Publicly accessible
URL: http://www.nzetc.org/collections.html
copyright 2007, by Victoria University of Wellington
All unambiguous end-of-line hyphens have been removed and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line, except in the case of those words that break over a page.
Captain James Cook
1. Portrait of In colour Oil painting in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
2. Whitby harbour in the mid-eighteenth century Water-colour drawing by unknown artist. Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society.
3. ‘Draught of the Bay and Harbour of Gaspee’, 1758 Cook's first published map. B.M. Maps K.Mar VII 2(5).
4. ‘Plan of the Harbour of Great and Little St Laurence’ By Cook. Inset in a chart of the south coast of Newfoundland, 1765. Ministry of Defence, Hydrographic Department, Taunton, C58/71.
5. Portrait of
6. Portrait of
7.
(a) ‘A View of part of the West Side of Georges Island’ [Tahiti] Drawing by Cook. B.M. Add. Ms 7085, fol. 8.
(b) ‘The West Elevation of the Fort’ [at Point Venus, Matavai Bay] Drawing by Cook. B.M. Add. Ms 7085, fol. 8.
8.
(a) ‘A Plan of Royal or Matavie Bay in Georges Island’ [Tahiti] Drawing by Cook. B.M. Add. Ms 7085, fol. 8.
(b) Peaks of Matavai Bay Pen and wash drawing by Parkinson. B.M. Add. Ms 7345, fol. 44v.
9. Fortified pa on arched rock, Mercury Bay Drawing by Cook, after a drawing by Parkinson. B.M. Add. Ms 7085, fol. 25.
10. The watering-place in Tolaga Bay Drawing by Cook, after a drawing by Parkinson. B.M. Add. Ms 7085, fol. 21.
11.
(a) The Endeavour at sea Drawing by Parkinson. B.M. Add. Ms 9345, fol. 16v.
(b) The hull of the Endeavour Drawing by Parkinson. B.M. Add. Ms 9345, fol. 57.
12. ‘New Zealand War Canoe. The crew bidding defiance to the Ships Company’ Drawing by Spöring. B.M. Add. Ms 23920, fol. 48.
13. ‘A Chart of New Zeland or the Islands of Aeheinomouwe and Tovypoenammu lying in the South Sea’ By Cook. B.M. Add. Ms 7085, fol. 17.
14. Entry in Cook's Journal, 16 August 1770 From the original in the National Library of Australia, Canberra.
15.
(a) The reef where the Endeavour struck, 11 June 1770 Detail from ‘Chart of Part of the Sea Coast of New South Wales’. By Cook. B.M. Add. Ms 7085, fol. 39.
(b) ‘A Plan of the entrance of Ms 7085, fol. 42.
16. The Endeavour being careened Engraving by W. Byrne after Parkinson.
17. ‘A Map of the Southern Hemisphere’ By Cook; showing his proposed route by a strong continuous line (yellow in the original). Mitchell Library, Sydney.
18. The Resolution. In colour Water-colour drawing by
19.
(a) Portrait of
(b) Reinhold and
20. Portrait of Captain Cook, after
21. The ships watering by taking in ice, in 61°S Water-colour drawing by Hodges. Mitchell Library, Sydney, D 11, no. 26.
22. ‘Dusky Bay in New Zeland 1773’ Unsigned plan, probably by Cook. B.M. Add. Ms 31360, fol. 56.
23. ‘Family in Dusky Bay, New Zeland’ Engraving by Lerperniere after Hodges.
24. ‘The Fleet of Otaheite assembled at Oparee’ Engraving by W. Woollett after Hodges.
25.
(a) Portrait of Omai, after William Hodges Engraving by
(b) Portrait of O-Hedidee [Odiddy], after William Hodges Engraving by
26. The Resolution off the South Sandwich Islands Pen and wash drawing by Joseph Gilbert, in his Log. Public Record Office, Adm 55/107, fol. 205.
27. Portrait of In colour Oil painting in Government House, Wellington, New Zealand.
28. Portrait of the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, by Thomas Gainsborough Oil painting in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
29. Stählin's map of Russian discoveries, 1774. In An Account of the New Northern Archipelago (London, 1774), by Jacob von Stählin.
30.
(a) Portrait of
(b) Portrait of
31. Christmas Harbour, Kerguelen's Land Water-colour drawing by
32. ‘Cook's interview with Natives in Adventure Bay, Van Diemen's Land, 29 January 1777’ Unsigned drawing. Ministry of Defence, Naval Library, London.
33. Cook in Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand Water-colour drawing by Webber. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
34. A Tongan Dance Drawing by Webber. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
35. ‘A Human Sacrifice, in a Morai, in Otaheite’ Drawing by Webber, B.M. Add. Ms 15513, fol. 16.
