In the printed account of Cowley’s voyage, he says, "we held our course S.W. till we came into the latitude of forty-seven degrees, where we saw land, the same being an island, not before known, lying to the westward of us: it was not inhabited, and I gave it the name of PEPYS’S ISLAND. We found it a very commodious place for ships to water at, and take in wood, and it has a very good harbour, where a thousand sail of ships may safely ride. Here is great plenty of fowls, and, we judge, abundance of fish, by reason of the grounds being nothing but rocks and sands."

To this account there is annexed a representation of Pepys’s Island, in which names are given to several points and head lands, and the harbour is called Admiralty Bay; yet it appears that Cowley had only a distant view of it, for he immediately adds, "the wind being so extraordinary high that we could not get into it to water, we stood to the southward, shaping our course S.S.W. till we came into the latitude of 53;" and though he says that "it was commodious to take in wood," and it is known that there is no wood on Falkland’s Islands, Pepys’s Island and Falkland’s Islands may notwithstanding be the same; for upon Falkland’s Islands there are immense quantities of flags with narrow leaves, reeds and rushes which grow in clusters, so as to form bushes about three feet high, and then shoot about six or seven feet higher: these at a distance have greatly the appearance of wood, and were taken for wood by the French, who landed there in the year

Voyaging Accounts