Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before

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

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before

by Tony Horwitz

Paperback(First Edition)

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Overview

In an exhilarating tale of historic adventure, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Confederates in the Attic retraces 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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780312422608
Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 08/01/2003
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 496
Sales rank: 214,884
Product dimensions: 5.35(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

About The Author
Tony Horwitz is the bestselling 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, Geraldine Brooks, and their son, Nathaniel.

Hometown:

Waterford, Virginia

Date of Birth:

1958

Date of Death:

May 27, 2019

Place of Birth:

Washington, D.C.

Place of Death:

Washington, D.C.

Education:

B.A., Brown University; M.A., Columbia University School of Journalism

Read an Excerpt

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.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Distance Traveled
1. Pacific Northwest: One Week Before the Mast
2. Tahiti: Sic Transit Venus
3. To Bora-Bora: Sold a Pup
4. New Zealand: Warriors, Still
5. Botany Bay: In the Pure State of Nature
6. The Great Barrier Reef: Wrecked
7. Homeward Bound: The Hospital Ship
8. Savage Island: The Hunt for Red Bananas
9. Tonga: Where Time Begins, and Goes Back
10. North Yorkshire: A Plain, Zealous Man
11. London: Shipping Out, Again
12. Alaska: Outside Men
13. Hawaii: The Last Island
14. Kealakekua Bay: A Bad Day on Black Rock
Epilogue: A Period to His Labours

Notes on Sources
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index

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