The Time of Captain Cook: A Conversation

Modern Language Review, 70, 137-8, 1975

As is pointed out in the introductory section of this book, the 61 engravings made from the drawings of the artist John Webber on James Cook's third voyage, first published as an Atlas accompanying the three volumes of Cook's journals in 1784, " were the first visual records of the Pacific for the Western world " (p. xi). It is unsurprising that both words and images have been mined by countless scholars ever since, providing as they do a record of some of the earliest contacts between the peoples of Europe and Oceania, and documenting customs and a material world whose trajectory of change was forever skewed in different directions by that contact, and was never to appear quite the same again. Given that amount of attention, perhaps most notably in Rüdiger Joppien and Bernard Smith's seminal four-volume magnum opus published in 1987 (twelve years before the first edition of the present work), we might be forgiven for having misgivings about whether yet another book on the topic had much fresh information to offer to us. We need not have worried. For a start, a work like Joppien and Smith (1987) is unashamedly aimed at scholars. Its very completeness and dense analysis (not to mention its cost) all militate against its use by the general readers to whom Eleanor C. Nordyke directs her book (p. xvii). Further, by limiting the imagery surveyed to that made on the third voyage (though drawing on the journals of all three voyages to provide commentary and contextualization), Nordyke reduces the extraordinary volume of information to a more " bite-sized " amount. The originality of the scholarship displayed here lies in the meticulous matching of each image with, on the facing page, original text that relates exactly to the event, scene, person or place depicted. The engraved images are presented in the sequence in which the original drawings and paintings were made, so that the book becomes in one sense a travelogue, and allows us to take a " virtual journey " along with the voyagers. The drawings and the journals are filled with the immediacy and urgency of the experiences as they were being lived and responded to by those intrepid men in their cockleshell vessels. The result, though certainly painstaking scholarship, avoids the voice

1979

Banks in 1962: a rich lode which other scholars immediately began to mine. He started drafting the life of Cook in 1967, the year in which he retired from Victoria University of Wellington, and, at this point, one can sympathize with his regret at any interruption. J.C. Beaglehole died on 26 March 1971, and his masterly and almost universally acclaimed Life of Captain James Cook appeared in 1974.4 Beaglehole's Cook offers as complete a study as one could expect a single scholar to produce. It is to be admired not just for its thorough ness but also for its erudition, style, and scholarly integrity. Having read Beaglehole, one might ask if there is anything else to say. The answer, as these papers show, is that Beaglehole's editions of the journals make possible a reassessment not only of Cook but, to some extent, of Beagle hole. He has paved the way, not closed it off. It is a measure of the power of his contribution that in the past few years much valuable scholarship has come to maturity. Like any biographer, Beaglehole focussed on his subject. The lens of his scholarship threw an intense light on Cook, but sometimes cast a shadow on those who surrounded him. In his paper on "Cook's Post humous Reputation," Bernard Smith has pointed out how the eulogists of the late eighteenth century excluded other individuals from their orations lest mention of their achievements diminish those of the hero. To some extent, perhaps, Beaglehole shared this tendency. Cook was his hero, and other men were sometimes judged harshly. David Mackay, Howard T. Fry, and to some extent Michael E. Hoare all assert the im portance of men who were Cook's contemporaries. Joseph Banks, Alex ander Dalrymple, and the two Forsters5 made fundamental contribu tions to Cook's voyages. Clearly their careers were profoundly influ enced by their association with Cook. But it is also true that Cook's stature was enhanced, not diminished, by the men that surrounded him. As the old Maori saying, which Beaglehole uses to sum up Cook, has it, "a veritable man is not hid among many."6 Perhaps surprisingly, given Beaglehole's exhaustive work, there are even some new perspectives emerging on Cook the man. Research prompted by bicentennial celebrations is producing new insights into Cook's early life in Yorkshire and the extent to which local connections explain his otherwise curious decision to join the Royal Navy in 1755. The last few years of Cook's life also bear re-examination, and Sir James Watt provides intriguing new evidence on the state of Cook's health on ROBIN FISHER & HUGH JOHNSTON Williams shows how he contributed to the emergence of a definite coast line out of the clouds and fogs of cartographers' imaginings. As in the south, Cook's influence did not end with his departure, and Christon I. Archer explains how the appearance of his account of the third voyage taught the Spanish the importance of publicizing their own efforts to ex plore the northwest coast of America. By then, however, it was too late, for Cook's presence on the coast resulted in the development of the seaotter trade and the influx of British and American traders. Another aspect of Cook's explorations that demands attention, in both the north and south Pacific, is their consequences for the indigenous people. Here, in the tradition of Beaglehole's "Note on Polynesian History," 10 the methods of historians and anthropologists need to be brought together in an effort to achieve some understanding of both sides of the relationship that developed between Cook's men and the people of the Pacific. Hitherto, European writing has been dominated to a considerable extent by the "fatal impact" view, 11 which tends to obscure any reciprocity that may have existed in the contact situation. The extension of this line of thought, sometimes expressed at the con ference, is the notion that there are two points of view on Cook's pres ence in the Pacific-that of the European and that of the Pacific people-and that these views are necessarily distinct and different. In his paper, Robin Fisher tries to show that a reciprocal relationship, which neither group dominated and both benefitted from, developed between Cook's men and the Indians of Nootka Sound. If nothing else, both cul tures also have in common the subsequent manipulation of Cook's memory to suit current social and political concerns. As the prefaces and footnotes of his volumes indicate, J.C. Beaglehole, like all scholars, drew on the knowledge of others. Yet he dominated the field of Cook studies in a way that no individual now can or, perhaps, ought to do. To carry the task further, to better understand the full scope of Cook's explorations and their impact, it is necessary to bring together people from many disciplines, individuals with different ex pertise but with a common interest. Those who participated in Simon Fraser's Cook conference demonstrated that, like the voyages them selves, Cook studies are now very much a cooperative enterprise.

