John Ledyard’s Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

JOHN LEDYARD’S JOURNAL

OF CAPTAIN COOK’S LAST VOYAGE

EDITED BY

JAMES KENNETH MUNFORD

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

SINCLAIR H. HITCHINGS

And with Notes on Plants by Helen M. Gilkey

And Notes on Animals by Robert M. Storm

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 2

ILLUSTRATIONS 3

EDITOR’S PREFACE by James Kenneth Munford 5

COLLABORATORS 8

LEDYARD’S VOYAGEMATES 10

APPRECIATION 15

INTRODUCTION by Sinclair H. Hitchings 16

THE VOYAGE 20

CORPORAL LEDYARD 22

THE EDUCATION OF A TRAVELER 24

THE WRITER AND HIS BOOK 28

ADVENTURES OF A VOLUNTEER 32

THE NORTHWEST FUR TRADE 36

A NOTE OF THANKS 41

JOHN LEDYARD’S JOURNAL 42

DEDICATION 43

PREFACE 44

A VOYAGE PERFORMED IN HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY’S SHIP RESOLUTION, IN COMPANY WITH THE DISCOVERY, UNDER THE COMMAND OF CAPT. JAMES COOK. 45

APPENDIX 212

NOTES ON PLANTS by Helen M. Gilkey 212

NOTES ON ANIMALS by Robert M. Storm 213

BIBLIOGRAPHY 214

ILLUSTRATIONS

Chart shewing Tracks of the Ships employed in Capt. Cook’s last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean in the Years 1776-1779. Ledyard’s Journal. JCB

FIRST SECTION: The South Seas

The Ships approaching York Island. Rickman’s Journal, page 164. OHS

Capt. Cook’s expedition in the South Seas (Moorea Island, Society Islands). An original aquatint by John Webber, no date. MM LP 389.

Omai’s Public Entry on his first landing at Otaheite. Rickman’s Journal, page 136. OHS

Representation of the Heiva at Otaheite. Rickman’s Journal, page 156. OHS

Polynesian Tools. Plate 10 from An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of His Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphers...By John Hawkesworth. vol. II. 1773. OHS

Cook’s route through the Cook, Tonga, and Society Islands. From Plate 1, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean Undertaken by the Command of His Majesty for Making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere, by James Cook, 2nd ed., 1785. OHS

SECOND SECTION: The Northwest Coast

Cape Gregory to Nootka Sound. From Plate 36, Cook’s Voyage. OHS

Chart of Cook’s River in the N.W. part of America. Plate 44, Cook’s Voyage. OSU Aleutian Kayak. From Plate 50, Cook’s Voyage. OHS

A Man of Oonalashka and A Woman of Oonalashka. Plates 48 49, Cook’s Voyage. OHS

Ounalaschkan Chief, Rickman’s Journal, p. 249. OHS

Natives of Oonalashka and their Habitations. Plate 57, Cook’s Voyage. OHS

The Inside of a House in Oonalashka. Plate 58. Cook’s Voyage. OHS

Unalaska Island, northeast section. From U.S. Army Map Service Series Q501, Sheet NN 3-7, 1953. OSU

THIRD SECTION: The Hawaiian Islands

A Man of the Sandwich Islands with Helmet. Plate 64, Cook’s Voyage. OHS

A Young Woman of the Sandwich Islands. Plate 63, Cook’s Voyage. OHS

A Man of the Sandwich Islands, dancing. Plate 62, Cook’s Voyage. OHS

An Offering before Capt. Cook, in the Sandwich Islands. Plate 60, Cook’s Voyage. OHS

Chart of Sandwich Islands. Plate 59, Cook’s Voyage. OSU

A View of Karakakooa, in Owyhee. Plate 68, Cook’s Voyage MM

Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii. JKM

Beach at Kealakekua, Hawaii. JKM

William Watman monument. JKM

FOURTH SECTION: Death of Cook and the Arctic

Representation of the Murder of Capt. Cook at O-Why-ee. Rickman’s Journal, frontispiece. OHS

A Man of Kamtschatka, Travelling in Winter. Plate 70, Cook’s Voyage. OHS

Chart of Behring Strait. From Plate 36, Cook’s Voyage. OHS

A Sea Otter. Plate 43, Cook’s Voyage. OHS

Sea Horses. Plate 52, Cook’s Voyage. OHS

A White Bear. Plate 73, Cook’s Voyage. OHS

A View of the Town and Harbour of St. Peter and St. Paul, in Kamtschatka. Plate 74, Cook’s Voyage. MM

The Resolution beating through the Ice, with the Discovery in the most eminent danger in the distance. Aquatint published in London 1809 by Boydell and Company. MM LP 1049.

