James Cook's First Voyage (1768-1771) on HMS Endeavour

James Cook’s first voyage (1768–1771) was a British naval expedition aboard HMS Endeavour that observed the transit of Venus at Tahiti, mapped the coasts of New Zealand and charted the east coast of Australia. Sponsored by the Royal Society and the Admiralty, it combined astronomy, natural history and secret orders to search for a southern continent. The voyage made Cook famous, transformed European knowledge of the Pacific and opened the way to British colonisation of Australia and New Zealand, with lasting consequences for Māori and Aboriginal peoples.

Background and aims

The voyage began as a scientific mission. Astronomers had calculated that Venus would pass across the face of the Sun on 3 June 1769, and observations from widely separated places could help measure the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The Royal Society asked King George III for support, and the Admiralty agreed to provide a ship.

Tahiti, reached by Samuel Wallis in 1767, was chosen as the Pacific observation site. The Admiralty also gave Cook sealed secret instructions: after the transit he was to sail south in search of the supposed Terra Australis Incognita, a great southern continent, and then explore New Zealand, which Abel Tasman had partly charted in 1642.

James Cook, born in 1728 in Yorkshire, was a 39-year-old master who had learned seamanship in the North Sea coal trade and made his name surveying the St Lawrence River and Newfoundland. He was promoted to lieutenant to command the expedition.

The ship and the people aboard

The Endeavour was a former Whitby collier, the Earl of Pembroke, bought by the navy in 1768. Cook chose such ships because they were sturdy, roomy and could be beached for repairs. About 94 people sailed, including officers, seamen, marines and a civilian scientific party.

That party was led by Joseph Banks, a wealthy 25-year-old naturalist who paid for his own team: the Swedish botanist Daniel Solander, a pupil of Carl Linnaeus, the artists Sydney Parkinson and Alexander Buchan, the secretary Herman Spöring and several servants. The astronomer Charles Green was appointed by the Royal Society.

Tahiti and the transit of Venus

The Endeavour left Plymouth on 26 August 1768 and called at Madeira and Rio de Janeiro, where the Portuguese viceroy suspected the ship of smuggling and kept the crew under close watch. Rounding Cape Horn in January 1769, two of Banks’s servants died of exposure in a snowstorm in Tierra del Fuego.

The ship anchored in Matavai Bay, Tahiti, on 13 April 1769. Cook built a fortified camp on a point of land now called Point Venus and observed the transit of Venus on 3 June with Green and Solander. The timings were made less precise by an optical blurring known as the black drop effect, which made exact timing difficult.

Over three months the British made close contact with Tahitians. Banks recorded customs, language and religion in detail. When the Endeavour left in July 1769, it carried Tupaia, a priest and navigator from the neighbouring island of Ra’iātea, together with his young assistant Taiata.

New Zealand

Guided partly by Tupaia, Cook explored the Society Islands and then sailed south and west. On 6 October 1769 the ship’s boy Nicholas Young sighted the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island, and the point was named Young Nick’s Head.

The first landings at Tūranganui-a-Kiwa, which Cook named Poverty Bay, went badly. Misunderstandings and fear led the British to shoot and kill several Māori in the first days. Tupaia, whose language was related to Māori, became a vital interpreter for the rest of the visit.

Over the next six months Cook sailed right round both main islands, proving they were not part of a southern continent and passing through the strait that now bears his name. His chart, produced with remarkable accuracy, showed New Zealand’s general outline for the first time. At Mercury Bay the party observed a transit of Mercury, and Cook claimed possession of the land for Britain. These islands had been settled by Polynesian ancestors of the Māori centuries earlier, a story told in the Māori settlement of New Zealand.

The east coast of Australia

Leaving New Zealand at the end of March 1770, Cook sailed west and on 19 April sighted the south-east corner of the Australian mainland, naming it Point Hicks after the officer who saw it first. He then followed the coast northwards.

On 29 April 1770 the Endeavour anchored in a wide bay. Two Gweagal men opposed the landing party, and Cook fired small shot, wounding one. The bay was first named Stingray Bay, but the wealth of new plants collected by Banks and Solander led Cook to rename it Botany Bay.

Continuing north, the ship entered the waters inside the Great Barrier Reef. On the night of 10–11 June 1770 she struck a coral reef. The crew threw about 50 tonnes of guns, ballast and stores overboard and eventually floated the ship off. She was beached at the mouth of a river, later named the Endeavour River, at what is now Cooktown, Queensland.

