It was undoubtedly far the most successful voyage ever made.

Much had been done--more than his orders directed--to explore unknown lands, and the dire enemy of seamen, scurvy, had been conquered.
But his luck was not to last.
It was absolutely necessary to remain some time at Batavia, while the roughly repaired damage to the ship was made good in the Dutch dockyard.
Two months and a half in the sickly climate of Batavia, during a bad time of the year, wrought a sad change in his ship's company.

The port they so much desired proved but the door of the grave to many of them, and Cook sailed for England on December 27th, 1770, with dysentery pervading the ship.

The surgeon had already died of it; so had the poor Tahitian, Tupia, with two seamen, and one of Mr.Banks' artists.
Worse was, however, to follow.

Day by day, as the ship slowly found her way over the Indian Ocean towards the Cape, against the wet and unhealthy north-west monsoon, the sick list grew larger.