36. Portrait of Poetua, by John Webber Oil painting in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
37. The Resolution at anchor in Nootka Sound Drawing by Webber. B.M. Add. Ms 15514, fol. 10.
38. ‘Chart of part of the Nw Coast of America. Explored by Resolution and Discovery, 7 March-3 October 1778. Public Record Office, Adm 1/1612 (Mpi 83).
39. The ships in the ice off Icy Cape, 18 August 1778 Drawing by Webber. Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.
40. Meeting with the Chukchi at St Lawrence Bay Drawing by Webber. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
41. ‘An Offering before Capt. Cook in the Sandwich Islands’ Engraving by S. Middiman and J. Hall after Webber.
42. Mpm 44.
43. Mrs Elizabeth Cook Oil painting by unknown artist. Mitchell Library, Sydney.
44. Portrait of Captain Cook, by In colour Oil painting in the National Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand.
The reproductions have been made by the courtesy of the Trustees of the National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum, Wellington, New Zealand, 44; His Excellency the Governor-General of New Zealand, Government House, Wellington, 27; the Trustees of the British Museum, 3, 6–13, 15a, 15b, 22–5, 29, 35, 37; the Trustees of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, frontispiece, 5, 16, 19b, 20, 28, 30a, 33, 34, 36, 40, 41; the Committee of the National Library of Australia, Canberra, 14, 30b, 31; the Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, 39; the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office, 26, 38, 42; the Hydrographer of the Navy, 4; the Trustees of the Mitchell Library in the Public Library of New South Wales, Sydney, 17, 18, 21, 43; the Right Hon. the Earl of Birkenhead, 19a; the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society, 2.
Nearly forty years ago
This biography, the summation of a lifetime's study of Pacific exploration, is the writing towards which my father's whole work as an historian was directed. His devotion to the eighteenth century, his antipodean wit, his recreating imagination, his fascination with the Pacific—over so much of which he was to travel in Cook's tracks from Nootka Sound in the north to
In completing the revision and seeing the book through the press I have had help from many quarters for which I am deeply grateful: in New Zealand from
Over many years my father became indebted to men and women in almost every part of the world for scholarly assistance. Many are listed in the prefaces to his editions of the Cook and Banks's Journal. It is impossible for me to list them all here, and all will, I am sure, accept that this book itself is the real acknowledgement of their advice and help and will, on their part, share our gratitude that a lifetime's work has been so magnificently completed.
T. H. Beaglehole
Victoria University of Wellington
John Tuke,The village of Marton-in-Cleveland, in the north-east corner of the North Riding of Yorkshire, where Cook was born, had not in the early part of the eighteenth century been touched by fame. No traveller, that we know of, committed to his journal any particular notice of the scatter of farm houses and cottages, on its gentle rise a quarter of a mile south of the road between Stockton and Guisborough; so far from prominence was it that it may indeed have shrunk since its earlier days, within its parish of five miles by two. It lay in an agricultural district, though moors and hills were not far away—a district well farmed, according to the standards of the time; the virtues of whose inhabitants were—so we learn from the worthy John Tuke,A General View of the Agriculture of the North Riding of Yorkshire (London, 1794).
Beyond the North Riding lay the county of Durham, and then Northumberland; Northumberland marched with the Border and on the other side of the Border was Roxburghshire. In the north-east corner of Roxburghshire was Ednam, the village where the poet Thomson was born; here also was born another person of more immediate interest to us. John Walker Ord, I am indebted for some relevant information to a letter from Mr Clifford Cook, of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire.History and Antiquities of Cleveland (London, 1846), 547.e son of a day labourer’. It is evident that the Cook family was strongly conservative in their choice of names for elder sons. There were six other children born to the couple, of whom four died young: Mary, born 1732, who died in her fifth year; Jane, born 173, who also died in her fifth year; another Mary, born 1740, who died at ten months; and a son William, born 1745, who died at the age of three. There were two survivors besides James beyond the year 1750, his sisters Margaret and Christiana.
A fitful light, as usual with the annals of the poor, plays on the boy's earliest years. A few months after his birth his parents went to another cottage—presumably, as they now had two sons, a larger one—and at some time thereafter his birthplace became the village ale-house, at the sign of the Bear. His father worked most regularly for a Mr Mewburn. When the baby became a small boy he went to learn his letters with Mrs Walker, whose husband farmed Marton Grange; the Walker family story was that this education of a promising youth was in return for his services round the place, running errands and watering stock. The Walker family story tended to move over into legend. Ord, who tells Cook's story in a very large footnote, 545 ff., writes in his elevated style, ‘Dame Walker was the daughter of the wealthiest farmer in the neighbourhood; and her husband, a respectable yeoman of the first class, resided at Marton Grange. Young Cook, then a mere lad, tended the stock, took the horses to water, and ran errands for the family; and in return for such services, the good old lady, finding him an intelligent, active youth, was pleased to teach him his alphabet and reading. Dame Walker was great-great-great grandmother to the author on the maternal side.’—The ‘intelligent, active youth’ would then be six or seven years old, and ‘the good old lady’, if she died in 1789, aged 89, as Ord says, would be in her mid-thirties. John Graves, The History of Cleveland (Carlisle, 1808), 197. I take it that Great Ayton had not changed essentially between 1736 and the beginning of the next century.
