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HMS 'Resolution' and 'Adventure' with Fishing Craft in Matavai Bay
(National Maritime Museum, London, Ministry of Defence Art Collection)
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Explorers in the second half of the seventeen hundreds were going south to the mystery continent we call Australia. The continent was unexplored by its existence was known and by the time the British arrived the Dutch had long called it New Holland. But the coast was virtually uncharted.

In 1768 James Cook was given command of the Endeavour to sail with members of the Royal Society to the Pacific - officially to observe the planet Venus. He had secret orders to look for the southern continent, Australia. The voyage was gale ridden in the Pacific; in Tahiti, many in his ship suffered from venereal disease, a few junior officers tried to desert.

Eventually, on 7 October, 1769, the Endeavour sighted the eastern seaboard of New Zealand. They spent six months surveying the coast and then headed east, mainly because Endeavour was in no state to tackle Cape Horn. This is how on All Fools day 1770 they sighted what we call New South Wales. Cook at first called the landing place Stingray Bay after the marine life. But when he was told about the abundant flora, he re-named it, Botany Bay.

The Endeavour returned to England in 1771 with 38 fewer hands than the 94 she'd sailed with. Cook's second voyage, in Resolution, took him further south into the Antarctic than any navigator had gone. Another three year voyage. His third voyage, in Discovery, with William Bligh as his sailing master, was to be his last. He died in the Pacific Islands, at the hands of islanders.

James Cook
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James Cook 1728-1779

Cook was born in Yorkshire into an agriculture labouring family. As a sailing apprentice on the coastal and Baltic trade, Cook learned his seamanship and pilotage and the sailing and sea keeping of Whitby colliers - vessels that would eventually take him to Australia. In 1755 he joined the Navy and within four years became a sailing master and then for almost a decade charted Newfoundland and St Lawrence Seaway waters. In 1768, he made the first of his three great voyages into the Pacific. He was apparently murdered on 14 February 1779 ashore at Karakakao Bay, Hawaii.

That early navigators found their ways home by measuring the altitude, the angle, of the Pole Star when they left, say, Plymouth and then to return, sailed north or south until the Pole Star was the same altitude and then followed whatever latitude they were in until they reached their home port. It was not until the late 18th century that long voyages could be attempted with any certainty. John Hadley in England and Thomas Godfrey in Philadelphia coincidentally produced octants, the forerunner of the sextant. The sextant and the chronometer were the essential instruments of navigation until the late 20th century.

Events of this episode took place in Australasia region. We're interested to hear your comments on the influence of Empire on this region:

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Excerpt from James Cook's secret orders to sail south

"Whereas there is reason to believe that a Continent or Land of great extent may be found to the Southward of the tract lately made by Captain Wallis in His Majesty's Ship the Dolphin, you are to proceed to the southward in order to make discovery of the continent above mentioned until you arrive at the latitude of forty degrees, unless you sooner fall in with it. But not having discovered it or any evident signs of it in that run, you are to proceed in search of it to the westward between the latitude before mentioned and the latitude of thirty five degrees until you discover it, or fall in with the eastern side of the land discovered by Tasman and now called New Zealand."

From James Cook's journal, 29 April 1770

James Cook describes his first encounter with Aboriginals in Botany Bay

"As we approached the shore they all made off except two men who seemed resolved to oppose our landing. I ordered the boats to lay upon their oars in order to speak to them but this was to little purpose. I thought they beckoned us to come ashore, but in this we were mistaken, for as soon as we put the boat in, they came to oppose us, upon which I fired a musket between the two which had no other effect than to make them retire back where bundles of their darts lay, and one of them took up a stone and threw at us which caused my firing a second musket. Some of the shot struck the man yet it had no other effect than to make him lay hold of a shield to defend himself."