Books › A voyage to the Pacific Ocean
A voyage to the Pacific Ocean
555 pages
Step aboard an eighteenth-century vessel and sail to the very edges of the known map through the meticulous, salt-sprayed logs of a legendary explorer.
What it feels like
Reading this historical account feels like unrolling a weathered, salt-stained map from the Age of Enlightenment. The pace is steady and deliberate, mirroring the slow, relentless push of a ship across vast, uncharted oceans. You are immersed in an atmosphere of formal curiosity and maritime peril, where dry navigational coordinates suddenly give way to awe-struck descriptions of ice walls and unprecedented cultural encounters. The prose is meticulous and distinctly eighteenth-century, blending the clinical detachment of a ship's log with the quiet thrill of discovery. It is a deeply immersive experience for history enthusiasts and armchair explorers who want to feel the wood of the deck beneath their feet and witness the world as it was first being charted by European eyes, complete with all the complex, imperial realities of the era.
- Mood
- expansive
- salt-sprayed
- perilous
- antiquarian
- Tone
- observational
- formal
- curious
- detached
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- the edge of the known world · colonial encounter · man versus nature · scientific curiosity · maritime endurance
- The writing
- Formal, meticulous, and heavily detailed, blending the dry precision of a ship's log with the earnest curiosity of an Enlightenment explorer.
- The arc
- Moves from the anticipation of departure into the vast stretches of the unknown, punctuated by moments of profound wonder and sudden peril.
- Who it's for
- History buffs, maritime enthusiasts, and readers fascinated by primary source accounts of the Age of Sail and early global exploration.
Content notes
- colonialism
- ethnocentrism
- violence
- animal death
- maritime peril
About the book
Part of a CIHM set. For individual microfiches in this set see CIHM microfiche nos. 17751-17753.
Volume I has title: Captain Cook's voyages round the world.
"The narrative is written partly in the 1st person, following Cook's journal, and partly in the 3rd person, paraphrased from the official account..." (Cf. New South Wales. Public Library, Sydney. Mitchell Library. Bibliography of Captain James Cook. Sydney, 1928, p. 10)--National Union Catalog pre-1956 imprints.
Includes Cook's third voyage, Phipps's voyage to the North Pole, and Governor Phillip's voyage to Botany Bay. The account of Phipps's voyage is by an anonymous author and is not to be confused with Commodore Phipps's journal of the same expedition, entitled "A voyage towards the North Pole" (Cf. National Union Catalog pre-1956 imprints).
"Directions to the binder, for placing the plates in Cook's Voyages"--Colophon.
Filmed from a copy of the original publication held by the Library Division, Provincial Archives of British Columbia. Ottawa: Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions, 1983.
Description from Open Library.
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