Before 1768 the northern and southern hemispheres were separate worlds. Three voyages changed all that. They were captained around the legendary seafarer James Cook.
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It's 1768 and the British are fixated on reports of land glimpsed in the south Pacific, convinced that an undiscovered Great Southern Continent lies in wait below.
The Royal Society commissions cartographer and explorer James Cook to embark on a voyage to chart the passage of the planet Venus between the Sun and the Earth.
It is believed that the angles of observation from different locations can be used to calculate the exact distance from the Earth to the Sun and the planets.
But the Admiralty has also given Cook secret orders to scour the seas for that mystical land in the south.
Cook's ship, The Endeavour, sets sail on August 26, 1768.
Exploring the south Pacific
Cook and his crew would not discover the mythical land mass, which geographers believed was necessary to allow the earth to spin on its access, balancing out the northern lands.
The voyages would instead bring the Europeans to Tierra del Fuego, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, the Tongan islands and Antarctica.
They would allow the accompanying artists and scientists to compile records of local culture in these regions, through collections of flora and fauna specimens, paintings and illustrations.
And they would scatter the seeds for British colonialism in the region, the lasting impacts of which are still felt deeply in many countries today.
A journey to the ends of the Earth
In Britain he's a celebrated explorer. To the Indigenous peoples of the south he's a colonial oppressor. This is the story of Captain Cook's voyages.
Image: The British Library Board
James Cook
The British explorer and cartographer was born in 1728 in Yorkshire and learned the essential skills for his later voyages during his time serving in the Seven Years' War. His three voyages to the Pacific are considered the starting point of European trade with and colonization of the region. In 1799, on his third voyage, Cook was killed in Hawaii after a dispute broke into violence.
Image: The British Library Board
Kangaroo by Sydney Parkinson
The name for the Australian marsupial, kangaroo, comes from the Guugu Yimithirr word "gangurru." The Guugu Yimithirr people lived in northern Queensland, where the ship Endeavour landed in June 1770. Sydney Parkinson, an artist on the voyage, compiled a vocabulary of the Aboriginal peoples' language.
Image: The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London
Three paddles from New Zealand by Sydney Parkinson
The Endeavour landed in New Zealand in October 1769. The indigenous people of New Zealand, the Maori, had lived there since about 1250-1300 AD. Violence erupted between the British and the Maori people on the first day, the British firing their muskets with fatal consequences. British sovereignty over New Zealand was not established until 1840 when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed.
Image: The British Library Board
Cook's chart of New Zealand
Cook was a skilled cartographer, and some of his charts were still used by sailors in the 1950's. Joseph Banks, a wealthy botanist, accompanied Cook on his first voyage. Banks and the party of artists and scientists he brought with him are credited with providing a glimpse into the cultural lives of the people they encountered through their collections and illustrations.
Image: The British Library Board
Tahitian musicians by Tupaia
During his first voyage onboard the Endeavour, Captain Cook landed in Tahiti in April 1769. The official mission was to chart the passage of the planet Venus between the Earth and the sun, but Cook was also following secret orders to search for the mythical lands thought to lie in the south. The British fort in Tahiti became a meeting point and trade center for the British and the islanders.
Image: The British Library Board
Inhabitants of the Island of Tierra del Feugo in their hut by Alexander Buchan
Tierra del Fuego, off the southern tip of South America, was one of the first stops Cook made on his Endeavour voyage. During this time the artist Alexander Buchan drew pictures of the Haush people, the land's inhabitants.
Image: The British Library Board
Entertainments at Lifuka on the reception of Captain Cook by John Webber
Cook first landed on the Tongan islands during his second voyage in October 1773. Taken with the warm welcome he received from locals, he named Tonga the "Friendly islands." Many scholars now believe that the Tongan chiefs had actually planned to attack Cook and his crew and seize his ships before the plot was called off.
Image: The British Library Board
Banks and a Maori man by Tupaia
During his stay in Tahiti in April 1769, Cook became friends with Tupaia, a priest and navigator from a nearby island. Tupaia joined the voyage and sailed on the Endeavour to New Zealand and Australia. Similarities between the Tahitian langauge and the language of the Maori people in New Zealand meant that Tupaia could act as an interpreter.
Image: The British Library Board
A Canoe of Tongatapu by William Hodges
William Hodges was appointed the official artist of Cook's second voyage. The goal was to discover a Great Southern Continent, which the British thought encircled the South Pole. The voyage proved that this great land mass was non-existent, and caused the voyagers to cross the Antarctic Circle three times.
Image: The British Library Board
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The voyages of Captain James Cook
This is the history that the British Library in London set out to explore in their exhibition of images and artifacts from Cook's three famous voyages.
The exhibit compiles original artworks, natural specimens, written accounts and jewelry from the voyages alongside material that reflects contemporary attitudes to Captain Cook in the places he reached.
Cook captained three voyages to the south Pacific. The first set sail in 1768 and brought the explorers to Tierra del Fuego, Tahiti, New Zealand and the east coast of Australia.
But Cook had failed to find the Great Southern Continent, so in 1772 two ships embarked on a second voyage, which ultimately disproved the existence of the envisioned continent.
The ships instead circled the south Pacific twice, charting islands which had not been accurately marked on European maps before and crossing the Antarctic circle three times.
This was the closest the explorers came to uncovering their vision of the Great Southern Continent encircling the South Pole.
Though they were the first crew to cross the Antarctic circle, the continent itself would not be discovered and named until 1820.
In 1776 Cook set out on his third voyage with the goal of finding a shorter trade route between Britain and the Pacific. That expedition led him to Hawaii in 1778, where he was killed by locals in a dispute.
Open since April, the exhibition closes its doors on August 28.
Competing histories
To some, Cook's voyages embody the spirit of exploration and a sense of wonder. To many indigenous people however, they symbolize the beginnings of dispossession and interference resulting from British colonialism.
With "Australia Day" celebrated annually on January 26, the date on which the first British settlers arrived in 1788, the celebration of colonial influence is at the center of ongoing public debate in that country.
Cook is often recognized as having "discovered" Australia despite Aboriginal Australians having inhabited the land for thousands of years before his arrival.
Statues of Captain Cook in the major cities of Sydney and Melbourne have twice been vandalised in the past two years, in protest of the continuing celebration of British settlement and the myth of Australian identity that grew out of it.
Click through the above gallery to explore some of the pieces on display in the British Library's Captain Cook exhibition.
