The great Pacific navigations of the mid-18th century were officially failures. Cook managed to map the missing north-eastern section of the coast of a land he claimed for Britain as New South Wales, and he also produced a complete outline of New Zealand - with surprising accuracy, given that he was entirely dependent on lunar observations. But he didn't find the Great Southern Continent. This had been his task, set out in the secret instructions for his first and second voyages; the other achievements were incidental. On his third expedition he spent time checking that there wasn't a continent in the higher latitudes of the Indian Ocean, though his primary job was to locate the Northwest Passage that was supposed to link the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. He couldn't find that either, but came across Hawaii instead.

LRB 20 March 2003 | PDF Download