The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks

[Pantaleon]

If you ever wanted to read the Journal of an 18th-century explorer, this is your chance.
These are the notes Joseph Banks took during a three-year expedition (1768 - 1771) aboard the Endeavour together with James Cook.

You can read it all here: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0501141h.html

my favourite line: 15. December, 1768
"Christmas day; all good Christians that is to say all hands get abominably drunk so that at night there was scarce a sober man in the ship, wind thank god very moderate or the lord knows what would have become of us."

Here's the link to his Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Banks
And the Wikipedia link about the voyage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_voyage_of_James_Cook

[MarcusJuliusCroft]

Thus began the rise of the Great Southern Land, otherwise known as the Unknown Southern land. 

[pakled]

...and a Hawaiian vacation gone horribly wrong...

[MarcusJuliusCroft]

that was after though, he almost got shipwrecked because he was stupid enough to sail into the middle of the Great Barrier Reef.  You go round a reef, you do not attempt to go through it.  Bad things happen when ships and reefs meet.  Maybe better luck nexttime.