Tony Horwitz vividly recounts Cook's voyages and the exotic scenes the captain encountered: tropical orgies, taboo rituals, cannibal feasts, human sacrifice. By the time of his violent death in Hawaii in 1779, the map of the world was substantially complete. When Cook set off for the Pacific in 1768, a third of the globe remained blank. His ships sailed 150,000 miles, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from Tasmania to Oregon, from Easter Island to Siberia. Captain James Cook's three epic journeys in the eighteenth century were the last great voyages of discovery. This book retraces the voyages of Captain James Cook, the Yorkshire farm boy who drew the map of the modern world. He also explores Cook the man: an impoverished farm boy who broke through the barriers of his class and time to become the greatest navigator in British history. 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 relives Cook's adventures by traveling in the captain's wake to such places as Tahiti, Savage Island, and the Great Barrier Reef along the way, he discovers Cook's embattled legacy in the present day.

North Yorkshire: A Plain, Zealous Man ġ4.This book retraces the voyages of Captain James Cook, the Yorkshire farm boy who drew the map of the modern world. Tonga : Where Time Begins, and Goes Back ġ0. Savage Island: The Hunt for Red Banana ĩ.

Botany Bay : In the Pure State of Nature Ĩ. Pacific Northwest: One Week Before the Mast ĥ. But most of all Blue Latitudes offers clear-eyed, vivid, and highly entertaining reassurance that there are still outlandish worlds to be discovered.īlue Latitudes brings to life a man whose voyages helped create the global village we inhabit today.' - from the dust jacket.ġ. 'Horwitz's adventures pay illuminating tribute to the great navigator - to Captain Cook himself and to his intrepid eighteenth-century colleagues, including the improbably attractive Sir Joseph Banks. 8vo, blue cloth spine with lighter blue paper-covered boards, silver lettering to spine and front board. New York : Henry Holt and Company, (2002). Blue Latitudes : Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before.

Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz