Vanessa Collingridge:Captain Cook: Obsession and Betrayal in the New World

By MARGIE THOMSON

Those who believe that an author's personal quest should be kept out of historical accounts will be appalled by Vanessa Collingridge's biography, Captain Cook: Obsession and Betrayal in the New World.

Hers is indeed a modern approach, which will have exponents of the objective telling of history disgusted for sure. It smacks of a kind of self-obsession that sees all "facts" filtered through the experience of the narrator - in this case, Collingridge's own "journey of exploration" in search not only of Cook the man, but of her distant ancestor George Collingridge who, in the late 19th century, challenged the premise that Cook was the first European to land on Australia's east coast.

Collingridge's cheek is breathtaking at times as she elbows through the crowds of other Cook experts to stand shoulder to shoulder with the great explorer. "The story of the three of us, James, George and me ... " she begins her book.

But there is no doubting Collingridge's abilities as a storyteller. Her history reads like fiction and, where a more orthodox account may be snapped up by academics, Collingridge's has all the makings of a best-seller. Some of her conjectures as to the emotions and states of mind of the historical characters seem unfounded, but she assures us that they are all based on written records. The lack of attribution in the text is, she says, in the interests of a smoothly flowing story.

The inclusion of George Collingridge gives this book its special - and in the end, intriguing - flavour.

Vanessa Collingridge, a television presenter who had read geography at Oxford, took a year off work to research a book on Captain James Cook, a book that "got under his skin" to uncover the man behind the myth. She had known of Cook's achievements since schooldays, but her imagination wasn't properly captured until in adulthood. As she stood before a museum display she became aware of Cook's journey from lowly beginnings to mighty achievements, and the tragedy that marked his life, with three of his six children dying in early childhood. (Actually, the tragedy was even greater, and mostly borne by his wife Elizabeth who outlived Cook by 56 years and buried all her children within 14 years of her husband's death.)

Collingridge began reading Cook's journals and those of his crew and associates, for clues to his psychological and emotional make-up. She saturated herself in 18th-century culture, ideas and social mores. She even spent several days aboard an Endeavour replica, sailing around Tasmania.

But the real excitement began when she was in Sydney, leafing through a book on Australian history. Flicking through the index for entries on James Cook, she stumbled across "Collingridge, George" and, turning to the appropriate page, read: "Although he received much vitriol at the time, it seems George Collingridge experienced a terrible injustice; in fact, his theories on the discovery of Australia are now gaining widespread acceptance."

She had come across her apparently wayward ancestor some years before when she spied his name on an index card in the School of Geography library at Oxford: "Collingridge, George: The Discovery of Australia, 1895 (Outsized)." She found the book and was captivated by the many exquisite, hand-drawn maps, and understood that her ancestor had been, like her, a geographer, enamoured of maps, and fascinated by James Cook.

She forgot about him until that hot Sydney day a decade later when it became clear that there was even more to this ancestor than she had thought.

The structure she eventually chose for her book reflected her ancestor's encroachment into the story she was to tell about Cook: the chapters alternate between Cook and George, their wildly different beginnings and careers.

George was the son of a well-to-do Catholic family, educated in France, fought Garibaldi in the emerging Italy, was one of Paris' leading engravers, but emigrated to Australia where he became obsessed by the matter of who had actually "discovered" Australia.

His obsession hinged around his examination of maps that the public libraries of Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney had bought from the British Museum. They were world maps - mappa mundi - from the 16th century, apparently drawn in the French city of Dieppe, and purporting to show early representations of Australia, almost 250 years before Cook mapped its shores.

There was an uproar at the time - Collingridge notes that the Australians have always been particularly wedded to the notion of Cook as discoverer and national hero (far more than have we Kiwis although, ironically, it was New Zealand that he loved and returned to time and again). Yet the more George, with his artist's eye, multilingual abilities and passion for geography and history, looked at these maps, the more convinced he became that Australia was first mapped by the Portuguese who named it Jave La Grande.

Although George's obsession was to destroy his finances and reputation, Collingridge makes a very good case for the veracity of his conjectures, while taking great care not to deflate Cook's own reputation or achievements.

The thinnest ice regarding Cook's own reputation seems to be that he named some parts of Australia's east coast with the same names found on the map of Jave La Grande. Botany Bay, for instance, appears on that much older map as Coste Des Herbiages; his Bay of Isles seems to correspond with the older Riviere de Beaucoup d'Isles. It is known that the British Admiralty had access to the maps; it is not known whether Cook did, and if he did, it is extremely likely that he believed them to be fake.

It all makes for a very good story. Tire as I did of Vanessa, I never tired of her attempt to understand Cook, with his astounding ambition, authority and morality, and his willingness to try to understand the indigenous people he came across on their own terms. His sympathetically documented descent into a kind of madness - an increasing loss of judgment and temper that was probably the result of a chronic gastrointestinal disease - only adds to the realisation that here is a story of operatic proportions.

As for George, while he died heartbroken in 1931, 50 years later a new mood of national independence swept Australia, making possible a wide consideration of different interpretations of history. Thus, those Dieppe maps continue to be part of the ongoing debate about Australia's national origins.

But, as Collingridge herself acknowledges, neither those maps nor any other argument will take away the fact that the original discoverers of Australia were the Aborigines, of whom many must still wish that those bird-like sailing ships, be they Portuguese or British, had simply sailed away and left their hot continent baking quietly in the southern sun.

Ebury Press
$34.95