page_title: First voyage of James Cook
section_title: Publication of journals
hierarchical_section_title: First voyage of James Cook / Publication of journals
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of John Hawkesworth (ca.1715-1773), English writer and editor
context_page_description: The first voyage of James Cook was a combined Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to the south Pacific Ocean aboard HMS Endeavour, from 1768 to 1771. It was the first of three Pacific voyages of which James Cook was the commander. The aims of this first expedition were to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun, and to seek evidence of the postulated Terra Australis Incognita or "undiscovered southern land".
  The voyage was commissioned by King George III and commanded by Lieutenant Cook, a junior naval officer with good skills in cartography and mathematics. Departing from Plymouth Dockyard in August 1768, the expedition crossed the Atlantic, rounded Cape Horn and reached Tahiti in time to observe the transit of Venus. Cook then set sail into the largely uncharted ocean to the south, stopping at the Pacific islands of Huahine, Borabora and Raiatea to claim them for Great Britain, and unsuccessfully attempting to land at Rurutu. In September 1769 the expedition reached New Zealand, being the second Europeans to visit there, following the first European discovery by Abel Tasman 127 years earlier.
context_section_description: Cook's journals, along with those of Banks, were handed over to the Admiralty to be published upon his return. John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich contracted, for £6,000, John Hawkesworth a literary critic, essayist, and editor of The Gentleman's Magazine to publish a comprehensive account of exploration in the Pacific: not just Cook's ventures but also those of Wallis, Byron and Carteret. Hawkesworth edited the journals of Byron, Wallis and Carteret into separate accounts as volume I and then blended Cook's and Joseph Banks' journals with some of his own sentiments and produced a single first-person narrative that appeared to be the words of Cook, as Volume II. The book appeared in 1773 as three volumes with the title:
  AN ACCOUNT OF THE VOYAGES undertaken by Order of His Present Majesty for making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, and successively performed by Commodore Byron, Captain Wallis, Captain Carteret and Captain Cook, in the Dolphin, the Swallow and the Endeavour: Drawn up from the Journals which were kept by the several Commanders, and from the Papers of Joseph Banks, Esq.; by John Hawkesworth, LL.D. In three volumes. Illustrated with Cuts, and a great Variety of Charts and Maps relative to Countries now first discovered, or hitherto but imperfectly known.
  — Printed for W. Strahan & T. Cadell in the Strand. London: MDCCLXXIII
  The book went on sale on 9 June 1773 but widespread criticism in the press made the publication a personal disaster for Hawkesworth. Reviewers complained that the reader had no way to tell which part of the account was Cook, which part Banks and which part Hawkesworth and others were offended by the books'
  descriptions of the voyagers' sexual encounters with the Tahitians. 
  Cook was at sea again before the book was published and was later much disturbed by some of the sentiments that Hawkesworth has ascribed to him. He determined to edit his own journals in future.
caption: John Hawkesworth
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