That quest provided the objective of a second expedition when Cook, promoted from Lieutenant to Commander commander in the Resolution, accompanied by Tobias Furneaux's Adventure circumnavigated the globe in high southern latitudes without finding the fabled continental land mass.
On this three-year voyage, Cook crossed the Antarctic Circle, carefully investigated Antarctic waters in that region, and turned north towards the New Hebrides. He revisited New Zealand, went on to discover New Caledonia and Norfolk Island in the Pacific, along with South Georgia in the South Atlantic and also charted Easter Island, the Marquesas and Tonga. By the time he returned to England in 1775, he had covered some 96,000 kilometres in three years.
Along the way, in February and March 1773, the Adventure, having lost the Resolution in fog and gales, made for Van Diemen's Land's south coast. Furneaux renamed Bruny Island's Adventure Bay, sailed around the Tasman Peninsula and along Tasmania's east before proceeding to a pre-arranged rendezvous in New Zealand.
Having put to rest the myth of Terra Australis Incognita, Cook, promoted to Captain and given an honorary retirement from the Navy, with a sinecure as an officer of the Greenwich Hospital. He was now a Fellow of the Royal Society, awarded the Copley Gold Medal for the remarkable achievement of completing his second voyage without losing a man to scurvy, but remained restless.
Cook turned his attention to the Pacific coasts of North America and Siberia, where he hoped to find the western outlet of the fabled North-West Passage, which was believed to connect the Atlantic to the Pacific around the top of North America.