The Northern Mariner / Le marin du nord, 2018

La cartographie de Terre-Neuve effectuée par James Cook de 1762 à 1767 a été indispensable à ses futures expéditions dans le Pacifique. Ses efforts lui ont valu la réputation de maître navigateur et arpenteur fort qualifié pour le commandement. Certains historiens ont examiné si le commandement de l'exploration du Pacifique aurait pu être confié à quelqu'un d'autre. Bien que cette conclusion soit acceptée par ceux qui ont méticuleusement étudié le capitaine Cook, il s'agit d'une conclusion qui est difficilement reconnue publiquement à l'extérieur du Canada atlantique. In introducing his book, Captain Cook's War and Peace: The Royal Navy Years, 1755-1768, John Robson remarked that "Some writers have asked the question, 'Why was James Cook chosen to lead the Endeavour expedition [into the Pacific in 1768]?'" Robson then suggested that, with a better understanding of Cook's career between 1755 and 1768, the more reasonable questions to ask would be "'Why would the Admiralty have chosen anyone else to lead the expedition?' and 'Who else could they have chosen?'" 1 Robson's point is that Cook's career in the Pacific (which for much of the rest of the world is the only James Cook there is) cannot be understood without reference to his accomplishments during the years that he served in the Royal Navy in North America. Those years were absolutely critical to his training as a navigator, a hydrographer, and as a commander. 2 Indeed, in his biography of Cook, Frank McLynn declares quite unambiguously that "Even

Cook-Voyage Collections of ‘Artificial Curiosities’ in Britain and Ireland, 1771–2015 (MEG Occasional Paper, No. 5), 2015

The University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (hereafter, MAA) houses more than 250 objects that have been authoritatively traced to the three Pacific voyages led by James Cook. These include the largest documented collection of first-voyage artefacts anywhere in the world and many objects known to have been acquired during the second and third voyages, a number of which were once in the Leverian Museum. Some objects can be linked to specific encounters between local people and members of the expeditions that are described in detail in the voyage accounts.The collections have been the focus of considerable scholarly attention over the past half-century, and firm provenances have been established both for specific objects and component assemblages. At the same time, growing interest in these collections amongst Pacific peoples and the affordances of new information technologies suggest novel ways in which our understanding of these singular artefacts of encounter might be enhanced in the future.