Captain James Cook

Lieutenant James Cook was a sailor with the British Royal Navy. He was born in England in 1728 and had first joined the British Merchant Navy as a teenager. In 1755 (at age 27) he joined the British Royal Navy. It is more than likely that he learnt a lot of his mapping skills while he was in the Merchant Navy. Cook was in Eastern Canada during the Seige of Quebec. He spent a good portion of his time mapping the Gulf of St Lawrence and the entrance to the St Lawrence river in detail.

This attention to detail brought him to the attention of both the British Admiralty and the Royal Society. Consequently in 1766, Cook was commissioned as Commander of the HMS Endeavour, and sent out on a joint Royal Navy/Royal Society scientific expedition to the South Pacific Ocean. The official mission of this voyage was to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun - and to search for the Terra Australis Incognita, the Unknown Southern Continent.

While Cook himself was an excellent cartographer and mapmaker, his first voyage as the Commander of the Endeavour would not have been quite so successful without the naturalist and botanist, Joseph Banks who was also assigned to the Endeavour. Banks had previously been in Newfoundland and Labrador collecting plants and drawing birds.

I am not going to go into a lot of details regarding Cooks voyages. You can find more information in the resources section.

Image source - Clip Art from Florida Educational Technology Clearing House

Dates - 1768 - 1771
Ship - HMS Bark Endeavour
Captain - James Cook
Naturalist and Botanist - Joseph Banks

Discoveries
Discovered the Tuamotu and Society Islands in what is now French Polynesia (Tahiti is in the Society Islands)
Circumnavigated and mapped the entire coast of both North and South Island of New Zealand

Named many features along the coast of New Zealand
Cape Kidnappers - (in Hawkes Bay where Maoris attempted to kidnap some of the crew)
Young Nick's Head - which was the first landfall sighted by the surgeon's boy - Nicholas Young
Poverty Bay - because the Maoris prevented Cook from landing to obtain fresh water and food
Hawkes Bay - after Sir Edward Hawke of the Admiralty
Mt Egmont - (now Mt Taranaki) after the first Lord of the Admiralty
Mercury Bay - where the Endeavour stopped for 10 days to observe the transit of Mercury across the sun.
Queen Charlotte Sound - top of the South Island
Cook Strait - Named after Cook himself.
NZ features named by Cook

Discovered Botany Bay and Port Jackson (now Sydney)
Mapped the East coast of New Holland (now Australia) from Port Jackson north to Torres Strait
Discovered the Great Barrier Reef when the Endeavour ran aground on it

Image Source - The Lost Forum

Dates - 1772 - 1775
Ship - HMS Resolution
Captain - James Cook
Crewman aboard - George Vancouver - who later became an explorer in his own right

Discoveries
This voyage made a determined effort to locate the Unknown Southern continent. Cook sailed at roughly 60 degrees south latitude around much of the globe and still did not find land - although there were many sightings of ice. Finally and absolutely confirmed that there was NO great unknown southern continent.

However Resolution was the first ship to cross the Antarctic circle (go below 66 degrees south). The furtherest south that Resolution sailed was latitude 71 degrees south at around 105 degrees west. According to the map - that is the deep South Pacific (south west of Chile) in the Amundsen sea.

Discovered South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands (South Atlantic)
Discovered the Friendly Islands, Easter Island, Norfolk Island, New Caledonia, and New Hebrides (now Vanuatu - All in the Pacific)

Image Source - The Lost Forum

Dates - 1776 - 1779 - 1780
Ship - HMS Resolution
Captain - James Cook (until his death) and Captain Clerke
Mission - To discover the Famed North West Passage - between the Atlantic and the Pacific

Discoveries
Discovered the Sandwich Islands (now called Hawaii)
Headed NE from the sandwich islands and mapped the North American coast from Cape Foulwind in what is now Oregon, north past Washington State, past Vancouver and Victoria Islands, the rest of British Columbia and all the way along the Alaskan coast as far as the Bering Strait. Cook also named a number of islands and features along this coast as well.

The Bering Strait was impassable and they were unable to locate the North West passage. So the Resolution returned to the Sandwich Islands.

After Cook was killed in Hawaii, the Resolution sailed away, and tried one more time to get through the Bering strait, but again was unable to do so, They then sailed down along the coast of Siberia, and through the Asian islands, (Japan, Philippines and Indonesia), across the Indian ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope and arrived back in England in 1780,

Image Source - The Lost Forum