Rob and Margaret have been busy researching our famous Captain Cook Endeavour Voyage Book…yes the one that featured in the Repair Shop programme and is now in our ‘Fantastic Archives and where to find them’ exhibition.
The following research is about who we think might have owned the book:
Luckily with this Endeavour voyage journal, there are several clues and records to help fill in its history and identify some previous owners.
The latest of these owners was James Bell Walker. James lived on Bagdale, Whitby, with his mother and sisters. He was born in Ainthorpe near Danby in 1856 and entered Cambridge University to study law from October 1878, but there is no record of him graduating or working in the profession. He later acted as a Justice of the Peace in Whitby, and was a dedicated local historian.
James was also a passionate admirer of Captain Cook. It was due to his, and the Whitby solicitor Thomas Harwood Woodwark’s, efforts that persuaded Sir Gervase Beckett (then MP for Whitby) to donate the statue which stands at the top of Khyber Pass; erected in October 1912. James died, unmarried, at the age of 82 in March 1939, leaving his elder brother to administer his estate; and it was this brother (William Ness Walker) who donated the journal to Whitby Museum in 1939/40.
This picture is was taken during the re-establishing of the statue at the top of Kyber Pass after WWII in 1948.
I digress, back to the research…
There is a sentence written on the front flyleaf of the book which states “This book was bought in Scarbro’ circa 1890”. Unfortunately, there is no other information as to who bought it or where from. In the 1890 Bulmer’s Directory, there are 35 booksellers and 18 auctioneers listed in Scarborough alone. This could be when James Bell Walker bought the book, but there is no definitive proof.
The next people identified are Joseph and James Cooper, whose names have been written on both the title page and the first page of text. These would have been impossible people to identify, if Joseph hadn’t included his middle name on the text page.
The names ‘James Cooper’ and ‘Joseph Cooper’ appearing in the Captain Cook Journal
Joseph Huntriss Cooper was born in Scarborough in 1809, the son of James Cooper and his wife Elizabeth nee Huntriss. James and Elizabeth also had a son James who was born in 1810, as well as a daughter called Elizabeth Huntriss Cooper.
James Cooper the elder was a Collector of Customs at Scarborough, and he died at the age of 49 in August 1825. He left each of his 3 children £500 to be paid when they reached the age of 21. This is the equivalent of at least £55,000 today, but could be considerably more. So this was a family well able to afford a book such as this which cost 6 shillings when first published in 1771.
Joseph Huntriss Cooper died young and unmarried aged 29 in June 1838, but his brother James married and had children; he died in May 1879 at Hutton Buscel, near to Scarborough.
Elizabeth Cooper, nee Huntriss, was one of the daughters of Joseph Huntriss, who built Huntriss Row, off Newborough in Scarborough. Joseph was also a Bailiff and Magistrate, and had been a Master Mariner when younger; he and his wife’s memorial tablet is inside Scarborough St Mary’s Church.
It is tempting to guess that the original owner of this book might have written their name on the title page in the top right hand corner. Unfortunately, this corner has been torn off, but there is a tiny inked loop left on the page which might, just might, have been a J…could this have been Joseph and James’ grandfather Joseph Huntriss?…we will probably never know.
This could be the letter ‘J’ for James or Joseph in the red box
Blank pages in the book have been filled with written notes and pasted book sale notices – but who was responsible?
James Bell Walker, the last owner, had several more of his books donated to Whitby Museum after his death, and in more than one the same pattern of behaviour is noted. In this journal, they are cut out entries from bookseller catalogues relating to numerous books about Captain Cook (including this journal) and, in Ralph Bigland’s book on Marriages (also from James’ library), book catalogue entries are glued inside the front cover, all relating to Bigland’s books. Does this mean that James did this, or did he buy books from another person who was actually responsible?
Easier to identify is the large amount of text written on glued in pieces of paper. This was done by another Cook devotee, Captain David Slater Ramsdale, who died in 1942. He was a former Captain for the Turnbull Shipping Line of Whitby, who volunteered in Whitby Museum Library after his retirement. A Library report in the Whitby Gazette in December 1955 told of how he spent much time in 1939 “listing and annotating books on shipping and geology” – and it has been found so far that he left lengthy comments in quite a few books; sometimes helpfully signed off with the initials “DSR”.
There are other examples of handwriting still to be positively identified – so yet more research to do…
By Margaret Hirst (volunteer)
If you are interested in viewing the book, please ask members of the team and we will happily fetch it out of the case in the exhibition. The ‘Fantastic Archives and where to find them’ exhibition runs until December 2026.
#archivesforall #HeritageFund
