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NLA News - home March 2006 Volume XVI Number 6

Cook’s Sites

Adapted from Martin Terry’s address at the opening of the exhibition at the National Library of Australia, 15 March 2006

To study James Cook, the man who with Drake, Nelson and Shackleton, completes the classical quartet of famous British mariners, it’s helpful to make a visit to the National Library in Canberra. Additional to its holding of internationally significant items, the Library is also the custodian of a wide-ranging collection of more personal mementoes, amongst which my favourite is James Cook’s clothes brush. I like to think it was last used by his servant on the morning of the 14 February 1779, before Cook, with a body of marines, was rowed ashore at Hawaii, rowed into History.

If we sent the brush across to the CSIRO, and amongst the lint and fluff, they found a human hair, what clone of Cook would CSIRO conjure up?—What Cook would we sight? The brilliant chart-maker who in North America found his calling in the crucible of battle, who set down the St Lawrence River and helped defeat the French? Perhaps the man who, on his first real command, searching for a continent, circumnavigated New Zealand, and charted the east coast of Australia from bottom to top, and named it New South Wales. On his second voyage, we would see Cook looking like an Eskimo in a Fearnought jacket, leading an expedition for the first time across the Antarctic Circle.

Cook was a faraway husband. Perhaps we’d catch him on a rare home-visit to his wife, Elizabeth. They made up for lost time, and had six children. Three died prematurely. Of the others, one died of fever, another was lost in a Caribbean hurricane, and the last—another James—drowned mysteriously in Portsmouth Harbour.

Or would the Cook appearing before us be the ‘Captain Cranky’ of the third voyage: irritable, unwell, and prone to flogging. Perhaps by then he was a little over the Pacific, as the Pacific was somewhat over him. When the Resolution returned unexpectedly to Hawaii, Cook had outstayed his welcome.

Cook fascinates; he also infuriates. Only the most unfeeling of us would fail to acknowledge that the changes in the Pacific that inevitably followed in Cook’s wake haven’t always been for the best. It’s not particularly Cook’s fault, but discoveries have consequences. No more so than in Australia. The present exhibition has been enriched by works of art by Indigenous commentators—ironic, angry and vigorous. We value these insights and alternate points of view, and we thank their lenders for sharing these compelling works with us.

On the eve of departing on Endeavour to observe the transit of Venus, Joseph Banks, ‘a gentleman of large fortune, well-versed in natural history’, declared that while any blockhead could make a grand tour of Europe, his grand tour would be around the entire globe.

Between them, photographers Mark Adams and Nicholas Thomas take us on a contemporary grand tour—from the Yorkshire coast, to Cairns and the Captain Cook Backpackers Hostel.

It was an inspired idea of our friends at the Historic Houses Trust to take this concept and turn it into an exhibition, and the National Library has complemented it with a number of related events such as a lunchtime talk by Brenda L. Croft, a member of the Gurindji community, and an artist represented in the exhibition.

The National Library of Australia and the Historic Houses Trust of NSW hope you enjoy this new look at Cook.

 

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