Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz

Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz, (New York: Picador; 2002), 480 pages.

These days, international travel is relatively easy. All one needs to travel across the world is a bit of money, a passport, and an airplane ticket. The traveller is moved quickly and safely around the globe with relatively little exertion. Today's traveler neither know of  or experience the challengers faced by the voyagers and discoverers of the past. Horowitz acquaints us with these difficulties in this book where he retraces the voyages of perhaps the greatest of England's navigator and explorer, James Cook. Horwitz recaptures the magnificence of Cook's achievements by retracing cooks voyages. He traces his rise from his lowly status as an impoverished farm laborer to his rise through the ranks of the Royal Navy, his voyages pf exploration, and his veneration as a great navigator. To convey the magnitude of Cook's achievements, he joins the crew of a replica of Cook's famous ship Endeavor to show the limited equipment Cook had to achieve what he did. He travels to many of the places discovered by cook, and armed with Cook's log book and other references, sees what Cook saw. Horwitz also tries to put into himself into Cook's position and tries to assess Cook's legacy, particularly in the island nations he discovered in the South Pacific.

This book is written by a fan of Cook. He likens Cook to a real-life "olden day" equivalent of Star Trek's Captain Kirk; he went where no one had gone before. The book demonstrates Cook greatness by giving a contemporary storytelling of Cook's achievements. By travelling to the major places Cook visited, Horwitz conveys to the modern reader the magnitude of Cook's achievements.

This book succeeds in conveying Cook's greatness, without slipping into iconography. Horwitz uses the right balance of reverence, balance, reflection and humour to made Cook's achievements accessible to the modern reader. This book is an entertaining and enjoyable read; its so good that you should read it more than once so you can double your enjoyment.

Batavia by Peter Fitzsimons

Peter Fitzsimons, Batavia, (Sydney: William Heinemann; 2011), 490 pages.

This book tells the story of the Batavia, the prize ship of the fleet of the Dutch East India Company. In 1629, the Batavia sailed on her maiden voyage from Amsterdam to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). The ship was carrying the treasure of the Dutch East India Company to be used to expand the company's operations in the Dutch East Indies. The voyage to the Dutch East Indies was via the Cape of Good Hope. Due to a navigation error, the Batavia stuck an unseen reef off Western Australia in the middle of the night. The captain evacuated the ship and crew to the uninhabited islands that formed part of the reef, and also salvaged provisions and treasure. The captain then decided to get help by taking an open longboat to travel across 2000 miles of open sea to their port in what we now call Indonesia. The captain left his second in command to manage operations until he returned.  The second in command, who was planning a mutiny before Batavia hit the reef, decided that 220 people on a small reef island was too many for their limited supplies. Quietly he put in place a plan for him and 40 other mutineers to save themselves by killing most of the others. Many innocent people were murdered including women and children. A wave of terror started on this deserted atoll. A few managed to escape the genocide by escaping to a neighboring island where they found fresh water and were able to resist and survive until the captain returned with a rescue ship. Once the captain returned, a salvage was undertaken and the mutiny and other crimes exposed. The perpetrators were dealt with swiftly: some were hung, while others were taken to Indonesia to face justice.

This book is not strictly a history. It was written in the present tense, like a novel based on documents of the Batavia's surgeons, the captain's journal, and other historical documents. The author's intention was to rely on historical facts to accurately convey the unprecedented drama of the Batavia shipwreck by making it read like a novel, while not limiting himself to only the few precise details of the story that have survived. For example, to read like a novel, the author invented conversations and dialogues between various people with little or any knowledge of whether those conversations actually occurred. Given the few historical accounts from which this story is drawn, it's at best a blend of history/fact and fiction. Faction perhaps? The author's style was annoying at times to this reader, but was consistent with his intention of having history told like a novel. The book was at times a gripping account of a terrifying shipwreck and appealing mass murder an deign of terror. It  was a thoroughly entertaining work of faction/historical narrative. The book also has a useful index of other books and sources for persons interested in reading about the wreck of the Batavia in more detail. The book also contains useful color photographs of relics, the island atoll and reef, a full size replica if the Batavia, and other symbols and pictures. 

“The Road from Coorain,” by Jill Ker Conway

“The Road from Coorain,” by Jill Ker Conway (New York: Vintage Books; 1989), 238 pages.

