19 Apr 1770 Jahr - James Cook Explores
Australian East Coast
Beschreibung:
In 1768, a rather significant voyage set sail from England. The ship was named Endeavour and it was captained by the Yorkshire-born James Cook. The mission of this voyage was to seek out bounty and trading opportunities in the mysterious continent known only as Terra Australis, meaning "the southern land." This continent was entirely theoretical and had been proposed by scientists for centuries on the basis that the enormous continental land in the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by there being one in the Southern.
Cook and his crew of 94 people sailed for fourteen months, journeying around the Cape Horn of South America and across the Pacific Ocean. Eventually, they came to the islands of New Zealand, becoming only the second group of Europeans ever to do so. Unlike the Dutch sailors 127 years before them, Cook and his men charted the entire New Zealand coastlines establishing that there was a North and South island. Because he had journeyed significantly more South than many other sailors before him, Cook reasoned that he would have come across a Southern Continent by now if it had existed, and so the decision was made to return home.
Rather than returning eastwards, however, Endeavour sailed west of New Zealand intending to reach the island of Tasmania. Due to strong gales at the time, the ship was forced to head further north than intended and so on the 20th April 1770 Cook and his men became the first Europeans to encounter the Eastern coast of Australia, then called New Holland.
The men continued to sail north as they charted the Australian coastline for a week, recording and naming it's visible landmarks. Eventually they made their first landing on the continent, in a place now known as Botany Bay. It was here where Cook met two Aborigines from the Tharawal-speaking tribe. According to Cook's personal diary entries, it was after these two men refused a gift offered by Cook, that a musket was fired over their heads, which wounded one of the men slightly, and he ran towards the nearby huts. He came back with other men and threw spears at Cook's men, although they did no harm. They were then chased off after two more rounds were fired. The adults had left, but Cook found several Aboriginal children in the huts, and so left some beads with them as a gesture of friendship.
The crew of Endeavour sailed further on following the coast, even running aground on a shoal of the Great Barrier Reef. It was here that the Europeans made more peaceful contact with Aboriginal tribes and were introduced to brand new animals such as the kangaroo.
Eventually Cook and his men charted the entire East Coast of Australia claiming it for the British Crown. He also established that this continent of New Holland was not connected to New Guinea, as some had previously speculated. Endeavour made it's way up into Indonesia for repairs before finally returning to England in July 1771.
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