The Coral Discovery project is a collaboration between James Cook University and the Queensland Museum network.
The project is in the process of digitally mapping all European scientific expeditions that have left records of entering the Indian and Pacific Oceans before 1834.
To qualify as scientific an expedition needs to have some commitment to scientific collecting and observation (most commonly by including at least one naturalist among its members), to have identifiable connections to at least one scientific institution, and to have published an account of at least some of its voyage.
While captains regularly recorded their calculated latitude and longitude the instruments in use during the time period covered by this project were not reliable. As a consequence, this project has collected names and dates of the places sighted by or anchored at by the expeditions. This allows for exact mapping of these locations, and the tracks of the ships at sea are not accurately approximated.
The project maps use the TLCmap digital mapping system. This system allows these journeys to be compared in ways not previously possible, and for users to focus on either the routes of particular ships or on particular places. The new technology makes comparison of expeditions easy, and allows users to compare observations of places across time.
This website provides access to TLCmap journey maps and to the datasets created to represent scientific expeditions as a series of dates and locations. In addition to providing access to route information, the project’s datasets provide information about an expedition’s ship(s), personnel, publications, and institutional connections. These datasets include links to digitised copies of expedition publications and are a new and valuable tool for researchers and readers.
Expeditions to the Pacific 