The official account of James Cook’s first voyage in the Endeavour (1768-71) was published in 1773. The account, being an edited version of Cook’s journal, occupies the second and third volumes of John Hawkesworth’s An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of His Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere. The first volume includes voyages by Byron, Wallis and Carteret – all seminal voyages in the history of the British Empire. We need to remember that Cook represents the culmination of the scientific discovery in the southern hemisphere, beginning with William Dampier in the late seventeenth century.

There has never been a shortage of material on Cook and his first voyage. The first account, attributed to James Magra, precedes Hawkesworth’s and was published only two months after their return in 1771. It was published in defiance of the Admiralty’s ruling that no unofficial accounts pre-empt the official one. This was the first of many ‘surreptitious’ accounts to appear in the Endeavour’s wake, and it was the beginning of a separate industry.