An abridgement of Portlock and Dixon's voyage round the world, performed in 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788.

Nathaniel Portlock; George Dixon

London : Printed for John Stockdale Piccadilly and George Goulding, James Street Covent Garden, 1789.

[8], 272 pp. Octavo; 22 cm. Lacks frontispiece portrait and map. Rebound in modern cloth. Solid binding. Minor staining / foxing. Howes P494; Sabin 20365, Forbes 178. Provenance: Signed by D.J. Waller Bloomsbury PA, 1891 on front end page. Explorers Club (NYC) book plate.  

"Nathaniel Portlock joined the British navy at the age of twenty-four, and was a junior officer on Captain Cook's third voyage, the first to encounter Hawaii.  With him on that trip was another young British officer, George Dixon. In 1785 the two men traveled to the north Pacific.  Portlock commanded the 1785-1788 expedition from the ship King George while Dixon captained the Queen Charlotte. The purpose of the expedition was to investigate the potential of the Alaskan fur trade and to resume Cook's search for a Northwest Passage through the continent.  The pair left England on August 29, 1785, and took nearly a year to reach Alaska, rounding Cape Horn and touching at Hawaii on the way. They charted the Alaskan coast until winter forced them back to Hawaii. In the spring of 1787 they headed north again, reaching the Kenai Peninsula from which Dixon explored southward while Portlock traded for furs. They wintered again in Hawaii before turning west to China to sell their furs, arriving home in England via the Cape of Good Hope on August 24, 1788." - American Journeys, Wisconsin Historical Society, 2017.