* 1780 – James Cook's ship HMS Resolution returns to England ( Cook having been killed on Hawaii during the voyage ).

* 1768 – James Cook begins his first voyage.

* 1541 – French explorer Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec City in his third voyage to Canada.

* 1984 – STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.

* 1492 – Spain and Christopher Columbus sign the Capitulations of Santa Fe for his voyage to Asia to acquire spices.

* 1534 – Jacques Cartier begins the voyage during which he discovers Canada and Labrador.

* 1628 – The Swedish warship sinks in the Stockholm harbour after only about 20 minutes of her maiden voyage.

* 1912 – The Titanic leaves port in Southampton, England for her first and only voyage.

In eight years of active service as an officer, he served two and a half years in a surveying ship in the Mediterranean ( 1818 – 21 ), one and a half years in a surveying sloop in the English Channel and off the coast of Ireland ( 1823 – 24 ), and one and a half years as Surveyor of the frigate during a voyage ( 1824 – 26 ) to and from the Hawaiian Islands ( then known as the " Sandwich islands ").

William " Captain " Kidd ( c. 1645 – 23 May 1701 ) was a Scottish sailor remembered for his trial and execution for piracy after returning from a voyage to the Indian Ocean.

The Portuguese navigator Pedro de Mascarenhas may have discovered the island during his voyage of 1512 – 1513, but there is little corroborative evidence for this ; cartographic analysis points to 1532 or later.

* 1577 – Sir Francis Drake sets out from Plymouth, England, on his round-the-world voyage.

* 1644 – Abel Tasman's second Pacific voyage began.

* 1909 – The sixteen battleships of the Great White Fleet, led by, return to the United States after a voyage around the world.

* 1502 – Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on his second voyage to India.

Vancouver's first naval service was as a midshipman aboard, on James Cook's second voyage ( 1772 – 1775 ) searching for Terra Australis.

He also accompanied Cook's third voyage ( 1776 – 1778 ), this time aboard Resolutions sister ship, and the first European sighting and exploration of the Hawaiian Islands.

* 1493 – Christopher Columbus sets sail for Spain from Hispaniola, ending his first voyage to the New World.

* 1597 – The first Dutch voyage to the East Indies reaches Bantam ( on Java ).

* 1959 –, said to be the safest ship afloat and " unsinkable " like the, struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage and sank, killing all 95 aboard.

* 1611 – The mutinous crew of Henry Hudson's fourth voyage sets Henry, his son and seven loyal crew members adrift in an open boat in what is now Hudson Bay ; they are never heard from again.

* 1767 – Pitcairn Island is discovered by Midshipman Robert Pitcairn on an expeditionary voyage commanded by Philip Carteret.

* 1952 – The sets sail on her maiden voyage to Southampton.

When I mentioned that for my first long voyage I did not even have the money for the return fare, but had trusted to luck that I would earn a sufficient amount, the young people looked at me doubtingly.

This voyage was the first successful crossing of the Atlantic under steam propulsion.

( The common misconception that he was Dutch and that his first name was Hendrik stem from Dutch documents of his third voyage.

Hudson's first error of the fourth voyage occurred only a few miles down the Thames.

Rogers ' A cruising voyage round the world: first to the South-Sea, thence to the East-Indies, and homewards by the Cape of Good Hope was published in 1712 and included an account of Selkirk's ordeal.

After further preparing the craft for the trans-lunar voyage, the crew began the first sleep period of the mission just under fifteen hours after launch.

The first European sighting of the Virgin Islands was by Christopher Columbus in 1493 on his second voyage to the Americas.

The known history of Cuba predates Christopher Columbus ' landing on the island during his first voyage of discovery on 28 October 1492.

Christopher Columbus, on his first voyage to the Americas, sailed south from what is now the Bahamas to explore the northeast coast of Cuba and the northern coast of Hispaniola.

During his first voyage in 1492, instead of reaching Japan as he had intended, Columbus landed in the Bahamas archipelago, at a locale he named San Salvador.

Charles Marie de La Condamine, seven months later, was able to give to the Académie française an account of Father Roman's voyage, and thus confirm the existence of this waterway, first reported by Father Acuña in 1639.

Here he found the first pirate of his voyage, Robert Culliford, ( the same man who had stolen Kidd ’ s ship years before ) and his crew aboard the Mocha Frigate.

Lyell asked Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle, to search for erratic boulders on the survey voyage of the Beagle, and just before it set out FitzRoy gave Darwin Volume 1 of the first edition of Lyell's Principles.

Joshua Slocum was one of the first people to carry out a long-distance sailing voyage for pleasure, circumnavigating the world between 1895 and 1898.

Christopher Columbus reached the island of Hispaniola on his first voyage, in December 1492.

Cão then coasted down along the present Angola ( Portuguese West Africa ), and erected a second pillar, probably marking the termination of this voyage, at Cape Santa Maria ( the Monte Negro of these first visitors ).

In 1498 French Guiana was first visited by Europeans when Christopher Columbus sailed to the region on his third voyage and named it the " Land of pariahs ".

At age 23, Drake made his first voyage to the New World, sailing with his second cousin, Sir John Hawkins, on one of a fleet of ships owned by his relatives, the Hawkins family of Plymouth.

The first report of his discovery of an open channel south of Tierra del Fuego was written after the 1618 publication of the voyage of Willem Schouten and Jacob le Maire around Cape Horn in 1616.

Drake was hailed as the first Englishman to circumnavigate the Earth ( and the second such voyage arriving with at least one ship intact, after Elcano's in 1520 ).

He visited Rome with his parents for the first time in 1933, the year of the maiden voyage of the transatlantic ocean liner SS Rex ( which makes an appearance in Amarcord ).

In 1978, Greenpeace launched the original Rainbow Warrior, a, former fishing trawler named for the Cree legend that inspired early activist Robert Hunter on the first voyage to Amchitka.