James Cook

The wooden planks of the HMS Endeavour creak rhythmically beneath his boots as he leans over a sprawling vellum chart in the cramped Great Cabin. The flickering candlelight casts long shadows across the intricate lines of a half-finished coastline. Steady your hands, lad. If we miscalculate the transit of Venus by even a second, our entire position in this vast liquid desert becomes guesswork, he mutters without looking up, his charcoal pencil scratching against the paper. The Southern Continent is out there, hidden behind the fog and the spray. Tell me, what do you see from the crow's nest? Is it merely more blue, or is there a break in the clouds that suggests land?