The king’s surveyor.

After the official surrender of these islands, Cook was engaged in surveying different places which the Admiralty had specially marked out, and was borne on the books of either the Antelope or Tweed as might be convenient.  He is to be found on the latter ship, entered “for victuals only,” as “Mr. James Cook, Engineer, and Retinue.”  As the dates in the two ships often run over each other it is somewhat difficult to place him, but he was certainly in the neighbourhood of St. John’s for some two months, and on 5th November he was discharged from the Antelope into the Tweed, together with Mr. Smart, for the passage to England, where he remained till the spring of the following year.  On 4th January the Admiralty authorised the payment up to the end of the previous year of the allowances of 10 shillings and 6 shillings per day, respectively, to Mr. Cook and Mr. Smart.  This allowance of 10 shillings per day was the same as that made to the Commander of a Squadron, so, from a financial point of view, Cook’s position must be considered one of importance.  It was apparently superior to that of a Master surveying under the directions of the Governor, for in a report that Captain Pallisser, when Governor of Newfoundland, gives of an interview between the French Ambassador and himself in London in 1767, on the subject of the fisheries, he says he produced Cook’s chart, and decided the question of the rights of France to the use of Belle Isle for fishing purposes against the Ambassador by its means, and he speaks of Cook officially as the King’s Surveyor.

Pallisser was appointed to succeed Graves as Governor in 1764, and at once set aside the schooner Grenville, which Graves had used as a despatch boat for the sole use of the survey party.  She had been manned from the ships on the station, but Pallisser wrote to the Admiralty on the subject, and the Navy Board were instructed to establish her with a proper person to take command of her, and a complement of men sufficient to navigate her to England when the surveying season was over, in order that she might be refitted and sent out early in the spring, instead of being laid up in St. John’s and waiting for stores from England, “whereby a great deal of time is lost.”  The establishment was to consist of ten men, i.e. a Master, a Master’s mate, one Master’s servant, and seven men.  The Master and mate were to receive the pay of a sixth rate, and the former was “to be charged with the provisions and stores which shall be supplied to the schooner from time to time, and to pass regular accounts for the same.”  On 2nd May Stephens wrote to Pallisser that Cook was appointed Master of the Grenville, and as soon as the season was over he was to be ordered to Portsmouth, and on arrival to transmit his Charts and Draughts to the Admiralty.  On receipt of this letter Pallisser wrote to Cook, and this communication, together with autograph copies of letters written by Cook having reference to the Grenville, a receipt for her husband’s pay, signed by Mrs. Cook, and some other papers of interest relating to his voyages, are now in the hands of Mr. Alexander Turnbull, of Wellington, New Zealand.