Quirky travel writer, Tony Horwitz, follows Captain Cook's seafaring adventures and discoveries.
I really enjoyed Horwitz's CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC, so I thought I'd try his Captain Cook travelogue, BLUE LATITUDES. My reaction was mixed. I loved the stuff about Captain Cook, but was less enthusiastic about Horwitz's attempt to follow Cook's explorations.
Cook set out on three explorations, essentially looking for the Southern Continent. As a result Horwitz starts with the South Pacific islands, New Zealand, and Australia. The most interesting segment of this account for me was Cook's contact with the Australian aborigines who wanted nothing to do with Cook and told him, in their own language, to "Go Away." Later on Cook discovered the Great Barrier Reef and came close to being shipwrecked.
In my mind Horwitz spends too much time on trivial matters. For instance, when Cook tried to land in modern Niue (Savage Island) the natives chased him away. He mistook them for cannibals since they had painted their teeth with red banana juice. Horwitz spends an inordinate amount of time looking for red bananas. In another instance, he travels the globe looking for an arrow supposedly made out of Cook's shin bone.
In some ways BLUE LATITUDES is inspirational. For one thing, Cook was born of poor parents in Yorkshire, England. He worked his way up from clerk, to sailor on a coal barge, to captain in the Royal Navy in a much more hierarchal society. He also went where "no man had been before." If that sounds familiar it's no accident. James T. Kirk was modeled after Captain Cook.
Captain Cook himself was a rather dour sort of person, but some of his shipmates had eccentric personalities. Joseph Banks, the botanist on board The Endeavor, was a nobleman who sailed with Cook rather than go on a grand tour. His journal entries can be poetic at times. David Samwell, surgeon's mate on board the Resolution, spent most of his time "admiring `Fair Damsels' and `nymphs' and calculating how to bed them." Cook, himself, comes alive when he philosophizes about the harm he may be doing to native cultures. Although he was ready with the musket when natives crossed him, he showed his human side when he tried not to expose the Hawaiians to venereal disease.
On the modern side, we visit Cooktown in northern Australia, where Horwitz and his pal Roger Williamson spend most of their time drinking, and the Aleutian Islands where Horwitz and his buddy Roger board a ferry that endures hurricane force winds, resulting in almost terminal seasickness. Roger grates on your nerves after a while; he seems to have a one-track mind; he never goes anywhere without a ready supply of alcohol.
Whenever the book rotates back to the Cook biography, interest picks up. The most riveting part of the book is when Cook lands in Kealakekua Bay, for the second time, and you know that this is where he met his death. Horwitz also spends some time analyzing Cook's mental pathology. He seemed to suffering from "burn-out" on his third exploration. He flogged his crewman more than he ever had before, he forced them to eat walrus meat, he gave in to his temper, and he treated the natives inconsistently, which ultimately led to his death.
Dave Schwinghammer's Fargo-esque novel, SOLDIER'S GAP, is available on Authorsden and at Amazon.com, new and used. Click here to post or read comments.
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