It’s not uncommon for autobiographies to read as boastful summaries of the author’s achievements and successes. Such books contain large tracts of recollection where the author places himself/herself at the center of everything, and takes sole credit for their successes. These books also tend to be critical of rivals and competitor’s, pointing out the splinters in their rival’s eye while failing to notice the beams in their own. The Road from Coorain is not such a book; rather it’s a journey of discovery (or coming of age) of an unusually bookish girl in the 1940’s and 1950’s in Australia. Her early years were spent as a home-schooled child on a remote and vast sheep station (ranch). In recalling her early life, she describes the stunning beauty of remote rural Australia, its bountiful appearance after soaking rains, and its slow and relentless decline into drought, where life is slowly strangled from plants, animals, and ultimately from the people that try to farm it. Ker Conway writes of the people that live in these wretched places and how isolation, biblical droughts and loneliness tend to breed hardy people. Not all can take the harshness and remoteness of rural Australia and seek refuge in the bottle, or for more desperate people, suicide. Ker Conway beautifully describes her family’s struggle farming their drought-stricken property, the death of her father, and her mother’s decision to move to Sydney and employ a manager to run their station “Coorain.” 

Ker Conway writes of the difficulty of county kids, such as her, to fit into life in the city. She quickly settles down and with a persistent and increasingly fragile mother, hunger for learning, and a bit of luck blossoms into a confident student at an exclusive high school. Her high school success propelled her to the University of Sydney, where she achieved notable academic success, and slowly realized after a few set backs and travel, that to achieve success in her chosen academic field that she would have to leave Australia for the United Stated.

The Road from Coorain gives us an insight into the Australia of the 1950’s, and all of the not uncommon prejudices, discriminations and disappointments of that time. It also shows one person’s encounter with this world, and one ambitious woman’s response and reaction to it. This beautifully written narrative is both particular and universal for it provides the lovely story of growing up in both rural Australia and the city, as well as the universal theme of how one uses their talents to find their way in the world.

Sydney, Cipher and Search: Solving the Last Great Naval Mystery of the Second World War by Captain Peter Hore

Sydney, Cipher and Search: Solving the Last Great Naval Mystery of the Second World War, by Captain Peter Hore, (Naval Institute Press: 2009), 320 pages.

Captain Peter Hore has written, arguably, the definitive book on the “mystery” of the sinking of the Australian cruiser H.M.A.S. Sydney by the German raider Kormoran in November 1941 with the loss of all 645 hands. It has long been acknowledged that the Australian light cruiser H.M.A.S. Sydney was sunk by the German raider Kormoran off the coast of Western Australia. Survivors of the Kormoran (disabled in battle and subsequently scuttled) captured and interred in Australia reported individually to investigators that they engaged H.M.A.S. Sydney at a range of about half a mile, causing great destruction that eventually caused her to sink. The “mystery” referred to in the title is how the Kormoran, a converted freighter with guns and torpedo armaments equivalent to that of a cruiser, could cause the loss of the pride of the Australian navy with the loss of its entire crew. To his credit, Captain Hore presents all of the facts from primary sources, including some that he discovered, to explain what happened. Captain Hore's sources include re-constructed and newly translated (by the author) battle logs written in code in a German-English dictionary by the Kormoran’s captain; Australian, German and British naval archive material; the author's interviews of surviving Kormoran crew members in Germany and Chile; and photographic evidence of the wreck of H.M.A.S. Sydney, located for the first time in 2008.

Captain Hore’s book is neither emotional, nor accusatory; he neither evangelizes his reader to a particular explanation or theory, nor attributes either praise or blame to the crews of H.M.A.S. Sydney nor the Kormoran. Rather, he simply collects evidence from all sources to explain what happened and lets the facts speak for themselves. The facts are that H.M.A.S. Sydney failed to follow established naval wartime procedures for identifying suspicious freighters, and brought herself broadside to the Kormoran at a range of approximately half a mile. When H.M.A.S. Sydney (which was not at battle stations) challenged the Kormoran, the captain of the Kormoran removed her disguise, ran up her German flag and commenced firing on H.M.A.S. Sydney with all of her guns and torpedoes causing catastrophic damage that caused her loss, and the loss of all crew. H.M.A.S. Sydney’s counter fire disabled Kormoran, which her crew subsequently abandoned and scuttled. These facts were found to be consistent with photographs of the wreck of H.M.A.S. Sydney. Captain Hore’s book presents all of the known facts, which leaves this reader with the opinion that the Kormoran should be solemnly recognized as having achieved something quite extra-ordinary: this was a major success for the Kormoran – something never before achieved where a raider (a converted freighter with significant weaponry) sank a cruiser with the loss of all hands. Conversely, for H.M.A.S. Sydney, it was a complete and total disaster. What is not known, nor will ever likely to be known, is why H.M.A.S. Sydney’s captain disregarded established wartime naval procedures and placed his ship and the lives of all of the crew in such a vulnerable position.

Captain Hore has written a fine book that explains all of the facts on the loss of H.M.A.S. Sydney. The book reads like a novel: it is interesting and fast-paced mixing discovery, de-ciphering and code breaking, travel, and first person interviews on multiple continents. The final product is an excellent story accessible to both experienced armchair naval experts interested in relatively obscure naval battles, and civilians who simply enjoy a good story well written. At the same time, this book could rightly be considered the definitive or authoritative book on this subject, which in itself is quite an achievement.