Apologies to Rob,
First Voyage was about Transit of Venus which I think helped work out longtitude more accurately?
Jospeth Banks was taken another voyage? and he collected plants that were unique to the Pacific and Australia. These plants were taken to Kew Gardens. JB ws known as KGs first plant collector
Alaska trip was about trying to find NW passage.
Cook reduced scurvey in his crew by forcing them to take Lime Juice - hence Brits are called Limeys by Yanks.
Wan't part of the US Apollo Space programme called after Discovery and Endeavour - two of Cook's ships?
Cook trained as a surveyor for the Royal Navy in Canada and had a real aptitude for it - he actually surveyed the St Lawrence River to allow General Wolfe to surprise Montcalm at the Battle of Quebec.
Cook was a member of the Royal Society and was selected for the First Voyage part sponsored by the Royal Society as he was a capable naval officer but it helped that he was also a proven surveyor and scientist. He helped with the astronomical readings together with the astronomer Charles Green. The Transit of Venus occurs twice a century and the first time it was messed up this time the Royal Society were taking no chances and sent off ships to different parts of the globe but their best hopes were with Green and Cook in Tahiti.
The passage of Venus in front of the sun allowed astronomers to do all sorts of measurements, like the size of the solar system.
Cook and Green were kind of successful in that they had a blurring of the outlines but were clever enough to largely get around this. When you think Cook was a second son of a labourer, he must have been a naturally gifted and very hard working mathematical genius. He trained the infamous Captain Bligh.
The super landed rich Joseph Banks part funded the voyage collecting flora and fauna - Cook gave them his cabin for this - and on his return Banks was the superstar, Cook largely overlooked, Banks set up the proto Kew Gardens from this voyage.
Mention of longitude, Cook was testing an early chronometer on these voyages. The watchmaker John Harrison invented a time mechanism that helped crack the problem of longitude and these voyages helped to make that massive step forward.
Scurvy - we have booked a lady from Australia called Debbie Gibson to speak at Captain Cook Birthplace Museum on Fri 21st Oct - part of her talk will be about the Monkhouse brothers, from Cumbria. One of them was supposed to log all the lemon juice, broth and sauerkraut the crew were eating and totally botched the job. They didn't know which one was responsible and actually came to the wrong conclusions. Cook continued to give his mariners all the possible cures and so no one actually died from scurvy. That was unheard of. Sadly, they didn't know why and used the wrong remedies afterwards.