Hamish Riley-Smith

COOK, Captain James A Voyage towards the South Pole, and round the World. London, W.Strahan and T.Cadell 1777

2 volumes, quarto, 29.7 x 23.0cm, fine contemporary pale calf with elaborate gilt rules to covers, spines richly and elaborately gilt in seven compartments with red morocco labels lettered and numbered gilt, marbled endpapers, head and tails of spines and joints skilfully repaired, xlpp + 378pp; (4) + 396pp; large engraved portrait after Hodges of Captain Cook folded at the base, 63 engraved plates and maps, many folding and double page, many with the original tissue guards, 1 folding table, some very slight foxing and off-setting, contemporary engraved armorial bookplate of Danl.Wilson, a fine large copy.

FIRST EDITION OF COOK’S SECOND, AND HISTORICALLY MOST IMPORTANT VOYAGE BETWEEN 1772 AND 1775.The prime purpose of the voyage was to settle, once and for all the speculative existence of the Great Southern Continent of whose existence Cook himself was a sceptic. Cook intended to search the vast wastes of the South Pacific for further discoveries circling the globe in an easterly direction. Sailing in the Resolution with Cook was William Wales as astronomer, William Hodges the ship’s artist, the tiresome German botanist-philosopher-church minister Johann Reinhold Förster, and George Vancouver, aged 15, the future surveyor of the north-west coast of North America. Cook also had the Harrison-invented ‘watch machine’ giving Greenwich Mean Time wherever they went. A second sloop the Adventure accompanied them commanded by Tobias Furneaux.Captain Cook, aged 43, began by cruising on the Resolution as far south as possible round the edge of the Antarctic ice. As in the first voyage, he visited New Zealand and, cruising through the Pacific, discovered, or explored again, many of the islands, in particular New Caledonia, Palmerston, and Norfolk Islands, Easter Island, the Marquesas, New Hebrides, Tonga, the South Sandwich Islands and South Georgia. This voyage produced a vast amount of information concerning the Pacific peoples and islands. His charts mariners relied upon for many years.“Cook exhibited an entirely new and refreshingly civilised attitude towards the natives of the lands he exposed to public view for the first time…he presented the most tolerant aspect of Western man….He was in the judgement of Fanny Burney, whose brother sailed with Cook, ‘the most moderate, humane, and gentle circumnavigator that ever went upon discoveries’ “Printing & the Mind of Man, 223. Hill, Pacific Voyages, p.61. Mitchell Library 1216. National Maritime Museum, I, Voyages & Travel, 577. see Richard Hough, Captain James Cook, A Biography. 1994

£9000

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