The complement of the Raleigh was eighty, but two additional carpenters’ mates were added to each ship later on.  Cook was also instructed not to bear, as was then usual, any servants on the books, but to enter A.B.s instead, and each officer who was entitled to a servant was “to be paid an allowance by Bill equal to the wages of the number of servants respectively allowed them.”

On 25th December the names of the two ships were changed, the Drake becoming the Resolution, and the Raleigh the Adventure.  The lieutenants appointed to the Resolution were Robert Pallisser Cooper, Charles Clerke, and Richard Pickersgill, and Mr. Tobias Furneaux, Commander, and Joseph Shank first lieutenant, of the Adventure.  Of these officers Cook writes: 

“I had all the reason in the World to be perfectly satisfied with the choice of the officers.  The Second and Third Lieutenants, the Lieutenant of Marines, two of the Warrant officers, and several of the Petty officers had been with me during the former voyage.  The others were men of known abilities, and all of them on every occasion showed their zeal for the service in which they were employed during the whole voyage.”

Alterations to the resolution.

Two days after receiving his orders, Cook hoisted his pendant and superintended the alterations that were to be made for the accommodation of Mr. Banks and his party of scientists.  These comprised Dr. Solander, Zoffani, the portrait painter, Dr. Lynd of Edinburgh, to secure whose services Parliament had made a special grant of 4000 pounds (though “what discoveries they expected him to make I could not understand,” says Cook), and nine others, draughtsmen and servants; at least three more than had been thought necessary when the vessel was purchased.  These alterations were: 

“to raise her upper works about a foot, to lay a spar deck upon her from the quarter-deck to the forecastle (she having at this time a low waist), and to build a round house or coach for my accommodation, so that the great cabin might be appropriated to the use of Mr. Banks alone.”

The Comptroller of the Navy, Captain Pallisser, was strongly opposed to these alterations as likely to be detrimental to the ship’s sailing qualities, and though his opinions were overborne, they in the end proved to be correct.

When he had seen the alterations fairly on the way, Cook applied for three weeks’ leave of absence, on the plea that he had “some business to transact in Yorkshire, as well as to see an aged father,” and his application was at once granted.  He therefore went to Ayton, where for the first time for seventeen years he was again amongst his own people.  From Ayton he went on to Whitby, and was met some miles out from that town by many of the leading men of the place.  From the Walkers he received the heartiest of welcomes, and it is related that the old housekeeper, Mary Prowd, had been carefully instructed that a Commander