Captain Cook - Softcover

Vanessa Collingridge

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0091888980 ISBN 13: 9780091888985

Publisher: Vintage/Ebury (a Division of R, 2003

Synopsis

A uniquely woven story encompassing three separate centuries and three different lives. Captain Cook, best known for his heroic voyages through the Pacific Ocean, is brought to life in vivid detail. We follow his humble beginnings as the son of a farm labourer, through his convention-shattering treatment of the indigenous groups he met on his travels, and then onto his final tragic voyage which signalled the end of his revered reputation. One hundred years on from the death of Cook, another great man, George Collingridge begins his own adventure. He, like Cook was oblivious to the implications his journey would have. Along the way he unfolds ancient maps, secret tales and unearths hidden lands and buried treasure. He is also said to have realised that it was not Cook who discovered Australia - it was the Portugese. This firm belief was the eventual cause of his self-destruction. Another hundred years later Vanessa Collingridge, is searching for books on her lifelong hero Captain Cook in a university library. She discovers the name of a distant cousin, George Collingridge, in a dusty card index. And so a new journey of discovery begins - in the footsteps of her hero and his nemesis.

About this title

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 the Author

Vanessa Collingridge is best known as a presenter and reporter on Tonight with Trevor MacDonald. A first class Geography graduate of Oxford, Vanessa's presenting career has spanned many scientific and historical programmes on both TV and radio. She has also had her own column with the Daily Telegraph.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage/Ebury (a Division of R
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0091888980
• ISBN 13: 9780091888985
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448