Known twentieth century books
Eighteenth century books
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Sydney Parkinson: Artist of Cook's Endeavour Voyage Carr, D. J. 1983
The Golden Haze; with Captain Cook in the South Pacific Cameron, Roderick. 1964
Land from the Masthead; a circumnavigation of New Zealand in the wake of Captain Cook Houghton, Philip. 1968
Far as a Man may go; Captain Cook's New Zealand Maddock, Shirley and Whyte, Don. 1969
Voyages to Paradise; exploring in the wake of Captain Cook Gray, William R. 1981
Captain Cook Gould, Rupert T. 1978
In the wake of Captain Cook: The life and times of Captain Charles Clerke, R.N. 1741-79 Cowley, Gordon and Deacon, Les. 1997
An Introduction to Thematic Collecting Morris, Margaret. 1998
The Archaeology of East Marton: Captain Cook's Birthplace Rowe, Peter. 1998
Sydney Parkinson. Published by Caliban Books, 1984.
This is a facsimile production of the 1784 edition of the Journal.
Stanfield Parkinson's preface to the original edition is included, and is followed by a lengthy 'Explanatory Preface' by John Fothergill, who presented the other and concluding side of the argument over the circumstances surrounding the original publication.
Twenty seven plates of Parkinson's drawings with attributions to various engravers are included. Parkinson's attentive ear supplies vocabularies for Tahiti, New Zealand, Savu and New Holland, and calculations for the Transit of Venus (2 - 3 June 1769).
The text is most readable and makes a superb supplement to Cook's more nautical account. And the whole book makes a very useful addition to a Cook library of accounts of the First Voyage.
Reviewer: Paul Capper
Originally published in Cook's Log, page 410, volume 9, number 1 (1986).
Edited by D.J. Carr. Published by Croom Helm with the British Museum (Natural History), 1983.
This is a de-luxe book, and sufficient superlatives and colourful adjectives cannot be found to describe it.
Everything is included in this large volume in the way of explanatory texts which accompany over 250 plates, nearly all of them executed by Parkinson as original drawings and paintings. The chapters correspond to the main areas in which discoveries were made. Much of the original material is still available for inspection at the British Museum (Natural History). A substantial proportion of the plates are in full colour, and included with them is information about the current whereabouts of the original material.
Expensive? Yes. But well worth saving up for a feat of illustration; a treasure to keep that will delight all those interested in the Natural History background of the First Voyage.
Reviewer: Paul Capper
Originally published in Cook's Log, page 410, volume 9, number 1 (1986).
Roderick Cameron. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1964.
Roderick Cameron visited Tahiti, Easter Island, Tonga, the Marquesas, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia and Hawaii between 1959 and 1961. It was a matter of flying to the main island of each archipelago and then arranging his itinerary. For instance to explore the New Hebrides he had to charter a fifty-foot launch, and to visit the Isle of Pines in New Caledonia he hired a Puss Moth.
His book devotes a chapter to each area, summarising what happened there when Cook arrived and then when Cameron arrived. It is more about Cook than Cameron.
Reviewer: Ian Boreham
Originally published in Cook's Log, page 444, volume 9, number 2 (1986).
Philip Houghton. Hodder and Stoughton, 1968.
Philip Houghton circumnavigated New Zealand in 1966-67 taking five months. He bought the only suitable vessel he could find, a Bermudan cutter forty foot in length, and renamed her Murihiku (the Maori name for the southern end of South Island). A friend was aghast at the idea of him changing the boat's name but quietened once it was pointed out to him that even the Endeavour had once had another name.
This book is more a description of Houghton's voyage with references to Cook thrown in than the other way around. There are few illustrations, but it does have a useful index. It is also full of incidents that a yachtsman will understand only too well.
Reviewer: Ian Boreham
Originally published in Cook's Log, page 444, volume 9, number 2 (1986).
Shirley Maddock and Don Whyte. Collins, 1969.
Shirley Maddock and Don Whyte have written a book about Cook's landfalls in New Zealand comparing their present state with what Cook found. It is not a description of one journey that was made, but a serious of travels made over a long period, either on deliberate expeditions to the Cook country or because other reasons took them to relevant places. They were mostly land journeys.
There are lots of illustrations but no index. The text is a more even mix of the modern journey (and the people encountered along the way) and Cook's events.
Reviewer: Ian Boreham
Originally published in Cook's Log, page 444, volume 9, number 2 (1986).
William R. Gray. The National Geographic Society, 1981.
William Gray's book has all the hallmarks of the National Geographic magazine: a chatty style of writing and a profusion of illustrations.
It covers places other books usually ignore, such as Yorkshire and Newfoundland. The interviews that Gray conducted are about Cook rather than modern day problems. Indeed, there is no mention of how Gray got from one place to another, such things are incidental to the story.
Reviewer: Ian Boreham
Originally published in Cook's Log, page 444, volume 9, number 2 (1986).
