Description

John Rickman, second lieutenant on one of the two ships commanded by James Cook on his last expedition, wrote this journal during the voyage. It was first published anonymously in 1781, because the Admiralty embargoed all personal accounts until an official report of the voyage was released. Rickman apparently wanted to anticipate any attempt to blame him (a party under his command had killed a Hawaiian chief) for precipitating Cook's death. This revised edition, 'compared with, and corrected from, the voyage published by authority' was published - again anonymously - in 1785. After an editorial preface and an introductory account of earlier voyages to the South Seas, the journal itself offers a detailed first-hand narrative of the four-year voyage, including the deaths of Cook and of Captain Clerke, who took over command of the expedition but died of tuberculosis while searching for the western entrance to the North-West Passage.

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