Most of what we know about the Endeavour's voyage comes from the journals of Lieutenant James Cook, Sir Joseph Banks and Sydney Parkinson. Read them at South seas voyaging accounts.

The Endeavour Journal

In the National Library of Australia there is a 743-page journal, written by Lieutenant James Cook on board the Endeavour during his trip down under in 1770. In this video, Warren Brown leafs through these precious pages to discover Cook’s first impressions and trace the beginning of Australia as we know it today.

Click on the video to the right which further explains the significance of Cook's journal, then read about the eight days the HMB Endeavour spent at Kamay Botany Bay.

Note – ships kept 'ship time' in which the day started at noon, hence journal entries are often dated a day behind.

As you watch the video, consider that many people believe that 'British Australia' began in January 1788, some 18 years after the Endeavour's visit.

First contact

Having arrived outside the bay at 6 am, it wasn’t until 9 am that the pinnace (one of the Endeavour’s small boats) was launched to check conditions inside the bay. By noon the Endeavour had started moving towards the heads, and then by mid-afternoon the Endeavour had been anchored, roughly 700m from where the flagpoles now sit.

As the landing party rowed towards the shore they were met by two Aboriginal men who appeared to be very angry at what they saw. The British men tried to make their intentions clear by offering beads and using gestures, such as imitating drinking water. Tupaia, a Polynesian nobleman travelling on the Endeavour, attempted to communicate, however he could not understand the language of these men. One thing was certain though – the two men did not want the landing party to come ashore.

In his attempt to get past the two men, Cook adopted an approach he had used many times during the six months spent in New Zealand. A musket was fired in their general direction. This was supposed to persuade them to move aside, but instead of that, the two men stood their ground, and one of them threw a rock. Another musket was fired, this time AT one of the men. The musket was armed with small pellets (called ‘small shot’), unlikely to cause any serious injury, so even though the man was hit on the legs, he managed to throw one of his spears before running off to fetch a shield. The two men returned shortly after but it was too late – the men of the Endeavour had landed.

Watering and repairing

The morning commenced with a careful search for a water supply. A stream was found that Cook was confident would provide water sufficient for the ship’s needs, after which it was referred to as ‘the watering place’.

Later on, Cook, Banks, Solander and Tupaia explored the local area. Banks noticed that the gifts he had left at the houses the day before had been left there on the ground, which was very different to all other places they had previously visited on their voyage. Other men from the Endeavour began their jobs of repairing the sails and venturing onto land to collect water and firewood.

A significant encounter

In the late afternoon, a group of local men came close to the watering place where some of the Endeavour crew were busy collecting water. The group approached as far as about 100 metres away and there made a stand. They were armed with ‘darts’ (spears) and 'wooden swords' (probably their spear throwing sticks). Two of the men went forward of the others, suggesting that the local people were not afraid as their retreat on day one might have suggested. The lieutenant of the Endeavour party, Mr Hicks, and one other man also walked forward and offered the local men some gifts. This was clearly not what the local men were after and as such, they slowly moved away.

Shouting

Day three began with lots of noise. Banks reported that he heard shouting coming from the houses on shore, before daybreak. Perhaps the sight of the Endeavour appearing as the sky slowly lightened reminded the people ashore that the ship was still in the bay. Perhaps they were shouting in frustration, as if to say ‘please go away!’ Later in the day, Banks again reported that some men on the north side of the bay were shouting. Meanwhile, Cook explored the bay with the intention of charting the area and communicating with the local people. Banks and Solander went out collecting plant specimens.

Walking inland

Others from the Endeavour came ashore to collect more water, firewood and grass. Those cutting grass strayed a little further than the others. They were approached by a group of the local Gweagal men, each carrying a stick of some kind. The officer in charge called the grass cutters back to the main group which caused the local men to pursue them, but they didn’t come any closer than shouting distance, about 200 metres. It’s impossible to know what the intentions of the local men were, but it can’t have been easy for them to see the visitors taking whatever they wanted. Cook missed the encounter.

A meeting near the watering place

That evening, several of the local men visited the watering place with what appeared to be similar intentions to the group who had approached the grass cutters earlier in the day. The men approached but maintained a distance, the third time in two days that they had done so.

The men from the Endeavour had been camped all day on the main water source for the people living in the nearby huts. It’s likely that the local men were looking for ways to communicate with the crewmen. Perhaps they were trying to say ‘That’s our water!’ or ‘We want you to stop – you don’t belong here.’

Cook was on board the Endeavour at the time, but he quickly came ashore in the hope of meeting with them. Alone and unarmed, he followed the men for some distance along the shore, but they didn’t stop.

