The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific: As Told by Selections of His Own Journals

324 Pages·1971·13.06 MB·English

by  James Cook

I Is
A
THE EXPLORATIONS OF
1
CAPTAIN JAMES COOK

INTHE PACIFIC

AS TOLD BY SELECTIONS OF HIS

OWN JOURNALS 1768-1779

I.!
r~~ . -
ggPfllMp
-r'iff
; . .*
• ‘:
ec;- '
t
.■•J•*
-
rj ■
) . • ■?!

■- ■•

■j
: M

|: ■ ^
7
i ■ ^

i /
i /
j
■M- :M
m
iff;,;

;! ■ felsi .<
j. ;■ •:
V -
iSgi
MM
> ■> lpp$:
O•.' /
; i I 1 *2 ■*. ./Tasp
■ ^'• - I F/ VC C ; -
, S^jgjSPr* ► , i'
m
■-■■I:'-r.

lie mm- & ^ ;v.;> tv-> ” .. • ' »,N •;./V
Sfasar—nr ■ -v:-;r-r
•\{i iis
Nfflyv. t mVX
:“i^-%*»*s*sr;*&■a."•■••.
EDITED BYA.GRENFELL PRICE

va„tuIL,L^TRATED BVejOFFREYC. INCLETON
. :7 WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY PERCY C j
ADAMS
"TS K
i
}
i
■
DOVER CLASSICS OF TRAVEL,

EXPLORATION, TRUE ADVENTURE

(
i
Melville in the South Seas, Charles R. Anderson. (21589-X) $2.25
The Eyes of Discovery: The Pageant of North America as Seen /
by the First Explorers, John Bakeless. (20761-7) $3.00 i-
r
Travels of William Bartram, edited by Mark Van Doren. (20013-2)
$2.25
Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and I
Meccah, Richard F. Burton. (21217-3, 21218-1) Two-volume r
set $4.50 t;
Histories of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North ■.
Carolina, William Byrd. (21831-7) $2.75
The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova. (20338-7, 20339-5, 20340-9)
Three-volume set $6.00
The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by
Elliott Coues. (21268-8, 21269-6, 21270-X) Three-volume set
$7.50
A New Voyage Round the World, William Dampier. (21900-3)
$3.00
h
Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s Librettist, translated
by Elisabeth Abbott. (21706-X) $2.75
f
The Buccaneers of America, John Esquemeling. (21751-5) $3.00
Norse Discoveries and Explorations in America 983-1362; Leif
Erikson to the Kensington Stone, Hjalmar R. Holand.
(22014-1) $2.75
Among the Indians of Guiana, Everard F. Im Thurn. (21772-8)
$3.00
Travels in North America, Peter Kalm. (21576-8, 21577-6) Two-
volume set $5.00 i
i
A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms: Being an Account by the
Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his Travels in India and China i:
(AD. 399-414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discip­
line, translated by James Legge. (21344-7) $2.00 t
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, edited by A. W. Pollard.
(21221-1) $2.75 :
t.
(continued on back flap)
1
v
r
r
}.■
u
-
'e
7

PLAQUE BY FLAXMAN FOR WEDGWOOD, 1784, IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM
THE EXPLORATIONS

OF
Captain lames C[ook

IN THE PACIFIC

AS TOLD BY SELECTIONS

OF HIS OWN JOURNALS

1768-1779
Edited by
A. GRENFELL PRICE

C.M.G.,M.A.(Oxon),D.LnT.(ADEL),F.R.G.S
Illustrated by
GEOFFREY C. INGLETON
With a new Introduction by
PERCY G. ADAMS
Professor o f English
The University of Tennessee
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.
NEW YORK
Copyright© 1971 by Dover Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved under Pan American and International
Copyright Conventions.
This Dover edition, first published in 1971, is an un­
abridged republication of the work originally published by
The Limited Editions Club in 1957. This edition also
contains a new Introduction by Percy G. Adams.
International Standard Book Number: 0-486-22766-9
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 79-145750
Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc.
180 Varick Street
New York, N.Y. 10014
INTRODUCTION
to the Dover Edition

