page_title: HMS Endeavour
section_title: Pacific exploration
hierarchical_section_title: HMS Endeavour / Voyage of discovery / Pacific exploration
caption_attribution_description: This is a 1893 chart of the track taken by the H.M.S. Endeavour during Lieutenant (later Captain) James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific Ocean.
context_page_description: HMS Endeavour, also known as HM Bark Endeavour, was a British Royal Navy research vessel that Lieutenant James Cook commanded to Australia and New Zealand on his first voyage of discovery from 1768 to 1771.
  She was launched in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, with the Navy purchasing her in 1768 for a scientific mission to the Pacific Ocean and to explore the seas for the surmised Terra Australis Incognita or "unknown southern land". Commissioned as His Majesty's Bark Endeavour, she departed Plymouth in August 1768, rounded Cape Horn and reached Tahiti in time to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun. She then set sail into the largely uncharted ocean to the south, stopping at the islands of Huahine, Bora Bora, and Raiatea west of Tahiti to allow Cook to claim them for Great Britain. In September 1769, she anchored off New Zealand, becoming the first European vessel to reach the islands since Abel Tasman's Heemskerck 127 years earlier.
  In April 1770, Endeavour became the first ship to reach the east coast of Australia, with Cook going ashore at what is now known as Botany Bay.
context_section_description: The transit observed, Endeavour departed Tahiti on 13 July and headed northwest to allow Cook to survey and name the Society Islands. Landfall was made at Huahine, Raiatea and Borabora, providing opportunities for Cook to claim each of them as British territories. An attempt to land the pinnace on the Austral Island of Rurutu was thwarted by rough surf and the rocky shoreline. On 15 August, Endeavour finally turned south to explore the open ocean for Terra Australis Incognita.
  In October 1769, Endeavour reached the coastline of New Zealand, becoming the first European vessel to do so since Abel Tasman's Heemskerck in 1642. Unfamiliar with such ships, the Māori people at Cook's first landing point in Poverty Bay thought the ship was a floating island, or a gigantic bird from their mythical homeland of Hawaiki. Endeavour spent the next six months sailing close to shore, while Cook mapped the coastline and concluded that New Zealand comprised two large islands and was not the hoped-for Terra Australis. In March 1770, the longboat from Endeavour carried Cook ashore to allow him to formally proclaim British sovereignty over New Zealand. On his return, Endeavour resumed her voyage westward, her crew sighting the east coast of Australia on 19 April. On 29 April, she became the first European vessel to make landfall on the east coast of Australia, when Cook landed one of the ship's boats on the southern shore of what is now known as Botany Bay, New South Wales.
caption: An 1893 chart showing Endeavour's track
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