[Cook, Captain James] | An 18th century French autograph manuscript of Cook's Third Voyage, the earliest known manuscript description of Hawaii and the death of Cook

Captain James Cook

Manuscript in French of Cook's third voyage to Hawaii, a fair copy. Ca. 1785

2 volumes, folio (320 x 204 mm). Manuscript in ink, titled "3e Voy. de Cook," unbound, the volumes each a single gathering of folded bifolia, with a laid in singleton, comprising 91 leaves written recto and verso, paginated from pp. 768–950, with 5 blanks at the rear of volume 2, the paper watermarked with a potted plant and countermarked E MARAY | G BALENCON | 1785; the sewing perished in first volume and largely holding in the second, with some light toning and wear along the deckled edges, very infrequent and minor staining, the second volume with the first bifolia split along the fold with losses touching the first few letters of about 10 lines of text. An unrelated contemporary manuscript slip, written in a different hand, found laid in. Housed in a cloth clamshell case.

The earliest manuscript description of Hawaii, and the death of Captain Cook, that has ever surfaced.

While various logbooks, letters, and charts relating to Cook survive, mostly in institutional collections, this is the only contemporary manuscript narrative of Cook's voyages that we can trace. As such, this is the earliest known manuscript of Cook’s third voyage in any language. It is a new discovery, unrecorded in all bibliographies, worthy of further study.

Cook’s voyages made a strong impression in France. The French crown, inspired by his successes and driven by a longstanding rivalry with Great Britain, Enlightenment curiosity, and the pursuit of new trade routes, decided to launch their own expeditions to the Pacific. Throughout the 1770s, contemporary with Cook’s voyages, the French explorers de Bougainville, du Fresne, de Surville, and Kerguelen all visited the Pacific. The most significant post-Cook French voyage, however, was that of Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse (see lot 488). His expedition, ordered by King Louis XVI, was directly modeled after and designed to compete with Cook’s voyage. La Pérouse set sail in 1785, surveyed the coasts of Chile, Easter Island, Hawaii, Alaska, California, and Northeast Asia, before tragically disappearing in 1788 after leaving Botany Bay in Australia. His voyage was followed by that of Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni, chevalier d'Entrecasteaux, who in 1792 attempted to find La Perouse and explored the Australian coast. In this context, it is evident that the Frech public were intensely interested in Pacific voyages throughout the 1780s and 1790s.

To meet this demand, three translations of Cook’s voyages were published in France in the 1780s. These include John Rickman's Troisiéme voyage de Cook, ou journal d'une expedition faite dans la Mer Pacifique... published in 1782, and Jean-François de La Harpe’s abridged version, Abrégé de l'histoire générale des voyages, published in 1786. However, the present text differs substantially from these two, so it is apparent that they were not used as the source material for this manuscript. Instead. the text closely follows Jean-Nicolas Démeunier's abridged French translation of Cook's Third Voyage, Troisiéme Voyage de Cook, ou Voyage à l'Ocean Pacifique, published in Paris in 1785.

The compiler condensed and edited Démeunier's text, closely following it, while often paraphrasing from it. For example, just after the death of Cook, Démeunier writes: "Ainsi termina ses jours, le plus célebre & le plus grand des Navigateurs, après tant de glorieuses entreprises, couronnées des plus heureux succès!" That same moment in the manuscript has been tersely trimmed down to: "Ainsi pour le grand Cook." The text contains numerous corrections, strikethroughs, and single-word insertions, which oftentimes appear to be copying errors or the compiler having second thoughts about word choice. Some words or passages are underlined, and others are placed in parentheses. While transcribing James King's narrative about Canton, the scribe complains in the margins about misprints that are making it difficult to be sure of the narrative—this is a strong indication that he was working from a printed source. As it turns out, Démeunier's translation of that passage contains some obvious printing errors.

There are no apparent gaps in the manuscript, though the compiler omits certain parts of the source text that he deemed nonessential. For example, he does not include any of the preliminary matter that appears in Démeunier's translation, and he skips the brief biography of Cook that appears immediately after his death. As such, this is the compete narrative of Cook's third voyage, beginning with The Discovery setting sail from Plymouth on 12 July 1776, and ending in the same place as the Admiralty account, per Démeunier's translation, with King’s statement: “La Découverte ne perdit pas un seul homme.”

It is apparent that this manuscript is a fair copy intended for publication. Not only does the text show careful editing, including hundreds of corrections, cross-outs, and single word insertions, but the underlines and parenthesis were evidently done with a mind to future indexing. However, we have been unable to locate a printed version of this text. For whatever reason, it seems to have never made it to press.

The next earliest manuscript narrative accounts of Hawaii, not ship’s logs or journals, that we can locate all date to the early 19^th century once Christian missionaries arrived on the islands. As such, this manuscript predates any similar documents by at least two or three decades and is the earliest known account of the Hawaiian Islands in manuscript form. 

REFERENCES

Jean-Nicolas Démeunier. Troisiéme Voyage de Cook, ou Voyage à l'Ocean Pacifique... Paris: Hotel de Thou, 1785 (https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k10733462/f1.item)