Account of Several Late Voyages and Discoveries to the South and North. Towards the Streights of Maggellen, the South Seas, the Vast Tracts of Land beyond Hollandia Nova, &c. also towards Nova Zembla, Greenland or Spitsberg, Groynland or Engrondland, &c. By Sir John Narborough, Captain Jasmen Tasman, Captain John Wood, and Frederick Marten of Hamburgh.To which ar annexed a large introduction and supplement, giving an account of other navigations to those regions of the globe.

FIRST EDITION, 18 engraved plates, 3 large folding maps, contemporary panelled calf, 8vo, London, 1694

An important collection of voyages ‘evidently designed to illustrate current knowledge of the two outstanding geographical mysteries, the northern sea passage to East Asia and the existence of the supposed Southern Continent. Publication was closely linked to the Royal Society, a keen exponent of the important contribution to science that mariners could make by keeping detailed journals of their voyages. A fellow of the Society, Sir Tanceed Robinson, is usually credited as editor and the book is dedicated by its publishers, the Royal Society’s official printers to Samuel Pepys, who, in addition to his famous place in naval affairs, was a Fellow and President of the Society.

It was widely read, sometimes in dire circumstances, such as by the survivors of the Wager (one of Anson’s support ships) who poured over a copy for navigational information when wrecked off the bleak coast of Patagonia.

The narratives of the two English voyages- Narborough and Wood’s – are printed here for the first time. Narborough’s expedition (1669-71) was the first English venture to the Pacific since that of Hawkins in 1593-94 and was the first such expedition to be officially sanctioned by the Admiralty. Instructed to make discoveries and to explore opportunities to breach the Spanish commercial monopoly over South America, Narborough was forced by increasing hostility to turn back, having reached Valdivia in Chili. His principal achievements were some careful observations of Patagonia and an excellent chart of the Straits of Magellan that remained standard for many years.

Wood’s voyage was an attempt to find a north-east passage to Japan but was wrecked off Nova Zembla in 1676. The book’s introduction concludes against the existence of such a passage and agrees with Wood that Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya formed part of a single landmass. Martens’s description of his voyage to Spitzbergen in 1671, which includes valuable information on whaling in northern waters. The interest in Tasman’s great voyage to the south in 1642, when he discovered Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) and New Zealand, presages the series of English attempts to locate the Southern Continent in the 18th century. The editor of the present volume follows the contemporary belief that such a continent enclosed the southern extremities of the Indian and Pacific oceans, and he suggests that the Dutch may have discovered more than they had published.

Cox II, 262; Hill 1475