Anne Salmond's writings are well-known among readers of Captain Cook studies.¹ She is Distinguished Professor of Maori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Aphrodite's Island is her most recent contribution. It is an extremely readable and excellent book.

During Cook's Second Voyage, Captain Cook and JR Forster estimated Tahiti's population as 200,000 to 240,000 persons. Although the book's subtitle suggests a focus on the European discovery of Tahiti, the volume is also a study of the Tahitian population in a way that no other book of which I am aware studies the people and milieu into which Cook and other navigators sailed in the later 18th century.

Professor Salmond observes that in the decade between 1767 and 1777, "it must have seemed to the islanders that almost as soon as a European ship sailed away from Tahiti, another appeared over the horizon." In June 1767 Samuel Wallis and Dolphin reached Tahiti which he named King George's Island. In April 1768 Louis Antoine de Bougainville and ships La Boudeuse and Étoile arrived in Tahiti for a ten day visit. Bougainville claimed the island for France and named it New Cythera (after an Ionian island off the eastern tip of the Greek Peloponnese), where the goddess Aphrodite first washed ashore. James Cook and Endeavour arrived first in April 1769 to observe the 3 July Transit of Venus. Cook named the island Otahite and claimed the island for King George III.

Three years later, the Spanish ship Águila arrived from Peru for a short visit in November 1772, commanded by Don Domingo Boenechea. Spain also claimed Tahiti. Bonechea named it Amat, the Viceroy of Peru's last name. Cook returned to Tahiti on his Second and Third Voyages; his final departure was in December 1777. The Spanish and Águila arrived a second time in November 1774, this time installing two Franciscan friars on the island to convert the natives, along with a marine as protection. After a dismal year, they departed in November 1775, on Águila's return, the friars having made no progress in conversion of the Tahitians to Christianity.

The European presence complicated relationships among Tahitians. The author describes how some of the Tahitians ingratiated themselves to one or more of the European visitors and how special bond (taio) relationships were established by the visitors and Tahitian chiefs. The European visitors also tried to discredit their rivals in the affections of the population, especially the Spanish who tried to convince Tahitians that England was a small island of no importance. Cook replaced a cross erected to claim Tahiti in the name of Spanish King Charles III with one bearing dates of English visits and claiming the territory for England: "Georgius Tertius Rex Annis 1767, 69, 73, 74, & 77."

In the book's 22 chapters, the author guides the reader through the English, French, and Spanish voyages to Tahiti. In doing so, she provides massive detail, often day to day events, sometimes hour by hour, identifying people, places, and actions. The narrative covers not only activities by Wallis, Bougainville, Cook, Boenechea and various ships' crews but also identifies the Tahitians involved with the European visitors: chiefs, former chiefs, paramount chiefs, warriors, wives, mistresses, children, assorted relatives, priests, and others. The native population is not part of an incidental, faceless crowd. Rather Salmond's narrative provides Tahitians with real identity and history, as active participants.

The author explains the power of the sacred "arioi," followers of the god 'Oro, with their life and death powers. Tahitian daily life, behaviour, food, tools, weapons, homes, furnishings, their impressive sailing craft and skills as navigators, etc., are detailed for the reader. A picture of a highly-organized society emerges in this account. While it is easy for the reader to become quickly lost in the day to day detail, the point of the narrative is to understand the flow of often-complicated relationships among the European visitors and the Tahitian population over the course of a decade.

Perhaps the most striking details presented in the book concern the important, constant, nearly daily exchange of gifts. It is clear that the Tahitians were extraordinarily generous in providing food and supplies to the European visitors. They offered pigs, chickens, plantains, breadfruit, coconuts, and other foodstuffs, especially during the Season of Plenty, one of the three seasons in the Tahitian calendar, when the gods were present on Tahiti. The season of High Seas is the second season. The Season of Scarcity, when the gods were absent, is the third season, during which supplies were not plentiful. A useful appendix explains the Tahitian calendar system. It is important to note that there are varying interpretations of Tahitian seasons.

In exchange for foodstuffs and supplies, the Tahitians received metal products (e.g. nails, hatchets, swords), clothing, and trinkets and, in Cook's later voyages, the highly prized red feathers which carried religious and other powers for chiefs and others.

The author also traces the travels from Tahiti to England or Peru by Tahitians such as Tupia (who died in Batavia), Omai, and Hitihiti (who traveled to the Southern ocean). She provides interesting detail regarding the Tahitian visitors to 18th century Peru and a glimpse into this important Spanish viceroyalty.

Tahiti created an extraordinary image in England and Europe. As Bougainville sailed from Tahiti in April 1768, he wrote in his journal, "Farewell happy and wise people, may you always remain what you are. I shall never recall without a sense of delight the brief time I spent among you and, as long as I live, I shall celebrate the happy island of Cythera. It is the new Utopia." Sir Joseph Banks and others educated in the classics provided similar ecstatic descriptions of the island. Whether Aphrodite's Island or Cythera, the landscape, surrounding seas, the people, the hospitable climate, and the native peoples of Tahiti (re-imaged as classical Greeks or Romans), all entered the European imagination as a paradise on earth. As illustration, the text includes a clever juxtaposition of Botticelli's painting, The Birth of Aphrodite, with John Webber's painting, A Polynesian Venus.

Then there were the women: often young, beautiful, apparently willing sexual partners, who even sailed to the ships to welcome visitors. Salmond carefully explains that girls, women (and men) would drop part or all of their clothes as a sign of respect when meeting persons of greater importance, including the European visitors perceived as gods or sent by the gods. Women and men participated in dances or acted in dramas, sometimes without clothing, performances that were often sexually explicit. Sometimes these dances actually derided their oblivious European visitors who automatically assumed these performances were an invitation for sex.

Imagine sailors having survived a long voyage from Europe or after weathering the fog, cold, sleet, snow and ice islands of the Southern Ocean, reaching presumed paradise, arriving to find scores of beautiful and apparently available and willing women. However, to the Tahitian women, there was not much attractive in sailors who showed signs of ulcers from scurvy or other diseases. Even with Cook's insistence on bathing, washed clothing, and a clean ship, many sailors were usually not personally or physically attractive as the natives, who bathed often several times daily, covering their bodies with oils and perfume, and who remained out of the sunlight to keep their skin light and not weathered.

Much of Cook's time was occupied in daily meetings and gift giving with various Tahitian chiefs and families, placating hurt feelings, smoothing over rivalries, quelling disturbances among natives and visitors. Tahitian feelings bruised easily. Reputedly Cook and other officers set out in pursuit of thieves who walked off with anything that could be taken from the ship or stockade. Native visits to Endeavour, Resolution and other ships were followed by visits to the island chiefs and families, somewhat of a human saga without end.

Paradise presented a darker side: Tahitians practiced infanticide and human sacrifice. Tahitian factions conducted internal warfare or fought groups from other Polynesian islands, such as Bora-Bora. It was a sign of Cook's prominence that he was taken to a marae during a human sacrificial ceremony prior to one group of Tahitians launching war against another.

The author provides a useful interpretation of the decade in the final pages covering Cook's last visit as well as in her concluding chapter. In Tahitian belief, at the creation of the world the creator god and a series of female goddesses created new forms of life. The author observes, "sex was the sacred force that drove the cosmos, ensuring the continuity and well-being of descent lines and providing people with key resources".

Salmond concludes that the Tahitians thought they "summoned up" the arrival of the European visitors because of an ancient prophecy that their ancestors would return to the islands. Therefore the European ships appeared as "floating islands," propelled by the power of their ancestors. That is why there was an endless exchange of gifts, why women and girls were offered to the visitors, because the Europeans appeared as ancestral gods.

While the Tahitians soon realized the visitors were human, they continued to be seen as extraordinary beings. The Tahitians continued to forge special bond (taio) relationships, attempting to mingle their spirits (varua) with their visitors. After 1777 the decade of visits by European navigators ended. The visitors' gifts, tarnished with time, and even the gift of Cook's portrait painted by John Webber, took on mythic dimensions in island ritual. Men and women exposed themselves to the portrait, "celebrating imperial and Christian power on the one hand, and the procreative power of the cosmos on the other," thus ensuring the continued fertility of the island.

The book contains over 60 illustrations as well as maps. One map identifies Tahitian districts and the island's chiefs which help the reader follow her narrative. Another useful map is Tupaia's Chart, from Endeavour's Voyage. Cook used Tupaia's knowledge to create the chart of islands surrounding Tahiti. The author provides thorough documentation, a selected bibliography, as well as a detailed index.

Readers are in debt to Anne Salmond for adding a substantial and well-researched cross-cultural work to understanding of a decade in which Europeans, Captain Cook among them, discovered Otahite, Aphrodite's Island.

Reviewer: James C. Hamilton

References

1. Amongst the works of Anne Salmond are The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas. Allen Lane. 2003. ISBN 0-713-99661-7.

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 38, volume 34, number 2 (2011).

On occasion an historical publication will appear that one wishes one had written oneself, and Jerry Lockett's superb study of the Canadian career of James Cook is just such a work. This reviewer's own small study of Cook's relationship with Canada grazed lightly over the story;¹ Lockett has now produced the work that, at last, looks in appropriate detail at this period in Cook's life and career.

Lockett is an ex-Briton who lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and benefits from being a highly experienced mariner as well as an award-winning writer. But it is in the command of detail and a capacity to weave together many threads of the Cook story into a coherent picture that Lockett most approaches the standards of leading modern Cook scholars like John Robson.² If ever a work was produced that demonstrates with clarity, pragmatic explanation, and unassailable detail the formative character of Cook's relationship with Canada, this one does.

