Captain Cook Rediscovered: Voyaging to the Icy Latitudes

Although the popular imagination has forever linked Captain Jams Cook with the South Pacific, his crowning navigational and scientific achievements actually took place in the polar regions. Recognizing that Cook sailed more miles in the high latitudes of all of the world's oceans than in the tropical zone, Captain Cook Rediscovered is the first modern study to examine his career from a North American vantage, giving due attention to his voyages in seas and lands that are usually neglected. While acknowledging the cartographic accomplishments of Cook's first voyage, through Australasian seas, David L. Nicandri focuses here on the second and third voyages, near the poles, where Cook pioneered the science of iceberg and icepack formation. This groundbreaking book completely reorients an area of study that has been typically dominated by the "palm-tree paradigm"--resulting in a truly modern appraisal of Cook for the era of climate change.