A crew member dies

At 6pm Forby Sutherland, an able-bodied seaman aboard the Endeavour, died. He had been ill since rounding Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America, over a year before. He was said to have died from ‘consumption’, most likely the lung disease that is now called tuberculosis.

Seeking contact

Part of the sealed instructions opened by James Cook when he left Tahiti was to sail farther south in search of what many people believed at the time to be an undiscovered continent. It was referred to then as Terra Australis Incognita—‘the unknown south land’. If Cook were to find this unknown southern continent, and found it to be inhabited, he was instructed to observe the local people and to establish a friendship with them. Cook attempted to follow these same instructions when he arrived at Kamay Botany Bay.

With the work of the crewmen now well under way, Cook, Solander, Banks and at least seven others ventured out to explore the area surrounding Kamay Botany Bay. As the day unfolded there were several times when they came across huts, but only once did they see any people, and even then that was only the one man, who swiftly departed as soon as he saw them. James Cook made the assumption that there must have been others who had also left in a hurry as his party approached.

A close encounter

Another encounter took place in the morning. Lieutenant John Gore and a party of men had rowed into the bay to collect oysters. They could see some local men on the shore. The party didn’t have much luck finding oysters. Gore decided to walk back to the watering place taking with him a midshipman (a person who is in training to become an officer). They met up with the local men they had seen before, a group of twenty or more, who followed the pair as they headed back to the watering place.

Unlike similar encounters on the previous two days, the group followed quite closely, say at a distance of about 20 metres — close enough to unnerve the pair. At one point Gore stopped and turned to face the men—who also stopped. The group was armed with spears but never once moved to attack Gore and his companion, however things changed when the pair met up with two or three others from the Endeavour, including the ship’s surgeon, Dr William Monkhouse.

These others decided to approach the local men but to then quickly turn back and run, as if they were retreating. Some of the local men responded by throwing their spears, which went a long way over the heads of the men as they ran. The local men then turned and started to walk back the other way. Meanwhile James Cook, Dr Solander and Tupaia, who had just joined the group, tried to catch up to the local men, but there was nothing they could do to persuade them to stop.

A rainy day

On this morning the weather was wet and windy, so Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander stayed on board the Endeavour, studying their specimens. They were only too happy to get a chance to start organising them. But as soon as the weather improved they were off again, into the surrounding bushland, as Banks put it, ‘botanising’.

Meanwhile, James Cook took advantage of the wet by ordering his crew to scrub the ship 'from sail to water' — from top to bottom.

A change of tack

During the first four days that the Endeavour was anchored in Kamay there were four occasions when the local Gweagal men had approached whichever groups of men from the ship were on shore —usually the crew who were working at the watering place. But from day five there were no such approaches.

As of day five, the people of Kamay began to avoid interactions altogether—and the journal-keepers on the Endeavour started to record what they saw on the bay rather than on the shore — they saw the men in their canoes.

Exploring

As the time to leave Kamay drew closer, James Cook seems to have shown more of a sense of urgency to try to ‘form some connections’ with the people of Kamay. In the morning he and some others from the Endeavour headed off in the pinnace towards the head of the bay. It wasn’t long before they came across several men fishing, each from his own canoe, but the local men paddled off into the shallows. Later, having landed, the visitors saw some more men who immediately took to their canoes and paddled away.

Cook and his party walked for some distance inland from the head of the bay, and although he did not see any more of the local people, he did take note of what he saw of the landscape:

'We found the face of the Country much the same as I have before described, but the land much richer for instead of sand I found in many places a deep black soil, which we thought was Capable of producing any kind of grain. At present it produceth, besides Timber, as fine Meadow as ever was seen; however, we found it not all like this, some few places were very rocky, but this, I believe, to be uncommon.' – Lieutenant James Cook

This information was used, many years later, to help justify the return by British ships to Kamay Botany Bay in January 1788, which eventually resulted in the establishment of a colony at Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour).

On the return trip back to the Endeavour, Cook again noticed some people on the shore:

‘... seeing some Smoke and Canoes at another part we went thither, in hopes of meeting with the people, but they made off as we approached. There were 6 Canoes and 6 small fires near the Shore, and Muscles roasting upon them, and a few Oysters laying near...’

Drying out

After rainy conditions that occurred over the previous two days, one of the things that was needed on the Endeavour was to loosen the sails to allow them to dry out, part of preparing the ship to be 'cleared for sea' — they were preparing to keep sailing up the coast.