In a subtitle Lockett describes his work "the adventurer and map maker's formative years", and he is right in doing so, for beyond the classroom of the North Sea collier fleet it was Cook's North American career that transformed him into the man capable of the destiny that awaited him in the Pacific. That Lockett lives in, and knows intimately, the storied Nova Scotian seaport that Cook knew more than any other save his home port of Whitby, is somehow appropriate. It is evident that Lockett knows intimately not only the waters that Cook sailed, but also the effect of the very shores where his skills coalesced into extraordinary competence.

Lockett has divided the book into seven major chapters that follow a logical and traditional form, that of a linear timeline. A well-reasoned introduction leads into the chapter titled "Before The Mast", which deals with Cook's early life and naval career. Well-trodden ground indeed, but Lockett knows his subject and makes extensive use of Cook's professional journals as he traces his life from scrambling up Roseberry Topping to sailing as Master in Pembroke for Nova Scotia in 1758. Unique to Lockett's narrative, however, is his insertion of conversational asides on technical aspects of the seamanship challenges Cook faced, and the other problems he faced, both natural and human. In doing so he paints a fuller picture of Cook's professional development before joining the Navy that goes beyond even the hallowed paragraphs of Beaglehole, and arguably it only could have been done by a seaman of Lockett's level of experience.

In the next chapter, "The Pestilence Of The Sea", Lockett enters into a detailed examination of that great bane of 18th Century offshore navigation, scurvy, taking as his departure point Pembroke's inability to join the assault on Louisbourg due to the impact of scurvy on her ship's company. Again, Lockett brings detailed and substantiated research into play by giving an overview not only of the nature of the disease and efforts to combat it, but the context of nutrition at sea. The remainder of the chapter gives an unremarkable account of the ship's participation in the later aspects of the successful siege, but then sets the stage, as most biographers of Cook do, for the moment of meeting between Cook and Samuel Holland on the beach at Kennington Cove: the chance encounter that would set Cook on the path to extraordinary achievement.

Lockett's following chapter, simply titled "Pembroke", is a detailed account of the siege of the Fortress of Louisbourg and its consequences, including the meeting with Holland. Where Lockett's commendable research shows again is in his ability to maintain a simultaneous overview of the course of larger events (the fall of the fortress, the despatch of naval forces to harry French settlements in the Gulf of St Lawrence, the "wintering over", and the preparations for the ascent of the river in 1759 to take Quebec) while maintaining that "chat across the chart table" on the practical seamanship problems faced by Pembroke and other ships of the fleet. Lockett has been to The National Archives in Kew, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and the chart repositories, and so is able to discuss in pleasing detail the process whereby Cook came to draw and produce his first chart, of Gaspe harbour.

The subsequent chapter, "Northumberland" (Cook's next ship) is a relatively straightforward recital of the main events of the next three years (when Cook came to know Halifax intimately). Lockett uses it for a clear and engrossing discussion of the art of navigation as it was practiced in Cook's day, which adds immeasurably to the reader's understanding of the intellectual challenges Cook faced, in addition to workaday seamanship. The chapter ends with Lockett raising the question of why Cook drafted a plan for Halifax's 1759 Navy Yard, and this opens the way for the next chapter, a detailed discussion of Halifax history and that of its unmatched harbour, with Cook's activities woven as before in amongst the discussions of anchor bearings and careening difficulties.

Lockett then turns his attention to, as he terms it, "The Great Newfoundland Survey", where he describes Cook's activities in the years 1764-67 on the Newfoundland coast, not so much as a logbook of each day's work, but as an overview discussion of Cook's continuing evolution as a chartmaker and surveyor. The successful observation of an eclipse from an islet near present-day Burgeo, Newfoundland, cemented Cook's record of achievement in relevant skills for far-flung navigation and exploration, should anyone have noticed; and the Admiralty did.

The final chapter, before several intriguing appendices on topics such as chart publication and the extraordinary number of "James Cooks" serving in the Royal Navy at the same time, is perhaps the best piece of writing in the book. As it discusses "James Cook The Explorer" it weaves Lockett's exhaustive and well-explained knowledge of navigation, astronomy and chartmaking seamlessly into an outline of the main points of Cook's Pacific voyages, explaining not so much what Cook achieved but how he was able to master a complex and imperfect science with such competence. In doing so Lockett gives us the greatest gift of the book, which is an unpretentious, satisfying and full-coloured image of Cook the navigational technician and master seaman; a welcome counterpoint to ruminations on his character and motivations. Lockett's excellent, readable work belongs on the shelf alongside Beaglehole, Robson, and others who have led the way in illuminating the life and achievements of this extraordinary Yorkshire navigator.

Reviewer: Victor Suthren

References

1. Suthren, Victor. To Go Upon Discovery: James Cook and Canada, from 1758 to 1779. Dundurn Press. 2000. ISBN 1-55002-327-6.
2. Robson, John. Captain Cook's War and Peace: The Royal Navy years, 1755-1768. Seaforth Publishing. 2009. ISBN 978-1-84832-033-8.

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 40, volume 34, number 2 (2011).

This book left me shaking my head in disbelief after reading so many examples of Man's inhumanity to Man. I felt embarrassed to be a member of the western society whose representatives had inflicted such pain and suffering on Pacific Islanders for so long.

But let me begin at the beginning. The book is about the history of the Pacific, and in particular the interaction between Islanders and Europeans (and Americans), from the late 18th to the early 20th century. The author is quick to point out that his book is not "the history", nor even "a history". It is merely the author's selection of a number of historical events. It is not clear what factors guided Thomas in choosing the events to relate, although he does admit to having some bias towards those islands with which he is most familiar (i.e. the Marquesas and Fiji).

The author starts with an historical introduction to the peoples of the Pacific and how they gradually migrated out to inhabit all of the islands of the Pacific. The reader might conclude that having stemmed from a common origin, the Islanders (to use the author's terminology) would have had similar cultures. Thomas shows that each island developed its own separate culture, and whilst there were some similarities (as Cook noted), the Pacific was quite a heterogeneous community.

In the course of ten chapters the reader is led through a chronological series of events. These start with missionaries leaving London for Tahiti in 1796, and end with the ill-fated attempt in the 1880s to establish "La Nouvelle France" in islands to the east of New Guinea. In between, there are tales of good intentions by missionaries that gave way to merciless exploitation by traders. Each island appears to have undergone the same sequence of contact with western society, starting with explorers, then traders, followed by missionaries, which preceded colonial powers, and finally the arrival of multinational companies.

The extent and the rate of such western "intrusion" varied from island to island, but in many cases the results were the same. Initial antagonism by the indigenous peoples was followed by violence against the intruders. The latter responded with retribution, and later the expropriation of lands, which only served to restart the cycle. The author does not judge the rights and wrongs of these actions; he sits on the fence, recognising that one culture's terrorist is viewed as a freedom fighter by others.

I wondered if the islanders were ever confused by the mixed messages that were given out by the Europeans? On the one hand there were the missionaries preaching a gospel of forgiveness, and "turning the other cheek"; meanwhile other Europeans were inflicting inhuman vengeance on tribes that was totally disproportionate to any misdemeanour.

The book is subtitled "The Pacific in the age of Empire", and the author gives examples of the involvement of various nations in the Pacific, principally Britain, France and Germany. France was eager to establish a presence in the Pacific and, as late as 1853, annexed New Caledonia. In contrast, Britain's approach seems to have been more bureaucratic. Islands were only annexed if they could generate sufficient income to cover the Government's costs of administration.

This is a book written by an academic in a style that I presume was meant for other academics rather than the general public. I learned a great deal from reading it, but found the going hard at times. Some sections are quite laborious, where the author writes in over-long sentences, and uses words that required me to have my dictionary to hand. It is packed with facts, giving dates, places, and the names of those involved in the various incidents, and it is has many useful footnotes that are often more than just bibliographic references.

I was disappointed to find that the book rarely gave any voice to the various island races. In most cases it is because there are few records of what the indigenous peoples thought. But this absence did not stop the author from speculating, with the usual caveats of "maybe", "perhaps", and "possibly" being added where necessary. The author's comments reminded me of one of Obeyesekere's arguments against Sahlins, and I wondered whether Thomas regarded his book as being in any way eurocentric?

As for Cook, the captain does merit a mention in some of the early chapters, but the narrative is chiefly concerned with contacts subsequent to Cook's voyages. The author clearly feels that historians have been too preoccupied by Cook. He describes him as being "treated like a superstar to an absurd extent, and as a result has arguably been misunderstood by both worshippers and detractors." And yet, after reading of the many massacres of the Islanders by settlers, traders, and armies, the book reminded me that from the start of Cook's voyaging in 1768 to the time of his death in 1779, only fifteen islanders had lost their lives. Cook's tolerance and humanity towards the islanders that he encountered is only enhanced by the inhumanity of those who followed him.

The 336 page book is well laid out, has copious footnotes and an index. There are 58 illustrations, although these are rarely referred to in the text. There is a map of the Pacific, but it would have been more useful if it had been on a larger scale, and not lost so much in the binding.

Reviewer: Cliff Thornton

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 42, volume 34, number 2 (2011).

Vanessa Smith is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Sydney, with degrees from the Universities of Sydney and Cambridge. Intimate Strangers is part of a series in British Empire studies published by the Cambridge University Press.

The book focuses on an understanding of friendship and cultural exchange recorded in the writings of European visitors to the South Pacific in the later eighteenth century. "Taio" was likely to have been the first word spoken by "Oceanians" to Europeans, and the visitors interpreted it as "friend."

The author explores the many levels of friendship, including the special bond and name exchange that might eventually arise from such associations, as well as the exchange of gifts between Europeans and native peoples. She argues that the significance of taio and its many levels or ramifications was not understood, or was misconstrued, by European visitors. Smith observes that Captain Cook followed Admiralty instructions and "charted the Pacific according to codes of friendship, repeatedly getting it wrong." As examples, Smith cites Cook's name of Savage Island for Niue; the Friendly Islands for Tonga; Friendly Cove in New Zealand, as well as Nootka Sound in Canada. The book's title, Intimate Strangers, supports her conclusions.