PHOTOPRINT CREDITS:

JCB John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island

OHS Oregon Historical Society, Portland, Oregon

MM The Mariners Museum, Newport News, Virginia

OSU Oregon State University Photo Service, Corvallis, Oregon

JKM Photo by J. K. Munford

EDITOR’S PREFACE by James Kenneth Munford

IN THE SENSE that a journal is a logbook or diary written daily or periodically as events transpire, the text reprinted in this volume is not a journal. A Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean and in Quest of a North-West Passage, between Asia & America by Mr. John Ledyard follows the expedition in chronological narrative, but to the best of our knowledge, Ledyard compiled it in Hartford, Connecticut, in the winter of 1783—more than two years after the end of the voyage.

The official account of the voyage as written by Cook up to the time he arrived at Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, and continued from that point by Lieutenant James King required nearly four years to be edited, cleared through the Admiralty, and printed in three magnificent quarto volumes and a folio Atlas. Since it did not appear until 1784, Ledyard did not have the benefit of these volumes when he wrote his Journal.

To forestall publication of inaccurate or misleading accounts in advance of the official account, the Lords of the Admiralty had enjoined Cook to demand from the officers and petty officers, the log-books and journals they may have kept, and to seal them up for our inspection.{1} The commanders of both vessels carried out these instructions before they reached China on the return trip to England (see page 198) and met with what King called cheerful compliance.{2}

Several surreptitious accounts, however, found their way into print in advance of the official account. The first of these, Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean on Discovery; performed, in the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, was published anonymously in London in 1781.{3} Since this book and Ledyard’s Journal have considerable similarity, its authorship has sometimes been attributed to Ledyard. T. M. Hocken in his Bibliography of New Zealand, 1909, p. 20, and Sir Joseph Carruthers in Captain James Cook R. N., 1930, p. 80, flatly assert that Ledyard wrote the anonymous account. Edward G. Cox says that it probably was written by John Ledyard.{4} After careful examination of the question of authorship, however, Judge F. W. Howay came to the conclusion that Lieutenant John Rickman of the Discovery had written it.{5} Since Rickman is now generally conceded to be the author, we refer to this first published account, a copy of which Ledyard had at hand when he wrote his Journal, as Rickman’s. Rickman may have secretly kept his journal when others turned theirs in. He undoubtedly had access either to notes kept on the expedition or to some other record or log because his positions, directions, and dates agree for the most part quite well with the official account. In turn, Ledyard’s figures are fairly accurate because he used Rickman’s.

Sparks says, With no other written materials Ledyard produced his manuscript journal.{6} Examination of Ledyard’s text, however, (especially pp. 48-58) shows that he also had access to or had previously read Hawkesworth’s compilation of accounts of Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific.{7} I have found no evidence of Ledyard having access to any other printed account of the third voyage.

About the first of May 1783, Ledyard sold his manuscript for 20 guineas to Nathaniel Patten (Hartford printer and bookseller from 1776-1797), who published it in a 208-page duodecimo volume with a chart taken, but not exactly copied, from the one in Rickman’s book but with none of the illustrations Rickman’s included. Hartford readers so eagerly awaited the Ledyard Journal that Patten released it first in two parts, No. I being issued in June and No. II in July, 1783.{8}

In many details neither chart agrees with Cook’s chart,{9} but in general they follow the expedition rather well. The etcher who reproduced the chart for Ledyard’s book followed the Rickman version very closely and in at least one place improved upon it. The track of the ships on their return from Alaska to Hawaii is omitted in the Rickman chart. Ledyard’s etcher included it, although he placed it much farther to the east than does the official chart of the voyage. He also added a decorative border to the cartouche.

