1769 Transit of Venus observed from Tahiti 1769 Transit of Venus observed from Tahiti On June 3, 1769, British navigator Captain James Cook, British naturalist Joseph Banks, British astronomer Charles Green and Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander recorded the transit of Venus on the island of Tahiti during Cook's first voyage around the world. During a transit, Venus appears as a small black disc travelling across the Sun. This unusual astronomical phenomenon takes place in a pattern that repeats itself every 243 years. It includes two transits that are eight years apart, separated by breaks of 121.5 and 105.5 years. These men, along with a crew of scientists,
RMS Tahiti Zealand Transport") "Tahiti". She was part of the convoy transporting the First Detachment of the Australian and New Zealand Imperial Expeditionary Forces, which left King George's Sound, Albany, Western Australia on 1 November 1914. On 11 September 1915, she arrived in Wellington with the first casualties from the Gallipoli campaign. "Tahiti" left New Zealand on 10 July 1918 with 1,117 troops onboard and 100 crew members, bound for England. When she met the rest of her convoy at Freetown in Sierra Leone, reports of disease ashore led to a quarantine order for the ships. However, the ships were resupplied by