Much of the book focuses on Tahiti, with occasional references to other locations. The time span covers approximately 40 years. It begins with Samuel Wallis and Dolphin (1767), Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1769), followed by the voyages of Endeavour (1769-1771), Resolution and Adventure (1772-175), and Resolution and Discovery (1776-1780). She covers the visits by Captain Bligh in Bounty (1788-1789) and Providence (1791-1792). She briefly deals with George Vancouver's visits to Tahiti and Hawaii (1791 and 1792); several Spanish visits (1772-1775); the Russian expedition in 1804; and, finally, the first London Missionary Society visit to the Marquesas (1796-1799). The book's organisation, however, is not strictly chronological.

The first half of the book considers taio relationships in four parts. Part one considers "Crowd Scenes", taio greetings and exchange on ship or on shore. Part two is entitled "Receiving Strangers," an example of which is the implications of Cook's instructions to Endeavour's men upon landing at Tahiti in 1769. The third part is "Calculated Affection," the European tension between intimacy and calculation rather than separation of these concepts by Oceanians. The final section considers "Performance Anxieties", such as Oceanic cultural rituals, sentiment, and authenticity as interpreted by European visitors. The examples represent only a few examples and implications of taio friendship and exchange explored by the author.

Professor Smith structures the second half of her book as case studies, tracing the voyages from Tahiti to France or England by Oceanians, as well as the travels of Captain Bligh to Tahiti, and visits by representatives of the London Missionary Society to the Marquesas. The author entitles these chapters "Fellow Traveling" (e.g., Tupaia or Omai), "Ruinous Friendships," and "Prizeable Companions. An easily recognizable example of a "ruinous friendship" concerns Captain Bligh, Bounty mutineers, and Oceanians.

The author does not study the travels by Oceanians to Lima, Peru. I found this to be curious since, while Peru is not part of Europe, it was the location of the second most important Spanish Viceroyalty, and Lima represented an important outpost of Spanish culture and administration in the Americas.

Smith asks why was it important for European visitors to be understood or accepted as "friends". She finds a purely utilitarian, calculated motive: to receive much needed foodstuffs and supplies, and to explore the broader future economic commercial considerations, or to meet the visitors' imperial world view. The deeper significance of "friend-ship" was rarely understood, or was misconstrued, by the visitors. The other implications included the bond relationship resulting in the exchange of names, with even deeper familial or interpersonal and property relationships. The understandings of the European visitors was often more superficial, or was translated into European concepts of social class.

The author's primary source material consists of the journals of James Cook, Joseph Banks, JR Forster, George Forster, Louis de Bougainville, William Bligh, and others. Cook's writings provide a relatively small amount of material cited, in comparison to references from accounts by Banks, Forster, or Bligh. This slant is not surprising, given the author's focus, and the more detailed observations of Oceanians by those three commentators.

Smith's lengthy bibliography includes several versions of Cook's journals. There are few works by historians, but many by specialists in literary criticism, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy. The author's text is sprinkled with references to Plato, Cicero, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and others, which are used to define the meaning of friendship over time and within a European framework.

It is important to understand that this study reflects post-modern and deconstructionist approaches found in some contemporary academic writings. Post-modernism and deconstructionism are found in many areas of study including philosophy, literary criticism, music, art, history, sociology, linguistics, etc.

Post-modernism questions the existence of objective truth. It suggests that the reality of a written work (e.g., a biography of Captain Cook or a study of his contributions to navigation or geography) is merely a social construct, subject to time and space. Reality, "the facts," even truth, is subjective. Written words tell more about the writer and his/her motivations, than truth or accuracy of an interpretation or event.

Deconstructionism regards any text as suspicious. The approach seeks to break down and dismantle a writer's motivations to show that the conclusions are irreconcilable, contradictory, or insubstantial. This is why great attention is focused on written words, which are often parsed in detail. Professor Smith's book is similar to "post-colonial literary theory" that is found in Currie's book on Cook at Nootka Sound,¹ in that it undertakes to study the meaning of words and a writer's intent, class, sex, sexual orientation, imperial world view, and motivations in order to examine a particular event or series of events.

I found parts of this book to be interesting. Certainly references to taio take on a multi-dimensional significance. The author's account of Captain Cook's death amongst what she terms the "crowd scene" at Kealakekua Bay is a useful adjunct to the more detailed study by Professor Glyn Williams.² Her chapter on Captain Bligh's visits to Tahiti is very interesting. It includes an analysis of his journal entries, the writings of the Bounty's mutineers and their subsequent court martial. Another useful section considers the travels to Paris and London by Oceanians. However, I found a few sections of the book difficult. On occasion, I found the text to be impenetrable. I found the book to be generally well-written but it is not a "page turner."

Toward the end of her book, Vanessa Smith provides a few sentences summarizing her work:

This book has attempted to interrogate the reflexive assumption that contact can only become legible when we assume the professions of friendship disguise their opposite, that friendship is always calculating on other goals. I have analysed something of the long western philosophical tradition in which such suspicion of friendship is embedded. I have shown that Oceanic culture also framed and articulated discourses of friendship, and that the conjunction of these with European values through rough and ready acts of friendship-formation on the beach begged questions of those values. I have attempted to articulate the kinds of European double-think about friendship that were exposed by those encounters, without obscuring the effective register of European investment in friendship. ...I hope to move the notion of cultural observation away from the panoptic and towards the reciprocal, the dialectical and the partial. To see it a little less like either science or sentiment, and more perhaps like taio might have been: a model created between cultures.

This book is not for the casual or general reader or someone without an understanding of the voyages of Captain Cook or other 18th century navigators. It is written by a specialist in language and literature for an audience of other specialists and academics, using a post-modern, deconstructionist focus. The author incorporated an impressive catalogue of material in her cross-cultural, well-documented interpretation of friendship and exchange. It sheds light on a narrow aspect of Captain Cook's voyages and for this reason is useful in an attempt to understand the European visits to, and impact upon, Tahiti and its environs.

References

1. Noel Elizabeth Currie, Constructing Colonial Discourse: Captain Cook at Nootka Sound, Reviewed in Cook's Log, page 43, vol. 34, no. 1 (2011).
2. Glyn Williams, The Death of Captain Cook: A Hero Made and Unmade, Reviewed in Cook's Log, page 18, vol. 21, no. 4 (2008).

Reviewer: James C. Hamilton

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 43, volume 34, number 2 (2011).

This book is the first biography of Tupaia, who, the author contends, is the greatest known Polynesian 18th century navigator. Druett's conclusion is that "The Endeavour voyage had been blessed with the most intelligent and eloquent Polynesian intermediary in the history of European discovery: That Cook's and Banks's Endeavour journals are great travel stories with remarkable insight, destined to be everlastingly popular, is directly due to Tupaia. The story of that voyage should be that of three extraordinary men, not just two, but Cook's moment of malice and the silence that followed have ensured that until very recent times Tupaia has been almost invisible."

Druett's "malice" refers to Cook's unflattering journal entry after Tupaia's death.

The author's book is organized into 18 chapters beginning with a very interesting description of Tupaia's early life and Polynesian navigation. The son of a Raiatean chief, he was destined for great things, including the best education, and to be a priest. Druett writes convincingly about Tupaia's navigational training, eventually ranking him as a master navigator. This included developing a complex mental navigational map, with knowledge of steering directions, weather, navigation by stars, and the sea: currents, ocean swells, winds, reflections of distant lagoons on the clouds, and flight patterns of birds. Tupaia presented an imposing appearance: handsome, tall, straight, dressing in flowing white robes, a high priest. Druett writes, "If Tupaia became haughty and arrogant later, it was because life made him that way."

Tupaia departed Raiatea when he lost his lands and position as a result of warfare by men from Bora-Bora. He then arrived on Tahiti, became the favored lover of, and advisor to, Queen Purea. Druett describes Tupaia as "the Machiavelli of Tahiti: not only did he greatly influence the policies at home, but he was an advisor in dealings with great warrior chiefs." Then the first European visitors arrived: Wallis in 1767, Bougainville in 1768 and Captain Cook in 1769.

Although the book is a biography of Tupaia, it is also a general narrative of the visitors to Polynesia. Tupaia is not always front and center in the narrative. He is viewed through the journal entries or other accounts by visitors, accounts written later by missionaries and others, or oral Polynesian traditions. The text relates the first meetings of the visitors and the Tahitians, the tentative exchanges, the apprehension, occasional violence, and eventual trading, personal relationships that developed, and the likely inevitable crises that arose when two cultures meet for the first times. Tupaia gradually moved from the shadows to a prominent position, along with Purea during Cook's visit.

The last half of the book deals with post-Tahitian events. One of the reasons advanced by the author is that by having Tupaia join Endeavour's voyage from Tahiti, Cook, Banks, and others could rely on a person familiar in dealing with other Polynesians, as well as his navigational knowledge. Tupaia, although apprehensive in leaving Tahiti, desired to return to Raiatea as well as the opportunity to eventually visit England and perhaps secure assistance in recovering his ancestral lands, however unlikely that might be. The author contends that neither Cook nor Banks (who encouraged Tupaia to join the voyage) fully thought through the implications of having him on board. Taiata, Tupaia's "acolyte and foster son," was also to sail with Endeavour.

When Endeavour departed Tahiti 13 July 1769 Tupaia wanted to sail north to visit other Polynesian islands. Cook, however, followed Admiralty instructions to search for the unknown southern continent, and then to proceed to New Zealand. The author acknowledges why Cook followed instructions but suggests that he should have followed Tupaia's advice, and that he later regretted not doing so. Moreover, Captain Cook infrequently sought Tupaia's advice about navigation. In general, Tupaia's navigational skills were either not recognized or went unused. Druett states his ambiguous position in the ship meant that he was essentially alone and friendless.

