The Journals of Captain Cook

by James R. Cook

Other authorsPhilip Edwards (Contributor)

Paperback, 1999

Status

Available

Call number

910.92

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Penguin Classics (1999), Edition: Abridged, Paperback, 672 pages

Description

Cook led three famous expeditions to the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. In voyages that ranged from the Antarctic circle to the Arctic Sea, Cook charted Australia and the whole coast of New Zealand, and brought back detailed descriptions of the natural history of the Pacific. Accounts based on Cook's journals were issued at the time, but it was not until this century that the original journals were published in Beaglehole's definitive edition. The JOURNALS tells the story of these voyages as Cook wanted it to be told, radiating the ambition, courage and skill which enabled him to carry out an unrivalled series of expeditions in dangerous waters.

User reviews

LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini

Oh, Captain Cook, you are the closest thing we have to a real-life Captain Picard, and you have such material, and yet you are so very, very limited. Homo oeconomicus, bah. But I am an aesthete, maybe even a synaesthete, and your constant logbook irrelevances about wind and sails do make me squint

and taste salt, and the idea of the endless sea and the endless strand and the brown people in their canoes, future friends and foes, makes my soul rise and swell and spread till it astrally envelops this sorry bone-cage and whisks it back to when the world was new.

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LibraryThing member John_Vaughan

Extracted from both his journals, kept by Royal Naval law, and his logs; this accounts reflect the bluntly honest man in his heroic ventures. Coming ‘up through the hawsepipe’ – starting as a hand on a coastal collier - to become a Naval Captain indicates the strength of that character, what

surprises is his lack of the prejudices of his time. His many trips of exploration around the oceans obviously broadened his horizons well beyond his time. And his sheer ability – particularly in mapping and charting those seas induced the Navy to give him commands above his supposed ‘station in life’’.

Some of the Endeavors chart’s remain in use in this century – a fitting tribute to this meticulous man and his work.

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