Local Maori gazed at this strange ship and the white people who came to shore. Unfortunately, some of the crew on Cook’s ship fired guns in the air, above the heads of the Maori on the shore but one Maori was killed. The next bay where they had better luck, Cook called it Bay of Plenty.

• The leader of the scientific party was Sir Joseph Banks and Dr David Solander was the botanist.
• This ballad was widely sung in New Zealand primary schools during the 1960s and 1970s.
• Captain James Cook, a prominent British navigator, was the first European to explore and map the coastline of New Zealand from 1769 onwards.
• The Mercury Bay museum at Whitanga today contains many interesting displays relating to Cook’s 12 day visit to the area.

In anger he fired a musket loaded with round shot killing the Maori trader. Although Cook on his return was annoyed that this had happened, local Maori seemed to accept that the trader had been at fault and trading continued on most fine days of their visit to Mercury Bay. Captain James Cook – 4c This stamp depicts a side portrait of Captain Cook with the planet Venus crossing the sun together with an old navigational instrument, the octant. Sir Joseph Banks – 6c This stamp includes a portrait of the noted naturalist Sir Joseph Banks with an outline of the ‘Endeavour’.

Glitches in Cook’s great maps

He used maths and tools like a compass and sextant to plot his position. About 2000 local people made submissions last weekend to the Geographical Board to change the name “Poverty Bay” to the original Maori name Turanganui-a-kiwa. This name gives honour to one of the first Maori, Kiwa, to come to New Zealand. It is still possible to see the stream where Cook and his men refilled their water butts and cut firewood.

Captain Cook

The following day November 20th, Cook with Joseph Banks and some seamen in a rowing boat were carried by a considerable tidal flow, upriver for some miles. Cook named this river the Thames but today this river is New casinos New Zealand the present day Waihou. It now has stopbanks (levees) and is in every way different from the river that Cook saw which was a river with swampy and ever changing banks clothed with lush forests to the waters edge. The following day Cook and others explored the river flowing into the bay on which is now the town of Whitianga. The following days saw some unpleasant weather but the crew of the Endeavour managed to collect a large quantity of seafood.

Cook’s astronomer Charles Green and Cook with a party went ashore at 8 am on November 9th, 1769 to observe the transit of Mercury at present day Cooks Beach. Banks, who did not go recorded this as being one of the few fine days ‘with not the smallest cloud intervening to Obstruct him’. The observation concluded that Mercury had little or no atmosphere. Observations of the transit of Venus had already been made at Tahiti.

Information for James Cook Research Fellowship contract holders

Nearby and undiscovered was the timber treasure of northern New Zealand – Kauri Agathis australis the gum of which had already been observed amongst the mangroves in Mercury Bay. Cook found it difficult to get leaves from such a tall tree and a smaller one was cut down so that the timber could be studied. Unfortunately the tree cut down was not the same species as the tree that had been measured. The Endeavour encountered strong south westerly gales and was forced to stand well off shore for four days. These gales diminished to the point where by the 18th canoes of Maori were again approaching the ship and throwing stones at it whereupon Cook fired a musket shot through a canoe and the Maori retired ashore. Moreover the natives who he had so far encountered had greeted him with threats to kill him and his crew should he set foot on their land.

The party had a total of four telescopes and two clocks as well as an astronomical quadrant. The observation of the transit of Mercury also helped Cook determine the exact position of his observation point with regard to latitude. The Endeavour at first moored close in but late in the afternoon of the 4th of November she was shifted to a safer anchorage some one and a half miles off what is now Cook’s Beach. Trade continued but on the next occasion when Cook was ashore First Lieutenant Gore who was in charge attempted to exchange some cloth for a dog skin cloak only to have the cloth taken without the cloak being given in exchange.