The author's two chapters on Endeavour's New Zealand circumnavigation are among her most interesting. It is here where Tupaia's value to the First Voyage is evident. Because Tupaia could converse with the Maori, whenever he was present relationships turned out positive. Tupaia, therefore, was not only a navigator but a skilled diplomat. Cook's most positive remarks about Tupaia were noted in New Zealand: "Tupaia always accompanies us in every excursion we make and proves of infinate service." While sailing, Tupaia's mental navigational map was recorded as a European style map by Cook, although the author criticizes Cook because he did not include all the islands identified by the Polynesian navigator.

After departing New Zealand and while encountering the eastern Australian coast, Tupaia developed signs of scurvy. By the time Endeavour struck the Great Barrier Reef, Tupaia was seriously ill. He recovered while Endeavour was careened for repairs, then suffered again from scurvy while sailing to Batavia. A partial recovery occurred but the unhealthy disease-ridden location was dangerous to everyone in Endeavour, including Cook who also fell ill.

The author contends that Tupaia died from scurvy, and that Captain Cook and others did not recognize this situation, ignored Tupaia, or deliberately obscured his illness. Her account of the deaths first of Taiata and then of Tupaia are particularly poignant. The author also suggests that Tupaia may have been affected by other diseases contracted at Batavia, but his system was so weakened by scurvy that he could not recover. Moreover, journal accounts provide varying dates for Tupaia's death, suggesting an effort to disguise the truth. Banks's date is 11 November 1770. Cook did not record Tupaia's death until 26 December, as Endeavour departed Batavia: his entry noted Tupaia's arrogance and unpopularity and that he did not take advice regarding diet and medicine. However, I think it an overstatement to infer that Cook conveniently obscured Tupaia's scurvy in order to achieve the Copley Gold Medal six years later.

Druett identifies another slight to Tupaia's memory in her conclusion that artifacts credited to Banks, once Endeavour returned to England, were originally gifts presented to Tupaia by Polynesians.

Joan Druett's book is very well written and reading it is enjoyable. She provides an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources. Tupaia's Map and his other drawings/paintings are included as illustrations. There are no footnotes. A chapter-by-chapter bibliographical essay at the end of the text identifies source material. Sometimes the text references the journal author cited for a particular matter.

It is a difficult task to write a biography about a person who left no personal papers, journal, or other records. Therefore, what is known about Tupaia is based on the writings or memories of others. At times the author's account or conclusions are conditioned: Tupaia may have been present, he might have suggested, he probably took or advised a particular action. It is understandable why this is necessary in order to write this particular biography but it also at times indicates conclusions based upon reasoned assumptions.

Along with Anne Salmond's recent Aphrodite's Island, Joan Druett's biography of Tupaia is well worth reading to gain an insight into Tahiti and Polynesia as well as Tupaia's contribution to Endeavour. Each reader will need to decide if one, two, or three extraordinary men navigated or directed Endeavour. Clearly, Tupaia's contribution to Cook's First Voyage and his historical visibility is enhanced through this useful biography.

Reviewer: James C. Hamilton

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 40, volume 34, number 3 (2011).

So we have another biography of James Cook. At first glance the book looks impressive. It is thick (nearly 500 pages) with a large section of colour illustrations and fifty pages of endnotes. The publisher is one of the most impeccable American academic bodies with a fine track record, while the author is an academic historian with twenty or so books to his name. So where did it all go wrong?

In dealing with Cook, one man represents both a tremendous benefit and, at the same time, a huge problem. John Cawte Beaglehole lies at the heart of Cook scholarship. His editions of the journals of Cook's three Pacific voyages published by the Hakluyt Society represent some of the foremost historical research of the twentieth century while his magisterial Cook biography, published after Beaglehole's own death remains the definitive work on the explorer. As such, all writers coming after Beaglehole, including this reviewer, draw extensively from his works.

However, Beaglehole did not get everything right, missed some things and his coverage of Cook's life before the Pacific is not nearly as good as the Pacific part. Later writers have also taken Beaglehole to task for some of his interpretations, for example his negative attitude to Johann Reinhold Forster.

Anyone attempting a new biography, therefore, has a daunting task in front of him or her, given Beaglehole has covered most things. What could or should we expect from such a new work? New information for a start not available to earlier writers; and new perspectives or interpretations of existing information assuming a better understanding of past events now exists. So does McLynn offer either of these in his book? Sadly, the answer is a loud no.

As stated above McLynn is the author of many books already. His Wikipedia entry calls him an author and journalist, so he knows how to write, and this book is very readable, flowing along at a merry pace. Wikipedia also lists his previous books including biographies of such diverse people as Charles Edward Stuart, Henry Morton Stanley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Napoleon, Carl Jung and Marcus Aurelius. Cook is the latest in a long line. But that body of work suggests something else: that McLynn is a butterfly writer flitting from subject to subject and that he acquires a superficial knowledge of a subject, writes a book on it and then moves quickly on to his next project.

That this is the case with his Cook book comes across strongly. There is a lack of feel for matters surrounding Cook and there are just far too many errors for anyone who had studied Cook properly. For example Elizabeth Cook's father was Samuel not John Batts while her cousin, not her brother, was a watchmaker. It was Nathaniel Portlock, not Porlock, on the Third Voyage and James, not William, Patten who saved Cook's life on the Second Voyage (and there are many more of these mistakes). One or two errors could be explained away by poor proof reading, but there are just too many for this excuse to hold.

Beaglehole is least successful when covering Cook's early life and McLynn is equally sketchy over this period. He manages to introduce several unproven anecdotes, including the South Seas Shilling story at Staithes, before usually dismissing them as being without substance. He even suggests Thomas Skottowe may have been Cook's real father! And an incident at Quebec that happened to Thomas Bissett (nearly being captured by North American Indians while surveying in a small boat) is applied incorrectly to Cook.

Chapter 2 begins on page 18 with a reproduction of a chart of Halifax Harbour by James Cook. Unfortunately for McLynn, the chart is by a different James Cook. Proper research would have revealed to him that three James Cooks operated as Royal Navy masters in Nova Scotia in the 1760s and all drew charts. Similarly, the first illustration in the book, opposite page 172, purports to be the first portrait of James Cook dated 1759. Now, the three accepted portraits of Cook by Dance, Webber and Hodges do not resemble each other very much but this portrait (allowing for it being about 13 years earlier) looks nothing like any of them. It would be interesting to know on what evidence this portrait can be said to be of Cook.

McLynn can write, but I find it somewhat pretentious that he litters his text with so many foreign phrases; examples, including via dolorosa, coup de theatre, fidus Achates, bien pensant and coup de foudre, crop up regularly. Linked to that he adds accents to French names (La Pérouse) but largely ignores them in Pacific words so that Hawai`i appears as Hawaii and M?ori appears as Maori (M?ori is also a plural so there is no need to put M?oris). Given that we no longer put Otaheiti for Tahiti it seems strange that Omai continues to appear when the man's name was Mai. McLynn also likes throwing in long or obscure words such as fuliginous (dusky), anfractuous (winding or circuitous) and nugatory (futile or worthless). They add little or nothing to the text.

McLynn proceeds to criticise Cook for not understanding the complexities of Tahitian society. One of the pluses of the book is that McLynn does provide an explanation of that society, but he is able to do so with two hundred years' hindsight. Sadly, he does not give similar backgrounds to Tongan and M?ori society, which were equally complex to the outsider. Cook was no anthropologist, so to expect him to grasp these matters in a matter of a few weeks and with the added problem of not being able to freely converse because of language is unrealistic.

Having conducted myself some research on James Wolfe, the "victor" at Quebec in 1759, I do not pretend to be a particular admirer of the general. McLynn, though, positively detests the man and every mention is accompanied by a vicious put down. On the other hand, Cook is compared several times with the explorer of Africa, Henry Stanley, whom McLynn obviously admires. The following strange comment occurs on page 1: "In both men the early years and subsequent trial of surviving the snobbery of their 'betters' left a legacy of subterranean rage, more easily visible from an early age with Stanley, but in Cook's case slowly germinating with ultimately fatal results."

To my mind, McLynn could not be more wrong in understanding Cook, and does little in the book to substantiate his statement. To use a twentieth century expression, Cook was a working class tory. He accepted how society was, even taking comfort from it, and would have been appalled by later events like the French Revolution had he lived to witness them. He believed in hard work and, through it, the possibility of some advancement. His ultimate downfall owed nothing to a "subterranean rage" about class. This piece from McLynn sets a tone for the book which should make the reader wary of what is to follow. Other throw away assessments appear.

Throughout the book, McLynn dwells upon gales and also 100-foot waves. Indeed, 100-foot waves warrant a separate appendix. Ships' logs of the period dutifully recorded the weather so every wind or calm was mentioned. However, this was long before Beaufort had developed his terminology for different winds and Cook and others used gale for any moderate to strong wind. Anyway, for Cook storms were a fact of life and represented one of the many risks of going to sea.

Ian Boreham, when asking me to review this book, said that if I did not like it (and, by now, you have probably detected that I do not) I needed to recommend another biography and that I could not nominate Beaglehole.

That was a difficult request, and my suggestion is not really a biography in the usual sense. However, John Gascoigne's book, Captain Cook: voyager between worlds¹ is a must, providing, as it does, a fresh insight into assessing and understanding Cook's achievements. And, if you have any money left, then grab a copy of James Cook and the exploration of the Pacific,² the extended catalogue of the exhibition that has been touring Europe lately. Some of the accompanying text is poor but the illustrations are wonderful and help bring the voyages to life.

