On this day ...
15 - 30 August 1769
Endeavour Voyage Maps
James Cook's Journal Ms 1, National Library of Australia
Transcript of Cook's Journal
Joseph Banks's Journal
Sydney Parkinson's Journal
The Passage from Oteroah to New Zealand
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WE sailed from Oteroah on the 15th of August, and on Friday the 25th we celebrated the anniversary of our leaving England, by taking a Cheshire cheese from a locker, where it had been carefully treasured up for this occasion, and tapping a cask of porter, which proved to be very good and in excellent order. On the 29th, one of the sailors got so drunk, that the next morning he died: we thought at first that he could not have come honestly by the liquor, but we afterwards learnt that the boatswain, whose mate he was, had in mere good-nature given him part of a bottle of rum.
On the 30th we saw the comet; at one o’clock in the morning it was a little above the horizon in the eastern part of the heavens; at about half an hour after four it passed the meridian, and its tail subtended an angle of forty-two degrees. Our latitude was 38° 20’ S. our longitude, by log, 147° 6’ W. and the variation of the needle, by the azimuth, 7° 9’ E. Among others that observed the comet, was Tupia, who instantly cried out, that as soon as it should be seen by the people of Bolabola, they would kill the inhabitants of Ulietea, who would with the utmost precipitation fly to the mountains.
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Vols. II-III of the London 1773 edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, pages 281 - 282, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv23/284.html