A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean. Undertaken, By The Command of His Majesty For Making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere. [Cook's Third Voyage].

For his last Voyage, Cook was ordered to seek a North-West Passage and to return Omai to Tahiti. From Cape Horn they sailed to the Kerguelens (named Desolation Island by Cook), Tasmania, and New Zealand, charting and mapping all the way, then north, discovering the Hawaiian Islands (which Cook considered his most valuable discovery) and Christmas Island. Cook charted the American West Coast from Northern California through the Bering Strait to 70 deg. 44’ N. He returned to Hawaii for the winter and was killed in an "unhappy skirmish" with the natives over a boat. Also on board were James Burney, William Bligh, James Colnett, and George Vancouver, who all made their own great contributions to navigation and discovery. The present work resulting from their voyage is “arguably the single most important book on the hawaiian islands, that documents all aspects of Hawaiian culture at the point of discovery by Europeans… and is in fact one of the most important English books published in the last quarter of the eighteenth century” (Forbes). “Cook earned his place in history by opening up the Pacific to Western civilization and by the foundation of British Australia. The world was given for the first time an essentially complete knowledge of the Pacific Ocean and Australia, and Cook proved once and for all that there was no great southern continent, as had always been believed. He also suggested the existence of Antarctic land in the southern ice ring, a fact which was not proved until the explorations of the nineteenth century” (PMM).