With Captain James Cook in the Antarctic and Pacific. The Private Journal of James Burney, Second Lieutenant of the Adventure on Cook's Second Voyage 1772-1773

Abstract

BEVERLEY HOOPER makes no excessive claims for the contents of this admirably edited and beautifully produced book. If anything, she underestimates the value of the informal account which James Burney kept during his first Pacific voyage, apparently for the benefit of his family. True, the so-called private journal (the original is untitled) cannot compare in scope or authori ty with Cook ' s official record. Nor, as the editor remarks, is it as lively or as colourful as the journals of Burney's fellow officers, Clerke and Pickersgill. Yet it is of biographical interest as. I assume, the earliest extant piece of writing by the future historian of the Pacific; and here and there it provides information found nowhere else in the voluminous annals of the expedition. At any rate the present reviewer found it of sufficient importance for his ow n obscure purposes to transcribe the whole manuscript when it was still in the possession of its former owner, the late Sir John Ferguson.