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Review: Retracing Capt. Cook
By L.D. Meagher (CNN) "Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before"
(CNN) -- It sounds like a pretty sweet assignment -- retrace the voyages of Captain Cook, the 18th-century British explorer who mapped the South Seas. What could be more alluring than tramping around the Pacific Rim, soaking up the sun in Tahiti, Hawaii and other exotic ports of call? The reality doesn't quite match the image, as writer Tony Horwitz learned during his year and a half of island hopping. The chronicle of his voyage, "Blue Latitudes," is less an account of "paradise lost" than of "paradise squandered." More than two centuries after European culture first came in contact with island culture, Horwitz can find only fleeting traces of the unspoiled beauty Cook encountered. Not only have the islands taken a beating -- from colonization, proselytization and commercialization -- so has the reputation of Cook. At the time of his voyages, he was arguably the most famous explorer in the world. Today, the dwindling native populations of the south Pacific see him as the avatar of colonial evil. Descendants of the colonials view him as remote and largely irrelevant. His legacy is as hard to find as a pristine beach. Looking for the man"One of the small ironies of Cook's voyages," Horwitz writes, " is that a man who charted and named more of the world than any other navigator in history has few places of consequence named in his honor. Magellan and Bering were honored with famous straits and seas; Hudson merited a major river and bay. Columbus garnered ten American cities, including the U.S. capital ('Columbia' is a feminized version of 'Columbus'), as well as a national holiday. Cook came away with two glaciers, several remote passages, inlets, and peaks, a tiny island group he barely visited, and a crater on the moon." It says something about the captain that he didn't affix his name to more real estate. After all, his voyages carried him from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic, from the Great Barrier Reef to the Aleutian Islands. Horwitz spends as much time looking for traces of the man as he does looking for the lands he surveyed. Great storytellingNot that the author remained buried among musty documents. Indeed, while the amount of research he did in libraries is evident, what motivates his voyage of discovery is an unbridled sense of fun. His most frequent companion is an old chum on a quest of his own -- for drink and "crumpet" (female companionship). He and Horwitz find a great deal of the former. As for the latter, well, the author is a married man who professes little interest in his buddy's conquests. "Blue Latitudes" is about travel to distant places, but it doesn't promote tourism. Quite the contrary. Its descriptions of South Seas locales are almost uniformly depressing. The story of Horwitz's adventures is a great yarn, but it isn't the sort to make the reader dream of undertaking the same journey. It's always unflinchingly candid, often uproariously funny and sometimes unapologetically poignant. It's a terrific read.
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