Ledyard’s Chart shewing the Track’s of the Ships appears in the endpapers. Five etchings included by Rickman but not by Ledyard have been reproduced among the illustrations. They are entitled The Ships approaching York Island, Omai’s Public Entry on his first landing at Otaheite, Representation of the Heiva at Otaheite, Ounalaschkan Chief, and Representation of the Murder of Capt. Cook at O-Why-ee.

Not all copies of the Ledyard original are exact duplicates. In examining nearly a dozen copies in various libraries across the country, I have found a number of variations. The printer apparently made changes—not necessarily corrections—in the type as the printing process went along. For example, the word seldom in the last line, page 34, is spelled soldom in some copies and soldome in others. On page 107, line 30, the word considered appears as consiered in some copies. On page 150, lines 3 and 20, bodies is spelled bodys in some copies, but on line 22 always as bodys in the copies I have examined. On page 151, line 11, pieces may be found spelled peices in some copies. No definite pattern appears in these variations to suggest a first and second printing.

My comments in the footnotes regarding anchorages, lands sighted, etc., sometimes come from Cook’s text but in many instances from the charts in the official accounts and Atlas. For present-day place names I have used roman type, reserving italics in place names for those given by Cook or his contemporaries if different from present usage. The present-day names for geographic features given in the footnotes come primarily from the National Geographic Atlas Series Maps, supplemented when necessary by the Atlas of the World, published in 1958 by the London Times and in a few instances, where additional detail is required, by the 1:1,000,000 World Aeronautical Chart series compiled by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.

The paging in this reprint follows very closely the paging in Ledyard’s original, the only variation being an adjustment to fill out lines at the bottom of the page and on a few pages the shifting of lines to allow space for footnotes.

The reader may be dismayed to find misspelled words, inconsistent punctuation and capitalization, and grammar unbecoming a former Dartmouth student. In editing the text we have sought to preserve all these irregularities as they appear in the original—a task that could be accomplished only with the gracious cooperation of the typesetters and proof readers. The only change we have made in the text is to convert the long f-like s’s frequently used by 18th century printers to present-day s’s. Samples of the text with the long’s may be seen in the photographically reproduced pages from the original on pages 1, 3, 5, and top of 7.

These pages, incidentally, enlargements of the original, may give an unwarranted impression of the size of Ledyard’s book. The book published in Hartford in 1783 was duodecimo, trimmed to about 4½ by 7½ inches, with type set in lines 20½ picas (3⅜ inches) long. For reproductions on pages 1, 3, 5, and 7, we have enlarged the type about 17% to lines 24 picas (4 inches) long.

The reader should not treat blunders in the original too critically but should recall the conditions under which the book came into being. Except for a cursory glimpse into the study of law and the ministry and part of a year at Dartmouth, Ledyard was largely a self-taught writer. Then too, the printer, Nathaniel Patten of Hartford, must have worked under extreme difficulties. At the time he set and printed Ledyard’s Journal, the colonies had been at war for more than six years with the nation that would normally supply his paper, type, and ink. His type was worn and broken, with some fonts apparently incomplete, and his paper of poor quality. According to Sparks, Ledyard spent only from January through April in Hartford in 1783. As busy as he was preparing manuscript for this 208-page book and at the same time enjoying the company of friends of long standing, it is not likely the author gave the printer much help in correcting proofs after the type was set. It is amazing that Patten got the book out at all, especially that he had the first section ready for the readers in June of that year.

COLLABORATORS

In the present volume, an Oregonian and a New Englander have joined forces to elucidate John Ledyard’s printed journal. Living in the Pacific Northwest, I have long had an interest in Ledyard’s part in the opening of the fur trade, the development of the Northwest, and the exploration as well as the description of areas of the Pacific first seen by Europeans on Cook’s third voyage. Living in New England, Mr. Hitchings for the past eight years has been gathering material for a biography of John Ledyard and an edition of Ledyard’s surviving letters and journals. Our partnership was a natural one.

