James Cook (1) (1728–1779)

Highly agreeable. This book collects lengthy extracts from Cook's journals, at a time of maritime journeys astonishing in every way to us now. The extracts are well placed in context, preventing the lay reader from having to scrounge through the entire pieces. Understandably, in the 2020s, many readers will approach these journals primarily from a racial context, as I see of some recent reviews here. Certainly this is important, and the complex layers of cultural expectations and understanding weight heavy on Cook's subconscious, as they do all of us, and we can clearly see the ways in which he applies thought and intellect and yet cannot always break free of his inculcated values. Given the consequences of this meeting (even though Cook himself had nothing do with the colonisation of Australia, and indeed was dead long before 1788), it's fair for readers to be engaged with this. However ultimately that's a comparatively minor part of this journal of maritime lore, exploration, and the (often repetitive, by their very nature) travails of taking dozens of men on a ship not much larger than a tennis court to sections of land and ocean which had never been visited by Europeans, where danger was not constant and potential but, in so many ways, fatal.… (more)

I believe that Guy Pocock is a clever editor. The language and style used in this presentation is more readable today than it probably would have been had it not been modernized. That is not to say that James Cook could not have made himself understood by today's readers but I think these reports to those who commissioned him would have been more official in style than they appear here. For me, a New Zealander and retired Naval officer, I wonder that I had not read these more complete stories before. I enjoyed them so much and found myself recognizing much of what he described. Cook's was a life well lived.
I am extremely fond of 'The Kings Treasuries of Literature" series of books and this one, number 257, is a true delight in every way.… (more)