We're a real world history class! Huzzah! Now all you Australians have to shut up about how we've never mentioned you. Right, so in his voyages, Cook also determined that there was no such thing as the mythical continent of Terra Australis, said to exist here, and he helped to dispel the idea of a Northwest Passage, which Europeans had been obsessed with for centuries. He was the first European to describe Hawaii, and also the first to keep his ship's crews free of scurvy. Cook and his successors were part of the middle wave of European colonization, the one that took place after Europeans settled in the Americas, but before they set their sights on Africa. One more thing to mention about the context of these voyages, or rather their impact.