A Voyage Round the World (complete title A Voyage Round the World in His Britannic Majesty's Sloop, Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, During the Years 1772, 3, 4, and 5) is Georg Forster's report on the second voyage of the British explorer James Cook. During the preparations for Cook's voyage, the expedition's naturalist Joseph Banks had withdrawn his participation, and Georg's father, Johann Reinhold Forster, had taken his place at very short notice, with his seventeen-year-old son as his assistant. They sailed on with Cook, accompanied by under Tobias Furneaux. On the voyage, they circumnavigated the world, crossed the Antarctic Circle and sailed as far south as 71° 10, discovered several Pacific islands, encountered diverse cultures and described many species of plants and animals.
When they returned to England after more than three years, disagreement about the publication rights for a narrative of the journey arose. After plans agreed with John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty, to publish a joint work with contributions by both Cook and Reinhold Forster had fallen through, Georg, who was not bound by any agreement with the Admiralty, began writing Voyage in July 1776. He published on 17 March 1777, six weeks before Cook's A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World appeared. While 63 copper engravings, paid for by the Admiralty, illustrated Cook's account, only a chart of the Southern Hemisphere showing the expedition ships' courses illustrated Forster's Voyage, which was sold for the same price.
While Forster organised Voyage chronologically, he wrote it as entertaining literature, focusing not on the nautical aspects of the voyage but on scientific observations and on the cultural encounters with the peoples of the South Pacific. This was well received by critics, who praised the writing, especially in contrast to Cook's book, but sales were slow. Controversy continued after the publication. Resolution astronomer William Wales suspected Reinhold Forster of being the true author and published many accusations in his Remarks on Mr Forster's Account of Captain Cook's last Voyage round the World that prompted a Reply to Mr Wales's Remarks in which Georg defended his father against the attacks. Voyage brought Georg Forster great fame, especially in Germany. It is regarded as a seminal book in travel writing, considered a major influence on the explorer Alexander von Humboldt, and has become a classic of travel literature.
Background
The Royal Society of London suggested James Cook's first voyage, 1768–1771, to observe the 1769 transit of Venus from Tahiti. Following proposals by the geographer Alexander Dalrymple, the scope was widened to a voyage of discovery that was hoped to find the hypothetical continent of Terra Australis Incognita. Cook circumnavigated New Zealand, proving it was not attached to a landmass farther south, and mapped the east coast of Australia but had not found evidence for a large southern continent. After Cook's return, a second voyage was commissioned with the aim of circumnavigating the globe as far south as possible to finally find this famed continent. In the preparations for Cook's second voyage, Joseph Banks, the botanist on the first voyage, had been designated as the main scientific member of the crew. He asked for major changes to the expedition ship, HMS Resolution, which made it top-heavy and had to be mostly undone. Subsequently, dissatisfied with the ship, Banks announced on 24 May 1772 his refusal to go on the expedition.
On 26 May 1772, Johann Reinhold Forster, who had attempted unsuccessfully to become part of Banks's scientific entourage, was visited by the naval surgeon and inventor Charles Irving, who told Forster of Banks's decision and asked whether he would go instead. Forster accepted but requested that his seventeen-year-old son Georg should accompany him as his assistant. Irving relayed this to the First Secretary of the Admiralty, Philip Stephens. Forster was supported by the Royal Society's vice president Daines Barrington, whose friendship he had cultivated. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Sandwich obtained the king's assent for Forster's appointment on 5 June, pre-empting attempts by Banks to force the Admiralty to comply with his demands. Financial questions still needed to be resolved. Barrington attempted to secure for Forster the £4,000 that Parliament had approved for Banks's would-be companion, James Lind. After Lord Sandwich recommended Forster to the prime minister, Lord North, as "one of the fittest persons in Europe for such an undertaking", mentioning Georg as a "very able draughtsman and designer", Lord North obtained the King's approval for a payment of £1,795 for equipment that Forster received on 17 June, as the first instalment of the £4,000. Additionally, despite not having a written contract and relying on Barrington's word only, Reinhold Forster believed he would be allowed to publish a narrative of the journey.
The second voyage of James Cook began with Resolution and Adventure sailing from Plymouth on 13 July 1772. Other than sailing to the Cape of Good Hope and back, the journey can be broken up into three "ice edge cruises" during the Southern hemisphere summers, where Cook attempted to find Terra Australis, broken up by "tropical sweeps" in the South Pacific and stays at a base in New Zealand. While they did not reach mainland Antarctica, they made the first recorded crossing of the Antarctic Circle on 17 January 1773. They discovered New Caledonia, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. Finally, Cook's ship returned to England on 30 July 1775. An abstract of one of Forster's letters to Barrington summarised the achievements for Banks as "260 new Plants, 200 new Animals – 71° 10 farthest Sth – no continent – Many Islands, some 80 Leagues long – The Bola Bola savage an [in]corrigible Blockhead – Glorious Voyage – No man lost by sickness."
