page_title: First voyage of James Cook
section_title: Homeward voyage
hierarchical_section_title: First voyage of James Cook / Homeward voyage
caption_attribution_description: This is an image of a chart showing the track of HM Bark Endeavour during the first voyage of exploration of Lieutenant (later Captain Sir) James Cook.
context_page_description: The first voyage of James Cook was a combined Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to the south Pacific Ocean aboard HMS Endeavour, from 1768 to 1771. It was the first of three Pacific voyages of which James Cook was the commander. The aims of this first expedition were to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun, and to seek evidence of the postulated Terra Australis Incognita or "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. Departing from Plymouth Dockyard in 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, and unsuccessfully attempting to land at Rurutu. In September 1769 the expedition reached New Zealand, being the second Europeans to visit there, following the first European discovery by Abel Tasman 127 years earlier.
context_section_description: Endeavour then visited the island of Savu, staying for three days before continuing on to Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies, to put in for repairs. Batavia was known for its outbreaks of malaria, and before they returned home in 1771 many in Cook's company succumbed to the disease and other ailments such as dysentery, including the Tahitian Tupaia, Banks' Finnish secretary and fellow scientist Herman Spöring, astronomer Charles Green, and the illustrator Sydney Parkinson. Cook named Spöring Island off the coast of New Zealand to honour Herman Spöring and his work on the voyage.
  Cook then rounded the Cape of Good Hope and stopped at Saint Helena. On 10 July 1771 Nicholas Young, the boy who had first seen New Zealand, sighted England (specifically the Lizard) again for the first time, and Endeavour sailed up the English Channel, passing Beachy Head at 6 am on 12 July; that afternoon Endeavour anchored in the Downs, and Cook went ashore at Deal, Kent. His return was unexpected, as newspapers and journals had long since reported fears that Endeavour had been lost at sea or destroyed in combat against the French.
caption: Route of Endeavour from the Torres Strait to Java, August and September 1770
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