Surprisingly it was not during his college career, but a year afterwards, that Mr. Hitchings, Dartmouth 1954, became interested in Ledyard, Dartmouth 1776 (if he had stayed to graduate). No one since Jared Sparks, who worked on and off for a dozen years before he completed his biography of Ledyard, published in 1828, has spent so much time trying to piece together in accurate detail the truth about Ledyard’s life and character. Time buries some materials and brings others to light; Mr. Hitchings has had the advantage of Ledyard documents which Sparks never saw. His research, begun in the Ledyard collection at Dartmouth College, has taken him to the Sparks Papers at Harvard, the Ledyard Papers at the New York Historical Society, and to scattered holdings of Ledyard material at the Connecticut Historical Society, the Boston Public Library, the American Philosophical Society, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The Phillips Collection in Salem has provided an ideal library for the study of Cook’s third voyage. The search led to the Public Record Office, London, where additional information about Ledyard lay waiting in the documents relating to the third voyage.

Where my compatriot’s interest has taken him eastward across the Atlantic, mine has led me westward over the Pacific. In Hawaii I have visited places where dramatic events took place and have gained new insight into some aspects of the voyage. I have made use of the extensive Howay-Reid collection at the University of British Columbia and source material in the University of Washington Library, the Library of Hawaii, and the libraries of the Oregon Historical Society, the University of Oregon, and Oregon State University. I have reviewed the collections at Dartmouth College and added notes from published materials in the University of Chicago Library, Cornell University Library, and the library of the Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Virginia.

In the past, only three major attempts have been made to tell Ledyard’s story. Isaac Ledyard and Philip Freneau hoped to publish a memoir of Ledyard in 1797 but their plans failed. Jared Sparks produced his best-selling biography of Ledyard in 1828. So convincing and readable was his book, and so full of quotations from Ledyard manuscripts, that no one for over a century did any original research on Ledyard. For generations, journalists lifted their material out of Sparks—sometimes with acknowledgment, often without. In 1946, Helen Augur’s Passage to Glory added some facts to the story as Sparks told it. The present edition of the only book Ledyard wrote for publication contains much information about Ledyard which has never been printed; in our annotation of the text, and our introductory comments, we have also taken advantage of the opportunity to correct errors which have been printed many times and date back, some of them, all the way to Sparks’ biography.

LEDYARD’S VOYAGEMATES

The Resolution had a complement of 112 officers and men, the Discovery 80, both including the marine detachments. In addition there were several supernumeraries, such as John Webber, the artist, and Omai, the Society Islander. The following brief notes{10} will help in identifying members of the expedition on both ships whom Ledyard mentions in the text, whom we have mentioned in the notes, or who became notable for some reason.

ANDERSON, ROBERT (C. 1742-?). Gunner in the Resolution. He had accompanied Cook on the two previous voyages to the Pacific, as a quartermaster on the first and gunner’s mate on the second.

ANDERSON, WILLIAM (1750-1778). Surgeon in the Resolution. He had served as surgeon’s mate on Cook’s second voyage to the Pacific. His knowledge of native languages, natural history, and ethnology was a great help to Cook, who had a warm regard for him. Like Captain Clerke, he suffered from tuberculosis and he and the commander of the Discovery had planned to ask permission to settle in one of the Society Islands, but Clerke could not get his ship’s accounts and papers in order. Both died in course of the voyage (pp. 86, 175-6).

BAYLY, WILLIAM (1737-1810). Astronomer in the Discovery. A self-taught mathematician and astronomer, he had served as assistant in the Royal Observatory and as astronomer on the Adventure on Cook’s second voyage to the Pacific. In later years (1785-1807), he was Headmaster of the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth.

BILLINGS, JOSEPH (c. 1758-?). Able seaman in the Discovery and later in the Resolution, also assistant to Astronomer Bayly. After the voyage he entered the Russian navy, and in 1785 Empress Catherine gave him command of an exploring expedition to northeastern Asia. In 1787 he had a dramatic encounter with John Ledyard at Yakutsk in eastern Siberia (see pp. xxx-xxxi) and went on from there to explore along the north Pacific, the entire expedition lasting nine years.

