Captain Cook – Cristina Sanders' blog

The Adventures of Tupaia – book review

The Adventures of Tupaia, by Courtney Sina Meredith and Mat Tait

Tupaia has shot to fame these last months as the pin-up boy of our history. Neither Māori nor Pakeha, the Tahitian ‘ariori (priest) and navigator who travelled with Cook bridged two very different cultures in 1769. If we approach the study of Aotearoa/New Zealand history through his eyes we develop a fresh understanding of our first encounters.

Cook’s Cook – book review

Cook’s Cook, by Gavin Bishop

Cook’s Cook is a picture book story of James Cook’s journey on the Endeavour, told through the eyes of his one-handed cook.

I’ve just come off a voyage on the replica Endeavour, sleeping in a hammock next to the stove where much of the action in this book takes place, so it all seems very real to me. We heard the stories of the salted meat being dragged behind the boat to wash off the salt and soften the meat, and we checked the barrels for remnants of rum. There was none. It had been licked clean by sailors long ago. Cook’s men subsisted on a diet of poorly packed supplies from home—by today’s standards—and things they scavenged on the way. Gavin Bishop has uncovered recipes that filled bellies. Along with the inevitable pease pudding hot or cold, treats included:

Hammocks & Futtocks

Life on the Endeavour

When Captain Cook set out on the Endeavour he probably worried about provisions, storms at sea, shipwreck, mutiny, navigation, cloud cover during the transit of Venus. Dysentery. Malaria.

Me? I worried about the hammocks. I didn’t know about the futtocks, then.

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