Volta
Exploration1768–1779

Cook’s Pacific Voyages

Also called: Voyages of James Cook, HMS Endeavour, HMS Resolution

Between 1768 and 1779 the British navigator James Cook made three voyages across the Pacific, charting New Zealand and the east coast of Australia and reaching Hawaii.

James Cook — portrait by Nathaniel Dance, 1775
James Cook — portrait by Nathaniel Dance, 1775

Nathaniel Dance-Holland · Public domain · Source

Commissioned by the Royal Society, Cook observed the transit of Venus at Tahiti in 1769, then sailed round New Zealand charting its coasts and in 1770 reached the east coast of Australia, which he claimed for Britain. On his second voyage (1772–1775) he crossed the Antarctic Circle and showed that the legendary southern continent did not exist, keeping his crew free of scurvy through diet. On his third voyage he reached Hawaii, where he was killed in a clash with the islanders in 1779.

Following his surveys, Britain founded a penal colony in Australia in 1788. In 1787 the French expedition of La Pérouse, passing through the East Sea, named Ulleungdo “Dagelet Island”.

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The map in 1768

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States at the time
Great Britain

People

  • James Cook1728 – 1779

    commander · British navigator who made three voyages across the Pacific, charting New Zealand and the east coast of Australia, and was killed in Hawaii

Before and after

Earlier
1760 Industrial Revolution
Later
1773 Boston Tea Party

Themes that include this event

  • Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment and the English Revolutions1543 – 1796

    The Scientific Revolution from Copernicus to Newton, parliamentary government in England won through the Puritan and Glorious Revolutions, and the Enlightenment that sought to remake society by reason — the groundwork of the civic revolutions and the Industrial Revolution