November 1769. Off Mercury Bay, the Endeavour resumes her course northward and completes the circuit of New Zealand begun in the first volume. Cook names a river the Thames, anchors in the Bay of Islands, rounds North Cape in a gale, then careens his ship in Queen Charlotte Sound, where he takes possession of the land in the name of the king.
What remains is to prove what Cook has suspected for weeks: a strait truly separates the two islands. With the circuit of the South Island complete, the council of officers decides at Admiralty Bay and sets a course west, toward a land still absent from every European chart. After a long crossing of the Tasman Sea, an unknown coast rises at last at Point Hicks: New Holland.
At Botany Bay, the first encounter breaks down: Aboriginal people brandish their darts before the English boats, a sailor dies and is buried beneath the sand. The Endeavour then sails north along an entire coast still unnamed by Europeans, scattering christenings on every headland, until reaching the point Cook calls Tribulation, because there, he writes, all his troubles began.
This second volume of Cook's authentic journal carries the reader, day by day, from Maori bays to Australian reefs, along the thread of a discovery where every headland rounded opens a new peril, until the moment the Endeavour enters the narrow waters of the Great Barrier Reef.
This stretch of the voyage marks a turning point: it is here, at Botany Bay and then along several hundred kilometres of coastline entirely unknown to Europeans, that Cook's expedition sets foot for the first time on the soil of what will become Australia. Cook names the bay after the unprecedented botanical harvest that naturalist Joseph Banks and Swedish botanist Daniel Solander gather there, while every headland rounded receives an English name that still appears on maps today.
The text followed here is Cook's personal journal, written day by day aboard the Endeavour, distinct from the reworked accounts that editor John Hawkesworth would publish in 1773 for the general public. Here one finds the direct voice of a meticulous sailor, more attentive to headlands, winds and men than to literary effect, which makes it a firsthand source on the very first contacts between Europeans and Aboriginal Australians.
The first complete modern rewriting for today's reader, making this account accessible without betraying anything of the voyage. Twenty original illustrations and redrawn maps bring the route to life, while a set of reference materials (glossary, chronology, index, further reading, editor's note, afterword) and selected passages from the original text accompany the reading.
A sailor at heart and passionate about ancient civilisations, Isabelle Perol has roamed the coasts of South America, West Africa and the South Pacific. Trained in maritime anthropology, she is drawn to accounts in which the sea is not a mere backdrop but a character in its own right. She brings to the project a sensitivity for oceanic cultures and forgotten voyages. She works on the Wild Americas, Oceania & Pacific, Uncharted Africa and East Indies collections.
A Royal Navy officer, James Cook (1728-1779) commanded the Endeavour on his first great voyage around the world, from 1768 to 1771. The son of a farmer who became an outstanding surveyor during the Seven Years' War, he was chosen by the Admiralty and the Royal Society to observe the transit of Venus at Tahiti and to search for the southern continent. This second volume of his journal sees him complete the circumnavigation of New Zealand, prove the existence of the strait that now bears his name, and reach the east coast of New Holland, where he was the first among European navigators to set foot at Botany Bay, before two further voyages that would make him the greatest navigator of his century.
