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'Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook has Gone Before'
With Tony Horwitz
Author
Thursday, Oct. 3, 2002; 3 p.m. ET
In his new book "Blue Latitudes" author Tony Horwitz retraces the voyages of eighteenth century explorer Captain James Cook. Sailing from the Arctic to the Antarctic, Tahiti to Siberia and beyond Horowitz sets off to relive the captain's journey to better understand the life of Britain's greatest navigator.
Horwitz will be online to discuss Captain Cook, "Blue Latitudes," and his career.
Horwitz was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of the best-selling novel "Confederates in the Attic."
A transcript follows.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control
over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
Tony Horwitz: Hi I am Tony Horwitz and happy to be here today. I am a big fan of washingtonopost.com - especially when I was in the Pacific. Thanks to washingtonpost.com I was reading the paper in Sydney Times sooner than 95 percent of readers themselves even though I was on the other side of the world.
Dale City, Va.:
the intro to this discussion calls Capt. Cook Britian's greatest navigator, but do you feel he is Britian's greatest adventurer? How do you stack him up against Shackelton or Scott?
Thanks
Tony Horwitz: I don't want to get into hot water by diminishing anyone else's heroes. Certainly in terms of endurance Shackelton and Scott probably take the cake, but I think the immensity and daring of what Cook did puts him in a special category. He was traveling long before Shackelton and Scott at a time when Europeans simply had no accurate notion of what was out there. They thought there was a vast and temperate southern continent at the bottom of the globe that had 50 million people. They thought open ocean didn't freeze. They thought Patagonians in South America were 10 feet tall. Cook sailed into this void in a small wooden ship without so much as a decent chart or a life raft or, on his first voyage, even a chronometer.
On top of that he stepped off his boat at land after land with no notion of whether he'd be met with spears or embraces. So for raw courage and nerve I would put him, if not number one, very close to the top.
Arlington, Va.:
Are you in anyway involved with the History Channel show called "The Ship" about Captain Cook? Have you seen the commercials for it and do you have an opinion on it?
Tony Horwitz: I am not involved and I live in a Virginia village without cable but I know about the show. I was in the UK two weeks ago and met some of those who were involved. Also, as part of my book research, I sailed on the same ship, a replica of Cook's Endeavor, that is used in the show. So I look forward to watching it at someone else's house.
I think that the challenge is to convey the wretchedness of sailing a tall ship without in any way suggesting it holds a candle to what cook did. The show follows the ship along the northeast coast of Australia. When Cook went there he didn't even know that the Great Barrier Reef existed and almost sank his ship when he ran into the coral.
Bethesda, Md.:
I haven't read your new book yet, but I'm from Selma, Ala., and I just wanted to tell you that Confederates in the Attic had the most balanced portrait of my hometown that I've ever seen. Great book, and I look forward to reading the new one.
Tony Horwitz: Thanks. I hope I have brought the same balance to Cook's story, which is also very controversial.
Harrisburg, Pa.:
There are conflicting accounts of how Captain Cook died. What do you believe is the most accurate account of his death?
Tony Horwitz: Cook's death is the best known and most written about moment of his entire career yet we still can't know exactly what happened. There are dozens of accounts but they are often contradictory and many of the English were protecting there own rears in what they wrote. Also, we don't have the Hawaiian perspective except in oral lore. What we do know is that he died during a skirmish on a beach on the big island of Hawaii and was probably felled by an iron spike of a type that he himself had ordered before leaving England to use as a trade item in gaining the friendship of islanders. His death scene abounds in such ironies.
Tony Horwitz: It is a very complicated story and I devote and entire chapter to it in my book.
Fairfax, Va.:
Hi Tony -- I'm an ex-pat Kiwi who of course is familiar with Cook's adventures (did you have to endure a crossing of the Cook Strait?) I was wondering if you've heard anything about somebody finding one of Cook's actual ships?
Tony Horwitz: I didn't cross the Cook Strait. I was waylaid on the north island traveling in Cook's wake and am sorry I didn't get there. And yes, marine archeologists believe they have found the location of both Cook's ships lying - believe it or not - at the bottom of Newport Harbor in Rhode Island, just a short way from each other.
Alexandria, Va.:
Mr Horowitz--
Have realy enjoyed all of your books and am looking forward to this one as well.
Any plans for further wargasms with Robert Lee Hodge?
Tony Horwitz: Not at the moment. I am still in touch with Rob and enjoy following his adventures - from a far. But I do some reenacting in my Cook-book too and hope you will enjoy that as well.
Lyme, Ct.:
Captain Cook seemed genuinely concerned about the welfare of his crew. He saw they had milk from a goat on the ship. He saw they avoided scurvy by serving sauerkraut. What was it that made Captain Cook willing to make these efforts when so many other ship captains failed to show similar concerns?
Tony Horwitz: Cook was a very practical man, as well as humane, and recognized that scurvy was one of the greatest impediments to long distance exploration. Incredibly none of his men died from scurvy. But id probably wasn't the sauerkraut it was Cook's obsessive gathering of fresh fruit and vegetables at every land he visited. Unfortunately, this wasn't well understood, even by cook, so that sailors continued to die by the droves from scurvy long after his voyages.
Alexandria, Va.:
Did Captain Cook observe any now-lost customs or religious rituals on Easter Island?
Were the statues on the island in the same state that they are now?
