Newfound note
from Capt. Cook
thrills collectors

The letter, found in a picture frame,
predates his voyage to Hawaii

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By Jane Wardell
Associated Press

LONDON >> Hidden for more than 200 years, a letter written by British explorer Capt. James Cook was found wedged in the back of a picture frame.

The letter was written to the British Admiralty telling them he had returned safely from his first voyage to Australia.

Bonhams Auction House said Tuesday that one of its employees found the letter in the library of Brancaster Hall, a country house near Hunstanton, Norfolk, on England's east coast.

The handwritten note detailed the hardships faced by the crew of Cook's ship, the Endeavour, during its three-year journey to chart the coasts of New Zealand, eastern Australia and Tahiti.

Nearly a third of the Endeavour's crew was killed by malarial fever or dysentery, and in the letter Cook refers to "28 dead tickets" -- the names of dead seamen. He also mentions five parcels containing the belongings of dead officers.

Experts believe that Cook wrote the note off the coast of Kent and passed it to a small fishing boat for delivery to London as he returned to England in 1771.

Finished off with Cook's distinctive florid signature, it was likely the explorer's first communication with the Admiralty from British waters.

"There must have been a great deal of satisfaction for Cook in writing such a letter to the Admiralty saying, 'I have made it and I am nearly home.' It is almost the equivalent of the 'Star Trek' crew returning to Earth," said David Park, head of books and manuscripts at Bonhams.

The letter, valued at $31,200, was tucked behind a framed list of supplies that turned out to be Cook's bill in 1776 to the Treasury for ship supplies on his second voyage. Cook came across Hawaii on his third voyage in 1778.

Both will be auctioned off by Bonhams in December, when the bill is expected to fetch $6,200.

Park said it wasn't known how the letter and the bill reached Brancaster Hall, but ancestors of the Simms-Adams family, who own the house, had connections with Whitby in Yorkshire, northern England, where the Endeavour was built and Cook honed his seamanship skills.

The Endeavour set sail from Plymouth in 1768 and sailed around Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean until reaching Tahiti. From there, Cook observed the transit of the planet Venus across the sun.

After departing from Tahiti, Cook sailed to the North Island of New Zealand and the east coast of Australia and discovered Botany Bay, near Sydney.