On this day ...
3 September 1770
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
Passage from New South Wales to New Guinea
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Soon after our return to the ship, we hoisted in the boat and made sail to the westward, being resolved to spend no more time upon this coast, to the great satisfaction of a very considerable majority of the ship’s company. But I am sorry to say that I was strongly urged by some of the officers to send a party of men ashore, and cut down the cocoa-nut trees for the sake of the fruit. This I peremptorily refused, as equally unjust and cruel. The natives had attacked us merely for landing upon their coast, when we attempted to take nothing away, and it was therefore morally certain that they would have made a vigorous effort to defend their property if it had been invaded, in which case many of them must have fallen a sacrifice to our attempt, and perhaps also some of our own people. I should have regretted the necessity of such a measure, if I had been in want of the necessaries of life; and certainly it would have been highly criminal when nothing was to be obtained but two or three hundred of green cocoa-nuts, which would at most have procured us a mere transient gratification. I might indeed have proceeded farther along the coast to the northward and westward, in search of a place where the ship might have lain so near the shore as to cover the people with her guns when they landed; but this would have obviated only part of the mischief, and though it might have secured us, it would probably in the very act have been fatal to the natives. Besides, we had reason to think that before such a place would have been found, we should have been carried so far to the westward as to have been obliged to go to Batavia, on the north side of Java; which I did not think so safe a passage as to the south of Java, through the Streights of Sunday: the ship also was so leaky that I doubted whether it would not be necessary to heave her down at Batavia, which was another reason for making the best of our way to that place; especially as no discovery could be expected in seas which had already been navigated, and where every coast had been laid down by the Dutch geographers. The Spaniards indeed, as well as the Dutch, seem to have circumnavigated all the islands in New Guinea, as almost every place that is distinguished in the chart has a name in both languages. The charts with which I compared such part of this coast as I visited, are bound up with a French work, intitled, "Histoire des Navigationes aux Terres Australes," which was published in 1756, and I found them tolerably exact; yet I know not by whom, nor when they were taken: and though New Holland and New Guinea are in them represented as two distinct countries, the very history in which they are bound up, leaves it in doubt. I pretend however to no more merit in this part of the voyage, than to have established the fact beyond all controversy.
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© Derived from Vols. II-III of the London 1773 edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, pages 659 - 660, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv23/659.html