During young Cook's continuance at this village seminary it appears that he was never much regarded by the other boys of the school, and was generally left behind in their juvenile excursions; a circumstance, which can only be attributed to his steady adherence to his own plans and schemes, never giving way to thecontre-projetsof his associates. This, instead of conciliating their regard, naturally rendered them averse fromhis company. It has been asserted by those who knew him at this early period of his life, that he had such an obstinate and sturdy way of his own, as made him sometimes appear in an unpleasant light; notwithstanding which, there was a somethingin his manners and deportment, which attracted the reverence and respect of his companions.
The seeds of that undaunted resolution and perseverence which afterwards accelerated his progress to immortality, were conspicuous, even in his boyish days. Frequently, on an evening, when assembled together in the village, to set out in search of birds' nests, Cook might be seen in the midst of his comrades, strenuously contending that they should proceed to some particular, spot: This he would sometimes do, with such inflexible earnestness, as to be deserted by the greater part of his companions.Graves, 456, n.
How long Cook remained a village seminarist, with the leisure occupations of birds' nesting and argument, before he emerged on the world as a master of reading, writing, and arithmetic and (a little less so) of spelling; whether he spent the succeeding period exclusively in the employ of his father or Mr Skottowe and how wide was his farm practice, how far he rambled from Ayton, who made the next suggestion for the career of a likely lad—of all these things we are ignorant. But it seems as if something—proficiency in arithmetic?—marked him out as perhaps equal to the demands of commerce; for we next find him, in 1745, at the age of seventeen, a shop-boy with Mr William Sanderson, grocer and haberdasher, of Staithes. This was not regular apprenticeship, there were no indentures, it was trial on both sides; Sanderson was a wise and amiable man. The building which contained his house and shop was close to the sea, and as early as 1812 was pulled down lest it should be washed away, to be rebuilt in its present position in Church Street by his successors in business; Captain James Cook (London, 1907), 7.
The word respectable recurs. John Walker was greatly to be respected, a Quaker ship-master, ship-owner, and coal-shipper, who made a firm with his brother Henry, though it was to John exclusively that the young Cook was bound apprentice. The Quaker connection was powerful in the town—its first meeting house was built in 1676—and a Quaker dignity and restraint marked many of the stone and brick dwellings of the old town, among them John Walker's own house in Haggersgate, on the west side of the river, where Cook lodged with his master, and that of John Walker's mother, the late seventeenth-century building in Grape Lane on the east side, to which Walker removed in 1752. Mrs Walker's house and its attic in Grape Lane are popularly regarded as the premises where Cook lived and slept, but the dates make this impossible. John Walker's house in Haggersgate no longer exists. There seems to have been no connection between these Walkers and the farming family of Marton.
The coal trade, too, in which the Walkers were concerned, was one of the great trades of Britain, and opened vistas of the real metropolis. Coal was the ‘grand commodity of the northern counties’; Quoted in E. Lipson, Henry Taylor, Economic History of England (5th ed., 1948), II, 113.Memoirs of The Principal Events in the Life of Henry Taylor (North Shields, 1811). Taylor, nine years younger than Cook, went to sea in the coal trade when about 13, as a six-years' apprentice, and became master of a ship when 21. His experience, coal trade and North Sea, was much like Cook's, and his picture of the life is the best we have. He left the sea at 35, to become a ship and insurance broker at North Shields, and to carry on a valuable propaganda for coastal lights (with which, indeed, his book is largely concerned).
Apprentices worked hard, a man who had been one not many years after Cook tells us. i.e. Taylor. Taylor, 158. William Falconer, Dictionary of the MarineA Universal Dictionary of the Marine. I have used the 1789 edition.
Into this life plunged the young Cook, fugitive from retail trade—young, but at eighteen or nearly eighteen rather old for a beginning apprentice—and joined the men and boys so thickly recruited from the Yorkshire coastal villages. While seamen are in the nursery they do not have individual prominence; and, as might be expected,
Freelove and the Three Brothers, and his mate Robert Watson; for we have record of Walker himself sailing as master only for two passages of the Freelove from London in 1747, and for a month on the maiden passage of the Three Brothers to London, with Jefferson, a man of 32, as his co-master then. Watson was five years younger. Good men could rise young in that service. Walker's function from then, it is clear, was that of owner.
Cook's first voyage was in the The surviving muster-rolls are now preserved in the Whitby Museum.Freelove, a ship—that is a three-masted vessel, square-rigged—of 341 tons, 106 feet in length with a beam of 27 feet—somewhat the equivalent, indeed, of the vessel in which, twenty-two years later, he was first to go exploring, and built as a collier at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, in 1746. Walker must have acquired her immediately, or almost immediately, she was built. She carried a complement of nineteen—master, mate, carpenter, cook, five seamen, and ten ‘servants’ or apprentices. The birthplace and domicile of all these last is given in the muster-roll as Whitby, and they ranged in age from nineteen down to fifteen.
