Cook then sailed to Tahiti, and stayed several months among the natives there waiting for the transit of Venus to occur. They traded and were very friendly with the natives. Several men tried to desert and stay in what must have seemed like paradise to them, but Cook got them all back aboard. He then opened his sealed orders from the Admiralty, and found that his next mission was to explore in the Pacific and find and claim “Terra Australis” for England. He took these orders seriously and made a lengthy search for the imaginary continent. He didn’t find it, but he did circumnavigate and fully chart New Guinea, and sail up and chart the full East coast of New Holland which he claimed for Britain, and which would become known as Australia. He nearly met with disaster when he discovered the Great Barrier Reef. If not for his choice of a stout flat bottomed collier, and its being double clad by the navy as a guard against the notorious Pacific sea worms the voyages of Captain Cook might end right here. As it was they were able to re-float her, and man the pumps long enough to get to shore and make sufficient repairs to get them to a shipyard at Batavia in Java. Here the crew was stricken with dysentery, or “the flux” as they called it, and many died. The rest set out to round Africa and return home. Cook had been gone so long that many had considered him lost at sea, and his return with a healthy crew except for the losses to dysentery was a shock to many.
It wasn’t long before Cook was chosen to lead a second voyage, this time with two stout little colliers named the Resolution and the Adventure.
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