Endeavour’s Journal and Log

Want more detail about day to day life during Endeavour’s voyage?

The day to day records of the Endeavour voyage, recording ‘remarkable occurrences’ (or things worth noting) are contained in the ship’s Journal. The print version edited by J.C. Beaglehole, The Journals of Captain James Cook: The Voyage of the Endeavour, 1768-1771, is regarded as the standard reference and the quotations from the Journal on this website are drawn from this source. There are plenty of online sources for the Endeavour Journal e.g: http://southseas.nla.gov.au/index_voyaging.html Read the original in Cook’s own handwriting from the copy in the National Library of Australia at: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-228958440/view.

You can listen to the spoken journal entries of Cook and Joseph Banks, and learn more about the Endeavour’s voyage along Australia’s east coast at this excellent website: https://captain-cook-continent-of-smoke.com.

The ship’s Log is an hour by hour record of Endeavour’s voyage which contains much interesting information such as distance travelled, ship’s compass course, wind directions, as well as brief information about the day to day activities on board that supplements entries in the Journal. You can read an original at: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-517532598/view?partId=nla.obj-558521253

Both the ship’s Journal and Log are recorded in ship’s time with each day commencing not at midnight but at noon, civil time. So, Cook arrives off the coast of Victoria, according to Endeavour’s Journal at 6 a.m. on 19 April 1770, ship’s time, that ship’s day having commenced 18 hours earlier at noon. But 6 hours previously at midnight civil time (which runs midnight to midnight) the civil time date had changed from 19 to 20 April. This means that according to civil time Cook arrives off the coast on 20 April, not the 19th as in the Journal. To avoid confusion this website refers the times and dates given in the Journal and Log, with the ship’s day 12 hours behind the civil day.

Leagues and Longitudes - Understanding Cook’s Journal

Reading the Journal extracts:
Despite his lack of formal education, Cook’s descriptions of the Landmarks he named are usually brief, but precise and accurate. 250 years later it is easy for the modern reader to understand most of Cook’s Journal entries, though sometimes the spelling can be a little different!

Distances:
Before you start to read it is useful to understand that Cook worked with measures of distance that are quite different to those we use today – metres and kilometres. The table below gives conversions. Cook deals in leagues and nautical miles. It is worth trying to remember that 1 league = 3 nautical miles or 5.56km, and that a nautical mile is just under 2km.

Latitude and Longitude:
Cook gives Endeavour’s position, and that of Landmarks, in Latitudes (so many degrees south of the Equator) and Longitudes (so many degrees west of Greenwich (London, UK)). The convention today is to give longitudes up to 180 degrees east and west of Greenwich, whereas Cook gives them all as west of Greenwich, so you will see ‘Long 207.30 W’. If you deduct this from 360 degrees you will get 152.30 E’, the modern way of expressing it. You will see that in the Journal Cook often gives his position at noon. This is because the sun is at its highest point at noon and it was easy to work out Latitude from the angle at which the sun appeared at that time. Longitudes were far more difficult. Cook carried lunar tables, a new technology which involved complex calculations following observations of the moon and certain stars. Because of these and other difficulties Cook’s latitudes and longitudes do not always coincide with modern positions.

On later voyages Cook carried the time at Greenwich with him in the form of a chronometer which made things so much simpler. If the chronometer was kept wound up and was of good quality he would at all times know the time at Greenwich. From his daily sun shot he would know when it was noon where he was, and so it was easy to calculate how many degrees he was from Greenwich. For example, at noon at 180 degrees from Greenwich, a chronometer would show it was midnight at Greenwich. If at noon locally the chronometer showed 1a.m at Greenwich Cook would know that he was 11 hours ahead of Greenwich, with every hour representing 15 degrees of longitude, and that he was at 165 degrees east.

Cook expresses latitudes and longitudes in degrees and minutes, a minute being one sixtieth of a degree. Modern coordinates are often expressed in decimal form, in degrees and hundredths of degrees – so Cook’s 207.30 W would become 207.50 W or 150.50 E. Modern coordinates in decimal form are given for each of the Cook Landmarks described on this website to enable you to punch this info into your smartphone and find your way to them.

Points of the compass:
In the Journal and Log Cook gives the ship’s course, wind directions, and bearings to land features in abbreviated form, e.g. W, NW, NNW, NbW. There are 32 points to the compass. Each Point = 11 ¼ degrees. The 32 points of the compass are N, Nb(by)E, NNE, NEbN, NE, ENE, EbN, E, EbS, ESE, SEbE, SE, SEbS, SSE, SbE and so on back to N)