References

1. Gascoigne, John. Captain Cook: voyager between worlds. Continuum Books, 2007. Reviewed in Cook's Log, page 43, vol. 30, no. 4 (2007).
2. James Cook and the Exploration of the Pacific. Edited by H. E. Bödeker, Chr. Feest, B. Hauser-Schäublin, R. Joppien, A. L. Kaeppler, G. Krüger. Thames and Hudson. 2009. Also published in German and French. Reviewed in Cook's Log, page 45, vol. 33, no. 1 (2010).

Reviewer: John Robson

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 42, volume 34, number 3 (2011).

Sailing the world's oceans, waves once plied by Captain Cook, may be the dream or even the fantasy of some CCS members. Bill Finnis and his wife accomplished that feat during a six year trek in their 12 ton Hillyard, Didycoy, covering seas traveled by Cook during his voyages, particularly in the Pacific Ocean. The author states this book is a narrative of Cook's life from a sailor's point of view. The author's familiarity with sailing and his observations about oceanic currents, winds, sailing techniques, and the dangers inherent with sailing close to shore for purposes of observation as well as difficulties in piloting craft through passages among numerous and sometimes treacherous coral reefs of Pacific islands bring useful perspectives to Cook's voyages of exploration.

The book is organized into 23 chapters that provide a chronological approach to Cook's life. An introductory chapter covers Pacific exploration from Magellan to Cook, although it does not include several of Cook's contemporaries (e.g. la Pérouse, du Frense, Crozet, or Kerguelen) whose voyages mirror some portions of Cook's travels. The early Whitby collier and Royal Navy years are covered briefly with greater emphasis allocated to the three voyages. The text contains some of the author's photographs of Pacific Islands or other points of interest, reproductions of Cook portraits as well as paintings by Sydney Parkinson, William Hodges, and John Webber. Charts of Cook's route among Pacific Islands, a useful graphic of prevailing Pacific winds, and other drawings are interspersed throughout the text.

I acquired this book especially because of its subtitle, squot;Seaman and Scientist," since I am interested in Cook's journals as sources for scientific information. Finnis provides numerous examples of Cook's abilities as a seaman during his first years in the Royal Navy and then as navigator in charge of the three voyages. For example, Finnis points out that during the First Voyage, Banks and others wanted Cook to sail well into inlets or bays to seek out naturalist phenomena rather than take the much smaller cutters for exploration. Cook cautioned that, as ship's master with broader responsibilities for safety, he knew the prevailing winds might prevent the ship from safely sailing out of newly discovered New Zealand or Australian inlets. The author's explanation of sailing techniques and principles well serve the reader in such instances. He also advises readers on seasonal variations while sailing in the Pacific as well as other similar insights.

The author's enthusiasm for sailing and Captain Cook is clearly shown in the chapter covering Endeavour's 1770 encounter in with the Great Barrier Reef. Finnis recounts experiences from his 18 month sail along the reef in Didycoy. He provides considerable interpretation regarding actions by Cook and company to break Endeavour free from the Reef, repair the ship, and pilot the ship away from the Queensland coast, through the Reef, and into the open ocean. Other examples of Cook's navigational skills include overcoming obstacles such as coral reefs during the return to Tahiti in 1773, those approaching Owharre Lagoon at Huahine, and in Vaitahu Bay at Tahu Ata, one of the Marquesas Islands.

With regard to science, the 1769 Transit of Venus is covered in a few paragraphs that provide useful explanation and graphics regarding the purposes of the transit's observation. However, in covering the three voyages, the author's observations or conclusions regarding the work of Sir Joseph Banks, Daniel Solander, J.R. Forster, George Forster, and Anders Sparrman are often very general in nature. The scientists appear in the book mostly as minor characters, their activities noted, as are a few of their occasional conflicts with Cook. While the book is a life of Captain Cook, the contribution of the "scientific parties" contributed much to our understanding of the First and Second Voyages.

The problem of accurately determining longitude and the use of the chronometer by sailors are well- explained by the author, drawing information from Dava Sobel's book, Longitude. For example, Cook's ability to pinpoint longitude is compared to less accurate charts prepared by Bougainville, Cook's French contemporary, in sailing among the islands of the New Hebrides.

Cook's efforts to prevent scurvy, as well as other steps to improve the health of sailors during long sea voyages, are covered in portions of several chapters. The book chronicles Cook's methods and the failure of these to be followed by Captain Furneaux in Adventure. The author suggests that Cook clearly and definitively understood anti-scorbutic foods were the key to prevent scurvy. Other studies of scurvy emphasize Cook's experiments with a variety of methods (anti-scorbutic and otherwise). Neither Cook nor the Admiralty was convinced that a single solution, the presence of Vitamin C in the diet, would both prevent and cure scurvy. In other words, Cook's important efforts to prevent scurvy may not have appeared as conclusive to Captain Cook as Finnis appears to assume. Moreover, the cure of scurvy and its prevention were not fully understood until after Cook's death.

The text contains no footnotes or endnotes. The book contains a glossary of nautical terms, a bibliography, and an index. The index is not comprehensive. The various graphics are useful to the reader in recounting Cook's Pacific travels. The bibliography contains approximately three dozen mostly secondary sources, including Beaglehole's Life of Captain James Cook.

The only primary sources are the Beaglehole editions of Cook's journals and the journal of Joseph Gilbert (Master, Resolution, Second Voyage). The journals or accounts by Banks, J.R. Forster and George Forster are not cited in the bibliography suggesting they were not utilized by the author. These accounts might have been occasionally referenced in a book that emphasized the scientific aspects of Cook's voyages. In terms of total detail, the author provides more information on Cook's seamanship than on scientific activities.

The author accomplishes his purpose in writing a Cook narrative from the point of view of an experienced sailor. This approach to Cook is similar to that taken by Captain Alan Villiers in his book Captain James Cook. This oversize book is rather handsomely produced, well-written and the narrative moves at a reasonable pace. My quibbles with bibliography, footnotes, or the index should not obscure the conclusion that the book is often enjoyable reading and the author's perspectives sailing in the Pacific or elsewhere provide interesting insights for the reader.

This book is useful as an introductory general narrative about Captain Cook for most any reader interested in Cook and navigation.

Reviewer: James C. Hamilton

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 44, volume 34, number 3 (2011).

When James Cook was appointed Surveyor of Newfoundland in April 1763 his surveying activities were in fact part of a large-scale undertaking. Two months earlier the Treaty of Paris had concluded the Seven Years War. France was defeated and Britain had acquired almost all of her territories. Britain also acquired Florida from Spain. The British North American lands of King George III thus covered an area stretching from Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico. A detailed survey, description and mapping of all these newly acquired territories were urgently needed, and ordered.

Between 1764 and 1775 Britain was engaged in one of the largest and most demanding surveying expeditions in her history: the mapping of the Atlantic coastline from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. The work was done by the best men available. New high standards were set confirming Britain's leading role in the scientific world. Most of the maps, accompanied by sailing directions, coastal profiles and descriptions, were later engraved, printed and published as The Atlantic Neptune.¹ This four-volume atlas is generally considered to be the greatest maritime atlas of the 18th century.

The mapping of the Atlantic coast and coastal areas was the work of hundreds of people, ranging from the surveyors and their teams to the military and the imperial authorities, but two names will forever be associated with the Neptune: those of surveyors Joseph Fredrick Wallet Des Barres (1729- 1824) and Samuel Holland (1729-1801).

In Surveyors of Empire Hornsby, professor of Geography and Canadian Studies at the University of Maine, describes the process that eventually led to the compilation of the atlas. The title might suggest that his book deals with surveying, topographical mapping and the world of 18th century engravers, printers and publishers. Of course it does, but it's only in the last chapter that the author focuses on the production and publication of the atlas itself.

Surveyors of Empire is far more than a "making of" book, and it is this quality that makes it such a fascinating work. It thoroughly examines, for instance, the intriguing manner in which science and Empire were intertwined. For surveying and mapmaking the government relied on the army and navy. Maps were essential for the exercise of power and control. They were needed to settle boundaries. In times of unrest and war they were of the utmost importance. Most of the maps were produced between the conclusion of the Seven Years War and the American Revolutionary War. They played a significant role in the establishment of the American Empire and - much sooner than expected - the protection of it. Surveyors of Empire is also, therefore, a story of British imperial power, in a military, political and scientific sense.

In more than 200 pages (introduction, six chapters and epilogue) we follow Holland and Des Barres and their teams. Their personal life is only lightly touched upon; the focus is on their work. The many quotations from the official correspondences (personal journals have not survived) bring their world to life. Much attention is paid to Holland's famous survey and description of Saint John's Island (nowadays Prince Edward Island) and Cape Breton Island and to Des Barres' survey of Nova Scotia.

The book contains not only beautiful maps, details of maps, portraits and paintings, but also many fine explanatory figures showing the movements of the surveyors around the territory. They add greatly to the understanding of what the General Survey was all about, and the magnitude of the whole enterprise.

Hornsby is a master of his subject. A good example is in the fourth chapter "Plans and Descriptions", when he examines the naming of St. John's Island by Samuel Holland. He writes, "Almost like Gulliver towering over Lilliput Holland gazed over his paper island and systematically allocated names to civil divisions, town sites and geographical features. What had been blank spaces on the map became identifiable places".

