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James
Cook (17281779)
Journal of HMS Endeavour
17681771
National Library of Australia
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James
Cook's Endeavour Journal
17681771
The
Endeavour Journal written by James Cook
records the voyage of His Majesty’s Barque Endeavour
to the South Seas from 27 May 1768 to 12 July
1771. Captained by First Lieutenant James Cook,
the flat-bottomed ship and its crew of 94 men
were sent out by the Admiralty of King George
III, officially to observe the transit of Venus
from King George’s Island (Tahiti). Unofficially,
however, the voyage was to be one of discovery.
Cook was to search between Tahiti and New Zealand
for ‘a Continent or Land of great extent’ (The
Instructions, Secret, 30 July 1768).
The
Endeavour’s voyage took nearly three years.
When the expedition returned to England in July
1771, the transit of Venus had been observed,
an unprecedented number of botanical and zoological
specimens collected, and New Zealand and the east
coast of New Holland (Australia) had been charted
and claimed for King George III.
The
753 pages of the Endeavour Journal were
written by Cook in a series of double-leaved folios.
He wrote the body of the text in dark-coloured
ink, with the dates beginning each instalment
in red. On the left-hand side of each page, he
recorded navigational information. Journal entries
describing daily events were entered on the right-hand
side of the page. As the voyage progressed, however,
Cook’s entries became more discursive, with the
state of the weather and winds becoming intertwined
with events. The journal is one of the few substantial
manuscripts in the hand of one of the world’s
great navigators and maritime explorers. It is
also of extraordinary importance in the history
of the British colonisation of Australia, and
as one of the earliest written records of the
Indigenous peoples of Polynesia, New Zealand and
eastern Australia.
In
2001, the Endeavour Journal was included
on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.
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