Captain Cook: A Legacy Under Fire - Softcover

Collingridge, Vanessa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1592280501 ISBN 13: 9781592280506

Publisher: Globe Pequot Press, 2003

Synopsis

Part biography, part historical mystery, this book spans the centuires to find the truth in Captain Cook's legacy.

About this title

Review:

"Indefatigably researched; deftly written. The Cook story is forever enthralling. There's adventure and danger. There's tragic death."--"The Wall Street Journal " "A fascinating double biography of two endlessly interesting men." --"Book" magazine "Collingridge intercuts finely detailed chapters on Cook's exciting major explorations with her ancestor's more bookish investigation of newly discovered maps. An excellent booka careful and deliberate account of exciting historical and psychological events."--"Publishers Weekly " "Collingridge goes beyond the usual litany of what he did and tries to get at who he was. Her work on Cook is excellent, and her book is a worthy addition to the bookshelf." --"The Columbus Dispatch

From the Back Cover:

In 1768 James Cook, on an epic sea journey that secured his place in history, discovered Australia. One hundred years later, countering cherished legends, George Collingridge dared to claim that the Portuguese had gotten to Australia first. Now Vanessa Collingridge, his distant cousin, unravels the strange tale of history's most fascinating explorer and the man who sought to dethrone him.
Collingridge charts Captain Cook's celebrated voyages: He mapped the Pacific Islands, circumnavigated Antarctica, charted New Zealand, and discovered the New Hebrides and Australia, curing scurvy along the way. He was shipwrecked on the Great Barrier Reef, cruised with sails frozen amid two-hundred-foot-tall icebergs, struggled to keep his crew from losing battles with alcohol and Polynesian women, and somehow managed to stay one step ahead of competing French and Spanish explorers. Over his twenty-one years of adventure-until his murder on a beach in Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii in 1779-Cook changed the Western map of the world.
Or so schoolchildren were taught. In 1883 British aristocrat George Collingridge sailed Down Under in search of adventure-and came across maps of Australia dated 1542 and 1546, drawn in northern France but based on Portuguese originals, suggesting that Cook was not the first to reach Australia. The proposal would prove Collingridge's undoing-and yet it is a controversy that lives on.

About this edition

• Publisher: Globe Pequot Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1592280501
• ISBN 13: 9781592280506
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 376