Walker had a new ship under construction, and it is said that Cook took part in her rigging and fitting out, invaluable experience again. She was the Kitson, 11, says she was ‘of some 600 tons’, and she ‘was still in existence near the close of the last [i.e. 19th] century.’ It seems doubtful whether a 600-ton ship could have been managed by a crew of nineteen, the number given in her muster-roll. An entry in the catalogue of a Cook exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, Green-wich, in the 1957–7, refers to her as ‘over 400 tons’, but gives no authority. Richard Weather-ill, I follow Kitson, 12, in this; but Three Brothers, apparently a quite large vessel.The Ancient Port of Whitby and its Shipping (Whitby, 1908), has no particulars.Freelove men, including six of the apprentices. Cook was one of these, and was in the ship continuously from 14 June 1748 to 8 December 1749. For the early part of this time she was in the coal trade; then, with stalls for forty horses, was chartered by government for some months as a transport, carrying troops that had been engaged in Flanders from Middleburg to Dublin and Liverpool.Three Brothers, William Drake master, convinced the officials concerned that the ship, ‘in which Cook was then serving’, sailed from Gravesend for Flanders in March 1747 and for Williamstadt in February 1748. Cook however was in the Freelove in 1747, and appears in the Three Brothers (master John Jefferson) only in June 1748—and she was then a new ship. The name Three Brothers may have been a popular one: the National Maritime Museum mentions another, 97 tons, taken up for transport duties at Whitehaven in December 1746.Mary of Whitby, owned by John Wilkinson and commanded by William Gaskin—some relative of Walker—for eight months to and from the Baltic, February to 5 October 1750, when he was discharged at London, He was next in a Sunderland ship, unspecified, till he returned to the Three Brothers for 1751 and 1752, her master being Robert Watson, the mate of his first voyage. In December of this latter year Watson moved as master to the Friendship, another new Walker ship, and with him went Friendship for two and a half years, with successive masters, after Watson, in John Swainston and Richard Ellerton: with the last-named of these men he seems to have formed a positive friendship. There is no doubt that he had learnt a great deal. The practice of seamanship, as well as its theory, has been adverted to, the rule of thumb, the line of coast alive in the mind. He had not been confined to one shore: he knew the North Sea and its further side, at least in ports from the Netherlands to Norway; he had been through the Channel and into the Irish Sea; but it was the east coast of England that had given him his most intimate experience, the experience of the inshore sailor. We shall see the deposit of that experience active in his mind on coasts far distant, as dangerous, still unknown.
We must beware of too much eloquence. The words quoted are those of Dr James Wilson, in the preliminary ‘Dissertation on the Rise and Progress of the Modern Art of Navigation' which he contributed to the second and third editions (1764 and 1772) of Robertson's book; he goes on, ‘the last [edition] I have seen, was in 1739; but some late writers seem to have abated the run of this book.’ Its full title was Quoted, by William Hutchinson, ‘Mariner, And Dock Master at Liverpool’, on p. 110 of his valuable volume beginning Taylor, 32.Elements of Navigation of Practical Navigation of John Seller, which, though first published in 1669, went through edition after edition for seventy years. Seller, a compass-maker and chart publisher of Wapping, gave rules,
Praxis Nautica: Practical Navigation: or, an Introduction to the whole Art. The Dictionary of the Marine lists a number of the ‘late writers’—e.g. Edward Hauxley, Navigation Unveil'd (1743), a perfectly conventional treatment in spite of its dramatic title; John Barrow, Navigatio Britannica (1750); and so on. Cook must have encountered Robertson's book later on. It is interesting to note that Art or Elements or Treatise or Complete Tutor—to place before his servant. One way or another, the young man would have learnt a little elementary astronomy and geometry, and how to use the more popular instruments; how to find a latitude and work out his position with the traverse board, how to allow for leeway and the other incidents of a ship's behaviour at sea. It is very possible that he had his own backstaff, or Davis's quadrant as it was now called, that old friend of mariners; probably he knew all about Hadley's quadrant, since Hadley invented it in 1731, though it may be doubtful whether he could afford to own one. He would probably on his experience not have seen much reason to differ from Halley—‘the celebrated Doctor Halley’—that the system of navigation in his time depended on the three L's of Lead, Latitude and Look-out,A Treatise and boiling down to Practical Seamanship. Hutchinson, in his second edition of 1787, adds (p. 106), ‘The latitude when it can be got by a good observation, with a good instrument, must be allowed to be the only guide we have in navigation; because it not only gives to a certainty, the ship's place, North and South, but it likewise helps us to form a judgment how far a dependance may be put on our reckoning, East or West; in proportion as the latitude by the account kept of the ship's way, agrees or disagrees with the latitude observed in the passage in general; so more or less dependance accordingly may be put upon the longtitude the ship is reckoned to be in.’ This is rather unsophisticated for 1787.
