KentishPirate
New Member
ISBN 978-0-140-43647-1
Just finished it. I don't usually finish a book and think "wow, that was a special book" but reading Cook's journals was really eye-opening, entertaining albeit very dry at times. "Wind East, Course S 75o 30' W. Sailed 99 miles. Lat in South 18o50'. Longde in West Reck.g. Gales which freshned towards Noon, at which we saw Land to the SbW and accordingly hauled up for it".
I suppose we've all heard the name Cook; famous British naval captain, went far and wide to newfound lands, one of the great "Sea-lords" of the Empire.
I had the image of a very aristocratic, "posh" British officer, gallivanting across the globe but I couldn't be more wrong, he was nothing like it. He was a Yorkshireman, the son of a Scottish day-labourer. First job was a shopboy for a grocer, joined a merchant collier fleet hauling coal out of Whitby. Switched to the Royal Navy for a better career at 26 as a mere able seaman. Learned algebra, geometry, astronomy, surveying, navigation.
Just a summary of what he got up to in life: learned his trade plying the shallow waters of the East coast, sailed the Baltic, the Channel and the Irish Sea. Joins the Navy, sees fighting with the French, Canada during the Seven Years' War (St Lawrence River and the Siege of Quebec), visits Madeira and Rio de Janeiro, and then the rest not in chronological order: goes South as far as 60 miles from the fabled "Southern Continent" (Antarctica) and sees "ice islands" 400 ft high, through into the Pacific, all the islands you've ever heard of, a lot of which he discovered. New Zealand, Tasmania, Hawaii, Alaska and the Arctic Circle, Tahiti, Samoa, Canada, Kamchatka, the Bering Strait, Java (Batavia), South Africa. Incredible.
I could go on and on, but the most interesting bits I took away:
- A very intelligent man, capable of taking observations of eclipses, azimuths and the like, working a Chronometer, charting, yet still comically thinks leaving a goat and a she-goat in New Zealand will populate the country. Leaving behind a vegetable garden of turnips, wheat, pumpkins and "millons".
- Bizarrely (to me) lends a lot of time and writing about food and "victuals", their "antiscorbutic" properties, how good dog "the sweetest meat", "Sea Horse" (Walrus), Turtle is.
- His tolerance and surprising reserve when it comes to the "Natives" and their thieving, he seems to let them get away with more than I thought someone of his station would, and his relative respect for them, calling them "friends" and engaging in their customs and rituals.
- He seems more concerned for the "natives", trying to stop his men giving these "new" peoples who haven't had much, if any, interaction with Europeans, the "venereal disease" and his comical comments which in old and polite English basically amount to "I can't get the men to keep it in their bloody pants and even if I could, I don't have eyes in the back of my head and half the time I can't keep these bloody women off the boat". It has the tone of "admiralty if you're reading this, don't look at me, I tried".
- The accounts of cannibalism in the Maoris of New Zealand, eating their slain enemies and cutting off the jawbones as trinkets.
- There's a point in his Second voyage when he suddenly out of nowhere mentions two horses (riding them in New Zealand) to the amazement of the Maori, and cows, gifted by the King, to take to the Pacific and populate the islands. And then you realise they must have been on the boat (33 metres long, 10 metres wide, 110 people on board) when he had been a mere degree off the coast of Antarctica, defeated by an horizon of gigantic icebergs, remarking on the icicles hanging off the sails and ice on the deck. With 110 men on board, rammed to the rafters with chickens, "hogs of the English breed", bulls, heffers, and goats. Just a surreal image.
What a life, what a book, what a man! I can't recommend it enough if you're a romantic for the sea.
Just finished it. I don't usually finish a book and think "wow, that was a special book" but reading Cook's journals was really eye-opening, entertaining albeit very dry at times. "Wind East, Course S 75o 30' W. Sailed 99 miles. Lat in South 18o50'. Longde in West Reck.g. Gales which freshned towards Noon, at which we saw Land to the SbW and accordingly hauled up for it".
I suppose we've all heard the name Cook; famous British naval captain, went far and wide to newfound lands, one of the great "Sea-lords" of the Empire.
I had the image of a very aristocratic, "posh" British officer, gallivanting across the globe but I couldn't be more wrong, he was nothing like it. He was a Yorkshireman, the son of a Scottish day-labourer. First job was a shopboy for a grocer, joined a merchant collier fleet hauling coal out of Whitby. Switched to the Royal Navy for a better career at 26 as a mere able seaman. Learned algebra, geometry, astronomy, surveying, navigation.
Just a summary of what he got up to in life: learned his trade plying the shallow waters of the East coast, sailed the Baltic, the Channel and the Irish Sea. Joins the Navy, sees fighting with the French, Canada during the Seven Years' War (St Lawrence River and the Siege of Quebec), visits Madeira and Rio de Janeiro, and then the rest not in chronological order: goes South as far as 60 miles from the fabled "Southern Continent" (Antarctica) and sees "ice islands" 400 ft high, through into the Pacific, all the islands you've ever heard of, a lot of which he discovered. New Zealand, Tasmania, Hawaii, Alaska and the Arctic Circle, Tahiti, Samoa, Canada, Kamchatka, the Bering Strait, Java (Batavia), South Africa. Incredible.
I could go on and on, but the most interesting bits I took away:
- A very intelligent man, capable of taking observations of eclipses, azimuths and the like, working a Chronometer, charting, yet still comically thinks leaving a goat and a she-goat in New Zealand will populate the country. Leaving behind a vegetable garden of turnips, wheat, pumpkins and "millons".
- Bizarrely (to me) lends a lot of time and writing about food and "victuals", their "antiscorbutic" properties, how good dog "the sweetest meat", "Sea Horse" (Walrus), Turtle is.
- His tolerance and surprising reserve when it comes to the "Natives" and their thieving, he seems to let them get away with more than I thought someone of his station would, and his relative respect for them, calling them "friends" and engaging in their customs and rituals.
- He seems more concerned for the "natives", trying to stop his men giving these "new" peoples who haven't had much, if any, interaction with Europeans, the "venereal disease" and his comical comments which in old and polite English basically amount to "I can't get the men to keep it in their bloody pants and even if I could, I don't have eyes in the back of my head and half the time I can't keep these bloody women off the boat". It has the tone of "admiralty if you're reading this, don't look at me, I tried".
- The accounts of cannibalism in the Maoris of New Zealand, eating their slain enemies and cutting off the jawbones as trinkets.
- There's a point in his Second voyage when he suddenly out of nowhere mentions two horses (riding them in New Zealand) to the amazement of the Maori, and cows, gifted by the King, to take to the Pacific and populate the islands. And then you realise they must have been on the boat (33 metres long, 10 metres wide, 110 people on board) when he had been a mere degree off the coast of Antarctica, defeated by an horizon of gigantic icebergs, remarking on the icicles hanging off the sails and ice on the deck. With 110 men on board, rammed to the rafters with chickens, "hogs of the English breed", bulls, heffers, and goats. Just a surreal image.
What a life, what a book, what a man! I can't recommend it enough if you're a romantic for the sea.