Hornsby makes interesting comparisons to the way Cook used to name his discoveries: "Cook named features as he encountered them along the coasts... The result was a mixture of names of prominent people and those reflecting the contingencies of the voyage. For every Mount Egmont and Queen Charlotte Bay was a Cloudy Bay and Cape Turn Again... He was never able to step back from the entire landscape and fix a hierarchy of names onto a rank order of physical features. Holland's experience was entirely different. He was not venturing along unknown coasts, assigning names... as he encountered them, but standing in front of an entire survey of Saint John's Island. He could thus apply a rank order of names... in much the same way that he had divided the island into a hierarchy of different-sized spaces." The Board of Trade appears to have given Holland "carte blanche" in assigning names. What follows are about five pages of names of 18th century British Royalty, imperial figures, authorities and benefactors, all explained by the author and put into context. "His systematic practice of naming should be seen as the beginning of the comprehensive British imperial naming of colonial possessions that so flourished in the late 18th and 19th century".

The book has many levels. It is about surveying, and the men of science in and around the field. It describes the emerging of Britain as a global military and scientific power, the interactions between science and empire, the roles of the Board of Trade and of the Admiralty, the chains of command, even the ways of communication between surveyors, their teams and their superiors. Letters sent from Halifax to London, from Louisbourg to Quebec, etc., by ship, small boats and horses. A whole chapter deals with the role of Des Barres and Holland as land proprietors. The book contains such a wealth of information that one can only admire the manner by which the author has approached the subject. Some authors drown in details, but Hornsby knows how to tell a good story. In his style of writing details serve a clear purpose and that is one of the reasons why his book is such a good read.

Studying the life of Samuel Holland for some years now, I was eager to see if Hornsby would come up with new material and fresh insights. He does. The many quotations from Holland's unpublished letters - well hidden in archives and libraries in Canada, the Unites States and England - clearly reveal the major role he played alongside Des Barres in the development of The Atlantic Neptune. I was excited to see some of his General Survey maps to be published for the first time. Despite the great importance of these two people for the development of 18th century surveying and cartography (think only of their introduction of Cook into the professional realm of surveying), both Holland and Des Barres still wait for a full-scale biography.² Hornsby is currently working on a historical atlas of Maine. I suggest an annotated Collected Letters of Holland and/or Des Barres as his next project.

In his introduction the author states that "despite their importance the surveys have largely been overlooked by scholars. In American and British historiographies, the 1760s and 1770s are dominated by the run-up to the American Revolution and Cook's opening of the Pacific, rather than by what was going on during the same years in what is today Eastern Canada".

If that is true, the author has filled that gap. His book is an impressive tribute to The Atlantic Neptune and its creators. The research has been undertaken at the highest level. The three appendices deserve a special mention. They contain a Cartobibliography of the extant manuscripts and charts related to the survey of Holland and Des Barres, Holland's "List of Plans sent to the Government" and a catalogue of the Henry Newton Stevens Collection of The Atlantic Neptune at the National Maritime Museum. The many illustrations and figures make it a treasure for every (Cook) library. Surveyors of Empire is a must read. And a must have.

References

1. The Atlantic Neptune can be viewed online: www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/explore/index.cfm/catagory/90437/
2. Partial biographies include: Uncommon Obdurate: The several careers of J.W.F Des Barres by G.N.D. Evans (1969), which contains 98 pages. The life of Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres by J.C. Webster (1933) has 70 pages. The article "The life and times of Major Samuel Holland" by Willis Chipman (1924) has only 79 pages.

Reviewer: Diederik van Vleuten

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 25, volume 34, number 4 (2011).

Mr Ashton Lever was wealthy enough to develop his interests in natural history and collecting, and so proud that he opened his collection to the public in 1771. Two years later he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. The collection was kept in his house Alkrington Hall, Lancashire, where he conducted tours of "upwards of 1300 glass cases, containing curious subjects" and "a great number of antique Dresses and parts of dresses of our own and other nations". On 26 July 1774 there were 1,040 visitors, so he decided to move the collection to London to make it accessible to a wider public, which he did later that year.

The new home was in Leicester Square, London. Lever opened his new museum in February 1775, calling it Holophusicon, a name he invented to show it embraced all of nature (holo for whole; phusikon for natural). Walls were altered and doors removed to form "a continuous range of rooms divided by arches". To pay the rent, taxes and other expenses, he charged visitors admission to see the thirteen exhibition areas (twelve rooms and the staircase).

After the return of Adventure and then Resolution he acquired material from Captain Cook's Second Voyage and expanded the exhibition areas to include an Otaheite Room, and a Club Room. He was also knighted by George III. Following the death of Cook, he was one of the Royal Society members who ordered a silver commemorative medal.¹ He also purchased many items brought back from Cook's Third Voyage, possibly including those sold by William Bayly.² Lever opened the Sandwich Islands Room as "a continuation of the subjects in the Otaheite Room, being full of curious Indian dresses, idols, ornaments, bows, &c. &c. &c. which express very strongly the character of the people."

This book tells the story of how Sir Ashton Lever's Holophusicon came together, grew, was sold, moved, was auctioned, what was in it and what happened to (many of) the 7,000 lots.

I recommend the reader to start with the Foreword and the Preface for an understanding of why Adrienne Kaeppler's first trip to explore European museums led to a fascination with Ashton Lever and his collection that has lasted for forty years, and why the publication of this book kept being delayed, and is considered by Kaeppler to still be incomplete. She writes "Occasionally I thought I should publish an article or two on my work so far, but I avoided this with the feeling that all the information should be together in one publication."

Unfortunately for Lever, his expenses were greater than his income, despite selling his remaining properties in Manchester, so that by 1783 he was contemplating selling his collection, independently valued at £53,000. He made an unsuccessful appeal to Parliament to buy it for the British Museum, which had been founded only in 1753.³ He then petitioned for, and obtained, an Act of Parliament to allow him "to Dispose of his Museum, as now exhibited at Leicester House, by Way of Chance". By now there were 26,662 specimens, including 1,859 ethnographic items from the Pacific region. Kaeppler points out that most of the latter "could only have come from Cook's voyages".

Despite the lottery tickets being only £1 1s 0d each, only 8,000 were sold "reimbursing Lever £8,400 for his life's work and the dissipation of his fortune". The winning ticket was drawn on 23 March 1786, and the museum went to James Parkinson, a law-stationer, who decided to move it in 1787 to the Rotunda in Albion Street, on the south side of Blackfriars Bridge. He also renamed the Holophusicon. His new name was the Lever Museum. Some people prefer the name the Leverian Museum. Sir Ashton Lever returned to Lancashire, but died the following year.

Parkinson was an enthusiastic owner, who continued to expand the collection. He changed the layout so that the first main room to be entered was now the Sandwich Room: "ornamented on the sides with flaxen mantles from Nootka, or King George's Sound and New Zealand, made by people to whom the use of a loom is totally unknown; above which are the war-clubs, adzes, and paddles of New Caledonia, Otaheite, and the Friendly Islands. The Sandwich room is dedicated to the immortal memory of Captain Cook".

By now the Leverian Museum "was the largest collection open to the public at regular hours. Unlike other contemporary collections, it did not require visitors to be members of the scientific establishment to make use of its contents."

Unfortunately, this part of London was unfashionable and, once again, expenses exceeded income. Parkinson was also unable to sell it to the nation, possibly due to opposition from Sir Joseph Banks, who was a major benefactor to the British Museum. In 1806 the collection was put up for auction.

The auction took place at the museum in six parts. There was so much material that it took 65 days. The 7,879 lots realised £6,642 13s 6d from about 140 purchasers. Some people bought just one or two lots, others bought several hundred specimens. Kaeppler has tracked down twelve annotated copies of the sale catalogue that give "the purchasers' last names, the purchase prices, corrections to the printed entries, drawings of some of the objects, and other useful information." Many copies are now in museums, one of which has been reprinted in facsimile.³ Some copes are in private hands, and one was recently sold.⁴

The descriptions of the lots are insufficiently detailed to make it easy to follow their trail and identify their many different locations today. But Kaeppler decided to try. She "made a master list of the lots... Work then proceeded to identify who these purchasers were, and to associate the individual specimens and artifacts from the lots... Research was carried out in museums, private collections, and libraries in Britain, continental Europe, the United states, New Zealand and Australia to locate specimens and drawings and to illuminate their histories and ties to the Leverian Museum."

Thus ends Chapter One of this book.

Several artists painted many of the items in the collection whilst it was at Leicester House and at the Rotunda. They were used for "scientific works, models for stage properties, and art exhibitions at the Royal Academy. The greatest number was painted by Sarah Stone, including objects from Cook's Second and Third Voyages. Kaeppler has studied the paintings as "most of the objects are painted accurately enough that they can be used to identify the unique objects that they are." Indeed, Kaeppler found them to be "the most important element in the research for this book... Without Sarah Stone's drawings this study would not have been successful." Stone became such a part of the Holophusicon that in 1783 almost 300 of her paintings were displayed in a large room there. "Many of her natural-history paintings, especially those of birds, have great artistic merit, in addition to their usefulness to the study of natural history." Kaeppler emphasises the importance of Stone's work by comparing her depiction of some objects with those of John Webber who, Kaeppler believes, "depicted generalized types, sometimes with distinctive features of individual objects, but seldom with accurate detail... Webber was an artist... Stone was an illustrator".

In a section that I found particularly interesting, Kaeppler examines the four famous paintings of Cook by Webber, Cleveley, Carter and Zoffany, and considers which of the objects depicted were modelled on those in the Leverian Museum.

In chapter three Kaeppler looks at the natural history objects in the Leverian Museum. They included birds from all over the world, many of which "became the type specimens on which subsequent knowledge of these species partly or even wholly depended." Unfortunately, she found it difficult to trace what happened to the birds from Cook's voyages as they were not always so noted in the sale catalogue. However, the largest number is now in the Natural History Museum in Vienna, and they are still studied today.

