Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CAPTAIN JAMES COOK
If aliens ever visit earth, they may wonder what to make of the countless obelisks,
faded plaques and graffiti-covered statues of a stiff, wigged figure gazing out to sea
from Alaska to Australia, from NZ to North Yorkshire, from Siberia to the South Pa-
cific. James Cook (1728-79) explored more of the Earth's surface than anyone in
history, and it's impossible to travel the Pacific without encountering the captain's
image and his controversial legacy in the lands he opened to the West.
For a man who travelled so widely, and rose to such fame, Cook came from an
extremely pinched and provincial background. The son of a day labourer in rural
Yorkshire, he was born in a mud cottage, had little schooling, and seemed destined
for farm work - and for his family's grave plot in a village churchyard. Instead, Cook
went to sea as a teenager, worked his way up from coal-ship servant to naval of-
ficer, and attracted notice for his exceptional charts of Canada. But Cook remained
a little-known second lieutenant until, in 1768, the Royal Navy chose him to com-
mand a daring voyage to the South Seas.
In a converted coal ship called Endeavour,Cook sailed to Tahiti, and then be-
came the first European to land at NZ and the east coast of Australia. Though the
ship almost sank after striking the Great Barrier Reef, and 40% of the crew died
from disease and accidents, the Endeavourlimped home in 1771. On a return voy-
age (1772-75), Cook became the first navigator to pierce the Antarctic Circle and
circled the globe near its southernmost latitude, demolishing the ancient myth that
a vast, populous and fertile continent surrounded the South Pole. Cook also criss-
crossed the Pacific from Easter Island to Melanesia, charting dozens of islands
between. Though Maori killed and cooked 10 sailors, the captain remained strik-
ingly sympathetic to islanders. 'Notwithstanding they are cannibals,' he wrote,
'they are naturally of a good disposition.'
On Cook's final voyage (1776-79), in search of a northwest passage between the
Atlantic and Pacific, he became the first European to visit Hawaii, and coasted
America from Oregon to Alaska. Forced back by Arctic pack ice, Cook returned to
Hawaii, where he was killed during a skirmish with islanders who had initially
greeted him as a Polynesian god. In a single decade of discovery, Cook had filled in
the map of the Pacific and, as one French navigator put it, 'left his successors with
little to do but admire his exploits'.
But Cook's travels also spurred colonisation of the Pacific, and within a few dec-
ades of his death, missionaries, whalers, traders and settlers began transforming
(and often devastating) island cultures. As a result, many indigenous people now
revile Cook as an imperialist villain who introduced disease, dispossession and oth-
er ills to the Pacific (hence the frequent vandalising of Cook monuments).
However, as islanders revive traditional crafts and practices, from tattooing to tapa
(traditional barkcloth) ,they have turned to the art and writing of Cook and his
