CAPTAIN COOK

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 132, 15 December 1928, Page 9

CAPTAIN COOK

EXHIBITION OF RECORDS LOGS, DIARIES, AND LETTERS j ' i (From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, ICth October, j In view of the bicentenary of Captain Cook's birth tho Public Records Office in London has arranged an exhi-1 bition of Admiralty documents relative to his work and explorations. His work in tho 51 years of his life waa so largely of a public and official kind that thero remains a wealth of manuscript to illustrate its various phases. The Public Record Office alono possesses 134 logs of his voyages, and many others, mainly in tho shape of private journals or preliminary drafts of logs, are preserved in the British Museum and elsewhere. It is obviously impossible to show more than a very small selection. This has been made i partly on the ground of historical interest, partly for legibility and general suitablity for exhibition, and partly to represent the four stages of Cook's naval career. The one document which concerns the first stage is the Muster of H.M.S. Eagle, where an entry half-way down the page notes that James Cook entered tho Eoyal Navy as a volunteer on 17th June, 1755. Ho was then 27, and had had such experience as led to Ms' becoming master's mato only a few weeks after ho had joined the Eagle as an ablo seaman. Into the category, of tho .First Voyage como four documents. Cook had been appointed to command the Endeavour, the ship placed at tho service of the Royal Society for making observations of the transit of Venus in 17G9. He was to employ the return journey in exploration, and did, in fact, survey tho eastern coast of Australia. Tho volume of secret instructions which led to this, among other results, is one of the exhibits. COOK'S PRIVATE LIFE. More striking, perhaps, to the ordinary observer is an application in Cook's own hand to the Admiralty for mathematical instruments and stationery. They wero, by the way, very simple instruments, and the Admiralty told him to buy them and send in the bill. This was in 1768 befoTO ho set out. Next comes the master's log of tho Endeavour, from. 26th August of the same year to 20th October df tho next, remarkably clear and legible and containing several sketches. Tho log is opened on two of the Society, Islands. A glimpse of Cook's private life and his scanty holidays is to be got from a letter, after his return from tho voyage in 1771, in which ho asks tho Admiralty for three weeks' leave to "visit an aged father" in Yorkshire. The application was granted, but one wonders how much time remained for him and his father when that consumed i by travelling to and from Yorkshire under 18th-century conditions is taken into account. The second voyage, that of the Resolution and Adventure in 1771-1775, is illustrated by the journal of the Resolution from 13th July, 1772, to 21st March, 1775, which is opened at the part dealing with Easter Island. While i Cook discovered many unknown islands during this voyage his greatest achievement was to disprove the suspected existence of a largo Antarctic Continent in tho Temperate Zone. On the third voyage, begun in 1776 in the Resolution and Discovery, Cook was killed, and his successor, Clerkc, died from the. hardships encountered. Tho first exhibit is a chart of tho north-west coast of America, which Cook had explored in the pursuit of his main object, tho discovery of tho North-West Passage. Tho chart was enclosed in Cook's last letter to tho Admiralty, written some (lays beforo his death, Mid forwarded by tho Russian "Isinyloff," who fell in with the expedition at a. critical stge. A drawing of Karakakoa Bay, Hawaii, whore Cook was killed, is the last item of a short but informing catalogue.