An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of his Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemispheres, and successively performed by Commodore Byron, Captain Wallis, Captain Carteret, and Captain Cook, in the Dolphin, the Swallow, and the Endeavour: drawn up from the journals which were kept by the several commanders, and from the papers of Joseph Banks, Esq. is a 1773 book by John Hawkesworth about several Royal Navy voyages to the Pacific: the 1764–1766 and 1766–1768 voyages of HMSDolphin under John Byron and Samuel Wallis, the voyage of HMSSwallow under Philip Carteret (1766–1769), as well as the 1768–1771 first voyage of James Cook on HMSEndeavour. Hawkesworth received an advance of £6,000 for editing the three volumes.
Captain Wallis, on his arrival at O'Taheite, in conversation with Oberea the Queen, engraving by John Hall depicting the 1767 encounter of Samuel Wallis and Queen Purea
In the middle of the 18th century, the knowledge of the Pacific by Europeans was still very limited, with the positions of many islands unknown and only some of the coasts of larger landmasses charted.[1] After the end of the Seven Years' War, the British Admiralty under John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont started to send expeditions to make discoveries in the South Seas, hoping to expand British overseas power and to add new possessions.[2] The first of these voyages was John Byron's 1764–1766 circumnavigation on HMSDolphin, which made few important discoveries.[1] It was followed in 1766 by the voyages of Samuel Wallis on the Dolphin and Philip Carteret on HMSSwallow, who were supposed to search the South Pacific for a southern continent.[1] The ships were separated; Wallis became the first European to reach Tahiti in 1767 and returned to Britain in May 1768, while Carteret discovered several islands including Pitcairn and returned to Britain in March 1769.[3]
With the dual aims of observing the 1769 transit of Venus from Tahiti and searching for a southern continent, the first voyage of James Cook set out in August 1768.[3] On board was also the botanist Joseph Banks with an entourage including naturalist Daniel Solander and the artists Alexander Buchan and Sydney Parkinson.[4] After sailing to Tahiti and observing the transit of Venus, Cook circumnavigated New Zealand and surveyed its coast, explored the east coast of Australia and passed through Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea.[5] On the return journey, the ship was repaired at Batavia (now Jakarta), and several crew members including Parkinson died from dysentery.[6] The ship returned to Britain in July 1771.[7]
Hawkesworth had access to about 57 journals and logs of the voyages, but probably used only a few of them.[13] Sandwich also helped him access the journal of Joseph Banks,[14] and Hawkesworth was pleased to be able to use the writings of an educated gentleman in addition to Cook's journal, which contained more nautical details.[15]
Hawkesworth was allowed to make his own publishing contract, and received the sum of £6,000 (equivalent to £840,000in 2021) from William Strahan for editing the three volumes of the Account,[14] in "one of the most lucrative literary contracts of the eighteenth century."[16] The success made Hawkesworth overly confident, and he boldly declared "I would do my best to make it another Anson's Voyage",[17][18] referring to the account of George Anson's voyage around the world.[19] After compiling his draft, Hawkesworth submitted it to Lord Sandwich, and it was read by other Navy personnel, who made some suggestions for correction; however, these were not incorporated. Nevertheless, the book stated that the commanders as well as Banks and Solander had read the manuscript.[20] As Cook was due to depart on his second voyage in 1772, the two volumes regarding Cook's Endeavour journey were prepared first.[21]
Hawkesworth obtained a legal injunction against the competing publication of Parkinson's posthumous Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas, so it was delayed until after the Account appeared on 10 June 1773.[22]
Content
A view in the island of Ulietea with a double canoe and a boathouse, engraved by Edward Rooker, after drawings by Sydney Parkinson, c. 1773
The first volume is split into three parts, each concerned with one circumnavigation. It starts with John Byron's account of the 1764–1766 voyage of HMSDolphin. This is followed by Samuel Wallis' journal of the 1766–1768 voyage of the same ship that included the first European encounter with Tahiti. The volume ends with Philip Carteret's 1766–1769 circumnavigation on HMSSwallow, where some islands including Pitcairn Island were found.
The second and third volume concern the first voyage of James Cook, with a large amount of content on Tahiti, where HMSEndeavour spent a considerable amount of time to observe the transit of Venus. This is followed by the description of the navigation near New Zealand and the east coast of Australia.
