Royal Mail Stamps 2018 - Captain Cook and the Endeavour Voyage, 16 August 2018

The achievements of Captain James Cook and his Endeavour voyage shipmates are celebrated with new stamps from Royal Mail which capture the pioneering spirit of the Endeavour voyage and the wonders the adventurers encountered on their travels.

In the summer of 1768 the Yorkshire-built ship Endeavour set sail from Plymouth. On board was Captain James Cook and a company of 100 sailors, artists and scientists. By the time the Endeavour returned to British shores three years later she had covered thousands of miles, crossed treacherous rivers and seas, and brought back 30,000 plant specimens – increasing the continent’s plant stocks by 25 percent.  

The Endeavour adventure begins

At the time the Endeavour voyage set sail, Captain Cook was a forty-year-old Royal Navy captain who had seen action in the Seven Years War and had proved his mettle as a cartographer, mapping the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the Siege of Quebec. His new adventure aboard the ship Endeavour would be the first of three Pacific voyages he would make, and one which would see Cook and his men initiate the first European contact with Eastern Australia, map New Zealand and observe the transit of Venus.

Royal Mail’s Captain Cook and the Endeavour Voyage issue comprises six stamps, a four-stamp miniature sheet and a range of associated products, including a coin cover and three handstamps.

Captain Cook and the Endeavour Voyage

Issue date: 16 August 2018

Design: Howard Brown

Printer: International Security Printers

Print process: Lithography

Perforations: 14 x 14.5

Stamp size: 37mm x 35mm

Phosphor: Bars as appropriate

Gum: PVA

2nd class: Sir Joseph Banks BTby Si Joshua Reynolds with red-tailed tropicbird and red passion flower

2nd class: Chief mourner of Tahiti and a scene with a canoe

1st class: Captain James Cookby Nathaniel Dance, Triumph of the Navigatorsby Robin Brooks

1st class: Drawings of the observations of the transit of Venus, 1769 and portrait of a Maori chief

£1.45 Scarlet clianthus by Sydney Parkinson and drawing of a Maori chief

£1.45 Blue-black grassquite and Sydney Parkinson self-portrait