Cook's experience, to recur to that, was still a narrow experience: although not confined to the Narrow Seas, its widest sea was the North Sea. If the argument should be advanced by some battered captain that the North Sea should be experience enough for anyone, the answer would be No, for the complete sailor its coastwise and short voyage sailing was not enough. The coal trade, the Baltic trade were not the only nurseries of seamen. The Newfoundland trade was another highly-esteemed nursery, though not one into which York-shire boys normally entered. There were various Atlantic trades, and there were the long passages, out to India and China and back, which bred men ‘the most perfect in the open seas’. Hutchinson, 129; ‘From all that I have seen, the seamen in the East India trade are the most perfect in the open seas, and those in the coal trade to London the most perfect in difficult narrow channels, and tide ways…’Friendship, as next in the succession of her captains. To become master of a ship eleven years after becoming an apprentice could hardly be other than satisfactory to any man; and Cook must have been tempted. Instead, he volunteered into the royal navy as an able seaman.
Phrase from Kippis, 4. ‘… as He volunteered at Wapping on 17 June 1755; and the only recorded reason is that he determined to ‘take his future fortune’ that way;Gallery of Greenwich Hospital, part I (1831), 2.
The volunteer was sent to the Kitson and others spell his name Hamer, but he signs himself in his log/journal, Adm 51/292, ‘Jos. Hamar’. ‘Immediately’, not ‘a month later’, if we are to take literally the title-page of his The quotations and dates given in this chapter are from Cook's log, Eagle, Captain Joseph Hamar,Eagle log, now in the Atl. But Kitson correctly gives the date of his promotion as 24 July, going on the muster book, Adm 36/5533. It is possible that he began to keep a log even as A.B., inscribing the title-page later.s Ship Eagle, Kept by Jams Cook Masters Mate Commencing the 27th June 1755; And Ending the 31st of December 1756’; and the first of innumerable entries registering wind and weather. The master was the very capable Thomas Bisset. Work on the ship went forward; at the beginning of July the fleet at Portsmouth was ceremonially visited by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Anson, and the Duke of Cumberland; ships and admirals came and went; the master's mate recorded such happenings as '[20 July] Recd on Board 12 Chalder of Coals & 3 Cask's of Char Coal, wth other Stoars for Pursser, Empd in Makeing Points & Pointing Ropes Ends'—or the arrival of ‘his Majs Ship Giberalter’; on 27 July all the volunteers on board got two months' pay in advance; and at last, on 4 August, the Eagle sailed: ‘weigh'd & Came to Sail, Saw a water Spout to ye S.W.’Atl, unless otherwise attributed.
The primary aim of the navy was the interruption of French communication with the possessions of France in North America, an aim in which it had so far not been markedly successful. The earlier intention for the Bisset's log, Adm 52/578, 8 and 9 August 1755. Hamar, Adm 51/292, 29 September, ‘This day CaptEagle was that she should cross the Atlantic to the Leeward Islands. In July, however, this plan was changed, and Hamar was ordered on a cruise outside St George's Channel, between the Scilly Islands and Cape Clear on the Irish coast. He was to put himself under the command of Admiral Hawke. It was a cruise of no great glory. One day out a sail to the south was taken to be a French ship of war, and chased, but proved a Dutch merchantman. From day to day small vessels were chased, stopped and examined; and Hamar, short-handed as he was, did not miss the chance to press men when he could from the London-bound—three one day, four another.n Palliser Superceeded me in the Comand of the Eagle'.—Cook, 1 October, ‘Came on Board, Capt Palliser & tooke Possesion of ye Ship’.
Palliser was another Yorkshireman, from the West Riding, well-rooted in the gentry; the son of an army captain. Five years older than Cook, he had had twenty years' more naval experience: he had gone to sea at the age of twelve, in an uncle's care, passed his examination and become a lieutenant when eighteen (which was three years too early for a commission according to the regulations), been in the action off Toulon in February 1744, and got his first command in 1746, the year in which Cook began as Walker's apprentice. He had served in the West Indies and on the Coromandel coast of India
Eagle for the first time on 8 October. The cruise this time was down Channel and about its western approaches, under the general orders of West and Byng, rear-admiral and vice-admiral; but for the greater part of five weeks the Eagle was on her own. They were weeks of gales and squalls, hard on the sails, and no doubt hard on the sailors, as the ship chased any-thing in sight—vessels which usually turned out to be English, Spanish, Swedes, Hamburgers or Dutch, though she took two or three French ones, fishermen homeward bound from Newfoundland. In one chase forty leagues west of Ushant, 18 October, in a hard gale, her main topmast went by the board and the Frenchman escaped under cover of night; but next day, with a jury topmast, the Eagle fell in with the Monmouth, and the Frenchman being sighted again, the Monmouth took her. The prizes were sent in to Plymouth. The Eagle, with more than two hundred prisoners, continued cruising, ran into gales again in early November, carried away her main topgallant mast in a squall, and on the 13th was with West and Byng in the Bay of Biscay.
