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[Chart showing track through the South Seas, 1767, pricked out in red, from Cape Pillar and Cape Victory by way of Piscador Island … ]1765

by Philip Carteret

Carteret sailed northward to catch the trade winds, in search of the uninhabited island of S. Ambrose and S. Felix, though he failed to locate them. Continuing west, he passed south of Easter Island. Sailing on a more southerly course, to the west of 110 degrees W, Carteret discovered Pitcairn Island; the destination of the Bounty mutineers, along with three low atolls on the southern fringes of the Tuamotu Archipelago. Reaching the Duke of Gloucester's Islands, he concluded that there was no continent lying anywhere near, thereby disproving earlier assumptions made by Quiros.