Joseph Banks also did some drying out of his own:

'Our collection of Plants was now grown so immensly large that it was necessary that some extrordinary care should be taken of them least they should spoil in the books. I therefore devoted this day to that business and carried all the drying paper, near 200 Quires of which the larger part was full, ashore and spreading them upon a sail in the sun kept them in this manner exposd the whole day...– Joseph Banks

Canoes on the bay

While Banks was tending to his plant specimens, he noticed several men in their canoes, not far from him:

‘We soon saw that the people in them were employd in striking fish; they came within about ½ a mile of us intent on their own employments and not at all regarding us.’

Several of the other journal-keepers on the Endeavour also commented on seeing the canoes. It appears that things really had changed in Kamay. The local people were out on the bay again, as they were when the Endeavour first arrived – intent on fishing, and collecting mussels and oysters — no longer trying to get the attention of the unwelcome visitors.

Close contact

Just as he had witnessed the day before, Banks saw a large number of canoes, 17 in fact, moving on the water close to the Endeavour. The people in the canoes were spearing fish. He noticed that they stayed longer than before, and he suggested that it might have been because the men now felt more confident, since nothing untoward had happened the day before.

There were signs in other parts of the bay that the lives of the people of Kamay were returning to normal. James Cook had sent some parties of men out to try to meet up with some of the local people. One of the midshipmen, who was a long way from the others in his party, suddenly came across an old man, an old woman and two small children sitting under a tree at the water's edge. These people seemed very scared at the sight of the midshipman but, this time, they didn’t try to leave. There were several other local people fishing from their canoes not far offshore. It is likely that the old man, the old woman and the children were part of the same group as the people in the canoes. The older couple were no doubt fulfilling family responsibilities by looking after the children.

The midshipman offered the old man and old woman a parrot he had shot but they wouldn’t touch it.

This would be the closest anyone from the Endeavour would come to having a proper meeting with the people of Kamay.

Sting Ray Harbour...

The yawl (a small boat stored on the deck of the ship) was sent out fishing. It was able to catch a number of extremely large stingrays to feed the sailors. In fact two of the stingrays weighed together 600 pounds — that’s almost 140 kilograms each. It is hardly surprising that James Cook named the bay ‘Stingray Harbour’ on this very day. About three weeks later he changed the name to ‘Botanist Bay’ and roughly three months after that, he finally changed the name to ‘Botany Bay’.

Banks and Solander took the opportunity to continue collecting last-minute specimens.

Interestingly, the local people were completely absent all day. Considering James Cook’s efforts on previous days to ‘try to form some connections with the natives’, and that he probably knew this was to be his last day in the bay, no doubt he was disappointed that he never did have the meeting he had hoped for. Cook was charged with making contact with the inhabitants of every place he visited, and had been able to do this until now. His journal entries record that he took a keen interest in the people he encountered.

...Botany Bay

Cook had planned to depart the bay this day, however the wind prevented him from doing so. In his journal he reflected on the eight days, and seems regretful that he was not able to meet with any of the local people:

‘ we could know but very little of their Customs, as we never were able to form any Connections with them; they had not so much as touch'd the things we had left in their Hutts on purpose for them to take away..’

During the eight-day stay of The Endeavour , Cook had an inscription cut into a tree of the ship's name and date:

'During our stay in this Harbour I caused the English Colours to be display'd a shore every day and an inscription to be cut out upon _^^one of the trees near the watering place seting forth the Ships name, date &C' – Lieutenant James Cook

Continuing up the east coast

After eight days in Kamay, with plenty of firewood, grass and fresh water aboard, it was time to leave. Banks and Solander had collected a huge range of plants, while Cook had mapped the bay and explored the surrounding area, but one thing Cook hadn’t been able to do was to make any meaningful connection with the Aboriginal people of Kamay.

It is important to understand that the arrival of the HMB Endeavour was not the start of European settlement in Australia, nor was it a discovery of Australia. Aboriginal peoples lived in Australia for over 60,000 years before European arrival. Dutch sailors reached the continent in 1606, long before the arrival of the Endeavour in Kamay Botany Bay.

James Cook was a skilled cartographer. His charts of the east coast of New Holland completed the European map of the continent that was started by the Dutch 164 years earlier.

Cause and effect

It was the voyage of the Endeavour in 1770 and the reports of Lieutenant James Cook, Joseph Banks and others that eventually set in motion the establishment of a British colony at Sydney Cove 18 years later, forever severely impacting the lives of the Australian Aboriginal people.

For better, or for worse, James Cook completed the map. And that map changed everything.