BLIGH, WILLIAM (1754-1817). Sailing master in the Resolution. He later became famous in connection with two mutinies, one on the Bounty in 1789 and another in New South Wales in 1808. His surveying work on this voyage proved so valuable that he received one-eighth of the profits from the sale of the official account of the voyage. (Holmes, 1952, p. 13.) On the title page of his personal copy of the official account the irascible Bligh wrote in ink:

None of the Maps and Charts in this publication are from the original drawings of Lieut. Henry Roberts, he did no more than copy the original ones from Captain Cook who besides myself was the only person that surveyed & laid the Coast down, in the Resolution. Every Plan & Chart from C. Cook’s death are exact Copies of my works.

Wm. Bligh.{11}

BURNEY, JAMES (1750-1821). First lieutenant on the Discovery and, after Cook’s death, on the Resolution. He had gone to sea as a captain’s servant at the age of 10 and had sailed with Cook as an able seaman on the second voyage, in course of which he was promoted to second lieutenant (1772) in the Adventure. Upon return to England after the third voyage, he became commander in 1780, captain in 1782; later he fought the French in the West Indies but came home in ill health and eventually retired as a rear admiral. He spent much of his later years chronicling discoveries in the Pacific and northeast Asia. It was in connection with his writings on explorations in Siberia that he wrote the matter quoted by Mr. Hitchings in the Introduction. His father was the noted organist, Dr. Charles Burney; one sister, the authoress Fanny Burney, married a French refugee, General d’Arblay; another sister, Susan, whom he introduced to shipmate Molesworth Phillips at the end of the voyage, married Phillips in 1782.

CAVE, JOHN. Quartermaster in the Resolution.

CLERKE, CHARLES (1743-1779), Commander of the Discovery, second in command of the expedition. Characterized as a cheerful, happy-go-lucky, affable person, he had joined the navy as a boy of 12. He had seen considerable action (including being blown from the mizzen-top into the sea in one battle) before he sailed around the world with Byron (1764-66) and with Cook on all three voyages. He suffered from tuberculosis and died before completion of the voyage.

COOK, JAMES (1728-1779). Commander of the Resolution, commodore of the expedition. On his first voyage to the Pacific (1768-1771), he had commanded the Endeavour and on his second (1772-1775), he had commanded the Resolution and also the Adventure with Captain Tobias Furneaux second in command. See Introduction.

DAVIS, JOHN. Quartermaster in the Resolution.

DIXON, GEORGE (1755?-1800). Armorer in the Discovery. After the voyage, in 1785 the King George’s Sound Company sent him in command of the Queen Charlotte to develop fur trade on the northwest coast of North America. On this three-year voyage, accompanied by Nathaniel Portlock in the King George, he visited Hawaii and the south coast of Alaska and in British Columbia left the name of his ship to the Queen Charlotte Islands and his own name to the entrance to the adjacent strait.

EDGAR, THOMAS. Sailing master in the Discovery. In later years he rose to lieutenant, and but for a partiality for grog might have gone further. (Gould, p. 312.)

ELLIS, WILLIAM. Surgeon’s mate in the Discovery and later in the Resolution. He published an account of the voyage in 1782.

GIBSON, SAMUEL. Sergeant of Marines in the Resolution. He had served as a private with Cook on the first voyage to the Pacific and as a corporal on the second. In July 1769 he had tried to desert in Tahiti and received for his pains 2 Dozn lashes. Although the master of the Endeavour called him a wild young man and he seems to have had a propensity for alcohol, his knowledge of Polynesian language and customs made him useful as an interpreter on all three voyages. Trevenen says he was a great favorite with Cook, having saved his life once in one of the skirmishes with the Indians at New Zealand. (Penrose, p. 26.) See footnotes, page 208.

GILBERT, GEORGE. Midshipman in the Discovery. He wrote a 325-page manuscript journal of the voyage, parts of which were published in pamphlet form by the Hawaiian Historical Society in 1926.

