Heinrich Zimmermann

Johann Heinrich Zimmermann (1741-1805) sailed on HMS Discovery on James Cook's third voyage to the Pacific (1776-1780) and wrote an account of the voyage, Reise um die Welt mit Capitain Cook (Mannheim, 1781). In 1782 he was invited by William Bolts to join a voyage to the North West Coast of America sailing from Trieste under the Imperial Austrian flag. He subsequently commanded the Austrian East India Company ships Concordia and Edward on voyages to India.

Johann Heinrich Zimmermann was born on 25 December 1741 in Wiesloch, a short distance south of Heidelberg in the Palatinate. Leaving home in 1770, Zimmermann had a variety of jobs around Europe. He had trained as a ‘Gürtler’, the profession of a worker in precious and non-precious metals who made ornaments, jewelry, cutlery including swords, metal tools and implements. He spent time working at this in Geneva, Lyons and Paris before he arrived in London in 1776 where, after a short period of working in a sugar refinery, he joined HMS Discovery as an able seaman on 12 March of that year for James Cook's third voyage to the Pacific. He became the ship’s coxswain in July 1776. During the voyage he kept a concise journal (contrary to orders) written in abbreviated German in a small notebook, which he afterwards used to write an account of it, Reise um die Welt mit Capitain Cook, published in Mannheim in 1781 and in Munich in 1783. He had the help of a friend in writing it, according to Johann Reinhold Forster. A French edition was published in Berne in 1783, and a Dutch edition in 1784. A Russian translation of Zimmermann’s account of Cook’s last voyage was published in St. Petersburg in 1786 and 1788. The fame generated by the book led to Zimmermann being appointed in August 1781 by the Prince Elector of Bavaria, Karl Theodor, to the position of “Churfürstlicher Leibschiffmeister” (Master of the Prince Elector’s Ships), where he was responsible for the fleet of hunting and excursion boats on Lake Starnberg.

Shortly after arriving at Starnberg, Zimmermann accepted an invitation from William Bolts, made through George Dixon, to join the proposed voyage of the Imperial ship Cobenzell, and obtained leave from the Prince Elector to do so. The voyage of the Cobenzell was to have been an Austrian answer to James Cook’s voyages, an Imperial voyage of discovery round the world which included a venture to exploit the commercial possibilities of the fur trade on the North West Coast of America and trade with China and Japan. Zimmermann was joined in Trieste by three of his former shipmates under Cook, George Dixon, George Gilpin and William Walker, all four to sail as officers on the Cobenzell. Three naturalists, Franz Josef Maerter, Karl Haidinger and Franz Boos, and a gardener, Franz Bredemeyer, were assigned to undertake the scientific tasks of the voyage. Zimmermann's participation in the forthcoming voyage was announced in the Augsburg newspaper, the Augsburgische Ordinari Postzeitung of 2 August 1782:

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