1. One of three drafts, written on a single sheet, of cover letters written by Joseph Banks for Richard Howe, first lord of the Admiralty. Since 1780 Banks had supervised on behalf of the Admiralty the preparation of an extravagantly illustrated three-volume account of the late Capt. James Cook’s third and final voyage. The quarto edition, including 78 engravings and charts, was completed by May, 1784, and the Admiralty ordered six sets to be elegantly bound as presentation copies for the King and Queen of England, the Prince of Wales, the King of France, the Empress of Russia, and, at Banks’s suggestion, BF. George III instructed Howe to seek Banks’s advice on composing the cover letters to the three foreign recipients. Banks drafted the letters on June 1: Banks to BF, Aug. 13, below; Harold B. Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, 1743–1820 (London, 1988), pp. 167–71.

2. In Banks’s hand (see the note above) and filed with his papers. On the verso of the sheet he wrote, “Letters written from the office of Admiralty with the Presents of Captn Cooks voyage.”

3. Lord Howe changed this word to “Approbation”; see the July 1 entry in BF’s journal, [June 26–July 27], where BF quoted the phrase.

4. James Cook, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean … for Making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere … in the years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, and 1780 (3 vols., London, 1784).

5. In March, 1779, BF issued a circular letter requesting all captains and commanders of American armed vessels to allow Cook and his crew to pass unmolested and, further, to offer them all possible assistance: XXIX, 86–7.