John Robson - Captain Cooks War Peace

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Copyright John Robson 2009

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by
Seaforth Publishing,
Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
47 Church Street,
Barnsley S70 2AS

www.seaforthpublishing.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84832 033 8
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 78346 928 4
PRC ISBN: 978 1 78346 695 5

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing of both the copyright owner and
the above publisher.

The right of John Robson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Typeset and designed by JCS Publishing Services Ltd, www.jcs-publishing.co.uk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge

Contents

Abbreviations

AB	Able seaman
ATL	Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington
BL	British Library
CO	Colonial Office
HLHU	Houghton Library, Harvard University
NLA	National Library of Australia
NMM	National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
PRO	Public Records Office
SLNSW	State Library of New South Wales, Sydney
TNA	The National Archives, Kew
UKHO	UK Hydrographic Office
W	The Royal Collection, Windsor Castle
WO	War Office

Acknowledgements

In the United Kingdom, thanks to:

Cliff Thornton for reading the text and providing ongoing support; Guy Hannaford in the Hydrographic Office at Taunton; Nigel Rigby at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; staff in the Caird Library, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; Bruno Pappalardo and other staff at National Archives, Kew; Derek Morris for much information about and a wonderful tour of Mile End Old Town; Ruth Boreham for undertaking extra research at Kew on my behalf; and Jessica Cuthbert-Smith for an excellent job of copy-editing.

A special word for the British Library at St Pancras. Tom Harper in the Map Room at the British Library, St Pancras, provided excellent assistance. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for his colleagues. I was prevented from using the library during my visit in late 2007 because of the draconian rules introduced to make it difficult for readers to renew their tickets. On three occasions staff were rude and unhelpful. The irony is I have to lodge copies of this book with them!

In Canada, thanks to:

Donald Graves for information about Quebec and allowing me to quote from his revised edition of CP Staceys book on Quebec. What was already a good book is now a marvellous one; Derek Hayes; Dave Fisher for photos of Louisbourg; Shannon Parker at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax; Daniel Vickers for his scholarship on Ashley Bowen; and Lynda Silver, librarian at the Maritime Museum in Halifax.

In Newfoundland, many thanks to:

Olaf and Ellen Janzen, Selma Barkham and Bernie Conran for wonderful hospitality. The beauty of their island is no longer a secret. To Olaf and Selma especially, thanks for enabling me to see places on the west coast where Cook surveyed; and Bernie Conran and Joan Ritcey at the Library of Memorial University of Newfoundland have continued to provide great assistance with resources.

In the USA, thanks to:

Karen McInnis of the Marblehead Historical Society for permission to reproduce text and drawings of Ashley Bowen; Denison Beach at the Houghton Library, Harvard University for help in acquiring a copy of Cooks sailing directions for Louisbourg; and Donald Olson for permission to use his map showing Wolfes passage down the St Lawrence River.

In New Zealand, thanks to:

Megan Symes for proofreading the text; Lesley Wilson for providing the index; Max Oulton for redrawing and computerising all the maps; William Jennings for French translations; and my work colleagues in the New Zealand Collection at the University of Waikato Library my mind has been elsewhere somewhat for the last two years or so.

Special thanks to Julian Mannering at Seaforth Publishing in the UK for agreeing to publish the book and providing ongoing encouragement and support.

Given that some events covered in the book have been described by soldiers and officials using civil time and by sailors using nautical time I have changed all dates and times (where they can be established) to civil time to avoid confusion.

Unless otherwise referenced, all quotations from logs and journals are from manuscripts held at the National Archives in Kew (TNA) and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich (NMM). All quotations from logs are taken from Cooks logs, unless indicated otherwise.

As ever I thank my corgis, Hector and Cullen, for their patience throughout the process of assembling this book.

Finally, in late 2007 I discovered that a namesake of mine had sailed with Cook on HMS Pembroke. This earlier John Robson suddenly appeared one day while I researched in the Caird Library at Greenwich. I had previously been unaware of his existence but I now had another personal reason for being interested in Cook. I do not know what happened to him or whether we are related but I dedicate the book to him.

Introduction

James Cooks exploits in the Pacific are well known, having been covered by countless books. Cook, however, was already thirty-nine when he set out for the Pacific, and most of those books skip over Cooks earlier career in the Royal Navy if it is even mentioned at all. Flann OBrien in his novel At Swim-Two-Birds had a character who was born at the age of twenty-five, and, in a similar vein, many of the authors of books about Cook have him born at the age of thirty-nine. For them, he was a ready-made explorer with no previous, personal history, just waiting to set off to discover peoples, lands and fortunes.

It is the intention of this book largely to ignore Cooks time in the Pacific but instead to focus on his career in the Royal Navy before his great adventures on Endeavour and Resolution. Similarly, only a brief overview will be presented of Cooks childhood and the time he spent sailing on colliers in the North Sea. For more detail on that part of Cooks life you are referred to the works of Cliff Thornton (Captain Cook in Cleveland) and Julia Rae (Captain James Cook Endeavours). Cook spent thirteen years in the Royal Navy before sailing to the Pacific, having joined in 1755. This book aims to show that most of the qualities that led to Cook being chosen to command

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