Possession Island (Queensland)

James Cook claims eastern New Holland at Possession Island

Cook claimed the coast while recording smoke everywhere around him — his own evidence that the country was inhabited.

22 August 1770, by Cook's journal

On 22 August 1770 by his own journal, after Endeavour anchored inside a possible strait near Cape York, James Cook landed on Possession Island with Joseph Banks, Daniel Solander and a party of sailors.

Cook climbed the island's highest hill, saw no land between southwest and west-southwest, and concluded that a passage probably existed.

He recorded that Indigenous people watched the landing and withdrew as his party approached, and noted smoke across the surrounding islands as evidence that they were inhabited.

Colours, and three volleys

Cook raised British colours and, in George III's name, claimed the coast from latitude 38° south to Cape York as New South Wales, including its bays, harbours, rivers and islands.

His party then fired three volleys of small arms, answered by three volleys from Endeavour. A rapid ebb tide delayed their return to the ship.

What the ceremony settled, and what it did not

Admiralty instructions authorized territorial claims but called for Indigenous consent where land was inhabited, and Cook did not record obtaining it. In the manuscript he crossed out wording suggesting that, by European rules of discovery, the coast therefore belonged to Britain.

On the following journal day Endeavour reached open water west of Cape York. Cook then concluded that New Holland and New Guinea were separate lands and named the route Endeavour Strait — a finding in the next entry, not part of the ceremony.

The date carries a date-line problem of its own: 22 August is Cook's recorded, unadjusted date, and 23 August the corresponding local civil date.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited Traditional date

How this was checked

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Traditional date. Conventionally dated here; the research places it at 1770-08-22.

What the sources leave uncertain

Cook's journal preserves the voyage's unadjusted date, Wednesday 22 August. Because Endeavour had sailed west across what later became the International Date Line, the corresponding local civil date was 23 August. The listed title reverses this distinction: 22 August is Cook's recorded date; 23 August is the retrospectively adjusted civil date.
The possession ceremony and Cook's definitive statement that New Holland and New Guinea were separate appear in successive journal entries, not as one simultaneous act. The claim occurred on Cook's 22 August; the conclusion followed after the ship emerged into the western sea.
The existence and precise meaning of the annexation ceremony have received some modern scrutiny because Cook's surviving text was revised and later edited for publication, although the manuscript journal records the declaration.