Tahiti on 11 October, Raiatea on 2 November, and Borabora on 7 December. On 26 October 1788, , under the command of Captain William Bligh, landed in Tahiti with the mission of carrying Tahitian breadfruit trees (Tahitian: "uru") to the Caribbean. Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist from James Cook's first expedition, had concluded that this plant would be ideal to feed the African slaves working in the Caribbean plantations at very little cost. The crew remained in Tahiti for about five months, the time needed to transplant the seedlings of the trees. Three weeks after leaving Tahiti, on 28 April 1789,
1769 Transit of Venus observed from Tahiti navigator, Samuel Wallis, made the first European contact with Tahiti. Wallis returned from his voyage in time to help the Royal Society decide that it would be an ideal location to observe the Transit of Venus. A big advantage was that Tahiti was one of the few islands in the South Pacific that they knew the longitude and latitude of. The Admiralty was not really interested in particularly where in the South Pacific the observation of the Venus transit would take place. They were more interested in the "secret" mission that would be revealed after the Venus transit observation: the