botanists Joseph Banks, Daniel Solander and Herman Spöring.

This first landing site was later to be promoted (particularly by Joseph Banks) as a suitable candidate for situating a settlement and British colonial outpost. However, almost 18 years later, when Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet arrived in early 1788 to establish an outpost and penal colony, they found that the bay and surrounds did not live up to the promising picture that had been painted. Instead, Phillip gave orders to relocate to a harbour a few kilometres to the north, which Cook had named Port Jackson but had not further explored. It was in this harbour, at a place Phillip named Sydney Cove, that the settlement of Sydney was established. The settlement was for some time afterwards still referred to generally as Botany Bay. The expedition's scientific members commenced the first European scientific documentation of Australian fauna and flora.
At Cook's original landing contact was made with the local Australian Aboriginal inhabitants. As the ships sailed into the harbour, they noticed Aborigines on both of the headlands. At about 2 pm they put the anchor down near a group of six to eight huts. Two Aborigines, a younger and an older man, came down to the boat. They ignored gifts from Cook. A musket was fired over their heads, which wounded the older man slightly, and he ran towards the huts. He came back with other men and threw spears at Cook's men, although they did no harm. They were chased off after two more rounds were fired. The adults had left, but Cook found several Aboriginal children in the huts, and left some beads with them as a gesture of friendship.

Endeavour River

Cook continued northwards, charting along the coastline. A mishap occurred when ''Endeavour'' ran aground on a shoal of the Great Barrier Reef, on June 11 1770. The ship was seriously damaged and his voyage was delayed almost seven weeks while repairs were carried out on the beach (near the docks of modern Cooktown, at the mouth of the Endeavour River). While there, Joseph Banks, Herman Spöring and Daniel Solander made their first major collections of Australian flora. The crew's encounters with the local Aboriginal people were mainly peaceable; from the group encountered here the name "kangaroo" entered the English language, coming from the local Guugu Yimidhirr word for a kind of Grey Kangaroo, ''gangurru'' (IPA: ).

Possession Island

Once repairs were complete the voyage continued, eventually passing by the northern-most point of Cape York Peninsula and then sailing through Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, earlier navigated by Luis Vaez de Torres in 1606. Having rounded the Cape, Cook landed on Possession Island on 22 August, where he claimed the entire coastline he had just explored (later naming the region New South Wales) for the British Crown.
At that point in the voyage, Cook had lost not a single man to scurvy, a remarkable and practically unheard-of achievement in 18th century long-distance sea-faring. Adhering to Royal Navy policy introduced in 1747, Cook persuaded his men to eat foods such as citrus fruits and sauerkraut. At that time it was known that poor diet caused scurvy but not specifically that a vitamin C deficiency was the culprit.
The means by which he persuaded his crew, described here, are illustrative of Cook's leadership qualities.
In negotiating the Torres Straight out of Cape York, Cook also put an end to the speculation that New Holland and New Guinea were part of the same land mass.^[4] The ''Endeavour'' then visited the island of Savu, staying for three days before continuing on to Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies, to put in for repairs. Batavia was known for its outbreaks of malaria, and before they returned home in 1771, many in Cook's crew succumbed to the disease and other ailments such as dysentery, including the Tahitian Tupaia, Banks' Finnish secretary and fellow scientist Herman Spöring, astronomer Charles Green, and the illustrator Sydney Parkinson. Cook named Spöring Island off the coast of New Zealand to honour Herman Spöring and his work on the voyage.

Voyage home

Cook then rounded the Cape of Good Hope and stopped at Saint Helena. On 10th June 1771 Nicholas Young, the boy who had first seen New Zealand, sighted England (specifically the Lizard) again for the first time, and the Endeavour sailed up the English Channel, passing Beachy Head at 6am on the 12th and on the afternoon of the 12th, anchoring in the Downs, Cook went ashore at Deal, Kent.
The ''Endeavour'', his ship on this first voyage, later lent its name to the Space Shuttle ''Endeavour'', as well as the Endeavour River.

Notes

1. G. Williams (2002)
2. Secret Instructions to Captain Cook, 30 June 1768
3. Aurthur R. Hinks, "Nautical time and civil date", ''The Geographical Journal'', '86' (1935) 153-157.
4. G. Williams (2002)

External links

★ ''The Endeavour'' journal (1) and ''The Endeavour'' journal (2), as kept by James Cook - digitised and held by the National Library of Australia

★ Voyages of Captain Cook, 1st voyage

★ James Cook, Voyage of the Endeavor, 1768-1771

★ The South Seas Project: maps and online editions of the Journals of James Cook's First Pacific Voyage. 1768-1771, Includes full text of journals kept by Cook, Joseph Banks and Sydney Parkinson, as well as the complete text of John Hawkesworth's 1773 Account of Cook's first voyage.

★ The Endeavour Replica A replica of Captain Cook's vessel.