Within minutes of the news breaking Australian Facebookers and Twitterati were rushing to, quite accurately, debunk any imprudent claims the great navigator had "discovered" the Australian continent.

It is, as Cook would have been one of the first to acknowledge, difficult to discover something that had been occupied for more than 50,000 years and which had been visited by European and Asian seafarers many times before.

The map created by naval cartographer, Henry Roberts, to chart the famous first voyage makes it clear Cook well knew he was filling in the eastern coastline of the continent already known for over a century as New Holland.

It would be unfortunate if this obsession with historical accuracy, which often mistakenly attributes grandiose claims made by Cook's many hagiographers to the man himself,  overshadows the rightful celebration of this week's development and its significance to Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific nations and the wider world.

Cook's first voyage was the spirit of the European Enlightenment made manifest in the form of a ship aptly named Endeavour and sent south into the unknown.

It was as much about scientific inquiry as the claiming of new lands in the name of George III for the British Empire. The observations of the transit of Venus from Tahiti on June 3, 1769, by Charles Green and Daniel Solander helped make it possible to accurately calculate the distance from the earth to the sun for the first time.

Sir Joseph Banks, the famous botanist, loaded the vessel with plant and animal specimens and sketches from every place the ship visited; often anticipating Darwin and the equally revolutionary voyage of the Beagle more than 60 years later.

Cook was able to demonstrate the importance of fresh fruits and vegetables in protecting sailors from scurvy, a dietary deficiency disease that claimed the lives of an estimated two million seafarers during the age of sail. The Royal Society honoured him for this accomplishment with its Copley Gold Medal in 1776.

The great navigator, despite the shootings that marred Endeavour's first contact at Botany Bay on April 29, 1770, was impressed by Australia's indigenous inhabitants and rejected William Dampier's demeaning 1697 description of them as "the miserablest people in the world".

"...in reality they are far happier than we Europeans; being wholly unacquainted with not only the superfluous but the necessary conveniences so much sought after in Europe... They live in a tranquillity which is not disturbed by the inequality of condition [and] the earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life," he wrote.

Cook and Endeavour, for both good and ill, laid the foundations for modern Australia and New Zealand. His charts and observations were largely responsible for the British Government's decision to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay - literally the ends of the earth - in 1788.

If, as many hope, it proves possible to raise Endeavour's hulk from Rhode Island's mud the vessel should be brought home to the southern hemisphere; the site of its, and its' master's, greatest accomplishments.