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Captain Cook
In 1768, James Cook, on an epic sea journey that secured his place in history, discovered Australia. One hundred years later, countering cherished legends, George Collingridge dared to claim that the Portuguese had gotten to Australia first. Now VANESSA COLLINGRIDGE, his distant cousin, unravels the strange tale of history's most fascinating explorer and the man who sought to dethrone him.
Collingridge charts Captain Cook's celebrated voyages: He mapped the Pacific islands, circumnavigated Antarctica, charted New Zealand, and discovered the New Hebrides and Australia, curing scurvy along the way. He was shipwrecked on the Great Barrier Reef, cruised with sails frozen amid two-hundred-foot-tall icebergs, struggled to keep his crew from losing battles with alcohol and Polynesian women, and somehow managed to stay one step ahead of competing French and Spanish explorers. Over his twenty-one years of adventure--until his murder on a beach in Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii in 1779--Cook changed the Western map of the world.
Or so schoolchildren were taught. In 1883 British aristocrat George Collingridge sailed Down Under in search of adventure--and came across maps of Australia dated 1542 and 1546, drawn in northern France but based on Portuguese originals, suggesting that Cook was not the first to reach Australia. This proposal would prove Collingridge's undoing--and yet it is a controversy that lives on.
Collingridge charts Captain Cook's celebrated voyages: He mapped the Pacific islands, circumnavigated Antarctica, charted New Zealand, and discovered the New Hebrides and Australia, curing scurvy along the way. He was shipwrecked on the Great Barrier Reef, cruised with sails frozen amid two-hundred-foot-tall icebergs, struggled to keep his crew from losing battles with alcohol and Polynesian women, and somehow managed to stay one step ahead of competing French and Spanish explorers. Over his twenty-one years of adventure--until his murder on a beach in Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii in 1779--Cook changed the Western map of the world.
Or so schoolchildren were taught. In 1883 British aristocrat George Collingridge sailed Down Under in search of adventure--and came across maps of Australia dated 1542 and 1546, drawn in northern France but based on Portuguese originals, suggesting that Cook was not the first to reach Australia. This proposal would prove Collingridge's undoing--and yet it is a controversy that lives on.
470 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 22, 2018
Terrible. I bought this book in good faith believing this would be a sturdy biography of Captain James Cook (y'know, the bloke on the front cover) and with "COOK" in big golden letters on the front. Instead this appears to melt into the bizarre musings of an author's life and her distant ancestor who wrote a book about Cook in the 19th century. It seems to me that the publishers didn't want to publish a book about an obscure 19th century writer, so the author has wrapped it up in a way that she straddles three topics (herself, George Collingridge and Cook) and ties them together, masquerading it as a focussed biography of Captain James Cook. From almost the first page, it starts by the author gloating about the prosperity and prominence of her ancestors and the rareness of her surname. I don't want to know. I don't care. I didn't buy your autobiography. I just want to read about Captain James Cook. The only saving grace is that I bought this book from an independent second hand book shop so at least some money has been given back to the local community, rather than the author.
January 5, 2013
The premise for this book is tantalising: Collingridge sets out to write a biography, but is waylaid by the discovery that a distant relative, many years earlier, made some shocking discoveries about their shared hero, Captain James Cook. This sets up a very personal journey for Collingridge, whereby the deeper she burrows into the annals of Cook’s life, the more she is forced to consider the journey of this long gone other Collingridge.
The author, an Oxford graduate now working in radio and television, puts both her academic and media credentials on display in a writing style that swings between solid historical analysis and melodrama. Collingridge methodically marks out her lines of enquiry, filling the book with dates, maps, illustrations and a substantial bibliography, but she is equally prone to racy imaginings about aspects of the lives and personalities of these men. Chapters alternate between the stories of Cook and George Collingridge, thus drawing parallels and marking differences, working up to the climactic point at which George Collingridge triggers a major controversy by suggesting that Cook was not, in fact, the first to discover Australia. Collingridge fleshes out her stories with anecdotes and travelogues as she takes the reader around the world tracing the two men’s journeys.
This is a most accessible, intimate portrait of Cook, and will work well to supplement the dry writings of school history books that do tend to make it seem like Cook appeared, fully-formed, for the purpose of mapping Australia’s east coast. The author’s enthusiasm for the subject is infectious (she calls herself a ‘Cookophile’), indeed she gives the impression of a wide-eyed school girl as she sifts through the layers of these stories. Most of those layers, however, were constructed by a thousand researchers before her, so there is no escaping contradictory opinion about such significant historical characters and events. Collingridge has attracted criticism from other Cook scholars: some have drawn attention to factual errors in her research, and for others any writing about Cook is fraught since the notion of ‘discovering’ countries we now acknowledge to have been populated for thousands of years is so problematic. Rewriting history is a “dangerous game”, as she says of George Collingridge’s experiences.
At the end of her book Collingridge discusses the ways in which history can be manipulated in the retelling. In particular, she offers opinions on why the legend of Cook as a discoverer of lands was politically vital to the British Empire and the developing colonies. At the same time though, Captain Cook is touted as the definitive Cook book, missing the point that this, too, is just one of an extensive, conflicting series of perspectives on Cook’s life. It is, however, a colourful, easy read – part history, part genealogy and part mystery/thriller – which many non-experts will welcome as an addition to the Cook catalogue.
