Captain Cook in Google Earth: Botany Bay
This post reports the completion of my endeavours to present, in a Google Earth tour, Lieutenant James Cook’s exploration and description of Botany Bay. The screenshot above shows Endeavour anchored in the bay close to the place where Cook first set foot on Australian soil.
It takes just under 24 minutes to read aloud Cook’s account of the bay, its hydrography, its wildlife, and its inhabitants. He sounded the bay and determined where there were deeper channels and areas of shoal water. He described the trees, the soil, the shellfish, and other marine life, including leather jackets and the stingrays after which the bay was given its first name. He also gave as good an account as he could of the people he met, though at no point was there an exchange of views, other than the throwing of spears and the firing of muskets.
Seaman Forby Sutherland died here and was buried near the watering place close to the southern promontory at the entrance to Botany Bay, which Cook then named Point Sutherland.
Copyright © Colin Hazlehurst, 2012
If you would like to follow Cook’s voyage, you will need to install the latest version of Google Earth on your computer; then go to the Captain Cook blog and click on the links on the right-hand side of the page, under the ‘Google Earth’ heading. After the animation is loaded in Google Earth, you need to expand an entry in the Table of Contents. You will see a ‘Play’ icon which you double-click to start the animation. Don’t forget to enable your speakers to hear the spoken journal.