How did material from Cook's Second Voyage end up with Ashton Lever? Kaeppler tells us that in 1786 Sophie von la Roche, a German visitor to the museum, wrote in her diary that Cook "so much admired this good Ashton's intellect, that he gave him a complete collection of all kinds of South Seas curiosities, which to me seems much vaster even than the one in the British Museum." Lever also purchased items from auctions, such as that in 1776 held by Samuel Jackson, who might have acquired them from George Jackson, carpenter's mate in Resolution, and that in 1779 held by George Humphrey, who "simply went to the ships [Adventure and then Resolution] when they docked and bought whatever he could."

During the Third Voyage Cook collected some items to go to Sir Ashton Lever, even "sending six Birds from the Cape [of Good Hope] to Leicester Fields." After the return of the ships, Lever acquired so much from Elizabeth Cook, "several of the Officers of the voyage, particularly Captain King and Captain Williamson" that in early 1781 Lever was able to declare "he is now in possession of the most capital part of the curiosities brought over by the Resolution and Discovery". Later that year he bought several items from the sale of the collection of David Samwell, surgeon in Discovery.

Chapter four deals primarily with Lever's acquisition of ethnographic objects from Cook's voyages and their subsequent purchasers at the 1806 auction. Until his acquisition of these artifacts, the majority of his collection comprised natural history specimens. What is particularly remarkable is the Kaeppler is able to identify many of the objects collected from the Cook Voyages "Thanks to the journals of the voyages, the recording by Lever of field-collection information, and the depictions by Sarah Stone". Kaeppler's analysis of the sale catalogue of 1806 shows there are "more than 900 artifacts listed individually and sometimes described in detail-nearly one third of these being Hawaiian." Sarah Stone depicted 348 ethnographic objects from the Pacific.

Kaeppler's research shows the "largest and most important group of ethnographic purchases [from the 1806 sale] is now in the Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna".⁵ About 80 lots were purchased comprising about 230 objects. The second largest is that made by John Rowe: 77 lots of 150 objects, of which 75 came from the Cook Voyages. Tracking them down is, for Kaeppler, "the most important discovery of this study" as by the 1960s no one knew the objects were linked to Cook or the Leverian Museum. Only three years after they had been purchased, a museum was built for them in Devon. The story of how Kaeppler made the association, and tracked down what has happened to them since their dispersal at different times over many years, is fascinating and cannot be adequately summarised in this review. It is followed by another about 54 lots of 135 objects purchased in the name Smith by a "Capt. Cook who bought as Smith". This captain lived for a short time in Devon, and his collection was sold by auction in 1813. Next comes the 80 lots purchased by Reverend Vaughan at the Leverian sale. Kaeepler "recognized the ethnographic part of the collection, now in the Royal Albert Museum, Exeter, though the identification of a Tongan club depicted in a Stone sketchbook".

Kaeppler then turns her attention to the mysterious Mr Atkinson, who "bought some of the most important ethnographic artifacts at the sale, including the feather cloak and helmet presented to Captain Cook by Kalani`?pu`u, Chief of the island of Hawai`i" that is now in Te Papa Tongarewa, the Museum of New Zealand.⁶ Kaeppler thinks the purchaser was William Atkinson, the architect of Abbotsford, the home of Sir Walter Scott, and she thinks this house has some items that could be from the Leverian Museum. Kaeppler has included in this book photos of the buildings associated with the stories. The stories continue with intriguing section headings, such as "Hewett, Vancouver and Cook: Detective Work in the British Museum", "Mrs. Higgins, A Lady of Taste from Bedfordshire: Further Detective Work in the British Museum" and "Purchases and Purchasers: Some Lost, Some Found".

Kaeppler devotes the rest of the book (60%) to a "summary biography". of every ethnographic artefact in the museum. Each one starts with the description from the 1806 sale catalogue, other descriptions of the museum, drawings and paintings by Sarah Stone and others of that time. They continue with the various identifiable owners of the object, to the present location, if known. For example, a drum from the Hawaiian Islands displayed at Norwich in 2006 and illustrated and described in Cook's Log,⁷ has the following biography:

209 "... drum, Sandwich Islands"
Purchased by Dick.
In the Museum of Peter Dick, where it was described as "curiously carved with eight grotesque Figures.
Sold at auction of Peter Dick as lot 40 (second day) "most industriously cut out of the solid wood, and very curiously carved with a number of Grotesque Figures supporting it."
Purchased by Tiphook
Cuming Museum, Southwark, London
Acquired by Ken Webster, a London dealer
Exchanged to James Hooper in 1948
Sold at Hooper auction at Christie's in 1977 as lot 272
Purchased by the British Museum
Catalogued in British Museum as 1977.Oc.8.1
Height 29 cm, diameter 16.5 cm

Chapter five is dedicated to the ethnographic items from the Pacific Islands. The areas are Hawai`i, Tahiti, the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, Easter Island, New Zealand, Tonga, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Australia, and those identifiable only as the South Seas.

Chapter six covers North, Central and South America. Of interest to CCS members are the areas Nootka Sound, Prince William Sound, Unalaska and Kamchatka. For Nootka Sound the artefact types include: tongue clubs, stone daggers, masks, rattles and whistles, hats and caps, and cloaks.

The last chapter covers India, Turkey, Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome and ancient Britain, European ceramics and other collectible items.

Christian Feest⁸ is to be congratulated for his part in ensuring this book has been published, with nearly 1,000 photos (most in colour) spread over 300 pages. It is a marvellous account of a fantastic piece of detective work, coupled with tremendous detail of the ethnographic items tracked down or waiting to be found. Adrienne Kaeppler9 says that over the last forty years she has "learned many things about how complicated historic research can be, but also how important and rewarding such research is". I am delighted to be able reap the benefits by studying this book without undertaking the huge effort involved. Having finished this review, I'm off to read the book again.

References

1. Cook's Log, page 20, vol. 32, no. 2 (2009).
2. Cook's Log, page 24, vol. 28, no. 2 (2005).
3. Leverian Museum: A companion to the museum MDCCXC. The sale catalogue of the entire collection 1806. A facsimile reprint of the above two rare volumes, the sale catalogue with manuscript annotations, prices, and buyers' names. Harmer Johnson & John Hewett. 1979
4. Cook's Log, page 44, vol. 30, no. 1 (2007).
5. Cook's Log, page 47, vol. 33, no. 3 (2010).
6. Cook's Log, page 30, vol. 34, no. 3 (2011).
7. Cook's Log, page 18 and 42, vol. 29, no. 2 (2006).
8. Cook's Log, page 48, vol. 33, no. 2 (2010).
9. Cook's Log, page 48, vol. 32, no. 4 (2009).

Reviewer: Ian Boreham

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 27, volume 34, number 4 (2011).

I wish this book had been published a few years earlier, as it would have been most useful in preparing for my recent book on Cook's time in Eastern Canada and Newfoundland.¹ J.S. McLennan's work² was a major source for me, but this new title renders it, and all other titles, largely redundant.

This book is by Hugh Boscawen, a direct descendant of Admiral Sir Edward Boscawen who led the British fleet during the siege of Louisbourg in 1758. He has assembled a wealth of information, and describes in detail all the operations of the three month long siege. The book covers events that were taking place on both the British and French sides during the campaign.

Louisbourg is strategically situated on the east coast of Cape Breton Island (known as Île Royale in early 1758), and commands the southern entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence (and hence access to Quebec and Montreal) as well as being close to the fishing resources of the Grand Banks, southeast of Newfoundland. Control of Louisbourg, therefore, was crucial to the control of Canada, both politically and economically. The settlement was founded after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 when France had to evacuate its settlement at Placentia in Newfoundland. Placentia's inhabitants were evacuated to form the nucleus of the future Louisbourg.

North American forces captured Louisbourg for the British in 1745 during the War of Austrian Succession, only for it to be returned to France under the terms of the peace Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 (much to the disgust of the people of New England). To counter the French presence at Louisbourg, Britain then decided in 1749 to build its own fortified port on the Nova Scotia coast. The site chosen was on Chebucto Bay and became the port of Halifax.

Hostilities commenced once more in the mid-1750s with the outbreak of the Seven Years War. The British realised they needed to capture and secure Louisbourg before they could proceed up the St. Lawrence to Quebec and beyond, so their fleet attempted a blockade of Louisbourg during 1757. It was a failure as French ships managed to regularly slip by. It was only in 1758 that Britain launched a concerted attack on French interests in North America. In Britain, William Pitt had become Secretary of State for the Southern Department and, as such, controlled foreign policy. While other European powers fought each other, Pitt concentrated his efforts overseas, and French Canada was his prime target. In 1758 he despatched a joint naval and military force, beginning with an attack on Louisbourg.

Boscawen shows how the British success came through the close working co-operation between the army and navy. The navy, under Boscawen, transported the army and affected a blockade of the settlement while the army, under Major General Sir Jeffery Amherst, undertook the actual siege and capture of the fort. Luck played a part in allowing the British force, led by James Wolfe, ashore in Gabarus Bay but Wolfe, as he would a year later at Quebec, seized the opportunity and gradually pummelled the French into submission.

Cook fans may be disappointed at the lack of reference to him in the book. However, HMS Pembroke, Captain John Simcoe and Cook only played a peripheral role in this campaign, spending most of their time as part of the offshore blockade. Cook's meeting with Samuel Holland (described so well by Diederik van Vleuten³) is mentioned in passing.

References

1. Robson, John. Captain Cook's War and Peace: The Royal Navy years, 1755-1768. Seaforth Publishing. 2009.
   Reviewed in Cook's Log, page 9, vol. 32, no. 4 (2009).
2. McLennan, J. S. Louisbourg From Its Foundation To Its Fall. Macmillan & Co. Ltd. 1918.
3. Cook's Log, page 5, vol. 32, no. 4 (2009).

Reviewer: John Robson

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 26, volume 35, number 1 (2012).