The author, an Oxford graduate now working in radio and television, puts both her academic and media credentials on display in a writing style that swings between solid historical analysis and melodrama. Collingridge methodically marks out her lines of enquiry, filling the book with dates, maps, illustrations and a substantial bibliography, but she is equally prone to racy imaginings about aspects of the lives and personalities of these men. Chapters alternate between the stories of Cook and George Collingridge, thus drawing parallels and marking differences, working up to the climactic point at which George Collingridge triggers a major controversy by suggesting that Cook was not, in fact, the first to discover Australia. Collingridge fleshes out her stories with anecdotes and travelogues as she takes the reader around the world tracing the two men’s journeys.
This is a most accessible, intimate portrait of Cook, and will work well to supplement the dry writings of school history books that do tend to make it seem like Cook appeared, fully-formed, for the purpose of mapping Australia’s east coast. The author’s enthusiasm for the subject is infectious (she calls herself a ‘Cookophile’), indeed she gives the impression of a wide-eyed school girl as she sifts through the layers of these stories. Most of those layers, however, were constructed by a thousand researchers before her, so there is no escaping contradictory opinion about such significant historical characters and events. Collingridge has attracted criticism from other Cook scholars: some have drawn attention to factual errors in her research, and for others any writing about Cook is fraught since the notion of ‘discovering’ countries we now acknowledge to have been populated for thousands of years is so problematic. Rewriting history is a “dangerous game”, as she says of George Collingridge’s experiences.
At the end of her book Collingridge discusses the ways in which history can be manipulated in the retelling. In particular, she offers opinions on why the legend of Cook as a discoverer of lands was politically vital to the British Empire and the developing colonies. At the same time though, Captain Cook is touted as the definitive Cook book, missing the point that this, too, is just one of an extensive, conflicting series of perspectives on Cook’s life. It is, however, a colourful, easy read – part history, part genealogy and part mystery/thriller – which many non-experts will welcome as an addition to the Cook catalogue.
March 10, 2024
It was pretty interesting
March 2, 2017
I'm sorry, but I wanted to read a book about Captain Cook...not a book about Captain Cook, the author and the author's long lost distant cousin.
August 26, 2010
In this strange curate's egg of a book, Vanessa Collingridge, a geographer by profession, interweaves an account of Captain Cook's voyages of discovery with the story of a campaign by George Collingridge, a distant, long-dead relative of hers, to prove that Portuguese or Spanish navigators discovered Australia before the illustrious British explorer.
The accounts of Cook's voyages are good, and fired my imagination in spite of Collingridge's sloppy writing style and the motives and sentiments she often attributes, seemingly without any corroborating evidence, to Cook and others. And frustratingly, though the author describes Cook's moral and physical breakdown on his third voyage, she gives us little to go on regarding the causes of this; without such detail, her portrayal of the man is incomplete.
The auctorial faults mentioned above, together with some treacly moralizing, are still more evident in the parts of the book dealing with George Collingridge and particularly his researches.
The chapters dealing with the authoress's own experiences in the first person are merely superfluous. They probably have their origin in the four-part TV series from which this book is a spin-off.
This is the first biography I've seen in which the author's portrait gets as much space on the front cover as the portraits of the book's subjects. Then again, Ms. Collingridge is an unusually attractive woman.
The accounts of Cook's voyages are good, and fired my imagination in spite of Collingridge's sloppy writing style and the motives and sentiments she often attributes, seemingly without any corroborating evidence, to Cook and others. And frustratingly, though the author describes Cook's moral and physical breakdown on his third voyage, she gives us little to go on regarding the causes of this; without such detail, her portrayal of the man is incomplete.
The auctorial faults mentioned above, together with some treacly moralizing, are still more evident in the parts of the book dealing with George Collingridge and particularly his researches.
The chapters dealing with the authoress's own experiences in the first person are merely superfluous. They probably have their origin in the four-part TV series from which this book is a spin-off.
This is the first biography I've seen in which the author's portrait gets as much space on the front cover as the portraits of the book's subjects. Then again, Ms. Collingridge is an unusually attractive woman.
February 23, 2016
This is an interesting book. It reads a bit like a travelogue of James Cook's voyages of discovery, and contains some quality information. I appreciated the easy style.
On the flip side of the coin, Collingridge adds various intrigues (such as Dalrymple's rivalry with Cook and Banks becoming stand-offish after the 1st voyage) that weren't explored in enough detail to truly understand their importance.
I felt that the passages on George Collingridge were interesting, but added nothing to the legacy of Cook himself.
At the end of the book, I was entertained, but added nothing to my existing knowledge of Cook. Having said that, this would make a good entry point for someone starting to learn about Cook, as it is engaging throughout.
On the flip side of the coin, Collingridge adds various intrigues (such as Dalrymple's rivalry with Cook and Banks becoming stand-offish after the 1st voyage) that weren't explored in enough detail to truly understand their importance.
I felt that the passages on George Collingridge were interesting, but added nothing to the legacy of Cook himself.
At the end of the book, I was entertained, but added nothing to my existing knowledge of Cook. Having said that, this would make a good entry point for someone starting to learn about Cook, as it is engaging throughout.
July 22, 2011
I read this book in conjunction with Hough's biography of Cook, which I preferred. Collingridge's account was good in places but was let down by Collingridge including reference and chapters to herself throughout. Biography should not focus on the author! Also much as George Collingridge's life was an interesting counterpoint, I think again it was a distraction. Collingridge is basically trying too hard to pin Cook to her viewpoint and to tie in her name to her hero. In conclusion, the book should be renamed "Obsession and Betrayal by the author"!
June 14, 2008
interseting factual look at history. Lots of stuff never taught in the history class that makes for a more feasible and more interesting account of the discovery of NZ
March 17, 2013
Very well written. The author is a distant relation...
June 8, 2016
Would be an awesome book without the chapters about her relative. Skip those and it's awesome.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews