James Cook

Efrat, Barbara S. and W.J. Langlois, eds.

Captain Cook and the Spanish Explorers on the Coast: Nu.tka. Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum, 1978.

In March 1778 Captain James Cook of the Royal Navy, in the course of his third voyage of exploration to the Pacific, called at Yuquot, a summer village of Nuu chah nulth peoples, sometimes called Nootka (or Nu tka). His visit of a month's duration was important in many respects as this book describes. Cook and his officers kept meticulous journals and notebooks, and many fine illustrations were completed, some of which are reproduced here. The Vancouver Island landscape and the natives were attractive to the explorers and posed no difficulties to them. It was a time of mutual discovery, with Cook remarking that the natives were keenly interested in property and rights of ownership. This book consists of the following: Barry Gough's long essay "Nootka Sound in James Cook's Pacific World," which places this visit into the larger world of Pacific exploration; Christon Archer's "Spanish Exploration and Settlement of the Northwest Coast in the 18th Century," which explains follow-on Spanish discoveries; and academic contributions on Nootkan music, native botany, and native linguistics. Altogether, this is an excellent, scholarly introduction to the subject, and is available from the publisher. This book is the best treatment available of the friendly encounter of British and Nuu chah nulth in 1778.

Villiers Alan.

Captain James Cook. New York and Toronto: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967.

Written by a master mariner who had sailed many of the same seas as James Cook, this book tells of the early days of training, the years as a surveyor in the Royal Navy, and the extensive official explorations by Captain Cook - explorations, then as now, that link Newfoundland and Labrador with Québec, Halifax, Vancouver Island, New Zealand, Australia, and elsewhere. A Yorkshireman, James Cook was in Halifax during the Seven Years' War and surveyed the River St. Lawrence preparatory to General James Wolfe's successful military campaign at Québec in 1759. Cook then surveyed Newfoundland waters after the Seven Years' War, the purpose being to mark out British zones of fishing. After two explorations to the South Seas, in March 1778 Cook arrived at Yuquot (or Nootka — also spelled Nu tka) and put Vancouver Island "on the map," so to speak. He was killed by Hawaiians. This book is about sailing and discovery, and about how Cook contributed to these explorations through surveying. As a brief recounting of the mariner's life it is unsurpassed. The book's extensive Canadian content is placed within the larger world framework of the era.

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