Illustrations
During Wallis' Dolphin expedition, there were no dedicated artists on board. To illustrate the first encounter with the people of Tahiti, the anonymous artist of the illustration Captain Wallis, on his arrival at O'Taheite, in conversation with Oberea the Queen fell back on interpreting Hawkesworth's text and on using oriental imagery from other places. They may have been inspired by engravings in François Valentijn's 1724–1726 Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (Old and New East India).[23]
For the Endeavour voyage with James Cook, Joseph Banks brought a party of eight people,[4] that included the two artists Sydney Parkinson for botanical drawings and Alexander Buchan as landscape and figure artist.[24] Work by both artists was later engraved for publication in the Account, but with some changes. Buchan's sketches were made to conform with Hawkesworth's interpretations. Giovanni Battista Cipriani added additional figures to Buchan's Inhabitants of the island of Tierra del Fuego, in their hut before the images were engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi.[25]
Some of the engravings in the Account were based on Parkinson's drawings, but this was not acknowledged;[26] Joseph Banks himself had written to Hawkesworth advising against it.[27] Some alterations were made; for example, Parkinson's original of Tree on One Tree Hill contains a seated figure of a person drawing as well as two Europeans; in the drawing by John James Barralet that was engraved for the Account, the seated figure has been erased and the Europeans have been replaced by Tahitians. It is possible that the seated figure depicts Parkinson himself and that he was removed at Banks' request.[28]
Reception
The first edition of the Account sold quickly, and a second edition came out in August of 1773.[22] Further editions followed, including an American edition in 1773 and French and German translations in 1774.[16] The book was generally very popular with the public. For example, it was the most borrowed book in the Bristol library between 1773 and 1784.[29]
However, the book was immediately criticised quite vehemently,[30] and the amount of abuse heaped on Hawkesworth was considered to have contributed to his death in November 1773.[16] Critics came from different directions; apart from criticism from seamen and the commanders whose journals had been used, flaws were found with Hawkesworth's morals, theology, geography, and with the excessive payment he had received.[31] There was outrage about the descriptions of Tahitian sexuality that Hawkesworth did not censor.[32] Writing about the Endeavour's shipwreck at Endeavour Reef, Hawkesworth had not accepted Providence, or divine intervention, as means by which Cook and his crew had escaped disaster.[33] His deism-influenced views were unorthodox and offended religious sensibilities.[34] The geographer Alexander Dalrymple, a strong believer in theory of a southern continent, published a pamphlet attacking Hawkesworth and Cook, in which he complained about differences between the narrative and the charts and defended his belief in Terra australis.[35][36]
James Cook first read Hawkesworth's Account at the Cape of Good Hope in 1775, on the return leg of his second voyage, and was shocked to read Banks's words appearing as his as well as the statement that he had read and approved the manuscript.[37] When they stopped at St Helena, wheelbarrows were conspicuously placed around Cook's lodgings.[38]Georg Forster, who accompanied Cook, wrote about the scene in his book A Voyage Round the World: "Dr. Hawkesworth's account of captain Cook's first voyage round the world, in the Endeavour, had reached this island some time before; it had been eagerly perused, and several articles, relative to this settlement, were now taken notice of with great good humour and pleasant raillery. The total want of wheelbarrows, and the ill-treatment of the slaves, which are spoken of in that account, were reckoned particularly injurious, and captain Cook was called upon to defend himself. Mrs. Skottowe, the sprightliest lady on the island, displayed to advantage her witty and satirical talents, from which there was no other escape left, than to lay the blame on the absent philosophers whose papers had been consulted."[39]
In 2004, the literary scholar Philip Edwards, described the Account as a "laundering of the actual record of the remorseless advance into the Pacific" and criticised the way that different witnesses of the event were merged into a single voice, losing their individuality.[40]
Legacy
For more than a century, Hawkesworth's Account was the most authoritative source for the voyages it covered.[41] For Wallis's journey, an additional text appeared in 1948, the journal of the Dolphin's master, George Robertson.[42] Cook's journals were published in their original text in an edition by William Wharton in 1893;[43] the next authoritative publication was John Beaglehole's 1955 edition of Cook's journals,[44] where Beaglehole himself stated "for a hundred and twenty years, so far as the first voyage was concerned, Hawkesworth was Cook."[45]
Another lasting legacy of Hawkesworth's Account was that his merging of the commanders into a single first-person narrator created the heroic British explorer as a literary character that would stay popular for more than 200 years.[46][47]
Related Research Articles
Captain James Cook was a British explorer, cartographer and naval officer famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences.
Vice-Admiral John Byron was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer. He earned the nickname "Foul-Weather Jack" in the press because of his frequent encounters with bad weather at sea. As a midshipman, he sailed in the squadron under George Anson on his voyage around the world, though Byron made it only to southern Chile, where his ship was wrecked. He returned to England with the captain of HMS Wager. He was governor of Newfoundland following Hugh Palliser, who left in 1768. He circumnavigated the world as a commodore with his own squadron in 1764–1766. He fought in battles in the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution. He rose to Vice Admiral of the White before his death in 1786.
HMS Endeavour was a British Royal Navy research vessel that Lieutenant James Cook commanded to Australia and New Zealand on his first voyage of discovery from 1768 to 1771.
Sydney Parkinson was a Scottish botanical illustrator and natural history artist. He was the first European artist to visit Australia, New Zealand and Tahiti. Parkinson was the first Quaker to visit New Zealand. The standard author abbreviation Parkinson is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
John Hawkesworth LLD was an English writer and book editor, born in London.
Samuel Wallis was a British naval officer and explorer of the Pacific Ocean who made the first recorded visit by a European navigator to Tahiti.
Rear-Admiral Philip Carteret, Seigneur of Trinity was a British naval officer and explorer who participated in two of the Royal Navy's circumnavigation expeditions in 1764–66 and 1766–69.
