Mostlymaps

Tel: +44 (0)1497 820539
Email: info@mostlymaps.com
Web site: https://www.mostlymaps.com/

Chart of Discoveries made in the South Pacific Ocean...by James Cook

£245.00 Approx $309.34, €286.55

Code: 53786



Date 1777

Copper engraving by W Palmer with later hand colouring. Published Wm Strahan in New Street Shoe Lane & Thos Cadell in the Strand London.  Overall sheet size: 51.9 cms x 39.4cms; Image size  465mm x 360mm.  Uncommon engraving from the official  edition of the accounts of Cook’s second voyage. All other later copies made of this image by other publishers were unauthorised, usually smaller and inferior in quality. Watermarked paper.  Old folds as issued; Remnants of tape from old framing at extreme top of map on verso ; two fox spots in middle of map; margin on right staggered .  Good condition.

The first printed chart of New Caledonia, made after Cook's discovery of the island group on 4 September 1774, which he named New Caledonia. The Resolution remained in New Caledonia from 5 to 13 September, 1774.

Cook had reached Maleku, Vanuatu (New Hebrides) on 17 July 1774 and made a careful survey of the islands which was completed on 1 September 1774. He named the islands the New Hebrides (Vanuatu).
Cook was the most important navigator of the Age of Enlightenment, a period that saw the idea of the idea of the great Southern continent was dispelled, the discovery of New Zealand, Hawaii, numerous Pacific Islands and confirmation that a Northwest Passage did not exist.

Cook was born in Yorkshire, England, the son of a Scottish labourer and was apprenticed  for three years to  John Walker, a Quaker coal-shipper of Whitby. In 1755 Walker offered him a command, but instead Cook joined HMS Eagle and within a month was master's mate. After two years on the Channel service, he was promoted master of the Pembroke, and in 1758 crossed the Atlantic in her and took part in the siege of Louisburg and the survey of the St Lawrence River that led to the capture of Quebec. Returning to England in 1762 he married Elizabeth Batts (1742-1832) of Shadwell, who he  rarely saw in the ensuing years at sea.

Cook then commanded three voyages that ended with his death on the island of Hawaii on 14 February 1779.