Kingdom of Tahiti Pomare was the Tahitian chieftain most friendly to the British. The additional British captains arriving at Tahiti accepted his claim to hegemony. They gave him guns in trade and helped him in his battles. Captain Cook gave him the advantage in a number of battles with rival forces during his last stay in Tahiti, circa 1779. British missionaries arrived, sent by a non-denominational Protestant group called the London Missionary Society. Pomare befriended the missionaries, and the missionaries favored both peace and Pomare, but, with the British unwilling to apply force to create order among the islands, the missionaries were unable
1769 Transit of Venus observed from Tahiti the transit. The viewing of the 1761 transit involved the effort of 120 observers from nine nations. Thomas Hornsby reported the observations as unsuccessful primarily due to poor weather conditions. He alerted the Royal Society in 1766 that preparations needed to begin for the 1769 transit. Hornsby's publication in the "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society" in 1766 focused attention on the "cone of visibility" indicating, like Halley, some of the better places to observe the transit. The Royal Society boasted that the British "were inferior to no nation on earth, ancient or modern" and were eager to make another