The first voyage of Lieutenant James Cook was a combined Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to the south Pacific Ocean aboard HMS Endeavour (a converted merchant collier previously named Earl of Pembroke) that occurred between 1768 to 1771.
On 16 February 1768 the Royal Society petitioned King George III to finance a scientific expedition to the Pacific to study and observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the sun to enable the measurement of the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Royal approval was granted for the expedition, and the Admiralty elected to combine the scientific voyage with a confidential mission to search the south Pacific to seek evidence of the postulated Terra Australis Incognita (undiscovered southern land).
The voyage was commissioned by King George III and commanded by Lieutenant Cook, a junior naval officer with good skills in cartography and mathematics. The voyage included 73 sailors and 12 Royal Marines, second lieutenant Zachary Hicks and third lieutenant John Gore. Joseph Banks had been appointed as the official botanist. Banks funded seven others to join him: Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander, a Finnish naturalist Herman Spöring, two artists (Alexander Buchan and Sydney Parkinson), a scientific secretary, and two black servants from his estate. Charles Green was the official astronomer.
Departing from Plymouth Dockyard on 26 August 1768, the expedition crossed the Atlantic, rounded Cape Horn and reached Tahiti in time to observe the transit of Venus. Cook then set sail into the largely uncharted ocean to the south, stopping at the Pacific islands of Huahine, Borabora and Raiatea to claim them for Great Britain.
In October 1769 the expedition reached New Zealand, being the second Europeans to visit there, after Abel Tasman. Cook and his crew spent the following six months charting the New Zealand coast, before resuming their voyage westward across open sea.
On 20 April 1770 they became the first known Europeans to reach the east coast of Australia, near Tolywiarar on the land of the Gunaikurnai peoples. He named the site Port Hicks after his second lieutenant.
Continuing north, Cook and his crew made their first landfall on 29 April on the continent at Kamay on the land of the Gweagal clan of the Dharawal nation. Two Gweagal men came down to the boat to fend off what they thought to be spirits of the dead. A skirmish occurred and Cook shot one of the men in the leg. The crew then landed, and the Gweagal men threw two spears before Cook fired another round of small shot and they retreated.
Cook and his crew stayed at Botany Bay for a week, collecting water, timber, fodder and botanical specimens and exploring the surrounding area. The Gweagal observed the Europeans closely but generally retreated whenever they approached. At first Cook named the inlet “Sting-Ray Harbour” after the many stingrays found there. This was later changed to “Botanist Bay” and finally Botany Bay after the unique specimens retrieved by the botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander.
On 6 May 1770, the Endeavour left Botany Bay and sailed north past an inlet, home of the Eora clans. Cook named it Port Jackson. He continued northwards, charting along the coastline.
He stopped at Bustard Bay on 23 May in five fathoms water on a sandy bottom at the south point of the Bay. On 24 May Cook and Banks and others went ashore. He sounded the channel and found a freshwater stream, noting there was room for a few ships to safely anchor. He noted a great deal of smoke on the hills and inspected one of the closest group of 10 fires around which were scattered cockle shells and other evidence of Aboriginal occupation.
The expedition continued northward along the Australian coastline, narrowly avoiding shipwreck on the Great Barrier Reef on 11 June. The ship was seriously damaged and his voyage was delayed almost seven weeks while repairs were carried at Gangaar on the mouth of the Wahalumbaal river in Yalanji. While there, Joseph Banks, Herman Spöring and Daniel Solander made their first major collections of Australian flora.
Once repairs were completed, the voyage continued on 22 August 1770, Cook reached the northernmost tip of the coast. Without leaving the ship, he named it York Cape and departed the east coast.
In October, the badly damaged Endeavour came into the port of Batavia in the Dutch East Indies, her crew sworn to secrecy about the lands they had discovered. They resumed their journey on 26 December, rounded the Cape of Good Hope on 13 March 1771, and reached the English port of Deal on 12 July. The voyage lasted almost three years.
Soon after his return to England in 1771, James Cook was promoted to the rank of commander.
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