Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before
Tony Horwitz. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2002. 480 pp. Photos. Maps. Bib. Index. $26.00.
Captain Cook: A Legacy Under Fire
Vanessa Collingridge. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2002. 376 pp. Photos. Maps. Bib. Index. $24-95.
Reviewed by John E. Carey
For anyone who loves the sea, two books published in 2002 capture the imagination, inspire, and entertain. Both vividly re-create the life of one of the world’s greatest explorers and cartographers, Royal Navy Captain James Cook (1728-1779). Blue Latitudes, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Horwitz, and Captain Cook: A Legacy Under Fire, by British columnist and news anchor Vanessa Collingridge, both provide detailed insights into Cook’s most famous adventures—his three multiyear explorations of the Pacific.
Both books are quirky, so if you like your history in a meat-and-potatoes style, you are in for a few surprises—and a terrific ride. I found both books to be delightful.
Because his father, a Scottish farmer who moved to the north of England after the Jacobite revolt of 1715, had little social standing, Cook worked hard to earn every inch of his tall reputation. He made himself the best navigator and cartographer of his age, and mastered the art of command. He joined the Royal Navy in 1755 as an enlisted sailor, but rose quickly through the ranks with the help of skills learned in the merchant service and powerful patrons such as Sir Hugh Palliser. Cook began the first of his famous tri- fecta of voyages in 1768. At that time, Horwitz notes, “roughly a third of the world’s map remained blank.”
Maybe not. Historians have conflicting opinions on just exactly when different parts of the world were discovered. Many theorize that before Cook, several of his “discoveries” already had been found and charted. Bad navigation and inaccurate charts kept some lands in the shadows long after Europeans first discovered them. That, compounded by the secrecy of competing empires, leaves the exact discovery dates of many islands (and the continent of Australia) in question. Collingridge in particular dwells on this aspect of Cook’s story.
A master navigator and chart maker with little need for secrecy, Cook charted much of Australia himself rather than entrust the job to others. He sailed into arctic and antarctic waters, visited Alaska and Russia, was the first European to see Hawaii, and circumnavigated New Zealand and the world. In the age of sailing ships built of timber, Cook did it all. He picked able specialists in botany and a host of other fields to assist him on his voyages. As a result, when Cook and his men first encountered kangaroos, koalas, and many other animals and plants unknown to Europeans, drawings were made, samples collected, and studies conducted.
At a time when long sea voyages could mean the death of half the crew because of poor diet and crude, unsanitary conditions (and the inherent dangers of climbing masts, working the lines, etc.), Cook’s record of successful missions with little or no loss of life is remarkable. He realized that a balanced diet prevented scurvy, a disease that hitherto had plagued men at sea. He had a penchant for a well-fed crew, a clean ship, and proper discipline. His efforts probably made him the father of the “messing and berthing inspection” (if not the Ney Award).
Horwitz, who also wrote the bestseller Confederates in the Attic, takes aim at Cook in a lighthearted way. Like a 19-year-old reveling in his father’s Western Pacific liberty exploits, Horwitz re-creates a Cook voyage in a replica of the Endeavor, the ship Cook commanded on the first of his missions of discovery.
Horwitz recounts port calls in such tropical locales as Bora-Bora, Tahiti, New Zealand, and Tonga. Alcohol and beautiful native women sneak into the history (and the re-creation). Roger Williamson served as Horwitz’s guide, mentor, and foil along the route. “Like most males in Australia,” Horwitz writes, “Roger drank too much.” Roger also apparently liked island girls, according to the more serious (and sober) Horwitz.
With a keen eye, Horwitz chronicles how the presence of white seafarers changed the peoples of the Pacific. Cook had grave regrets; the discoverer of so many lands and pristine societies had seen some of those cultures nearly destroyed after they were “discovered” by Europeans. On his third and final voyage (he was murdered and dismembered by Hawaiians while attempting to discipline a group of islanders after a theft), Cook commented on the less than ideal impact “discovery” had had on many Pacific islands. He was shocked and saddened by the degenerative effects of disease, thievery, alcoholism, and prostitution—all social ills largely unknown in the Pacific before Europeans arrived.
Vanessa Collingridge, a highly regarded British TV news personality, found out that a relative of hers was the first to attack Cook’s claims of Pacific discoveries. She alternates between Cook’s voyages and the life and research of George Alphonse Collingridge de Tourcey (1847-1931), whose work was devoted to tearing down Cook’s reputation. The story of George Collingridge at first seems like a diversion or even a dead end, yet the reader slowly gains an appreciation for the added depth and substance to the story. Today’s cable TV news hosts would have loved George Collingridge as he attempted to debunk Cook and his discoveries. George ultimately was vilified—yet there is more than a shred of truth to his theories.
