Joan Druett

Tupaia

The Remarkable Story Of Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator (Large Print 16pt)

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

The remarkable story of Tupaia, Captain Cook's Polynesian navigator. Winner of NZ Post 2012 Best General Non - fiction Book Award. Tupaia, lauded by Europeans as 'an extraordinary genius', sailed with Captain Cook from Tahiti, piloted the Endeavour about the South Pacific, and interceded with Maori in NZ. Tupaia, a gifted linguist, a brilliant orator, and a most devious politician, could aptly be called the Machiavelli of Tahiti. Being highly skilled in astronomy, navigation, and meteorology, and an expert in the geography of the Pacific, he was able to name directional stars and predict landfalls and weather throughout the voyage from Tahiti to Java. Though he had no previous knowledge of writing or mapmaking, Tupaia drew a chart of the Pacific that encompassed every major group in Polynesia and extended more than 4,000 kilometres from the Marquesas to Rotuma and Fiji. He was also the ship's translator, able to communicate with all the Polynesian people they met. As a man of high social ranking, Tupaia performed as an able intermediary, interpreting local rituals and ceremonies. Joseph Banks is famous for his detailed, perceptive descriptions of the manners and customs of the Polynesian people. Much of the credit for this belongs to Tupaia. Not only did Tupaia become one of the ship's important artists, drawing lively pictures to illustrate what he described, but he could justly be called the Pacific's first anthropologist. Despite all this, Tupaia has never been part of the popular Captain Cook legend. This is largely because he died of complications from scurvy seven months before the ship arrived home. Once he was gone, his accomplishments were easily forgotten - indeed, by removing Tupaia from the story, what the Europeans had achieved seemed all the greater. This fascinating, handsome book also won the 2012 PANZ Book Design Award for best cover.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: ReadHowYouWant
• Seitenzahl: 604
• Erscheinungstermin: 12. Oktober 2013
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 254mm x 172mm x 40mm
• Gewicht: 1059g
• ISBN-13: 9781459672093
• ISBN-10: 1459672097
• Artikelnr.: 40325321

Autorenporträt

Joan Druett is an independent maritime historian and writer, married to Ron Druett, a highly regarded maritime artist. In 1986 she travelled to museums in the United States on a Fulbright Cultural Fellowship, to research the lives of women at sea. This led to three ground-breaking books, Petticoat Whalers, She Was a Sister Sailor, and Hen Frigates, all prize-winners. She Was a Sister Sailor received the John Lyman Award for Best Book of Maritime History; Petticoat Whalers (with a later book, She Captains) won the L. Byrne Waterman Award, and Hen Frigates received a New York Public Library Best Book to Remember Award. In 1992, with the aid of a Creative New Zealand grant, Joan returned to the United States, where she was a consultant for a museum exhibit, "The Sailing Circle," which received the Albert Corey Award, which is infrequently granted by the American Association for State and Local History for works "that best display the qualities of vigor, scholarship, and imagination." Returning to New Zealand in 1996, another Creative New Zealand grant enabled her to research castaway depots and wrecks in the sealing islands of the sub-Antarctic. This led to a Stout Fellowship at Victoria University, which she took up in 2001, and a best-selling book about a double wreck on Auckland Island in 1865, Island of the Lost, which has become a classic in the castaway genre, and is used as a text in universities in the United States and Australia. In 2009, a major Creative New Zealand grant enabled her to research the life of Tupaia, the extraordinary priest, orator and navigator, who guided Captain Cook on the Endeavour voyage, both at sea and through tricky intercultural situations on land, particularly in New Zealand, where Tupaia's actions undoubtedly saved lives, both Maori and European.