Explorer Atlas
Follow expeditions, people, ships, and armies across time, on an interactive map. Every claim is traceable to a source. Uncertainty is shown honestly — not smoothed away.
Where each journey began
Hover a departure flag to trace its voyage; drag to spin.
On this day — 3 September
“On the 3rd Came Old Tahoohooatumma with His Son Taroatchoa Mr. Christians friend, & Daughters, one of which was the young woman who had Come on board at our first anchoring and was Calld Wyakka, with a number of attendants loaded with provisions … at the request of the Old Man the young weomen performed a dance…”
Old Tahoohooatumma visits with his son Taroatchoa and daughters — among them Wyakka, who had led the singing at Bounty's first anchoring. The young women dance, the Tahitian women answer in kind, and next day Christian's Heiva entertains the guests in Society Islands style with mourning-dress parais — while the whole party stands under arms.
The Bounty Saga
Spithead to the eve of mutiny: 517 days under Lieutenant Bligh’s command — beaten back at Cape Horn, the long road east by the Cape of Good Hope, five months at Tahiti, and 1,015 breadfruit plants bound for the West Indies. Day by day, from Bligh’s own logs.
47 days. 3,618 nautical miles. A 23-foot launch from Tofua to Coupang after the mutiny on HMS Bounty.
The Bounty under Fletcher Christian: a fortress raised and abandoned at Tubuai, the split at Tahiti, and the ship’s disappearance toward Pitcairn — told from the journal of James Morrison, boatswain’s mate, who stayed and was captured.
The Age of Discovery
Palos to a Bahamian landfall and back: 225 days, three ships, and the crossing that joined two hemispheres. The false reckoning, the wreck of the Santa María on Christmas Day, the garrison left at La Navidad, and the storm-driven return through the Azores and Lisbon — day by day, from the Journal as Las Casas preserved it.
Sanlúcar around the world and home: five ships west to reach the Spice Islands, a mutiny put down in Patagonia, the strait and the first Pacific crossing, Magellan’s death at Mactan — and one ship, the Victoria, closing the first circle around the earth. Day by day, from Pigafetta’s eyewitness account and Albo’s log.
Plymouth around the world and home: 1,051 days aboard HMS Endeavour under Lieutenant Cook — to Tahiti for the transit of Venus, south after a continent that wasn’t there, New Zealand circumnavigated, and the whole east coast of New Holland charted and claimed. The reef that nearly ended the voyage, and the Batavia fever that undid a scurvy-free crossing. Day by day, from Cook’s own journal.
The hunt for the Southern Continent. HMS Resolution drove three times into the Antarctic ice — the first ship ever to cross the Circle, and a farthest south of 71°10′ that stood for forty-nine years — between sweeps through New Zealand and the Pacific: Easter Island, the Marquesas, New Caledonia, a volcano at Tanna, and 330 war canoes drawn up at Tahiti. Three years and eighteen days; four men lost. From Cook’s own account.