Still, Cook is the hero of both books. Unlike the other great icon of British naval history, Lord Horatio Nelson, Cook was not a warrior—he was instead a sailor of the highest caliber. Collingridge refers to the youthful Lieutenant Cook as a “mariner and navigator extraordinaire." Charts derived from those made by Cook’s own hand still are in use, even in this age of satellite navigation and computers. Both of these books deserve attention and merit special places in any library.
Naval Warfare: An International Encyclopedia
Spencer C. Tucker, ed. 3 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002. 1,231 pp. Maps. Illus. Gloss. Bib. Index. $295.00.
Reviewed by Jack Sweetman
An exceptionally ill-humored review of James Mitchener’s massive Chesapeake warned that there were two things one should avoid doing with the book. The first was to drop it on one’s foot; the second was to read it. Users would be well advised to keep a firm grip on these substantial volumes, too. But anyone who does so will find them a delight, if not exactly to read, then to browse and to consult. In Naval Warfare: An International Encyclopedia, Spencer Tucker and his collaborators have produced a superb reference. I only wish it had been available when I began teaching naval history 30 years ago.
In purely quantitative terms, Naval Warfare is an imposing work, comprising 1,500- plus entries totaling 822,000 words by 155 contributors spanning a period of 2,500 years. Happily, its scope and sophistication are as impressive as its scale. The majority of entries relate to the British and U.S. navies, the dominant sea forces of the oceanic age, and treat individuals, ships, ship types, battles, campaigns, and wars. But that is far from the whole story. Naval history did not begin with the voyages of discovery, and attention is accorded its ancient and medieval components. The English-speaking navies’ major rivals also receive good coverage, with roughly 64 entries on the French Navy, 54 on the German, 53 on the Japanese, and 16 on the Dutch (excluding entries on actions in which these navies were engaged). In addition, there are topical entries on no fewer than 15 other navies, including those of Australia, Austria-Hungary, Canada, the Confederate States of America, Denmark, Italy, Norway, the Ottoman Empire, the Papacy, Russia, the Soviet Union, Spain, Sweden, the Republic of Texas, and Venice.
Other topical entries are devoted to weapons and equipment, tactics and strategies, amphibious warfare, treaties, administrative organizations, bases, training and discipline, intelligence, communications, food and medicine, fiction, ranks, social customs, and terminology. Each entry, whatever its content, concludes with cross- references to allied subjects and a brief bibliography. Another feature worthy of note is that the biographical entries extend beyond commanders to include policy makers, publicists, naval architects, inventors and innovators, strategic thinkers, and analysts (such as Alfred Thayer Mahan, Sir Julian Corbett, Hyacinthe Laurent Theophile Aube, Philip Colomb, Romeo Bemotti, Raoul Victor Patrice Castex, Sir Herbert Richmond, Tetsutaro Sato, Joseph Wylie, Henry Eccles, and others), as well as naval historians (such as Sir John Knox Laughton, Charles Paullin, Robert Albion, Howard Chapelle, Michael Oppenheim, Dudley Knox, Samuel E. Morison, Stephen Roskill, and Arthur Marder). In short, Naval Warfare is, as its subtitle promises, both international and encyclopedic.
Evident care also was taken to make the work an attractive and user-friendly one. Its format and type are large, with generous margins and good graphics. A complete table of contents that gives dates for individuals, vessels, and events is repeated at the front of each volume, as are nine area maps, sparing the user the bother of switching back and forth between books. Finally, the third volume includes a useful glossary and a marvelous, cross-referenced general index.
Of course, no reference work ever will contain everything every user will expect. Aviation historians might be disappointed that, although several entries address naval aviation, there are none on specific aircraft, some of which have played significant roles in naval history. Assiduous nitpicking identified a score or so of potential subjects, mostly individuals, whose omissions could be questioned. One example is Commander James D. Bulloch, the Confederacy’s resourceful undercover purchasing agent whose British-built cruisers swept the Union merchant marine from the sea. He also was author of The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe and was technical advisor on sailing-ship evolutions to his young nephew, Theodore Roosevelt, during the future Rough Rider’s composition of The Naval War of 1812.
As is inevitable in a work of such magnitude, there are a few relatively minor slips. The most substantial noted has the German battleship Scharnhorst help her sister, the Gneisenau, sink the British carrier Glorious in May 1940 after having been damaged during the invasion of Norway a month earlier. In fact, it was only in the action with the Glorious that the Scharnhorst sustained serious damage, and the date was 8 June.
But in comparison to the wealth of information this work offers, these matters pale to insignificance. As James C. Bradford concludes in his well-written introduction, it certainly is “the most comprehensive work of its kind.” No naval reference collection, public or private, should be without a copy.