A journey to the ends of the Earth

The British explorer and cartographer was born in 1728 in Yorkshire and learned the essential skills for his later voyages during his time serving in the Seven Years' War. His three voyages to the Pacific are considered the starting point of European trade with and colonization of the region. In 1799, on his third voyage, Cook was killed in Hawaii after a dispute broke into violence.

The name for the Australian marsupial, kangaroo, comes from the Guugu Yimithirr word "gangurru." The Guugu Yimithirr people lived in northern Queensland, where the ship Endeavour landed in June 1770. Sydney Parkinson, an artist on the voyage, compiled a vocabulary of the Aboriginal peoples' language.

The Endeavour landed in New Zealand in October 1769. The indigenous people of New Zealand, the Maori, had lived there since about 1250-1300 AD. Violence erupted between the British and the Maori people on the first day, the British firing their muskets with fatal consequences. British sovereignty over New Zealand was not established until 1840 when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed.

Cook was a skilled cartographer, and some of his charts were still used by sailors in the 1950's. Joseph Banks, a wealthy botanist, accompanied Cook on his first voyage. Banks and the party of artists and scientists he brought with him are credited with providing a glimpse into the cultural lives of the people they encountered through their collections and illustrations.

During his first voyage onboard the Endeavour, Captain Cook landed in Tahiti in April 1769. The official mission was to chart the passage of the planet Venus between the Earth and the sun, but Cook was also following secret orders to search for the mythical lands thought to lie in the south. The British fort in Tahiti became a meeting point and trade center for the British and the islanders.

Tierra del Fuego, off the southern tip of South America, was one of the first stops Cook made on his Endeavour voyage. During this time the artist Alexander Buchan drew pictures of the Haush people, the land's inhabitants.

Cook first landed on the Tongan islands during his second voyage in October 1773. Taken with the warm welcome he received from locals, he named Tonga the "Friendly islands." Many scholars now believe that the Tongan chiefs had actually planned to attack Cook and his crew and seize his ships before the plot was called off.

During his stay in Tahiti in April 1769, Cook became friends with Tupaia, a priest and navigator from a nearby island. Tupaia joined the voyage and sailed on the Endeavour to New Zealand and Australia. Similarities between the Tahitian langauge and the language of the Maori people in New Zealand meant that Tupaia could act as an interpreter.

William Hodges was appointed the official artist of Cook's second voyage. The goal was to discover a Great Southern Continent, which the British thought encircled the South Pole. The voyage proved that this great land mass was non-existent, and caused the voyagers to cross the Antarctic Circle three times.