John Ledyard’s Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage

By: John Ledyard and Helen M. Gilkey and Robert M. Storm

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Synopsis: To the Pacific Ocean, and in Quest of a North-West Passage, Between Asia and America; Performed in the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, and 1779Captain John Cook’s last voyage, his third to the Pacific Northwest, was a remarkable one, for his crew included several literate men, scientists, scholars, and specialists. Anticipating a rush into print after the voyage, the British Admiralty ordered all logbooks, journals, diaries, and notes of the crew members confiscated when the fleet returned to England. It has thus been presumed that John Ledyard, the young Yankee sailor, compiled this Journal from memory or from notes which he secretly retained. Aside from its value as an independent account of the Cook voyage, it was the first writing on the Pacific Northwest to be widely distributed in America.