The repairs took about seven weeks. During this time the British had extended contact with the Guugu Yimithirr people, including a dispute over turtles taken by the crew, in which Guugu Yimithirr men set fire to grass around the camp before the two sides were reconciled. Banks and Parkinson recorded the kangaroo, and the word “kangaroo” entered English from the local language.

After threading a dangerous passage through the reef, Cook reached the northern tip of the continent. On 22 August 1770, on an island he named Possession Island, he claimed the whole east coast for George III under the name New South Wales, without the consent of its Aboriginal owners.

Batavia and the return

Cook confirmed that a strait separated New Guinea from Australia, then sailed to Batavia (Jakarta), the main Dutch base in Asia, to repair the ship. Until then the voyage had been unusually healthy: Cook enforced cleanliness and fed his men sauerkraut, fresh food and greens, and no one died of scurvy.

Batavia changed that. Malaria and dysentery swept through the crew from late 1770. Tupaia and Taiata died there, and on the way home many more died, including the astronomer Charles Green and the artist Sydney Parkinson. In all, more than 30 people, roughly a third of the ship’s company, died during the voyage, most of them after Batavia.

The Endeavour returned by the Cape of Good Hope and St Helena and anchored in the Downs, off the coast of Kent, on 13 July 1771.

Key people

James Cook (1728–1779) combined the practical skills of a merchant seaman with first-class surveying and mathematics. His careful running surveys, taking bearings and soundings as the ship moved along a coast, produced charts that remained in use for generations. He was promoted to commander on his return.

Joseph Banks (1743–1820) turned the voyage into a great natural history expedition. With Daniel Solander (1733–1782) he collected specimens of more than 1,000 plant species new to European science, many of them later engraved for a vast botanical publication known as Banks’ Florilegium.

Tupaia (c. 1725–1770) was a high-ranking priest and expert navigator from Ra’iātea. With the help of the British he drew a chart showing dozens of islands around Tahiti, evidence of the depth of Polynesian geographical knowledge. Māori remembered him long after the Endeavour left, and some asked after him on Cook’s later visits.

Charles Green (1735–1771), the Royal Society’s astronomer, made the transit observations with Cook and also taught officers to find longitude by lunar distances. Sydney Parkinson (c. 1745–1771) produced hundreds of drawings of plants, animals and people before his death at sea.

Consequences and legacy

The voyage brought back thousands of plant and animal specimens, hundreds of drawings and detailed records of Pacific societies. Banks, rather than Cook, was at first the public celebrity, and he went on to lead the Royal Society for more than 40 years.

Cook’s charts of New Zealand and eastern Australia were the most important results. Banks later recommended Botany Bay as a site for a penal colony, and in 1788 the First Fleet arrived to found the settlement at Sydney. For Aboriginal and Māori peoples, the voyage marked the beginning of a colonial era that brought disease, land loss and conflict.

The southern continent was not found, and Cook was given command of a second expedition to settle the question. Today the voyage is remembered in very different ways: as a triumph of navigation and science, and as the start of a colonial invasion, a debate that surfaced strongly during the 250th anniversary commemorations in 2019 and 2020.

Timeline

• 1768, 26 August: HMS Endeavour sails from Plymouth.
• 1769, 13 April: The Endeavour anchors in Matavai Bay, Tahiti.
• 1769, 3 June: Cook, Green and Solander observe the transit of Venus.
• 1769, 6 October: New Zealand is sighted at Young Nick’s Head.
• 1770, 31 March: Cook leaves New Zealand after charting both main islands.
• 1770, 29 April: The Endeavour anchors in Botany Bay.
• 1770, 11 June: The ship strikes the Great Barrier Reef.
• 1770, 22 August: Cook claims the east coast for Britain at Possession Island.
• 1770, October – December: The crew falls sick at Batavia; Tupaia dies.
• 1771, 13 July: The Endeavour anchors in the Downs off Kent.

Why it matters

Cook’s first voyage combined scientific observation with exploration on a scale not seen before and fixed the outlines of New Zealand and eastern Australia on world maps. It made Cook Europe’s leading navigator and set in motion the British colonisation of Australia, shaping the modern history of the Pacific.