James Cook’s first voyage was part of a secret government mission

The conflict between Europe and Asia for control of the oceans began in 1768. In quest of new places to conquer and riches to plunder, Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands had already spent many decades traveling the world, but the Pacific, and particularly the South Seas, remained completely undiscovered. The British government and the Royal Navy devised a covert strategy to compete to be the first to claim new land: send a naval officer on an ostensibly scientific expedition, then instruct him to embark on a conquest expedition for the mythical Southern Continent. One of the interesting facts about James Cook is that he was selected for the position because he was a Navy captain with experience in cartography and other sciences.

Cook's career as an explorer began in August 1768 when he boarded the HM Bark Endeavour and departed England with close to 100 crew members. Their trip had a covert military purpose, even though it was nominally a scientific one. They were ordered to sail to Tahiti to watch Venus pass across the face of the sun. The "Great Southern Continent," an undiscovered landmass that was thought to be hiding somewhere close to the bottom of the world, was a landmass that Cook carried secret orders telling him to look for.

Following orders, the explorer sailed to the 40th parallel in the south but was unable to locate the rumored continent. He then made a westward swing and circled New Zealand to demonstrate that it was a pair of islands and was not joined to a bigger landmass. During his second voyage around the world, which began in the early 1770s, Cook would later pick up the quest for the Southern Continent. He would almost succeed in spotting Antarctica before pack ice forced him to turn back.