Cook's Endeavour Sails from Plymouth

August 26, 1768

A Yorkshire coal-ship's master, commissioned lieutenant, sailed south with astronomers, a botanist named Banks, and sealed orders: observe the Venus transit from Tahiti, then search for a southern continent. James Cook would not return for three years. He would return having added a continent's coastline to the map. The voyage would also yield botanical, zoological, and ethnographic collections that transformed European knowledge of the Pacific.