Matavai Bay, Thaiti

Our Captain Cook commanded to sail to the Thaiti, to Matavi Bay. He was commissioned by the Royal Society of London for the observation of the transit of Venus 3th June 1769. To navigate our ship the HMS Endavour to Thaiti, I use a map based on a Mercatorprojection. This projection allows us to sail in a constant compass direction. This allows us to reduce the difficult, errorfree course corrections that would be necessary if we were sailing according to a different map.

Observe the Mercator-Projection and it's distortions.