Endeavour journal of James Cook
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Endeavour journal of James Cook is a diary and ship's logbook written by Lieutenant James Cook, captain of HMS Endeavour, on his first voyage of exploration in the Pacific Ocean from 1768 to 1771. The handwritten journal is in the collection of the National Library of Australia located in Canberra.
The journal includes observations of the 1769 transit of Venus from Tahiti, the first European charting of the east coast of Australia and the first circumnavigation of New Zealand. The original document, in Cook's handwriting, foreshadows British colonization of Australia, including one of the earliest written records of the indigenous peoples of Polynesia, New Zealand and eastern Australia.
The journal, handwritten by James Cook, consists of one volume of 753 pages bound in oak and pigskin.[1] The journal documents one of the first English voyages to the Pacific Ocean, departing from Plymouth on 26 August 1768.[2] The voyage circumnavigated the globe with three main objectives, to observe and record the transit of Venus from Tahiti on 3 June 1769; to record natural history; and a secret mission to search for the Great South Land.[3][4] Cook's last entry in the journal on 12 July 1771 records HMS Endeavour anchored in the Downs, an anchorage for ships off the east coast of Kent, near the port of Deal.[5]
