Carteret’s Voyage Round the World, 1766-1769

1965

Journals G161 H2 Ser.2 no. 124

Cambridge: University Press for the Hakluyt Society

In the preface to this Hakluyt volume, editor Helen Wallis quotes a late 17th century voyager: ‘We for a long time, …convers’d with Monsters of both Men and Beasts.’ She continues: ‘Patagonian giants, the fierce Santa Cruzian…, wily Buginese princes of Celebes, and the South African giraffe’. All feature in the first voyage of Philip Carteret (1733-1796), a circumnavigation of the world undertaken between 1764 and 1766. Despite horrendous storms, an outbreak of scurvy, and separation from Samuel Wallis, who commanded the sister ship Dolphin, Carteret, in command of the Swallow, went on to discover Pitcairn Island, to re-discover Mendaña’s Santa Cruz, and to name Gower Island, part of the Solomon Island Archipelago. The original of Edward Leigh’s map of the Strait, and Carteret’s journal are in the Dixson Collection, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.