Tony Horwitz: Cook was desperately ill when his ship reached Easter Island so he himself didn't observe anything on shore. But others onboard wrote at length about the island and measured the statues, which astonished them. What is astonishing to me is how far flung Polynesian culture was. The customs and belief systems of Easter Islanders bore many similarities to what the English saw in Hawaii and New Zealand, thousands of miles away.
Oslo, Norway:
Greatly enjoyed your recent piece in the New Yorker and look forward to reading the book.
Your writing style reminds me of both Jonathan Raban and Paul Theroux and I wonder if they were/are favourite authors of yours?
Tony Horwitz: Raban is certainly a favorite, his mix of erudition, wit and beautiful writing can make your jaw drop. I also like Theroux, but I find his grumpy persona sometimes hard to take.
Alexandria, Va.:
Did Captain Cook's crew spread or pick up any diseases from the native populations?
Tony Horwitz: Unfortunately yes. Within weeks of their arrival in Tahiti, half the crew came down with venereal disease, which they called "a clap." It is unclear whether the disease came with an English or French ship that visited earlier, or whether the disease was actually yaws, which was common in the Pacific and produces symptoms like those of VD. In the wake of Cook's voyages, other ships quickly brought smallpox, tuberculosis and other diseases that almost wiped out the populations of some islands.
Baltimore, Me.:
What can you tell us about Captain Cook's widow? I recall from a Social Studies class many years ago that she outlived him by quite a few years. Thanks.
Tony Horwitz: Elizabeth Cook was the daughter of a dockside tavern keeper in East London. She had six children by Captain Cook and they all died young and she herself lived for 55 years after her husbands death without remarrying. So Cook's personal story is quite tragic. She was only 38 when Cook died.
Mt. Lebanon, Pa.:
As a native of Anchorage which sits at the top of Cook Inlet and where Cook references are ubiquitous, one would think I'd know more about the white man who mapped his homeland. Sad to say I don't. Am I right in recalling, however, that Cook was not a Royal Navy captain, that is, when he conducted his expedition it was not under a "blue peter?" His journey was a part of a common hyrdographic survey the Admiralty often contracted out to noncommissioned vessels and their captains. Is this correct? If true perhaps you could cover this in more detail, like the absence of Royal Marines on board and so on. Thanks much.
Tony Horwitz: This is only partly correct. Technically, Cook wasn't a captain on his first voyage, he still held the rank of lieutenant. By the time he reached Alaska, though, he was a captain and had been dispatched by the British admiralty on all three voyages. There were Royal Marines aboard, along with all the other trappings of the British Navy.
Albany, Ore.:
What were your obsevations, in regards to the migrations of the two distinct ethnic groups -- Maori and Polynesian -- throughout the South Pacific?
Tony Horwitz: Maori are in fact Polynesians, belonging to the same broad ethnic group as Tahitians, Hawaiians and others. They migrated to New Zealand about a thousand years ago from the center of Polynesia. Cook was the first to recognize the astonishing feats of these and other pioneers, who spread across he Pacific thousands of years before Europeans got there in sailing canoes without any of the navigational instruments available to Western explorers.
New York, N.Y.:
Would you ever take the tour on the endeavor again? Would you recommend it to others?
Tony Horwitz: I would certainly recommend it to others, particularly people who have read too many Patrick O'Brian novels. It will cure you very quickly of romantic notions about sailing a tall ship. I thought marching through Virginia heat as a confederate reenactor and spooning with smelly confederates was the worst thing I'd ever do for the sake of a good story. But I would rather eat hardtack and re-fight Gettysburg than get back on the Endeavor.
Flemington, N.J.:
Hi Tony, I love the book. Do you think the journey would have been harder without Roger along? He seems to contribute a lot to your experiences.
Tony Horwitz: Roger, my companion in the Pacific, brought a lot of nautical expertise to the story, as well as an understanding of the British class system and empire. He also brought comic relief to what otherwise could have been a grim historical tale. So I am glad he came along. But my liver would be in much better shape if he hadn't.
University Park, Md.:
Loved Confederates and plan to buy Blue Latitudes for my husband. Will you be flogging it this weekend in Waterford?
Tony Horwitz: I will. I'll be signing books at the fair on Friday from about 1 to 4 in the afternoon.
Paramus, N.J.:
Any plans for your next book?
Tony Horwitz: ot yet. I only finished this one in July and am a little Cooked out. But I would like to find another explorer to follow in America, closer to home.
Montclair, N.J.:
Your books seem to tackle very different topics. Is there any underlying theme to them all?
Tony Horwitz: I am fascinated by the way the past bleeds into the present and how we remember history today. I am not an academic historian, but part of me wishes I was, so perhaps all my books are a back door way of indulging my fascination with the past. Also, I like strange places, they make me feel alive, my senses are on full alert when I am in the outback or Baghdad or the Deep South or Savage Island in the Pacific.
Framingham, Mass.:
Hi Tony, Are you surprised at how much attention the book has received?
Tony Horwitz: I have just started on a book tour, so it is hard for me to assess how much attention it is receiving. But I think Cook is a natural figure to be rediscovered right now at a time when we are so interested in explorers, and grappling with many of the same issues that Cook did as he set out to communicate and trade with other cultures.
Tony Horwitz: Thanks for having me! Great questions! I will be on another Cook tour for a while talking about the book, but would be happy to do a follow-up if there is interest.
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