Captain Cook
Master of the Seas
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
This “thoroughly researched and sharply opinionated” biography presents a nuanced portrait of the renowned 18th century navigator (The Wall Street Journal).
The age of discovery was at its peak in the eighteenth century, with bold adventurers charting the furthest reaches of the globe. Foremost among these explorers was Captain James Cook of the British Royal Navy. Recent writers have viewed Cook through the lens of colonial exploitation, regarding him as a villain. While they raise important issues, many of these critical accounts overlook his major contributions to science, navigation and cartography.
In Captain Cook, Frank McLynn re-creates the voyages that took the famous navigator from his native England to the outer reaches of the Pacific Ocean. Although Cook died in a senseless, avoidable conflict with the people of Hawaii, McLynn illustrates that to the men with whom he served, Cook was master of the seas and nothing less than a titan. McLynn reveals Cook's place in history as a brave and brilliant yet tragically flawed man.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The man who searched the Pacific Ocean for the Great Southern Continent was much more than a circumnavigator and an explorer. A polymath and all-round specialist on both coastal and deep-water sailing, his selection by the Royal Society and the British Navy to lead the first expedition to the South Pacific was a strategic, political, and economic decision influenced by the results of the Seven Years War. During his three voyages, he charted the entire coast of New Zealand as well as the east coast of Australia. The introduction of Harrison s chronometer in 1759 enabled Cook to establish correct longitude and to chart the Pacific with an accuracy that still astonishes mariners. Cook exhibited his intense interest in fields as varied as astronomy, sociology, navigation, and commerce in his establishment of England as the colonial power in Asian waters. McLynn does a yeoman s work in transforming Cook s terse, factual notations in the ships logs into a much more readable portrayal of his voyages. A just and honest captain, Cook s navigation through the Great Barrier Reef and across both the Arctic and Antarctic circles are achievements that will never be equaled.
