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British Royal Navy officer, explorer, and cartographer (1728–1779) who led three voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans between 1768 and 1779. He completed the first recorded circumnavigation of the main islands of New Zealand and led the first recorded visit by Europeans to the east coast of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. ALS signed “Jam: Cook,” one page, 8 x 10, February 21, 1776. Handwritten letter to a gentleman, in full: "Please to order His Majesty's Sloops, the Resolution and Discovery, to be Ballasted with Coals as was done in former voyages of the same nature." In very good to fine condition, with silking to the reverse and professional restoration to marginal losses.
This brief but historically resonant letter finds Captain James Cook deep in preparations for what would become his third and final voyage of Pacific exploration. Both HMS Resolution, his veteran flagship from the second voyage, and the newly acquired HMS Discovery were, fittingly, former colliers—coal-carrying vessels built in the Whitby tradition that had shaped Cook's own early seafaring career in the North Sea coal trade. His practical instruction here, ordering the ships ballasted with coal as had been standard practice in earlier voyages, reflects both Cook's meticulous attention to seaworthiness and his intimate, firsthand knowledge of collier-built ships, whose flat bottoms and shallow draft made them ideal for the uncharted coastlines he intended to survey.
The two ships would not depart Plymouth until July 12 of that year, embarking on a voyage officially tasked with returning the Pacific islander Omai to his home in the Society Islands, but secretly charged with locating the Northwest Passage. Cook would not live to see the mission's end, losing his life in Hawaii in February 1779. Letters from this final period of preparation are scarce, particularly those touching on the operational minutiae of outfitting his ships for the voyage from which he would never return.
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