The official published accounts of Captain Cook’s three great voyages (1768-79) were immense popular successes in Britain. That for the third voyage sold out within three days of publication in 1784. When the Frenchman La Pérouse sailed from Botany Bay in March 1788 into the Pacific – and into oblivion – he remarked that Cook had done so much that he had left him nothing to do but admire hi ... (read more)