A Voyage towards the South Pole

cook's second voyage

The first edition of the official account of Cook's second voyage. Cook was sent by the Admiralty to ascertain whether a great Terra Australis really existed below the Antarctic Circle.

Cook captained the first ship on record to cross the Antarctic Circle, and the first to use the Larcum Kendall K1 chronometer. Although he discovered the South Sandwich Islands and South Georgia he did not gain sight of a Southern Continent and definitively disproved the Terra Australis theory. What he did see were the pacific islands between New Zealand and South America, with much attention paid to the cultures and peoples he encountered. The plates show views, plants and fauna, indigenous handicrafts including weapons, and most importantly eighteen portraits of Pacific Island peoples, including New Zealand, Tahiti, Amsterdam Island, Easter Island, Marquesas Islands, Raiatea Islands, Bora Bora, Tonga, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tierra del Fuego.

Cook sailed his HMS Resolution alongside the HMS Adventure commanded by Tobias Furneaux. They were split twice during their voyage: the first time they successfully met at the rendezvous at Queen Charlotte Sound in New Zealand, the second time, on their loop to Tonga, they both made it back but missed each other by four days. Cook had returned first and set off again into the South Pacific, leaving a message for his fellow captain. When Ferneaux returned he lingered in New Zealand and lost ten crewmen in a clash with the Māori people after one of them broke a tapu (i.e. taboo), convincing him to make his return to Britain rather than chase Cook. His narrative is included at the end of the work.

'Cook was a brilliant navigator and hydrographer, an excellent administrator and planner, and probably the first sea captain to realize the importance of preserving the health and well-being of his crew…On his second voyage, of 112 men on board the Resolution, which he commanded, Cook lost only one by disease - and that not scurvy - a unique achievement in his time' (PMM).

First edition; 2 vols, 4to (30 x 24.5 cm); engraved portrait of Captain Cook by James Basire as frontispiece, 14 maps (6 of these folding), 47 engraved plates after Hodges (23 of these folding), 2 folding schematics, 1 folding letterpress table, most with tissue guards, armorial bookplates to front pastedowns, a touch of marginal toning, small marginal tears to plates V and II; contemporary dice-scored calf, rebacked with original spines laid down, boards gilt ruled, gilt spines in six compartments with gilt lettering pieces, a little wear to extremities, a very good set; xl, 378; viii, 396 pp.

Beddie 1216; Hill 358; Holmes 24; PMM 223; Taurus 1.