Captain James Cook: Claiming the Great South Land

Distant, cloaked in mystery and reckoned to be the source of untold riches, the Great South Land was, over centuries, the inspiration for countless voyages of discovery. No less did its possibility influence the British Admiralty when it commissioned James Cook to sail across the Pacific in his first voyage on the Endeavour in 1768-71. The narrative of Cook’s voyage primarily depends on his journal. His eloquence gives power to his story. The tangible reality of the voyage is derived from the maps that Cook painstakingly drafted for every league of that journey. These documents are the powerful record of Cook’s contribution to our national story.