Holograph journal of Captain James Cook on HMS Resolution (320 ff.), 28 November 1771-10 November 1774

Component identifier:

File Add MS 27886

Content Summary:

The journal begins on 28 November 1771, when Cook received his commission to command HMS Drake, which shortly after was re-named HMS Resolution. There are no further entries until May 1772. HMS Resolution and Adventure left Plymouth on 13 July 1772 and the journal records the voyage to Cape Town, the southern Indian Ocean, Dusky Sound, New Zealand (March – May 1773), Queen Charlotte Sound, Tahiti (Aug. 1773), the Friendly Islands (Oct. 1773), the separation from the Adventure (Oct. 1773), Queen Charlotte Sound (Nov. 1773), the southern Pacific Ocean, Easter Island (March 1774), the Marquesas Islands (April 1774), Tahiti (April – May 1774), Huahine (May 1774), Savage Island (Niue) (June 1774), Tonga (June 1774), New Hebrides (July – Sept. 1774) and New Caledonia (Oct. 1774). The journal ends with the Resolution sailing south-east towards the Straits of Magellan.

The journal was written in seven folio books bound in thick marbled paper which were later taken apart and re-bound in a guardbook. There are a number of calculations, notes by the ship's master (Joseph Gilbert) and other insertions. The most substantial is an extract in a clerk's hand from the journal of Captain Tobias Furneaux on HMS Adventure, 8 February – 15 May 1773, written when he explored the eastern coast of Van Diemen's Land (ff. 97-105). The first page of the journal is written in another hand and is headed 'Remarks in Long Island Sound'.

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M1580

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