Blue Latitudes : Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before

by Horwitz, Tony

• ISBN13: 9780805065411
• ISBN10: 0805065415
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-10-02
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Summary

In an exhilarating tale of historic adventure, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author ofConfederates in the Atticretraces the voyages of Captain James Cook, the Yorkshire farm boy who drew the map of the modern world Captain James Cook's three epic journeys in the 18th century were the last great voyages of discovery. His ships sailed 150,000 miles, from the Artic to the Antarctic, from Tasmania to Oregon, from Easter Island to Siberia. When Cook set off for the Pacific in 1768, a third of the globe remained blank. By the time he died in Hawaii in 1779, the map of the world was substantially complete. Tony Horwitz vividly recounts Cook's voyages and the exotic scenes the captain encountered: tropical orgies, taboo rituals, cannibal feasts, human sacrifice. He also relives Cook's adventures by following in the captain's wake to places such as Tahiti, Savage Island, and the Great Barrier Reef to discover Cook's embattled legacy in the present day. Signing on as a working crewman aboard a replica of Cook's vessel, Horwitz experiences the thrill and terror of sailing a tall ship. He also explores Cook the man: an impoverished farmboy who broke through the barriers of his class and time to become the greatest navigator in British history. By turns harrowing and hilarious, insightful and entertaining, BLUE LATITUDES brings to life a man whose voyages helped create the 'global village' we know today.

Author Biography

Tony Horwitz is the best-selling author of Confederates in the Attic, Baghdad Without a Map and One for the Road. He is also a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has worked as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and a staff writer for the New Yorker. He lives in Virginia with his wife, novelist Geraldine Brooks, and their son, Nathaniel.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Distance Traveled	p. 1
Pacific Northwest: One Week Before the Mast	p. 9
Tahiti: Sic Transit Venus	p. 42
To Bora-Bora: Sold a Pup	p. 77
New Zealand: Warriors, Still	p. 101
Botany Bay: In the Pure State of Nature	p. 140
The Great Barrier Reef: Wrecked	p. 165
Homeward Bound: The Hospital Ship	p. 199
Savage Island: The Hunt for Red Banana	p. 214
Tonga: Where Time Begins, and Goes Back	p. 248
North Yorkshire: A Plain, Zealous Man	p. 282
London: Shipping Out, Again	p. 315
Alaska: Outside Men	p. 333
Hawaii: The Last Island	p. 375
Kealakekua Bay: A Bad Day on Black Rock	p. 405
Epilogue: A Period to His Labours	p. 434
Notes on Sources	p. 445
Selected Bibliography	p. 453
Acknowledgments	p. 461
Index	p. 463
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

From Blue Latitudes:
I studied the application for a berth on His Majesty's Bark Endeavour. An Australian foundation had built a replica of Cook's first vessel and dispatched it around the globe in the navigator's path. At each port, the ship's professional crew took on volunteers to help sail the next leg and experience life as eighteenth-century sailors. This seemed the obvious place to start; if I was going to understand Cook's travels, I first had to understand how he traveled.
The application asked about my "qualifications and experience."
"Have you had any blue water ocean sailing experience?"
"Can you swim 50 meters fully clothed?"
"You will be required to work aloft, sometimes at night in heavy weather. Are you confident of being able to do this?"
I wasn't sure what was meant by "blue water ocean." Did it come in other colors? I'd never swum clothed; as for working aloft, I'd climbed ladders to scoop leaves from my gutter. I checked "yes" next to each question.
But the last query gave me pause. "Do you suffer from sea sickness?"
Only when I went to sea.

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Excerpted from Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz
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