Storms and Dreams: Louis De Bougainville: Soldier, Explorer, Statesman by John Dunmore

$30.00 NZD

Category: Naval | Reading Level: very good

Louis-Antoine Comte de Bougainville (1729-1811) is best known for his circumnavigation of the globe from 1766 to 1769. Throughout a long and distinguished life, however, he participated in many of the turning points of world history: the birth of the United States, the fall of French Canada, the opening of the Pacific, the French revolution and the Revolutionary Wars, the crowning of Napoleon and the modernisation of France . Bougainville was also a witty and charming courtier, becoming one of Napoleon's senators. A true Man of the Enlightenment, he was gifted in navigation, seamanship, soldiering, mathematics, longitude and latitude – many of the arts that made his age one of most productive and creative in modern history. John Dunmore, a distinguished historian and an expert in French Pacific exploration, brings the man and his era to life in this vivid and elegantly written biography. ...Show more

Ships of the Victorian Navy by Conrad Dixon

$14.00 NZD

Category: Naval | Reading Level: good

The Pandora Survey. The completion of the 1848-1856 Great Survey of New Zealand by HMS Pandora together with an account of its genesis and initial phase by Brian Byrne

$165.00 NZD

Category: Naval | Reading Level: near fine

The 1848-1856 Great Survey of New Zealand, carried out initially by Captain John Stokes in HMS Acheron between 1848-51 and completed by Commander Byron Drury in HMS Pandora between 1851-56, yielded "one of the most magnificent of the many productions of the English Navy". An opinion first expressed in 1 864 and just as valid today. Equally, in their time, the two surveys played a significant role in the successful settlement of Europeans in New Zealand and its subsequent economic development. Though the story of the initial phase of that monumental undertaking was told twenty-nine years ago, the full story of its completion by Drury remained unrecorded. To rectify this oversight, the author of The Riddle of the Kaipara, Wing of the Manukau, and The Unknown Kaipara, spent four years researching and writing his latest book: The Pandora survey. This long overdue book not only provides a comprehensive history of the Pandora Survey, together with details of its findings along the coastline between New Plymouth to Doubtless Bay; Mercury Bay to Cape Kidnappers; and parts of the Hauraki Gulf and Marlborough Sounds; it also explores the origins of the Great Survey and looks into selected aspects of the Acheron Survey. ...Show more

Wayfarer & Warrior: The Monowai Story by Jack S. Harker

$20.00 NZD

Category: Naval | Reading Level: very good

'The Monowai' holds a special place in the hearts of many New Zealanders, Americans and assorted members of the British Commonwealth armed forces. Both Monowais were the latest liners of their times and both served as troopships - from the Boer War to World War I, and the Pacific and D-Day theatres of W orld War II, during which she was converted to an armed merchant cruiser. Many danced the night away and found romance on Monowai during local or Pacific cruises, others used her as a Tasman Sea taxi to and from Australia, and in the 1940s she would provide the first and last sea voyage in many young lives. In the tradition of his previous books on New Zealand's cruisers, Jack Harker relates this history of the two Monowais with the benefit of eye-witness accounts from the veterans. ...Show more

The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas by Anne Salmond

$25.00 NZD

Category: Pacific | Series: Allen Lane History S. | Reading Level: very good

The Trial of the Cannibal Dog is a spectacular recreation of three of the greatest and most startling of all human journeys. The Pacific voyages of James Cook explored the ice-bound fringes of the Arctic and Antarctic, sailed across perilous tropical seas, survived hurricanes and volcanic eruptions, dis covered unknown lands and peoples and made their Captain an icon of imperial history. Yet, as Anne Salmond shows, the story of these epic South Sea journeys is far more than one of conquest and control. She has devoted a lifetime to the study of relations between Europeans and Polynesians, and this startling, rich, stylish book is the result. In Salmond?s account, Cook?s great voyages regain their dreamlike quality as they encounter the last major human communities, untouched by wider worlds. Far from being little wooden islands of Englishness in a Polynesian sea, his ships and the men in them are as much changed by what happens as the islanders they meet. We see them alarmed and entranced by the islanders? open sexuality, shocked by human sacrifice and cannibalism, but also forging relationships with Pacific Island friends and lovers, acquiring tattoos and learning to speak Polynesian languages, with Cook himself granted the status of high chief in many areas before his violent downfall. Filled with astonishing descriptions, drawing on all the surviving accounts of New Zealand, Tahiti, Easter Island, Hawaii, Tonga, the Society Islands and the New Hebrides, The Trial of the Cannibal Dog re-imagines the two worlds that explosively collided in the eighteenth century and the lasting impact of that collision. ...Show more

