The Journals of Captain Cook

Oh, Captain Cook, you are the closest thing we have to a real-life Captain Picard, and you have such material, and yet you are so very, very limited. Homo oeconomicus, bah. But I am an aesthete, maybe even a synaesthete, and your constant logbook irrelevances about wind and sails do make me squint and taste salt, and the idea of the endless sea and the endless strand and the brown people in their canoes, future friends and foes, makes my soul rise and swell and spread till it astrally envelops this sorry bone-cage and whisks it back to when the world was new.

Extracted from both his journals, kept as required by Royal Naval law, and his logs, both surrendered to their Lordships at the Admiralty on conclusion of the trip; this accounts reflect the bluntly honest man in his heroic ventures. Coming ‘up through the hawsepipe’ – starting as a hand on a coastal collier - to become a Naval Captain indicates the strength of that character, what surprises is his lack of the prejudices of his time.

His many trips of exploration around the oceans obviously broadened his horizons well beyond his time. And his sheer ability – particularly in mapping and charting those seas induced the Navy to give him commands above his supposed "station in life’’.

Some of the Endeavor's charts remain in use show more in this century – a fitting tribute to this meticulous man and his work.' show less