She was present at the end of the Palliser to Clevland, 27 November 1755, Adm 1/2292. Kitson, 20.Espérance, a French seventy-four short of fifty guns, which had eluded Boscawen's fleet on the other side of the Atlantic only to be maimed in the storms and brought up by West's squadron almost within reach of home: in a fight that for hopeless heroism was like that of the Revenge she was finally battered into surrender. She was to enter no British harbour as a prize, and Cook's log registers her last hours, on the afternoon of the 15th: ‘Recd on Bd from ye Esperance 26 Prisoners art 4 ye Esperance on fire there being no Posabillity of Keeping her above water’. And so she went down. A few days after this funeral rite Byng, having returned to the Channel, ordered West and half-a-dozen ships, including the Eagle, into Plymouth Sound for cleaning and refitting; and here she remained from 21 November to 13 March 1756. On 27 November Palliser wrote to the Admiralty Secretary with the perennial captain's plaint. He had a great many men on board, he said, who were supernumeraries belonging to other ships, and had been received at different times from them or from hospital, to make up a sufficient crew to go to sea. What ships they properly belonged to he could not tell, and nobody wanted them: forty-four were alleged to belong to the Ramillies, she needed only six, and her boatswain
The winter, so it seems, was marked for Cook by further promotion. ‘Am had a Survey on Boatswain's Stores, when Succeeded ye Former Boatswain’. This was on 22 January. It may have been only temporary. As boatswain he would have been responsible for ropes, sails, cables and anchors, flags, and (not unnaturally) boats; his pay would have risen from £3 16s to £4 a month. It was very satisfactory, though Palliser still refers to him as a mate, he continues to appear in other records as master's mate, and as such he may continue to be referred to here.
The cruise last completed laid down the pattern for the next fifteen months, in and out of Plymouth Sound and hanging round the French coast, a period broken by one savage duel with the enemy and two interludes of semi-independence for the master's mate. Palliser reports on his proceedings for March-April. Palliser to Clevland, 13 April 1756, Adm 1/2293; and his log, Adm 51/292, Part III.Windsor, and cruised in company with her until they both joined the Antelope, Captain Gayton, Palliser's senior officer, who ordered him further west off the Isle of Batz on the Breton coast. He and Captain Faulkner of the Windsor agreed to keep company as far as that island in case a French convoy then in Cherbourg should sail that night and elude Gayton. They encountered no convoy, only two little sloops, smugglers from Guernsey with tea and brandy for the English coast: the weather was too bad and they were too short of men to detain these sloops, so they took out their cargoes and let them go. On 4 April they joined company with a British squadron of three ships and two cutters; Palliser sent one of the cutters into Guernsey to fetch out pilots, and sent Cook into the other. Cook's log entries for two weeks now relate to this experience, beginning with the morning of 5 April: ‘Brot too on ye Star: Tack when I
e Cruzer Cutter, to take ye Command of her with Men, Arms, and Ammanishon. Modt & Clowdy. In Company wth ye Eagle, Falmouth, Greyhound, & Firret Sloop.’ Next day he makes a little drawing of the coast about Morlaix, with its buildings and rocks—already trying his hand, as if by instinct, on a ‘coastal profile’. On the 8th, off the Tragoz rocks, two large French sails, taken for frigates, were chased but made their escape into Morlaix, where the British could not follow; then on the 12th an order was received from Captain Keppel to repair to Plymouth Sound, whence next day Palliser wrote to the Admiralty. He was out again on the 16th. Meanwhile Cook was off on his own, in and out of sight of the squadron, having some hard squalls and rain, no doubt enjoying the exercise of authority as he fired a few shots to bring vessels to—until he went on board the Falmouth, the commodore's ship, on the 21st, to return to Plymouth. Here on the 27th he and his men transferred to the St Albans, another 60-gun ship, which sailed on the 30th and joined the fleet of ‘AdmEagle log, 22 May 1756 to 1 July.Eagle now part of Boscawen's fleet. Boscawen met no French fleet—the British purpose was blockade—but as explicit war came nearer (it was declared on 18 May) the Eagle's men began to die, and her log is a melancholy record. There was a little relief on 20 May, when in the Bay of Biscay she and the St Albans took two prizes, one ‘a ship from Santimingo’ with sugar and coffee (as Cook notes), and put boarding parties in both to carry them to port.Eagle log, 22 May 1756 to 1 July.e Triton prize’ and got her into Plymouth at the end of the month, only to be sent round to London with her. By the end of June he had her moored securely in the Thames, had taken an inventory of her rigging and stores, sent his men back to Plymouth, and followed them himself. Rejoining his ship on 1 July, he was plunged into a very busy month of refitting.
