The Dutch explorer ran across two islands in the Pacific of which Europeans knew nothing, but his chief desire was to get past them.
New Zealand came under British control with the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840; James Cook had charted its coasts in the 1770s, but Dutch explorer Abel Tasman had set the first European eyes on the islands, over a century before. As William Reeves notes, however, he was interested only in getting past them.
Captain Cook’s friend and ship’s surgeon David Samwell gives us his impressions of the great explorer.
Welsh poet and doctor David Samwell was Captain James Cook’s surgeon on his third voyage, aboard HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery. Samwell accompanied him from Plymouth in 1776 to Hawaii, where he saw the impulsive Cook killed in an altercation over stolen stores on February 14th, 1779.
James Cook describes his first sight of a beloved Australian icon.
James Cook captained ‘Endeavour’ on a round trip to New Zealand and Australia from 1768 to 1771. Between June and August 1770, the ship lay at the mouth of the Endeavour (Wabalumbaal) River in north Queensland, undergoing repairs. Cook kept a meticulous journal, in which he described some of the animals he saw.