Dear Sir,

It is now settled that I am to publish without Mr. Forster, and I have taken my measures accordingly.  When Captain Campbell has looked over the manuscript it will be put into the hands of Mr. Strahan and Mr. Stuart to be printed, and I shall hope for the continuation of your assistance in correcting the press.  I know not how to recompense you for the trouble you have had and will have in the work.  I can only beg you will accept of as many copies after it is published as will serve yourself and friends, and I have given directions for you to be furnished with them.  When you have done with the Introduction, please send it to Mr. Strahan or bring it with you when you come to Town, for there needs be no hurry about it.  Tomorrow morning I set out to join my ship at the Nore, and with her proceed to Plymouth where my stay will be but short.  Permit me to assure you that I shall always have a due sense of the favour you have done me, and that I am with great esteem and regard, Dear Sir, your obliged and very humble servant,

James Cook.

Notwithstanding the Forsters’ endeavour to discount its success by forestalling the publication by some weeks, Cook’s work was well received by the public, and Mrs. Cook, to whom the whole of the profits were given, reaped considerable benefit from its sale.

Fellow of royal society.

On 29th February 1776, Captain James Cook was unanimously elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and his certificate of election was signed by no less than twenty-six of the Fellows.  He was formally admitted on 17th March, on which date a paper written by him, on the means he had used for the prevention and cure of scurvy, was read.  That he valued his success in dealing with this disease, which, at that time, even in voyages of very moderate length was the most terrible danger to be encountered, is plainly set forth in his Journal of the voyage.  He says: 

“But whatever may be the public judgment about other matters, it is with real satisfaction and without claiming any merit but that of attention to my duty, that I can conclude this account with an observation which facts enable me to make, that our having discovered the possibility of preserving health amongst a numerous ship’s company, for such a length of time in such varieties of climate and amidst such continued hardships and fatigues, will make this voyage remarkable in opinion of every benevolent person, when the disputes about a Southern Continent shall have ceased to engage the attention and to divide the judgment of philosophers.”

During his early days at sea it was no unusual thing for a man-of-war to be short-handed through scurvy after a cruise of a few weeks, and in a voyage across the Atlantic as many as twenty per cent of the crew are known to have perished.  To give some of his own experiences in the Navy:  On 4th June 1756, H.M.S.  Eagle arrived in Plymouth Sound, after cruising for two months in the Channel and off the French coast, and Captain Pallisser reported landing 130 sick, buried at sea 22, and since his arrival in port his surgeon and 4 men had died, and both his surgeon’s mates were very ill; this out of a complement of 400!