HMS Dolphin was a 24-gun sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Launched in 1751, she was used as a survey ship from 1764 and made two circumnavigations of the world under the successive commands of John Byron and Samuel Wallis. She was the first ship to circumnavigate the world twice. She remained in service until she was paid off in September 1776, and she was broken up in early 1777.
Zachary Hicks was a Royal Navy officer, second-in-command on Lieutenant James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific and the first among Cook's crew to sight mainland Australia. A dependable officer who had risen swiftly through the ranks, Hicks conducted liaison and military duties for Cook, including command of shore parties in Rio de Janeiro and the kidnapping of a Tahitian chieftain in order to force indigenous assistance in the recovery of deserters. Hicks' quick thinking while in temporary command of HMS Endeavour also saved the lives of Cook, Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander when they were attacked by Māori in New Zealand in November 1769.
The first voyage of James Cook was a combined Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to the south Pacific Ocean aboard HMS Endeavour, from 1768 to 1771. It was the first of three Pacific voyages of which James Cook was the commander. The aims of this first expedition were to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun, and to seek evidence of the postulated Terra Australis Incognita or "undiscovered southern land".
Captain John Gore was a British American sailor who circumnavigated the globe four times with the Royal Navy in the 18th century and accompanied Captain James Cook in his discoveries in the Pacific Ocean.
Alexander Buchan was a Scottish landscape artist. He is known for his participation in the 1768–1771 first voyage of James Cook aboard HMS Endeavour, where he was one of the artists in the entourage of botanist Joseph Banks. Buchan had from epilepsy. On the journey, he had two documented seizures, the first during an expedition in Tierra del Fuego. Buchan died after the second seizure, shortly after Endeavour's arrival at Tahiti, and was buried at sea. Buchan produced landscapes, coastal views, ethnographic drawings and natural history drawings. He is best known for illustrations of the people of Tierra del Fuego, some of which were engraved for publication in accounts of the voyage. All of his drawings from the voyage were taken by his employer Joseph Banks and are now in the British Library and the Natural History Museum, London.
The second voyage of James Cook, from 1772 to 1775, commissioned by the British government with advice from the Royal Society, was designed to circumnavigate the globe as far south as possible to finally determine whether there was any great southern landmass, or Terra Australis. On his first voyage, Cook had demonstrated by circumnavigating New Zealand that it was not attached to a larger landmass to the south, and he charted almost the entire eastern coastline of Australia, yet Terra Australis was believed to lie further south. Alexander Dalrymple and others of the Royal Society still believed that this massive southern continent should exist. After a delay brought about by the botanist Joseph Banks' unreasonable demands, the ships Resolution and Adventure were fitted for the voyage and set sail for the Antarctic in July 1772.
Robert Pitcairn was a Scottish midshipman in the Royal Navy. Pitcairn Island was named after him: he was the first person to spot the island on 2 July 1767, while serving in a voyage in the South Pacific on HMS Swallow, captained by Philip Carteret.
Matavai Bay is a bay on the north coast of Tahiti, the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia. It is in the commune of Mahina, approximately 8 km east of the capital Pape'ete.
The Tahitian Dog is an extinct breed of dog from Tahiti and the Society Islands. Similar to other strains of Polynesian dogs, it was introduced to the Society Islands and Tahiti by the ancestors of the Tahitian (Mā’ohi) people during their migrations to Polynesia. They were an essential part of traditional Tahitian society; their meat was included in Tahitian cuisine and other parts of the dog were used to make tools and ornamental clothing. Dogs were fed a vegetarian diet and served during feasts as a delicacy. European explorers were the first outsiders to observe and record their existence, and they were served to early explorers including Captain James Cook. The Tahitian Dog disappeared as a distinct breed after the introduction of foreign European dogs.
A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas, in His Majesty's ship, the Endeavour is a 1773 book based on the papers of Sydney Parkinson, who accompanied Joseph Banks as botanical illustrator on the first voyage of James Cook. Parkinson died at sea in 1771 on the return voyage, and the Journal was compiled by William Kenrick for Parkinson's brother Stanfield, who quarrelled with Banks about his brother's papers and belongings and attacked Banks and others in the book's preface. A legal injunction prevented the publication of the Journal until after the official account of Cook's voyage, edited by John Hawkesworth, had appeared. A second edition appeared in 1784 with explanatory remarks by John Fothergill.
HMS Swallow was a 14-gun Merlin-class sloop of the Royal Navy. Commissioned in 1745, she initially served in home waters as a convoy escort and cruiser before sailing to join the East Indies Station in 1747. There she served in the squadron of Rear-Admiral Edward Boscawen, taking part in an aborted invasion of Mauritius and the Siege of Pondicherry. In 1755 Swallow returned home to join the Downs Station, as part of which she fought at the Raid on St Malo, Raid on Cherbourg, and Battle of Saint Cast in 1758. She was also present when the French fleet broke out of Brest prior to the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759.
Williams, Glyndwr (15 May 2020). "Pacific Voyages". In Edney, Matthew H.; Pedley, Mary Sponberg (eds.). The History of Cartography, Volume 4: Cartography in the European Enlightenment. University of Chicago Press. pp.1083–1090. ISBN978-0-226-33922-1.
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