EXACTLY TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO CAPTAIN JAMES COOK
was sailing the Pacific Ocean on the first of three voyages that were to make him the
greatest of sailor explorers the world has known. The two-hundredth anniversary
of his decade of unbelievable accomplishments began in London in late July of 1968,
on the day of the month when Cook started the Endeavour toward the mouth of the
Thames. After an address delivered before hundreds of distinguished guests by
R. A. Skelton, the chief student of Cook’s charts, the celebration moved to the
British Museum for a long look at the most attractive, easily the most valuable,
exhibit ever arranged to honor the memory of a restless, curious son of earth: there
were original maps and drawings, great natural history collections and artifacts, and
manuscripts and first editions of dozens of journals and logs kept by Cook and the
men who sailed with him. From England the celebration of Cook’s exploits has
moved and is moving to Tahiti, to New Zealand, to Australia, to Hawaii, to the
northwest coast of North America. One of the most appropriate observances of the
anniversary has been held at Wellington, for that city overlooks the strait that bears
Cook’s name and separates the two islands of New Zealand which he knew so well.
And there too works the most noted of Cook scholars, Professor J. C. Beaglehole,
whose careful editing of the three journals kept by Cook himself—completed just
in time for the anniversary—constitutes not only one of the best monuments to the
man himself but, appropriately, the best work ever published by the Hakluyt
Society. Since those four volumes contain over 3300 pages of notes, essays, and
journals and will probably never be reproduced in an inexpensive edition, Dover
Publications is offering as its part in the bi-centennial this handsomely illustrated,
one-volume selection of entries from the original journals.
Each of the three voyages was carefully planned, for each the British Admiralty
provided a detailed set of general instructions, and each increased knowledge and
brought fame for James Cook. On the first voyage (1768-1771), taken in the
Endeavour, Cook went through the Strait of Le Maire to Tahiti, where he observed
the transit of Venus at the same time two other expeditions were observing it at far
separated spots and where he and his men fell in love with the South Sea paradise
discovered a year before by Samuel Wallis; from there he made his way to New
Zealand to chart the coast and show it to be two islands, then to the eastern coast of
Australia, and finally home by Batavia and South Africa. On the second voyage
VI INTRODUCTION TO THE DOVER EDITION
(1772-1775), in the Resolution and the Adventure, Cook sailed in the opposite
direction, first to Cape Town and then south to the ice of Antarctica, which he
coasted as he headed east looking for the great continent that maps from the time of
the middle ages had shown as •Terra Incognita. Finding no southern continent he
twice turned north on this circumnavigation to make huge exploring sweeps among
the islands of the warmer part of the South Pacific before returning to the upper
latitudes and other tries for the continent. On voyage three (1776-1780), in the
Resolution and the Discovery, the now famous sailor started out as he had on the
second circumnavigation but went by the shortest route to the islands of the South
Pacific, by then so well known, before heading due north to discover Hawaii; then
he explored the northwest coast of North America well into the Bering and Arctic
Seas and proved nonexistent the navigable Northwest or Northeast Passage to India
which merchants and rulers had long sought from the Atlantic side and which many
mapmakers had confidently sketched in as a reality. But the third proved to be
Cook’s last voyage; for on a second visit to Hawaii, intended to be a respite from the
rigors of the Alaskan winter, his luck ran out and he was killed by savages.
It had taken more than luck, however, to move among the giant ice floes that have
since captured and crushed so many ships, to brave the reefs and shores of hundreds of
unmapped islands small and large, to keep peace with thousands of savages some of
whom were cannibals, to guard the health of his men successfully at a time when a
circumnavigation normally meant death to so many, and to keep such helpful
journals, draw such fine maps, and see the necessity of aiding the scientists whom he
took along. For such successes Cook had to have experience as well as genius, and his
experience was of the proper, most practical kind. After a bare minimum of school­
ing he went to sea and by the age of twenty-one had worked his way up to the
position of mate on a small coaling ship, meanwhile learning much about piloting,
navigation, mathematics, and charting. When the Seven Years’ War began he gave
up his career to enlist as a seaman in the British navy. Again he quickly gained the
admiration of his superiors and rose in rank, serving on three men-of-war and
ending as Master of a sixty-four-gun ship, the Pembroke, a position that required not
only considerable talents as a leader but great ability as a navigator and pilot. During
the fight for Canada he provided important charts and gave helpful advice to
General Wolfe. When the war was over his former commanders saw to it that his
genius was employed in surveying and charting the newly acquired coasts and
waters of Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence, a job that permitted him to spend
only four winter months a year for several years with his wife and children in
England. By 1768, then, James Cook at age forty was well known in the British
Admiralty as a man whose talents and training equipped him to be the leader of a
long sailing expedition whose object would be not to fight battles or to sack treasure
ships but to bring back scientific information.
One of the first evidences of Cook’s judgment and ability was his choice of a ship
PERCY G. ADAMS Vll
for the voyage. Instead of a large, heavily armored, comfortable navy vessel like the
one he had served on last, he selected one of the small, square-rigged coalers out of
Whitby, of the kind he had once known so well. It was a masterful choice, for such an
