Question 1

He was sent to watch a planet cross the Sun. The sealed orders he opened afterwards told him to go looking for a continent that did not exist.

Accepted Answer

Cook's gift was not courage but precision. He charted New Zealand so accurately that his outlines were still being used in the twentieth century, and he proved the great southern continent was a myth by sailing round the place it was supposed to be.

Question 2

James Cook: what happened in 1759–1767?

Accepted Answer

The surveyor — He charts the St Lawrence so precisely that a fleet can navigate it at night, then spends five summers mapping Newfoundland. This, not seamanship, is what gets him the Endeavour.

Question 3

James Cook: what happened in 3 June 1769?

Accepted Answer

The transit of Venus — At Tahiti the astronomers time the planet crossing the Sun. The observations turn out messier than hoped — but the voyage's real orders are still sealed.

Question 4

James Cook: what happened in July 1769?

Accepted Answer

Tupaia comes aboard — A Raiatean priest and master navigator joins the Endeavour. He names seventy-four islands from memory and draws a chart of them — and can speak with Māori, because Polynesian languages are related.

Question 5

James Cook: what happened in 1770?

Accepted Answer

The east coast of Australia — Botany Bay, then 3,000 km north — including tearing the hull open on the Great Barrier Reef. He claims the coast for Britain as terra nullius, having recorded seeing people on it.

Question 6

James Cook: what happened in 1773–1775?

Accepted Answer

Sailing round the missing continent — Three crossings of the Antarctic Circle and a push to 71°10′ south. There is no habitable southern continent, and he proves it by looking — the hardest kind of proof.

Question 7

James Cook: what happened in 14 February 1779?

Accepted Answer

Kealakekua Bay — A boat is stolen. Cook goes ashore to take a Hawaiian chief hostage until it is returned. The crowd resists, the confrontation turns, and he is killed in the shallows.

James Cook — Pacific · 1768 · three voyages · Great Explorers

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