he second voyage of James Cook began with Resolution and Adventure sailing from Plymouth on 13 July 1772. Other than sailing to the Cape of Good Hope and back, the journey can be broken up into three "ice edge cruises" during the Southern hemisphere summers, where Cook attempted to find Terra Australis, broken up by "tropical sweeps" in the South Pacific and stays at a base in New Zealand. While they did not reach mainland Antarctica, they made the first recorded crossing of the Antarctic Circle on 17 January 1773. They discovered New Caledonia, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. Finally, Cook's ship returned to England on 30 July 1775. An abstract of one of Forster's letters to Barrington summarised the achievements for Banks as "260 new Plants, 200 new Animals – 71° 10' farthest Sth – no continent – Many Islands, some 80 Leagues long – The Bola Bola savage an co rrigible Blockhead – Glorious Voyage – No man lost by sickness."[nb 2] Publication rights dispute After the return of Cook's expedition, there was disagreement about who should write the official account of the journey. After Cook's first voyage in 1768, the writer and editor John Hawkesworth had compiled a report from the journals of Cook and Banks. He had been recommended to Lord Sandwich by their mutual friend Charles Burney and received compensation of £6,000. Hawkesworth's report was poorly received by critics. Cook was also dissatisfied with gross inaccuracies in the report, which according to Hawkesworth had been approved by him. After this experience, Cook decided to publish his own account. Reinhold Forster believed he would be allowed to write the official report of the voyage and reap the expected financial rewards from it. Both Cook and Forster had kept journals for this purpose and reworked them in the winter of 1775–76. In April 1776, Sandwich brokered a compromise that both sides agreed to: Cook would write the first volume, containing a narrative of the journey, the nautical observations, and his own remarks on the natives. The elder Forster was to write the second volume concerning the discoveries made in natural history and ethnology and his "philosophical remarks". Costs and profits were to be shared equally, but the Admiralty was to pay for the engravings. However, when Forster had completed a sample chapter, Sandwich was dissatisfied with it and asked Richard Owen Cambridge to revise the manuscript. Forster, who mistakenly assumed that Barrington wanted to correct his work, was furious about this interference with his writing and refused to submit his drafts for corrections. He offered to sell his manuscripts to the Admiralty for £200, which Cook and Barrington supported, but Sandwich refused. In June 1776, it was decided that Cook would publish his report alone, giving Cook the full financial benefit of the publication. Reinhold Forster's agreements with Sandwich made it impossible for him to publish a separate narrati
|