The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific by James Cook

$10.00 NZD

Category: Naval | Reading Level: fair

"No man ever did more to alter and correct the map of the Earth," writes Percy Adams in his new Introduction, than James Cook, the Scotland-born British naval commander who rose from humble beginnings to pilot three great eighteenth-century voyages of discovery in the then practically uncharted Pacific. His explorations of the eastern coastline of Australia, leading to its eventual British colonization; his thorough charting of New Zealand, discovery of the Hawaiian Island, and his investigation of both the mythical 'Terra Incognita' in the southern ocean and the equally mythical Northwest Passage, as well as his contributions to cartography and to the cure and prevention of sea disease were all of immense scientific and political significance. Though lacking in formal education, Cook was a man of great intelligence and unbounded curiosity, and his journals reflect a wide-ranging interest in everything from island customs to specific problems of navigation, charting, command, and diplomacy.This reprinting of selections from Cook's journals, edited by A. Grenfell Price, celebrates the bicentennial anniversary of his explorations. It abounds in descriptions of newly discovered plant species, particulars of coastline and land features, details of navigation, and impressions of the various Pacific peoples he encountered. Cook's was a many-faceted genius, able at once to grasp the complexities of mathematics necessary for navigation and mapping and the subtle intricacies of politics and negotiation. He often recorded his keen judgments of both subordinates and native chieftains and priests in a way that displays his own great spirit and humanity. Always solicitous of the health of his crewmen, he took great pains to insure proper diet and conditions of cleanliness, and he carefully described these measures in his journal. His tragic death at the hands of Hawaiian islanders is fully rendered from eyewitness accounts, and the implications of his discoveries to the expansion of scientific knowledge are clearly presented by the editor.Although Cook's journals will prove of inestimable value to historians, anthropologists, and students of the history of science, they can be enjoyed equally as lively narratives of high adventure and discovery. Any sympathetically roving imagination will take unbounded delight in this great classic of exploration by a most "curious and restless son of Earth." ...Show more

The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks: Volume I by J. C. Beaglehole (ed.)

$60.00 NZD

Category: Naval | Reading Level: good to very good

The Ship: Retracing Cook's Endeavour Voyage by Simon Baker

$25.00 NZD

Category: Naval | Reading Level: very good

The story of Captain Cook's voyage. Hardback

Captain Cook's Voyages 1768-1779 by Glyndwr Williams (ed.)

$45.00 NZD

Category: Naval | Reading Level: very good

Captain Cook by Alistair MacLean

$15.00 NZD

Category: Naval | Reading Level: very good

Captain James Cook: A Biography by Richard Hough

$20.00 NZD

Category: Naval | Reading Level: very good

James Cook, born in 1728, rose from the lowest ranks of the merchant marine, then through the Royal Navy, to become one of the most celebrated men of his time, the last and the greatest of the romantic navigator/explorers. His voyages to the eastern and western seaboards of North America, the North and South Pacific, the Arctic and the Antarctic, brought a new understanding of the world's geography and of the peoples, flora, and fauna of the lands he discovered. Richard Hough's meticulously researched narrative captures all the excitement of this age of discovery and establishes Cook as a link between the vague scientific speculations of the early eighteenth century and the industrial revolution to come. He pioneered the use of new navigational technology, measuring and recording endlessly, producing maps of unprecedented accuracy. He revolutionized the seaman's diet, all but eliminating scurvy. Always seeking the truth of geography Cook was also an exploder of myths, among them that of the great southern continent imagined by earlier geographers and scientists. ...Show more

Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook by Nicholas Thomas (Professor of Anthropology, Goldsmith's College, University of London)

$30.00 NZD

Category: Naval | Reading Level: very good

Captain James Cook was one of the greatest sea explorers of all time. His epic voyages charted the islands of the Pacific, defined the coasts of New Zealand and eastern Australia, and ventured into both Arctic and Antarctic ice. His men suffered near shipwreck, were ravaged by tropical diseases and surv ived frozen oceans. They did all this not for conquest, but as Nicholas Thomas ...Show more