Product Description

James Cook never laid eyes on the sea until he was in his teens. He then began an extraordinary rise from farmboy outsider to the rank of captain of the Royal Navy, leading three historic journeys that would link his name with fearless exploration. This text portrays a complex man of tremendous ambition, intellect and sheer hardheadedness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1015176 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
Clive CusslerA brilliantly written saga of history's greatest explorer.

About the Author
Martin Dugard is the author of Knockdown and also writes regularly for GQ, Sports Illustrated and Esquire.

Customer Reviews

A journalist's jolly jaunt
Dugard's account of the life of explorer James Cook is a light, easily read introduction to England's greatest explorer. Dugard stresses the travails of a man of humble beginnings who, through force of his own will and some fortuitous connections garnered command of the first solo expedition into the South Pacific. He describes Cook's early voyages on colliers, moving on to his decade-long exploration of the Newfoundland coasts. Lured away by the glories of the Royal Navy, Cook entered that force as a lowly seaman but rose rapidly to junior officer due to his cartography skills and forceful sense of drive.

Dugard dubs Cook "the original adventurer." Other expeditions had concentrated on map-ping coastlines along regularly used routes or finding harbours to serve as sanctuaries or supply bases. Cook's voyage in the Endeavour was the first journey dedicated to scientific studies. Cook's mandate was to convey a team of scientists to Tahiti. There they would study the rare phenomenon of Venus' transit across the face of the sun, adding to the navigator's store of tools. From that mid-Pacific isle, however, Cook was free to seek the legendary Southern Continent, particularly Antarctica. Given a mandate to wander the Pacific, Cook found yet another landmass, the island continent of Australia.

Dugard portrays Cook as impelled by several ambitions. To become the premier explorer of the Pacific, to bask in the adoration of its peoples, and show Britain's class-bound society that the son of a farm labourer was the equal of any aristocrat. He achieved all these aims, but at the usual cost to a man overcome by hubris. He went too far, barely staving off mutiny by a crew that adored him. In the end, of course, an act of arrogance cost him his life in Hawaii. Through all this tale of a man burdened by ambition, Dugard offers us glimpses of Elizabeth Cook who remained in England almost mindlessly cheering on her husband's goals. While Cook sailed as far as from the Earth to the Moon, Elizabeth bore and buried a succession of children. When the reader feels the urge to learn of her outlook in more detail, Dugard reminds us of her burning the Cook correspondence, eliminating any record of her thoughts. Unrestrained by evidence, Dugard blithely presents her viewpoint, derived from assumptions.

Given the wealth of books available on Cook and his voyages, this one stands well down on the list of "must read" titles. Only someone with a superficial interest in the explorer and his journeys would find this useful. A good introductory overview, its lack of bibliography or even an index renders this title merely a journalist's superficial exercise. There are simply too many scholarly books on Cook, some well written, to warrant spending much time with this one. Save it for the beach or cottage. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

A CANNIBALISED COOK BOOK
...One thing is for sure; it is not a history book. It is, instead, a garbled, confused and at times, barely literate attempt at writing a psychodrama based on the life of that most famous of navigators, Captain James Cook.

You would think an author was wants to write about voyages of discovery, and purports to have done his research by following his subject's tracks around the globe would have his basic geography under control. We have Dugard wandering around London (UK) not knowing what side of the Thames River he is on. He takes us on a walk from the Deptford Docks near Greenwich (on the south bank) to Cook's house in the East End of London, without crossing the river! He takes us along famous London thoroughfares like Regency (sic) Street and Savile (sic once again) Row.

You would hope a book like this might have some useful maps. There is one. Right up front of the book we get a chart of the world showing the tracks of the ships taken in Cook's three voyages. This map however is totally useless. The essence of Cook's peregrination around the Pacific saw him often crossing his paths. The map in this book has tracks without arrows. You can't tell where he's come from or where he's going!

Dugard's inventiveness really comes into its own when he attempts to go inside the head of Cook. He gives us the passionate details of his relationship with his wife Elizabeth. The fact that Mrs Cook burnt all her correspondence with her husband before she died, and the total lack of details in Cook's own records of his personal life is a real convenience for the imaginative author.

Dugard's thesis is that Cook's eventual downfall at the hands of the Hawaiian BBQ Kings was due to an egotism that was verging on psychotic. Whenever the author starts to develop a case for a particular aspect of Cook's personality or a behavioural trait he goes and destroys his own argument a few pages later...

Dugard also invents another motive for Cook's zeal for discovery. On at least 6 occasions in the book he claims Cook wanted to "wipe off the map" previous explorers contributions to cartography. The author provides zero evidence for this. In fact, immediately prior to one of these repeated claims on p216, he had just provided a quote from Cook's journal which shows the great navigator (contrary to Dugard's thesis) was only too willing to recognize the work of the explorers who went before him.

When writing about maritime practice and procedures Dugard, the lay reader is left gasping. In one account where Cook's ship is wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef, he tells us (twice) that it was Cook's "gut instinct" that the evening tide that day would be higher than the previous high tide seen during the day. Even a weekend sailor could have worked that out from a few prior observations.

Dugard attempts at literary "style" fall in a heap. He tries to conjure up some 18th Century atmosphere by using lingo like "unbeknownst". A few paras later he goes and shatters it with modern metaphors like "laser-like intensity".

As an historic travelogue to places familiar to the 21st Century tourist, any visitor-info website could replace this book. For example, Dugard describes the entrance to Sydney Harbour as being between "two towering basalt heads". The golden cliffs of sandstone that erode to make the famous beaches of Bondi must have popped into existence in the last 200 years!

There is no shortage of great books written about the life and times of Captain Cook. An AMAZON search will give you the Penguin Classic "The Journals of Captain Cook" (you cannot go past the man's own words) or John C. Beaglehole's "The Life of Captain James Cook".

It is sad to see the publishing industry churning out "pot-boilers" like this book. With all the bloopers, inconsistencies and non sequitur logic in this text it hard to believe there were any editorial disciplines interposed between the author's manuscript and the printing press.

As a Cook Book this one belongs in the bargain bin --- right alongside titles like "101 Recipes for Olde English Style BBQ".

Every journey needs a beginning
By no means a definitive account of Cook's life, but certainly a readable introduction to the legacy of this man.

Martin Dugard has touched lightly on many of the pressures Cook must surely have felt - His family, his birthright and position in society, his ambition, the relationship with his father, England's position in the World and the birth of Empire. It would be impossible to do all of this justice in just 300 pages, and I don't believe that Dugard is really attempting to. Instead, he offers the topics like a light buffet - take what you want, go and look for more on what interests you.

This informal style, laced with conjecture as to conversations or motives, will infuriate the purist historians. This book will also not appeal to those who hold Cook up as a definitive British hero. The author speculates on Cook's rationales and motives, but the message clear: Cook did indeed go father than any man. He led the world into a new era, both through his geographical discoveries and the courage he displayed in attaining them.

French Navigator Jean-François de Galaup de La Pérouse said of Cook that his work was so all-encompassing, there was little for his successors to do but admire it. This is not an all-encompassing account of Cook, but an easy place to begin your own voyage of discovery.