Palliser had been sent into Plymouth by Boscawen to land his sick men and his prisoners. He arrived on 3 June, on which day his surgeon and four men died, to add to the twenty-two who had been buried in the previous month; he put 130 men in hospital, ‘most of which are extreamly Ill’, including the two surgeon's mates; and as he had thirty-five men away in prizes, and was thirty-four short of his complement, he reported himself in a very weak condition. Palliser to Clevland, 3 June, 4 June 1756, Adm 1/2293. Palliser to Clevland, 17 June 1756 and endorsement, Adm 1/3293. Palliser to Clevland, 6 July, Adm 1/2293: but Cook's log notes continuous work on the ship, rigging, loading, etc., till they sailed on 4 August. Palliser to Clevland, 18 July, Adm 1/2293. Palliser to Clevland, 2 August, Adm 1/2293. Kitson, 22, gives the story more at large: ‘The report originated with the master of a Swedish trader, who, under examination, swore that he had seen nine ships off the Isle of Wight, flying a white flag, all large, and he estimated two to be 90-gun ships. He stated that he was boarded by a boat from one that he believed to be the flagship, and that after the boarding officer had returned to his ship, a gun was fired, and the whole squadron made sail. Very careful enquiry was made, and the portion of the Channel mentioned by the Swede was thoroughly searched, but no signs or tidings could be found of any French men-of-war having been in the neighbourhood, and the Swede paid the penalty of what seemed to be only an exercise of his imagination, by suffering a detention of some months in Portsmouth.’ Palliser log, 17 December 1756, Adm 51/292/III.Eagle Palliser took further thought. The sickness and mortality that had raged in his ship, he reported, was in great measure owing to the want of clothes: his men were nearly all landsmen, who had never been at sea till they were sent on board the Eagle, ‘Naked when they came on board being for the most part Vagabones not one in Twenty of them that had more than Shirt and one ragged Coat'. The established allowance of slops was not enough; when they became sickly he had to give them more, and he now wished to be indemnified for this over-expenditure of clothing.Eagle first helped to convoy a large number of merchantmen down Channel; then, one of a dozen ships, took part in the blockade directed by Boscawen, cruising some sixty miles west of Ushant, chasing whatever appeared, seizing an occasional prize: it was a long cruise, that hardly rose above routine, and by the time she was back once more at Plymouth, on 11 November, her men had again begun to die. That was the other routine. When an advance payment of prize money
She left again, her crew increased to 420, on 29 December—the blockade was winter work as well as summer—only to meet a very hard gale of wind off the Isle of Wight on 4 January 1757, ‘which blowed away most of our sails’, Palliser to Clevland, 6 January, 13 January 1757, Adm 1/2294; Palliser log, 30 January. Palliser to Clevland, 17 April 1757, Adm 1/2294.Medway, another 60-gun ship, Captain Proby, she departed to rejoin Boscawen. Five days later she had her moment of glory. It was an Atlantic action, its place given by Palliser as about latitude 48° and 2° W of the Lizard—that is about 180 miles southwest of Ushant. At 1 o'clock in the morning, through driving rain, a sail was seen to the north-west of the two English ships. They immediately gave chase: ‘let out the Reefs, & set Studding Sails & Clear'd Ship for Action', wrote Palliser in his log. The Medway, in the lead, omitted to clear for action, and was forced to bring to when nearly up with the chase to do so; by this time she had hoisted French colours. Proby, the senior captain, at first urged Palliser on, then wished him to shorten sail so that he himself might get into the action; Palliser, however, did not understand—possibly did not want to understand—the signals, and Proby managed only a few raking shots.
‘At 1/4 before 4’, writes Palliser, ‘Came along side the [chase] & Engaged at about Two Ships lengths from her the Fire was very brisk on both Sides for near an hour, she then Struck to us, She proved to be the Duc D'Acquitaine last from Lisbon, mounting 50 Guns all 18 Pounders, 493 Men, We had 7 men Killed in the Action & 32 Wounded, Our Sails & Rigging cutt almost all to Peices, soon after She Struck her Main & Mizen Masts went by the Board Employed the Boats fetching the Prisoners & carrying Men on board the Prize, Employed Knotting & Splicing the Rigging. Our Cutter was lost alongside the Prize by the going away of her Main Mast.’Palliser log, 30 May, Adm 51/292/III.
At the end of the day the prize's foremast also went by the board, and three of the Palliser to Clevland, 5 June, list of ‘Visible Defects’, Adm 1/2294. ibid.Eagle's men died of their wounds; another died two
Eagle herself had suffered badly, her masts and rigging and sails ‘very much shattered’, sails indeed ‘rent almost to rags’, almost all the running rigging shot away, her sides full of shot-holes, and stuck, like her masts and yards, with bars of iron.Medway took in tow. The latter had had only ten men injured from an accidental explosion of powder. The Duc d'Aquitaine was an East Indiaman of 1500 tons, commanded by ‘the Sieur D'Esquelen'; she had landed a rich cargo at Lisbon, whence she had sailed on her way round to Lorient, equipped for war and hoping to intercept a British convoy about to sail from Lisbon in charge of the 20-gun Mermaid, but before this desperate action had taken only an English brig from Cadiz.
The three ships put back into Plymouth together. Palliser found that his report made the Lords exceedingly happy, and he in his turn was made happy by their compliments. The prize was surveyed, found worth taking into the navy in spite of the 97 shot-holes through both her sides, and fitted out as a 64-gun ship under the same name. The Kippis, 4–5, ‘From the information of Minute Books of the Trinity House, Deptford, 29 June 1757.Eagle, put into order again within a month, on 12 July sailed for Halifax across the Atlantic, to join Rear-Admiral Holburne, second-in-command to Boscawen, who was now blockading the formidable stronghold of Louisburg. His fleet, formidable too, was thwarted by foul weather as well as French daring; and by the end of September the Eagle, victim of a violent storm, had begun to stagger home across the Atlantic, leaking, with jury-masts and improvised sails, and men going down sick in tens and scores. She reached safety; but Palliser's days in her were almost at an end. He handed over the command in February 1758. He had been without two of his most valuable warrant officers for many months. Bisset, the master, had been appointed to the Pembroke, a ship still building, on 28 April 1757, and had a good deal to do with her even before she was launched. He thus missed the Duc d'Aquitaine affair. In this affair his mate, Eagle and entered as master in the Solebay, a 24-gun frigate, Captain Robert Craig.
The Position of master in a ship of the navy was an honourable and responsible one, without parallel at the present day; rooted in history, to the time when for purposes of war the royal servants hired a ship with her ‘master’ and crew all together, and installed in her the necessary military persons to ‘fight’ her, men skilled in arms but innocent of navigation. The transformation of these men into officers acquainted with the ways of the sea and of ships came in due course, but the master remained, of inferior social position, appointed not by commission from the Admiralty but by warrant from the Regulations and Instructions; some of their duties were, on paper, very like a master's; but the master's were cumulative. He wore no uniform. His competence was certified when he passed his examination. In the end his capacity to find his position at sea was outdistanced by officers with scientific accomplishment
The Cook's ‘Solebays Logg’ is a small quarto, Adm 52/1033, 30 July—7 September 1757, according to its title-page, but the date of the first entry is corrected from 30 to 31 July. At the end of the book, after a large interposition of blank pages, is a small section heralded ‘Solebays Journal / Kitson, 29, says, ‘on 17th September James Cook was superseded by John Nichols as Master’; but there could quite easily have been a nine days' vacancy in the position. Kitson, 29: ‘entered upon his duties on 27th October, the twenty-ninth anniversary of his birth’. This does not allow for the change in the calendar instituted in 1752. The 27 October of his birth was Old Style: a strict reckoning of his birthday after 1752 would have been eleven days later, i.e. 7 November New Style. Bisset[t]'s log, Adm 52/978, finishes on 26 October, on which date he was appointed to the Solebay's duty was the patrol of the eastern coast of Scotland and of the Orkney and Shetland islands, against smuggling and ‘treasonable intercourse’ with France or Holland. Her base was at Leith on the Firth of Forth; there she had just returned and was at anchor in Leith Road when Cook joined her on 30 July 1757. He must have had leave in the month since his discharge from the Eagle, but how he spent it one can but speculate. He had pay in his pocket, and one guesses that he made his way from Plymouth to London, where, at the Black Swan in Holborn, he took the coach for Yorkshire, to visit his parents, and Stirling Castle.Eagle, and it was a very satisfactory one indeed. For the warrant made him master of the Pembroke, the almost new 64-gun ship, 1250 tons,
Simcoe had taken command of his ship while she was still on the stocks at Plymouth, and had watched over her launching on 2 June and her fitting out. Simcoe to John Clevland, secretary to the Admiralty, 19 April, 14 May, 2 June 1757.—Adm 1/2471. Adm 52/978, 3 January 1758.Pembroke on 8 December weighed and came to sail from St Helen's, where she had been anchored for a fortnight, and with other ships made down Channel. This was a cruise of a sort he was familiar with from his days in the Eagle, across the Bay of Biscay, somewhat further south than before, so that Finisterre and not Ushant became the point of reference, in the old routine of chase—one day he remarks on ‘the whole Fleet in Chase’;
This sort of activity was necessary though humdrum. The Pembroke, however, with Cook in her, was on the edge of greater things—was, in fact, about to play her part in one of the great reversals of history; and a reversal in an American theatre. The war that had been waged between Britain and France since 1754—undeclared