ZIMMERMANN, Heinrich

Dernier Voyage du Capitaine Cook autour du monde...

      Berne, 1782 Octavo; a lovely untrimmed copy in stiff paper boards, with manuscript spine label, some wear and minor worming to upper board. An attractive copy of the first French edition, and extremely scarce. 'Both French editions are of great rarity and are of interest not only on that account but because of the additional matter which they contain...' (Holmes).

In any early edition, Zimmermann's narrative of Cook's third voyage is one of the scarcest of all the Cook voyage accounts. It was the first description of the third voyage to appear on the continent, and as one of two accounts published three years before the official account it may be the first description of the voyage. It includes an eye-witness account of Cook's death, and his account is 'valuable for his lower-deck impressions of the character of Cook...' (Beaglehole).

'Zimmermann, a native of Speyer, was coxswain in the Discovery. From the start of the voyage he determined to keep a shorthand journal of the voyage and to retain it, despite the instructions... demanding the surrender of all logs and journals... His account is by no means free from errors, but it has an ingenuousness and charm which differentiate it from the other accounts. His appreciation of Cook's character deserves to rank with that of Samwell' (Holmes). Four pages in this edition contain Zimmermann's long description of the Tasmanian Aborigines, with an interesting note in passing suggesting how many copies of the "Resolution and Adventure" medal, minted for distribution on the second voyage, were actually still available for distribution during the third voyage: on one day alone, Cook gave copies to eight or nine Aborigines, 'which had such a good effect that the next day 49 more came to visit... some of whom received the same presents as their earlier compatriots, but none of whom was willing to come aboard the ships...'.

First published in German the previous year, the first French edition is significantly expanded with the inclusion of the "Abrégé de la Vie du Capitaine Cook" (pp. 118-172) and the "Notes" (pp. 173-200). As this section of the French edition attests, the work was written with the active assistance of Georg and Johann Forster, who had spent the year following the first news of Cook's death producing articles on their former Captain, including four substantial contributions to the Göttingisches Magazin (which Georg edited with his compatriot Georg Christoph Lichtenberg). Johann was also heavily involved in preparing the German-language edition of another surreptitious account of the third voyage, John Rickman's Journal.
Beddie, 1629; Davidson, 'A Book Collector's Notes', p. 66; Forbes, 'Hawaiian National Bibliography', 47; Hawaii One Hundred, 2n; Holmes, 44; Kroepelien, 1363; not in Lada-Mocarski; not in the catalogue of the Hill collection; O'Reilly-Reitman, 423.