expedition required putting in close to shore in order to land scientists and to chart
coasts. The coaler’s flat bottom and shallow draft were best for such work. Further­
more, great speed and huge guns were not necessary since thecivilized world quickly
heard of Cook’s peaceful pursuit of knowledge: the only men he would need to fear
were those poorly armed ones in the Pacific islands who were not yet aware of the
values of science. Even the third voyage, which took place during four years of the
war fought between Britain and its American colonies and France, was safe. At that
time Benjamin Franklin himself sent an open letter to all American armed ships
asking them not to “plunder” or in any way “obstruct” the return home of “that
most celebrated Navigator and Discoverer Captain Cook,” who was doing so
much “to the Benefit of Mankind in general.” Cook’s first small coaler performed its
function so well that he never considered any other kind of ship for either of his
later voyages of discovery.
Perhaps the most lasting evidence of Cook’s genius has been the journals he kept;
for while each of the three voyages ultimately supplied the world with numerous
accounts produced by crewmen or supernumeraries on his ships, the most important
are of course those written by the commander-in-chief himself. But it has not always
been possible to read Cook’s own words exactly as he wrote them. It was customary
in the eighteenth century to order everyone on an official voyage for the Admiralty
to turn over all logs and journals he had kept, the reason being that the Admiralty
itself wished to publish its “official” version first. On every well known circum­
navigation, however, someone—sometimes several people—managed to hide a
journal, perhaps by writing it in the margins of a Bible or on such thin paper that it
could be secreted in the lining of a jacket. Such subterfuges were profitable since
publishers were always ready to pay well for the surreptitious journals. Hardly, for
example, had the Endeavour docked when one publisher came out with an anony­
mous account of its voyage. For the “official,” ghost-written, version of that first
voyagejohn Hawkesworth was paid at least £6,000, a munificent sum. (His contem­
porary Henry Fielding received only £1,000 for Tom Jones.) Hawkesworth’s
assignment was to collate Cook’sjournal with that ofjoseph Banks, who went along
as chief scientist, then to rewrite the two accounts as one and publish it in 1773 in
three volumes along with the journals of the circumnavigators Philip Carteret,
Wallis, and John Byron. But Hawkesworth was not Captain Cook, for not only did
he depend heavily on Banks but he often rewrote Cook’s words and even inserted
comments and opinions of his own. Nevertheless, his edition was enormously
successful as a publishing venture and is undoubtedly one of the most important
travel books. Not until 1893 would Cook’s own journal be published, and not until
the Hakluyt Society’s edition of 1955 would the copy in Cook’s handwriting, now
INTRODUCTION TO THE DOVER EDITION
VUl
preserved in the Commonwealth National Library at Canberra, be given to the
world. By the time he had completed his second circumnavigation the explorer was
so important that he was permitted to select his own editor, and so his last two
journals—both of which are in the British Museum—were brought out substan­
tially as he would have wanted them.
As a writer Cook was untrained and artless, but he learned fast and had good
teachers. Without formal schooling he did not spell or punctuate accurately or
consistently. Some of his inconsistencies, such as the confusion of then and than, can
be in part attributed to his times; but he had far more trouble with ie and ei than did
his educated contemporaries, and sometimes he wrote a page or more without
inserting any mark of punctuation. On the first voyage he was quite close to Joseph
Banks, the rich young scientist, highly educated and cultured, whose own journal
contains evidence that he was an important influence on Cook as a writer, especially
during the early months when they were together. Professor Beaglehole has shown,
for example, that while Cook’s description of Tahiti owes something to Banks, his
account of New Zealand is his own. On the second voyage the mathematician
William Wales seems to have had a similar influence, although to a much smaller
degree. The explorer’s chief teacher, however, was probably James Cook, for just
as he taught himself surveying and navigating he must have worked at improving
his method of recording what he experienced. The best evidence for such an opinion
is to be found in the fact that he constantly wrote and rewrote his second journal.
The last journal is, of course, incomplete and must be supplemented by the records
of Clerke and King, who succeeded him after his death. Through all his accounts he
remained modest and unobtrusive, preferring not only objectivity but his own
observations. And to read him, whether in one volume of selections or in four long
volumes, is to arrive at certain definite conclusions about him as a man and about the
results of his career.
The most obvious conclusion is that no man ever did more to alter and to correct
the map of the earth. After him cartographers abandoned the great southern
Terra Incognita and the equally mythical Northwest Passage while at the same time
they were able to sketch in Australia’s east coast and Great Barrier Reef even more
correctly than Dampier and others had given them the western coast. After him
maps could show Hawaii, the southern ice line, the northwest coast of North
America, dozens of previously undiscovered islands in Polynesia, and New Zealand
as two islands. And since he drew such splendid, professional charts himself, after
him the map of the Pacific was everywhere more trustworthy. Furthermore, that
map will show how well his names for islands, points, reefs, and mountains have
stood the test of time.
His journals will also show Cook’s great importance in the struggle to keep sailors
healthy while on long voyages. He constantly experimented with diets that would
prevent scurvy-sauerkraut, spruce beer, inspissated beer; he kept his crews and