Welcome to South Seas 2.0

Here you will find the full text of the Endeavour Journals of James Cook, Joseph Banks and Sydney Parkinson. The journals are presented so that you can see what each of the three voyagers wrote on each day of Cook's momentous first voyage (1768-1771).

You will also find journal entries are linked to the relevant pages in John Hawkesworth's official account of the voyage, published in 1773.

South Seas 1.0 is now archived with the National Library of Australia.

I have created HTML5 interactive maps for this new version  using digital cartography created by Chris Blackall,   and used texts of Hawkesworth's account of the voyage corrected by Christine Winter.   

My aim has been to make South Seas 2.0 HTML5-parseable and structurally sound, while preserving  textual materials, hyperlinks, menus, and historical layout much as originally published. Deprecated but functional markup (for example, table-based layout and presentational attributes) has been intentionally preserved, as such elements are explicitly supported by HTML5 for legacy documents. All changes were applied conservatively using small, purpose-built scripts designed to avoid content loss or reinterpretation. The resulting files should render consistently in modern browsers while remaining faithful to the original scholarly aims of the project. This approach reflects best practice in digital humanities and cultural heritage preservation, prioritising long-term stability and authenticity over cosmetic or stylistic modernisation.

Search functionality is being progressively restored.

There will also in time be direct links to digital images of Cook's original journal held by the National Library of Australia (NLA Ms 1).       

I personally made the transcript  of NLA Ms 1 used here. It may be reproduced in whole or part for non-profit educational purposes.

I gratefully acknowledge the Australian Research Council and the National Library's support of this project between 2000-2004

If you have any queries or suggestions for further development, do please contact me by email: paul.turnbull@utas.edu.au