Melbourne: Penguin Australia, 2010 ISBN 9780143204893
The blurb in the front of this book points out that Geoffrey Blainey is "one of Australia's best-known historians." With over 30 books to his name, he has also been one of our most prolific. His academic career initially started in the field of Economic History, but he soon branched out into more general topics, with Mining being a particular interest, before in his late career writing some broad histories such as A Short History of the World, which sold very well.
Sea of Dangers is a return to the more specific, a history of Cook's "discovery" of Australia - mostly. The book is mainly about Cook's first voyage (1768-1761), but Blainey has intertwined the journey of Jean-Francois-Marie de Surville across the Pacific in the Saint Jean-Baptiste with Cook's story. Why has he done this? Because, although Cook was on a scientific mission and de Surville on a trade mission, they shared a similar goal - to find the "missing continent" "Davis Land", which was purported to exist in the South Pacific.
Although the two explorers never met, they were at one stage of their voyages within a few hours of each other, at the Northern tip of New Zealand, an absolutely extraordinary circumstance. Blainey notes that de Surville was also within a few hours of the Australian coast before he turned east to New Zealand: in fact he was so close that the crew could smell land.
So the question needs to be asked - why did de Surville spend so little time investigating new lands? The key is in the purpose of his voyage - to trade. Spurred on by the belief that Davis Land existed, and by stories emanating from the voyage of the Dolphin that Jewish traders from another land were seen at Tahiti, de Surville did not want to land on the coast of Australia, which others had written about as a barren land of no water, gold, or food, and with natives who were hostile and not interested in trade.
In fact de Surville's search for trade ended up severely hampering his voyage. With no incentive to stop for a long time at places he couldn't trade, his crew never had the chance to gather and eat enough fresh food to stave off scurvy and the other ills that beset a ship-bound crew in the Eighteenth Century. On several occasions he barely had enough fit men to crew the ship.
Nor was Cook's crew immune to the effects of scurvy. Despite what we think we know, on his first voyage Cook did not fully understand how to curtail the effects of this disease, and it was only his frequent soujourns ashore that saved much of his crew. In fact Blainey suggests that the holing of the Endeavour on the Great Barrier Reef was in some ways a blessing in disguise, as it enabled his crew enough time on shore eating fresh food to face the rest of the voyage.
Blainey, using the journals of Banks and Cook as prime sources, shows us a Cook that was methodical, usually averse to risk-taking, and willing to indulge his scientists as long as it fitted into his bigger plan. Blainey points out too that it was the scientific outcome of the voyage that was the highlight on the Endeavour's return - there was no real ballyhoo about the "discovery" of a new land. That was because of course Cook did not discover Australia, or New Zealand. What he did do though, and with a remarkable degree of accuracy, is map much of the coastline of both countries (While one could claim he "discovered" much of the East Coast of Australia, he knew it was there before he arrived, just not it's extent).
Blainey carefully describes the interaction of Cook and his crew, and de Surville and his, with the native inhabitants of the lands they entered. The mutual misunderstanding is well mapped out in the text, highlighting the effect that over 100 extra mouths to feed had on the locals. This quite often led to friction and occasionally conflict. Blainey notes the difference in attitude to the Europeans between the Maori and the Aboriginals, with the former keen to barter or to steal for European items, especially steel and iron, and the latter not interested at all.
Cook came home to praise and promotion, but what happened to de Surville? An altogether sorrier tale, after sailing the Pacific and not finding the hoped-for lost continent, de Surville sailed to South America, only to drown trying to enter Chilca Harbour. His crew were then kept captive by the Spanish for three years before getting home to France, with little to show for their time away. Unlike Cook, de Surville was not an assiduous chart-maker, so his voyage added little to the knowledge of the Pacific, and his name has faded into obscurity.
Cook also met his end in the Pacific, but by that time he was already famous, and has gone on to greater glory. While he never saw himself as the discoverer of Australia, it suited the English to paint him that way, thus obscuring his true genius as a map-maker and leader of men.
Sea of Dangers does not really break any new ground, and the premise that Cook and de Surville were rivals in any real sense of the word is false (a publisher's gambit perhaps?), but as a wonderfully readable account of Cook's first voyage, and an interesting one of de Surville's, this book is worth the effort.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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