GORE, JOHN (C. 1730-1790). First lieutenant in the Resolution. He had visited the South Pacific with Byron and with Wallis (1766-1768) and with Cook (1768-1771). A practical seaman and sportsman, he succeeded to command of the expedition after deaths of Cook and Clerke. After the voyage he was appointed Captain, Greenwich Hospital, the position Cook vacated in 1776. Ledyard refers to Gore as my countryman and several accounts speak of him as a native of Virginia, on what authority I have not been able to determine.

KING, JAMES (1750-1784). Second lieutenant in the Resolution. A year older than Ledyard, he had first joined the navy at age 12 and had been a lieutenant for five years. He had studied at Oxford and in Paris and was a competent astronomer. He came home in command of the Discovery and soon after arriving in England received promotion to captain. The next year (1781) he took charge of a 500-ship convoy to the West Indies. He came home in ill health but finished writing the third volume and assisted with the editing of the other volumes of the official account of the voyage. He went to Nice in 1783 to try to recover his health but died there in 1784.

LANYON, WILLIAM (?-1817). Master’s mate in the Resolution. He had served as able seaman and master’s mate with Cook on the second voyage to the Pacific. He was promoted to lieutenant after Clerke’s death in August 1779. He retired from service as a commander in 1814.

LEDYARD, JOHN (1751-1789). Corporal of Marines in the Resolution, promoted to Sergeant in September 1780. See Introduction.

MOUAT, A. Midshipman in the Discovery. Son of Captain Patrick Mouat.

NELSON, DAVID. Botanist. The first botanist to collect in Hawaii and along the northwest coast of North America. (See page 117n.)

OMAI. Native of the Society Islands, whom Captain Furneaux had taken back to England in the Adventure on Cook’s second voyage to the Pacific. Between 1774 and 1776 he became very well known in England. Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Nathaniel Dance painted his portrait. (See Smith, B., fig. 56, pi. 58 and Beaglehole, 1961, fig. 43.) Lord Sandwich and Sir Joseph Banks sponsored him. He was entertained by nobility and presented to King George III. He acquired a veneer of good breeding which sloughed off when he returned to his home islands. When an English ship called at Tahiti in 1789, the captain learned that Omai had died a short time previously. (Howay, 1930, pp. 2-3.)

PECKOVER, WILLIAM (1751-?). Gunner in the Discovery. He had served as able seaman in the Endeavour on the first voyage and as gunner’s mate in the Resolution on the second.

PHILLIPS, MOLESWORTH (c. 1755-1832). Second lieutenant in the Royal Marines, in command of the marine detachment in both ships. A handsome, gallant, talented hero, at the end of the voyage he met and soon became engaged to Susan Burney, sister of fellow-officer James Burney, and was married to her the following year. He had a tolerable knowledge of music. (p. 114n.) A skilled gentleman mechanic, he presented models of vessels, utensils, and arms which he had created to a London museum. Retired as a colonel, he enjoyed the society of Charles Lamb, the Burney family, and other notables of the era. He was past 75—the only surviving officer of the voyage—at the time of his death in 1832.

PORTLOCK, NATHANIEL (1748P-1817). Master’s mate in the Discovery and later in the Resolution. Upon return to England he received a commission as a lieutenant. In 1785 the King George’s Sound Company sent him in command of the King George, accompanied by Dixon (see above) to develop fur trade along the British Columbia coast. His account of the voyage was published in 1789.

RICKMAN, JOHN. Second lieutenant on the Discovery and later on the Resolution. He is assumed to be the author of the anonymous account of the voyage published in London in 1781.

RIOU, EDWARD (1758?-1801). Midshipman in the Discovery, later in the Resolution. Promoted to lieutenant upon return to England, he later became a distinguished naval commander. He died in action in the Battle of the Baltic.

ROBERTS, HENRY (c. 1757-1796). Master’s mate in the Resolution. A skilled cartographer, he drew many of the charts for the official account of the voyage. He had served as able seaman on Cook’s second voyage. In later years he held several commands and died in the West Indies.

