Journals of Captain James Cook on his Voyages of Discovery

Captain James Cook, RN, FRS, has been rightly called 'the greatest explorer of his age, the greatest maritime explorer of his country in any age'. On the three expeditions which he led to the Pacific between 1768 and his death at Hawaii in 1779, his ships thrice circled the globe; he drew the modern map of the Pacific, and he was the first European seaman to circumnavigate New Zealand, to discover the east coast of Australia, to cross the Antarctic Circle, to chart the north-west coasts of America. From his ships the scurvy that had made a hell of long sea voyages was banished, and on his second voyage of over three years he lost not one man from this disease. The three voyages proclaim his greatness alike as a seaman and navigator, an explorer, a practical scientist, and a leader of men. They were worthily chronicled in his own Journals and charts. It is a reproach to scholarship that Cook's own record of his voyages has never till now been faithfully reproduced from the manuscripts written in his hand. In this edition, prepared for the Hakluyt Society, the text has been printed from surviving holograph Journals by Cook, under the editorship of Dr J.C. Beaglehole, of Victoria University College, Wellington, who has for many years dedicated himself to the study of Cook and his career in exploration. The work is in four volumes (originally with a separate Portfolio containing reproductions of original charts and views drawn on the three voyages; these were subsequently republished separately by the Hakluyt Society). This first volume deals with the voyage of the Endeavour, 1768-1771. Prefixed to it is a General Introduction on the exploration of the Pacific before Cook. The illustrations reproduce original drawings and paintings (many now published for the first time), portraits, documents and maps. This is a facsimile of the edition first published in 1955, along with the Addenda and Corrigenda published in 1968. For the print-on-demand edition, the illustrations originally in colour are reproduced in black-and-white, the fold-outs divided to fit on separate pages, and the volume split into two parts.