Publication rights dispute After the return of Cook's expedition, there was disagreement about who should write the official account of the journey. After Cook's first voyage in 1768, the writer and editor John Hawkesworth had compiled a report, An Account of the Voyages, from the journals of Cook and Banks. He had been recommended to Lord Sandwich by their mutual friend Charles Burney and received compensation of £6,000. Hawkesworth's report was poorly received by critics. Cook was also dissatisfied with gross inaccuracies in the report, which according to Hawkesworth had been approved by him. After this experience, Cook decided to publish his own account. Reinhold Forster believed he would be allowed to write the official report of the voyage and reap the expected financial rewards from it. Both Cook and Forster had kept journals for this purpose and reworked them in the winter of 1775–76. In April 1776, Sandwich brokered a compromise that both sides agreed to: Cook would write the first volume, containing a narrative of the journey, the nautical observations, and his own remarks on the natives. The elder Forster was to write the second volume concerning the discoveries made in natural history and ethnology and his "philosophical remarks". Costs and profits were to be shared equally, but the Admiralty was to pay for the engravings. However, when Forster had completed a sample chapter, Sandwich was dissatisfied with it and asked Richard Owen Cambridge to revise the manuscript. Forster, who mistakenly assumed that Barrington wanted to correct his work, was furious about this interference with his writing and refused to submit his drafts for corrections. He offered to sell his manuscripts to the Admiralty for £200, which Cook and Barrington supported, but Sandwich refused. In June 1776, it was decided that Cook would publish his report alone, giving Cook the full financial benefit of the publication. Reinhold Forster's agreements with Sandwich made it impossible for him to publish a separate narrative.
Writing and publication
Not bound by his father's agreements with the Admiralty, Georg Forster began to write A Voyage Round the World in July 1776, which fully engaged him for nine months. His father's journals were the main source for the work. The facts about what they saw and did are typically taken from these journals but recast into Georg's own style, with a different ordering of the details and additional connecting material. Some parts were based on segments of Cook's journals that Forster's father had accessed while preparing his samples for Sandwich. Georg used his own notes and recollections, including his own memorandum , which contains botanical and biological observations up to 1 January 1773.
Unlike the systematic approach of Johann Reinhold Forster's later book Observations Made during a Voyage round the World (1778), A Voyage Round the World is a chronology of the voyage, but written as entertaining literature, including the use of quotations from classical literature to frame the narrative, instead of a dry collection of facts. Among the first books using such scientific-literary techniques, it is regarded as a seminal book in the history of travel writing and has been described as "unambiguously the finest of the Cook voyage narratives". The Oxford astronomer Thomas Hornsby proofread the book's manuscript. Georg Forster drew a chart for the book, which was engraved by William Whitchurch. It shows most of the Southern Hemisphere in stereographic projection from the intersection of the Arctic Circle and the meridian of Greenwich. The chart shows the tracks of the expedition's ships more clearly than the one printed in Cook's account, which included those of other navigators. Reinhold Forster attempted to access the plates with the engravings that were made for Cook's account, but was refused by the publishers. Nevertheless, Georg had seen proofs of these plates, frequently mentioned and commented on in Voyage.
The book appeared on 17 March 1777, printed in two volumes totalling 1200 pages by the publisher Benjamin White. Cook's official account of the voyage, A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, appeared six weeks later. Cook's book included 63 copper engravings, some of which were based on Georg Forster's drawings, while A Voyage Round the World was not illustrated except for the chart. Nevertheless, both books were sold at the same price of 2 guineas. Forster's book sold slowly; in 1778, 570 of about 1000 copies were still unsold, and the Forsters had to sell most of their collection of Pacific artefacts and Georg's drawings to alleviate their debts. Some of the drawings were not published until 2007, when they appeared in an illustrated German edition of Voyage.
Content
The book is structured as a travelogue, chronologically retelling the events and observations of the journey. Unlike Cook's report, it does not focus on the nautical aspects of the voyage, but on the scientific and ethnological observations. Forster describes encounters with the peoples and cultures of the South Seas and the corrupting impact of the contact with European sailors. Peoples described include the Tahitians, the Maori of New Zealand, and the Fuegians of Tierra del Fuego, whose technologies and societies Forster analysed and compared.
The following is a summary of the contents of each chapter, following the journey of the Resolution under Cook, which was accompanied for parts of the journey by the Adventure under the command of Tobias Furneaux.
Preface
Forster explains the history of the work, including the agreements between his father, Cook and Sandwich. He proceeds with an apology for producing a work separate to Cook's, and gives an account of the life in England of Tahitian native Omai, who had arrived in Europe on Adventure in 1774.
Book I
Chapter I. Departure—Passage from Plymouth to Madeira—Description of that Island.