HMS Beagle sailed on a five-year Royal Navy surveying voyage under Robert FitzRoy. Charles Darwin travelled as a self-funded naturalist, spending long periods ashore collecting specimens and recording the geology, plants, animals, and societies he encountered.
Lieutenant James Cook commanded HMS Endeavour on a joint Royal Navy and Royal Society voyage to observe the 1769 transit of Venus at Tahiti. Under further Admiralty orders, the expedition then circumnavigated and charted New Zealand, followed the eastern coast of Australia, and returned to England through Batavia and the Cape of Good Hope.
Sources and further reading
Darwin’s Itinerary on the Voyage of the Beagle, The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. Day-by-day chronology, historical place names, coordinates, ports, shore excursions, and Beagle positions.
Joseph Banks: Scientist, Explorer and Botanist, Natural History Museum. Banks’s role, scientific party, collecting programme, major voyage regions, and the expedition’s imperial context.
Journals of Captain James Cook: Endeavour, 1768–1771, National Library of Australia and Australian Joint Copying Project. Digitized manuscript journals and logs supporting the first voyage’s chronology, coastal survey, Botany Bay, Endeavour River, Torres Strait, and return route.