Attractive large-format map of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, derived from the survey work of Chabert (1750-51) and Fleurieu (1769) as well as that of Cook in 1765. This map was included in Thomas Jeffreys' American Atlas of 1775. It was the Newfoundland survey which established Cook's reputation and ultimately led to his being appointed to the command of the Endeavour.

Attractive large-format map of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, derived from the survey work of Chabert (1750-51) and Fleurieu (1769) as well as that of Cook in 1765. This map was included in Thomas Jeffreys' American Atlas of 1775. It was the Newfoundland survey which established Cook's reputation and ultimately led to his being appointed to the command of the Endeavour.

Cook had entered the Royal Navy in 1758, after serving his apprenticeship aboard Whitby colliers, and at the conclusion of the Seven Years War was appointed to the Newfoundland Survey as master of the Greville. The need for a Newfoundland survey had arisen at the end of the Seven Years War, when the English asserted their fishing rights in the region. French fishermen were to be allowed limited concessions for catching and curing cod from these rich waters, but to enforce the terms of the Paris treaty of 1763 new and accurate charts were needed. Cook was selected as master of the Greville in 1764, and the Newfoundland surveys occupied the next three years.

"Cook started by surveying the northwest stretch of coastline in 1763 and 1764, then in 1765 and 1766 the south coast between Cape Ray and the Burin Peninsula, and in 1767 the west coast. His work was interrupted by what was to prove to be the first of his three great voyages to the Pacific, and the work on Newfoundland and southern Labrador was continued by Joseph Gilbert between 1767 and 1769 and Michael Lane between 1768 and 1773… The charting of Newfoundland and southern Labrador by Cook, in the years 1763-67, and by his successor Michael Lane, in 1768-73, was unequalled, for thoroughness and method, by any previous hydrographic work by Englishmen; and it produced the first charts of this extensive and difficult coastline that could (in the words of a later hydrographer) 'with any degree of safety be trusted by the seaman'…" (Skelton & Tooley).

Recently the Newfoundland charts were used in the BBC series on Cook hosted by Vanessa Collingridge in which the Newfoundland survey work was overlaid with satellite photographs to demonstrate its fundamental accuracy.