SAMWELL, DAVID (c. 1751-1799). Surgeon’s mate in the Resolution and after Anderson’s death surgeon in the Discovery. He wrote for Biographia Britannica and afterwards published as a separate pamphlet (London, 1786) a frank narrative of the events relating to Cook’s death, to which he appended Observations Respecting the Introduction of the Venereal Disease into the Sandwich Islands.

SHAW, THOMAS. Gunner’s mate in the Discovery.

SPENCER, ROBERT (possibly MICHAEL). Able seaman in the Resolution.

THOMAS, JAMES. Corporal of Marines in the Resolution. See notes for pages 143 and 148.

TREVENEN, JAMES (1760-1790). Midshipman in the Resolution and later in the Discovery. After the voyage he served as a lieutenant with his good friend Captain King in the West Indies and later accepted a commission as captain in the Russian navy, in which service he met his death in action against the Swedes. In a copy of the official account of Cook’s third voyage, he had made notations which provide vivid insight into events and people. His brother-in-law, Vice-Admiral Sir Charles V. Penrose, gathered these notations and published them in a narrative of Trevenen’s life some years later. This book provides the basis for the Navy Records Society volume on Trevenen published in 1959. See Bibliography. The Provincial Archives in Victoria, British Columbia, has a manuscript volume of Trevenen notes which vary somewhat, both in number and content, from those reprinted in the Navy Records Society publication.

VANCOUVER, GEORGE (1757-1798). Midshipman in the Discovery. At 15 he had sailed with Cook as an able seaman on the second voyage. After the third he received appointment as a lieutenant and served in the West Indies for eight years before being sent to the northwest coast of North America to help settle a dispute with the Spaniards and to make accurate surveys. In 1792-4 he circumnavigated the island that bears his name and probed into Puget Sound, the mouth of the Columbia River, and other stretches of coastline between California and Alaska. His account of this latter voyage was published in 1798.

WATMAN (or WHATMAN or WHATTMAN), WILLIAM. Able seaman in the Resolution. He had served also on the second voyage to the Pacific.

WEBBER, JOHN (c. 1750-1793). Artist and draughtsman for the expedition. Son of a Swiss sculptor, he made sketches which he converted into finished drawings for the official account of the voyage. In 1789-92 he published a series of 16 views of places visited with Cook, etched and colored by himself. He was a regular exhibitor and became a full member of the Royal Academy.

WILLIAMSON, JOHN (?-1789). Third lieutenant on the Resolution. After the voyage he rose to command of the Agincourt at the battle of Camperdown in 1797, was court martialed for conduct during the battle, and was prohibited from ever serving again on a Royal Navy ship. See page 148n.

WOODRUFF, SIMEON. Gunner’s mate in the Discovery. A native of America, he returned to New England after the voyage. See Introduction, note 30.

ZIMMERMANN, HEINRICH (C. 1751-?). Coxswain in the Discovery. He kept notes during the voyage which he retained when the officers called in such unauthorized writings and expanded them into a small book published in German in 1781.

For names of Ledyard’s fellow marines in both ships see pages 228-229.

APPRECIATION

Many people have had a hand in compiling the notes in this volume. I especially appreciate the thoroughness with which Botanist Helen M. Gilkey sought to identify or illuminate plants Ledyard mentions in his text and the assistance given by Zoologist Robert M. Storm in preparing notes on the bird and animal life of the regions visited by the expedition. Another Oregon State University faculty member, Dean Emeritus F. A. Gilfillan loaned rare books from his personal library that proved indispensable in the editing process.

Professor Emeritus James Dow McCallum of Dartmouth College gave friendly counsel and loaned manuscript notes on Ledyard and the voyage which he had prepared some years ago. His exchange of letters with Judge F. W. Howay written several decades ago and now preserved in the Special Collections of the University of British Columbia provided insight into the life and times of the central character of this study. Montana author, Robert McCaig of Great Falls, also gave hints that helped.

Libraries and librarians across the country have given generously of their time, services, and facilities. In addition to those mentioned above, Librarian Thomas R. Adams of the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, R. I., who microfilmed a copy of Ledyard’s Journal for my use, deserves a word of commendation for his helpful suggestions and assistance. The librarians in the information services of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the World Book Encyclopedia, who helped in finding sources, verifying suppositions, and checking facts, seemed to do so with more than routine interest and enthusiasm.