I enjoyed this book. It is a cracking good story for sailors about accomplishing, but only just, a voyage that was the first half of the first voyage of Resolution aboard a schooner of significant size (greater in length than the Cook's Grenville). The author and skipper is a tough, resilient sailor with exceptional navigational skills, and his ambition was to replicate the Resolution voyage of 1776 in the bicentennial year of 1976.

Gordon Cook is certainly worthy of his namesake. His tenacity and dogged determination to prosecute the voyage after a rogue wave of incredible size had smashed over the vessel, seriously damaging, almost beyond repair, her rigging and the starboard side of the deck and hull, is proof of his special qualities.

His eventual accomplishment of the re-enactment of the Resolution voyage after his reconstruction of the vessel in Australia was also remarkable, and I look forward to reading the second half of the story of Schooner to the Southern Oceans.

My only minor reservations about the project are in the choice of vessel. At 70 feet long with considerable freeboard and high square stern she must have presented enormous resistance to the power of the following seas, particularly to an east bound ship in the southern ocean. Being crewed only by four adults in that part of the voyage, one unreliable, one a wife and mother responsible for two small children, and all subjected to a watch system aboard a vessel without self-steering, there must have been a heavy burden on everyone.

However they were not to know that the weather in the Southern Ocean was to be the worst for many years. Sailors understand that one needs luck as well as skill and knowledge, understanding that out there on the most remote parts of the oceans one must be utterly self-reliant.

On a personal note, when I followed the Endeavour voyage to coincide with the 1988 Australian Bicentennial Celebrations,¹ it was for this reason that I chose to build a steel yacht, with a similar long keel, plus clear decks, and to sail her well crewed, and with a simple single mast and cutter rig.

References

1. See Cook's Log, page 803, vol. 14, no. 4 (1991) and page 32, vol. 33, no. 1 (2010).

Reviewer: John Paul

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 27, volume 35, number 1 (2012).

This book is a well-written, detailed, and very readable biography of Captain Bligh’s rather remarkable career, especially if an impression of Bligh is based only upon "Hollywood history," vignettes associated with the Bounty mutiny.

As I read the book, I recalled my impressions of Captain Bligh. Yes, Bligh presented a volcanic temper. In modern terms, he lacked human relations skills. But, there is far more to Bligh’s life than Charles Laughton’s grim faced man scowling and glowering at Bounty’s failure to round Cape Horn, and the outbursts of his disagreeable temper. The 1935 film version contrasts this image with Clark Gable’s ever-charming Fletcher Christian or scenes of Christian and other officers frolicking with lovely Tahitian girls in the surf and on land before the mutiny and Bligh’s open boat journey in the Pacific. Unlike the film, in the real world of the mutineers, all does not end happily before or after their arrival at Pitcairn Island. Other film portrayals differ in degree but not in overall approach: bad Mr. Bligh, good Mr. Christian.

William Bligh (1754-1817) is of considerable interest to Captain Cook enthusiasts for at least three reasons:

1. Bligh was Master in Resolution during the Third Voyage and was, therefore, present at Kealakekua Bay.
2. Bligh considered Captain Cook as his mentor, believing he modeled his career upon what Cook would have done under similar circumstances.
3. Both Cook and Bligh were excellent surveyors and cartographers as well as master navigators.

Almost alone among Cook’s junior officers during the Third Voyage, Bligh received no promotion after Resolution and Discovery returned to England in 1780. It is believed that Bligh was sharply critical of the conduct by others at Kealakekua Bay. Bligh believed that Cook was abandoned and left to fend for himself in those fateful hours on the morning of 14 February 1779. When most other officers and crew closed ranks after Cook’s death, Bligh was on the outside. He resented being passed over for promotion and he likely thought others schemed against his welfare and career.

The first two chapters are exclusively centered upon Captain Cook and Bligh, beginning with Cook’s death at Kealakekua Bay, and followed by a long account of Bligh, Cook and the Third Voyage. The biography then takes the reader through Bounty’s breadfruit venture to Tahiti, the extensive interactions with natives, and the deterioration of relationships between Bligh and Bounty’s men.

After Bounty departs with its 1000+ breadfruit plants, the reader encounters the mutiny and its aftermath, including Bligh’s miraculous 4,000 mile voyage in an overloaded open boat, along with 18 others, to Timor. The narrative then recounts the disintegration of relationships among the mutineers at Tahiti, the ill-fated attempt by a few at escape in Pandora, and violence and murder on Pitcairn Island. The balance of Bligh’s career was an effort to complete the breadfruit mission and to prove himself as an able captain, whether in Providence, on other naval assignments, or as Governor of New South Wales.

Bligh was obsessed with "setting the record straight" after the Bounty mutiny. Critical to an understanding of Bligh is his constant effort to prove himself by demonstrating his considerable seamanship. He was a perfectionist, and in matters of seamanship he was usually correct. Bligh was unable to deal constructively with adversity and often with the people he most needed for a successful voyage. He expressed great satisfaction in obtaining breadfruit and other plants for the Caribbean colonies as well as for Banks’s projects at Kew Gardens. He saw this achievement as vindication for his career.

Bligh was an extremely capable seaman as well as a caring and devoted husband and father, the latter revealed in his extensive correspondence with his beloved wife, Elizabeth (Betsy). Salmond includes letters between Bligh and Betsy that provide an insight into their loving relationship. Quite ironically, prior to Bounty’s departure from England, Christian was a family guest at Bligh’s home and bounced the Bligh children on his knees.

In contrast to this positive image, Bligh possessed an ungovernable temper. When he discovered something amiss, Bligh cursed his officers and sailors castigating them as "damned villains, miserable wretches," etc., while flailing his arms about, shouting, and screaming. But these temper tantrums quickly passed and Bligh would then invite the same officers to dinner as if nothing had happened.

Varied opinions and testimony were offered about Bligh by officers and sailors at the various naval proceedings in England regarding the loss of Bounty or other subsequent voyages. On the high seas, Bligh provided great care and attention to the crew’s comfort and followed a detailed antiscorbutic regimen. He was sparing in the application of the lash, even compared to Cook, and especially in comparison to George Vancouver.

Joseph Banks is a link between Captain Cook and Bligh. Banks served as a life-long patron and supporter of Bligh, frequently approaching the Admiralty for Bligh’s advancement. Banks was a leading promoter of Bounty’s breadfruit missions and a defender of Bligh in the aftermath of the mutiny. It was Banks who encouraged the Admiralty to send Bligh back to Tahiti on Providence, just as it was Banks who encouraged Bligh’s ill-fated governorship of New South Wales. Banks is often regarded as an authority on Tahitian culture but Salmond points out that Bligh’s long stay at Tahiti while breadfruit were gathered provided an opportunity to study, interact with, and understand Tahitians on a far deeper level than either Banks or Cook.

As she similarly constructed the narrative for Aphrodite’s Island, Anne Salmond writes in great detail about Tahitian peoples. They are not merely various chiefs or groups of Polynesians in the background of the breadfruit voyages, but flesh and blood persons and families, many of whom recalled Cook with great affection from his visits during all three voyages. The constant almost daily giving of gifts in exchange for supplies, attendance at native festivals, and the misunderstandings and interpretations of actions by natives and visitors permeates the narrative. It is easy for the reader to get a bit lost in the details and personalities of various Tahitians, and the repetitive minutiae of daily cultural exchanges This concentration of detail reflects the author’s knowledge of the people and society of late 18th century Tahiti and is an important contribution to documentation of relationships between Tahitians and their visitors.

Tahitian reverence for Captain Cook initially led to welcoming Captain Bligh. John Webber’s portrait of Cook served as a sacred relic brought by Tahitian chiefs to Bounty or Providence when English ships first appeared offshore. William Bligh and captains of British ships anchored off Tahiti signed their name, ship’s name, and dates on the portrait’s reverse side, connecting them to Cook’s earlier presence. Initially Tahitians regarded Bligh as "Cook’s son," and Bligh led Tahitians to believe that Cook was still alive when Bounty arrived in October 1788. After the Tahitians discovered Cook was dead, Bligh’s reputation suffered among island chiefs and their families. Similarly, Tahitians grew weary and unfriendly toward Christian and the mutineers when Bounty returned to Matavai Bay after the mutiny.

In appraising Bligh, Anne Salmond confirms Bligh’s great navigational abilities. However, she writes that he was "seriously flawed as a commander. Vain and ungenerous, he had a volatile temper and a biting tongue. Unlike his mentor Captain Cook, he lacked charisma or an imposing physical presence; and unlike Charles Clerke, he had no sense of humour. Obtuse to the point of cruelty, he had little empathy, except for his family and a few young protégés, and no gift for the arts of political management." Salmond finds N.A.M. Rodger’s assessment close to the mark: Rodger observed Bligh was "an outstanding seaman with an ungovernable temper and no idea of how to get the best out of his officers, while Fletcher Christian was "an unstable young man who could not stand being shouted at."

Bligh’s tomb (and that of his wife Betsy and two grandchildren) is found at St. Mary’s Lambeth Churchyard, now The Garden Museum, not far from the Bligh’s home at 100 Lambeth Road. The large monument is topped with a sizeable breadfruit. Its inscription recalls the acquisition of plants from Tahiti, and the lengthy career of Bligh, eventually Vice Admiral of the Blue, in the service of England. As you stand in this lovely knot garden with its extensive collection of plantings and look at Bligh’s resting place it is useful to recall both Bligh’s excellence as a navigator and his ungovernable temper that bedeviled this complex personality.

The author is to be congratulated on mastering the material associated with William Bligh’s career. I highly recommend this excellent book with its important connections to Captain James Cook.

The book is organized into 23 chapters and an epilogue. There are chapter footnotes found at the end of the book as well as a bibliography and index. The book contains colour plates and extensive black and while illustrations.

Reviewer: James C. Hamilton

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 26, volume 35, number 2 (2012).