Rupert T. Gould
"Captain Cook" by Rupert T. Gould was first published in 1935. A new edition and introduction came out in 1978 published by Duckworth, London; it is distributed in the USA by the Longwood Publishing Group, Dover, New Hampshire.
This small book in 128 pages, with an index, gives a concise chronological account of Cook's life. In editing the 1978 edition Gavin Kennedy notes that almost nothing needed correction in light of Beaglehole's outstanding 40 years of study that culminated in the biography "The Life of Captain James Cook".
Gould served in the Royal Navy and the Hydrographic Department of the Admiralty, and was a skilled navy historian, chartmaker and surveyor. He reconstructed the Harrison chronometers in 1933. This background, similar in many respects to that of Cook, gives him a meaningful insight and understanding to Cook.
The biography presents the first realistic and balanced account that acknowledged Cook's faults and flares of bad temper as well as his many virtues as a diligent explorer, navigator and surveyor.
There are six chapters; early years, how the first voyage came about, the first voyage, the second voyage, the last voyage, and Cook's death and after, which give a balanced account of the major phases of Cook's life.
A few charts are provided to illustrate the regions of the globe that Cook accurately charted and where large land areas had previously been speculated to lie. The treatment has an easily readable and concise style that covers nearly all the known significant events.
For the topical stamp collector, who needs a very short and precise history to guide the annotation of a mounted collection, this book provides a great starting point. I used this book as my primary guide to plan and layout my collection.
There are few events not referred to, such as the transit of Mercury that gave an independent fix to the longitude in New Zealand on the first voyage. Norfolk Island, a source of excellent topical stamps, is not included in the list of discovered islands in 1774. Cook is attributed to have visited his parent's Ayton house in 1772, which is now believed not to have been built until 1775.
The description of Cook's death follows the accepted views in 1935 for which new insight has since been provided in Gavin Kennedy's "The Death of Captain Cook", published in 1978 (see page 279). These are but minor corrections in this well written account of Cook's life.
Gould has provided an excellent and concise account of Cook's life that corrects many errors in the first Kippis biography and agrees closely with Beaglehole's later definitive biography. The brief and accurate treatment is an excellent guide for the topical stamp collector.
Reviewer: Brian Sandford
Originally published in Cook's Log, page 482, volume 9, number 4 (1986).
By Gordon Cowley and Les Deacon; published by Richard Kay Publications; 1997; ISBN 0-902662-49-X
I think it is a very attractive cover, and got into reading it more easily than I did with the Richard Hough book, Captain James Cook, earlier.
They set the scene well, and one has to remember all readers who know very little of even Cook, but myself I got a bit impatient for the Charles Clerke story. It was a shame MARTON was mis-spelt and likely to be confused with a civil war battlefield perhaps, but one always gets printers errors or readers.
I felt there was quite a precis of Beaglehole, but the sources of any information are bound to be the usual ones.
I think it was a worthy project to compile a book giving more prominence to Clerke's life, and an admirable amount of research, etc., has taken place, and any collector of Cook related material would want a copy. My impression of Clerke is still bound in the Beaglehole and the interpretation shown in the TV series about Cook starring Keith Michell.
If Gordon Cowley is, as I assumed, a descendant of Ambrose Cowley, who circumnavigated the world 1683-1686, named Pepy's Island and claimed the Falkland Islands in the name of the King, it is understandable that he should take a keen interest in the voyages of later explorers, especially Captains Cook and Clerke.
Reviewer: Brenda Paulding
Originally published in Cook's Log, page 1524, volume 21, number 3 (1998).
Number 5 in a series of booklets published by the Royal Mail, London, 1998; ISBN 0-946165-02-5.
If you would like to collect stamps featuring Captain Cook, or any other theme, then Margaret Morris, our President, has written a booklet just for you.
The fifteen pages are packed full of ideas to get you started on this wonderful hobby, written in a simple and enthusiastic style.
Finally, the cover features many items for the Captain Cook theme.
Reviewer: Ian Boreham
Originally published in Cook's Log, page 1524, volume 21, number 3 (1998).
Produced by Peter Rowe, Sites and Monuments Record Officer for The Tees, 1998.
If you want to know more about the results of the archaeological study of Marton described by Cliff Thornton recently [see Cook's Log page 1408, vol. 21, no. 1 (1998)], then you will want to buy this nine page booklet
The study was successful in identifying the plans of the former settlement and revealing the locations of a number of properties through a combination of excavation, survey work and geo-magnetic prospection. Among the illustrations are an extract from the 1804 plan of the area, and an overlay of this plan onto a modern one. There is an explanation of the two separate settlements of East and West Marton, as well as the rise and demise of Marton Lodge and Marton Hall.
Reviewer: Ian Boreham
Originally published in Cook's Log, page 1524, volume 21, number 3 (1998).