In preparing for our New Zealand trip, I’m continuing to read related books, and I’ve enjoyed the crossover of information among them. In this book, published in 2002, Tony Horwitz combines adventure travel with history as he visits many of the countries, ports, islands, and water features that James Cook explored in the mid to late 1700s on his three epic journeys, all of them–in whole or part–in the Southern Pacific. 

Horowitz retells/recounts much of Cook’s original words, ideas, geography, and knowledge through extensive research as well as reading all of Cook’s journals. So as he travels to these same locations 200+ years later, he’s observing the obvious changes, inquiring about Cook’s impact, and offering commentary–sometimes humorous, sometimes a bit hokey–on each place and its people. I was mostly interested in the South Pacific islands of Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, and Tonga. 

Well ahead of his time, Cook speculated that inhabitants of north and south New Zealand had one origin or source since the scattered tribes of the two islands spoke similar dialect that was close to Tahitian (134). Today most scholars agree that the first Polynesians migrated in canoes from Southeast Asia, thus originally from one area of people. This information created a strong crossover Adam Johnson’s The Wayfinder, a Polynesian Odyssey similarly uniting, though also dividing, Māori and other Polynesian tribes that sailed great distances across the Southern Ocean’s islands hundreds or even thousands of years prior to Cook. 

Another interesting crossover occurs between Blue Latitudes and Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides, the latter a retelling of Cook’s third and final voyage. Both writers bring Cook’s journeys alive for the modern day reader by conveying his vast knowledge of navigation, exploration, sailing, geography, and management, along with his mistakes and hubris in interfering with native people and cultures. 

Near the beginning of Horwitz’s book, he describe the ways in which Star Trek’s Captain James Kirk and his Enterprise echo Captain James Cook and his Endeavor. Both captains were farm boys who took to the sea, Cook traveled “farther than any other man had been before,” and Kirk “would boldly go where no man has gone before.” Both set out–at least in theory–to “discover and describe new lands rather than to conquer or convert.”

I’d never thought of that comparison before, but it makes sense and reveals obvious parallels.

I liked Wide Wide Sea more than Blue Latitudes, but together, and along with The Wayfinder, they offer insight into the history and cultures of the South Pacific, from the long-time past to the past to the present. That said, I still have more reading to do.