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Letter By Cook Discovered In 2002 Withrawn from Auction

 

Bonhams Auction House of London was to auction on Tuesday, 17th December 2002 a recently discovered letter written by Cook in 1771. The estimate was GBP15,000-20,000. It was withdrawn before it appeared in the catalogue, and its future is uncertain.

Part of Letter written by Captain Cook A letter written by Captain James Cook informing the Admiralty of his safe return from his epic first voyage to Australia has been discovered by Bonhams auctioneers while cataloguing the contents of a Norfolk house. The previously unrecorded letter, which is of considerable significance to Cook scholars, was written aboard his ship, the Bark Endeavour in sight of the Kent coast. It is believed to be the first communication from Cook to the Admiralty from English waters after his three-year voyage.
With it is a second document, also written in painstaking copperplate handwriting, which is a bill to the Treasury for supplies purchased by Cook at the Cape of Good Hope (now Cape Town) for the sloops during his second voyage in 1776. It is estimated at £3,000-4,000.
The documents were discovered by Bonhams specialist James Glennie while he was cataloguing the contents of Brancaster Hall, on the north Norfolk coast.
It is not known how the documents came to be at Brancaster Hall but James Glennie said: "The Simms-Adams family, who own Brancaster Hall, had connections with Yorkshire and Whitby."

 

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