Fellow-editor Sinclair H. Hitchings, whose by-line appears on the Introduction which follows this Preface, did far more than contribute that essay. He wrote many of the notes in entirety, added to others, and read all with a critical candour based on a deep and penetrating knowledge of the subject. Whatever acceptance this book may receive will come to a large extent as a result the energetic support of this accomplished young man.

INTRODUCTION by Sinclair H. Hitchings

CAPTAIN COOK’S three voyages to the Pacific are among the great scientific adventures of all time. Our present age of discovery, with its own adventurous voyages—from that of the Kon-Tiki to the orbital flights of the first astronauts—has no achievements that overshadow them. Careful plans carried out by able men, well-equipped and well-prepared, brought princely cargoes of information home from the Pacific.

Cook’s first two voyages were spent largely in exploration of the southern Pacific. On his first, in the Endeavour, from 1768-71, he carried out observations from Tahiti of the transit of Venus across the face of the sun, charted the coasts of New Zealand and eastern Australia, and confirmed the existence of a sea passage between Australia and New Guinea. On his second, from 1772-75, in the Resolution, accompanied by the Adventure under Captain Tobias Furneaux, he cruised further south than anyone had ever ventured before, and disproved the existence of the supposed Great Southern Continent. He charted the Friendly Islands, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, part of Tasmania, and Easter Island, as well as South Georgia and Tierra del Fuego. The Adventure, separated from the Endeavour in a gale in the fall of 1773, came home independently. In New Zealand she suffered the loss of ten of her crew who were attacked, killed, and eaten by the Maoris. Captain Furneaux brought the Adventure home in July, 1774, more than a year before the Endeavour’s return. With him he brought a native Polynesian, Omai, whom the nation cast in the role of the noble savage, a part he fulfilled (for a time, at least) with some distinction.

On his third voyage Cook set out to fill the gaps that still remained in his work. His destination was the northern Pacific and the northwest coast of America; his aim was the discovery, from the Pacific side, of the Northwest Passage.

The scientific achievements and romantic and heroic episodes of the first two voyages stirred intense popular interest. Cook was famous as a navigator, an explorer, and a captain who took good care of his crews. He had proved that he could prevent scurvy and the high mortality that had long been taken for granted on extended voyages. An unusual number of intelligent, skillful, and enterprising men had taken part in the first two voyages, and this character was sustained on the third voyage. By a combination of chance and audacity, one of those who succeeded in winning a place was a roving American, John Ledyard, whose experiences on the voyage stirred him, later, to make the first attempt to launch a fur-trading venture from the northeastern American ports to the Pacific Northwest—a foreshadowing of the trade that made fortunes for American merchants in the 1790s. Ledyard’s observations on the American Indian of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and his speculation on intercourse from tribe to tribe across the continent, he was later to share with Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson in turn was to share with Ledyard his hopes of American exploration of the vast country between the Mississippi and the Pacific.

Ledyard was born in 1751 on the Connecticut coast at Groton. After the death of his father, a sea-captain, in 1762, he was sent to live with his grandfather, who looked after his education and when John was in his teens put him in training for the law. As Ledyard’s uncle, Thomas Seymour, drily commented many years later, It soon appeared, that he was averse to that dull pursuit.{12} When grandfather Ledyard died in 1771, Ledyard’s mother was left with the problem of what to do with her restless son. Ledyard was well on the way to becoming the black sheep of the family.

His mother’s hopes were just as badly suited to his disposition as his grandfather’s had been. She sent him up to Hanover, New Hampshire, in the spring of 1772, to study at Dartmouth College, newly founded by the Rev. Eleazer Wheelock. She was a pious woman and apparently hoped that Wheelock might be able to make a missionary out of John. But Ledyard kicked against the pricks of Wheelock’s stern Calvinism just as he rebelled against the Methodist beliefs of his mother. Wheelock’s efforts to educate and convert the Indians failed to capture his