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| Book | Searching... North Andover - Stevens Memorial Library | 910.92 MOORE | 31478010126085 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Amesbury Public Library | 910.92 MOO | 32114002525443 | Searching... Unknown |
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| Book | Searching... Essex - T.O.H.P. Burnham Free Library | 910.92 MOO | 32119000388132 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Hamilton-Wenham Public Library | 910.92 MOO | 30470001720753 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Haverhill Public Library | 910.92/MOORE P | 31479007008492 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Lawrence Public Library | 910.92 MOO | 31549004680418 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Manchester-by-the-Sea Public Library | 910.92 MOO 2019 | 32124001898543 | Searching... Unknown |
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| Book | Searching... Tewksbury Public Library | HISTORY / EXPLORATION / MOO | 32132003143040 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"An immense treasure trove of fact-filled and highly readable fun." --Simon Winchester, The New York Times Book Review
A Sunday Times (U.K.) Best Book of 2018 and W inner of the Mary Soames Award for History
An unprecedented history of the storied ship that Darwin said helped add a hemisphere to the civilized world
The Enlightenment was an age of endeavors, with Britain consumed by the impulse for grand projects undertaken at speed. Endeavour was also the name given to a collier bought by the Royal Navy in 1768. It was a commonplace coal-carrying vessel that no one could have guessed would go on to become the most significant ship in the chronicle of British exploration.
The first history of its kind, Peter Moore's Endeavour: The Ship That Changed the World is a revealing and comprehensive account of the storied ship's role in shaping the Western world. Endeavour famously carried James Cook on his first major voyage, charting for the first time New Zealand and the eastern coast of Australia. Yet it was a ship with many lives: During the battles for control of New York in 1776, she witnessed the bloody birth of the republic. As well as carrying botanists, a Polynesian priest, and the remains of the first kangaroo to arrive in Britain, she transported Newcastle coal and Hessian soldiers. NASA ultimately named a space shuttle in her honor. But to others she would be a toxic symbol of imperialism.
Through careful research, Moore tells the story of one of history's most important sailing ships, and in turn shines new light on the ambition and consequences of the Age of Enlightenment.
Reviews (4)
Guardian Review
From the oak of its timbers to a watery grave off Rhode Island, this is an engaging account of Captain Cooks vessel Endeavour was the ship that Captain Cook sailed to Australia and New Zealand on his first voyage of discovery from 1768 to 1771. Endeavour, Peter Moore argues in this ambitious exploration, was also the word that best captured the spirit of the age. Britain, in the second half of the 18th century, was consumed by the impulse for grand projects, undertaken at speed. Samuel Johnsons dictionary, composed of 42,773 entries, which he expected to take three years to compose, but took nine, is one example of these grand projects; the vast histories of David Hume, Tobias Smollett, Catharine Macaulay, William Robertson and Edward Gibbon are others. Moore links such bold literary endeavours to diverse social and political changes: the radical MP John Wilkess campaign for liberty in the 1760s, the beginnings of the industrial revolution, sea voyages to discover the fabled southern continent and pan-European attempts to map the dimensions of the universe. Endeavour was a fundamental component of the Enlightenment approach and it was in the years 1750-80 that the impulse was at its strongest. Moore, the author of two previous books, most recently the group biography The Weather Experiment, finds a form for his inquiries in the 18th-century vogue for it-biographies: accounts of the lives of real or fictional objects, such as coins, coaches and walking canes. He focuses on the wood that became the ship Endeavour, and in doing so is able to connect a far-flung cast of characters and places, pulling into his story politicians, philosophers, sailors, ship-builders and the natural history of Britain, Australia and New Zealand. No one knows how many oaks were used to make the ship in Whitby docks that was first christened the Earl of Pembroke before it was renamed Endeavour, or where they were sourced from. Probably about 200 were needed, each about 100 years old. So the very beginning of Endeavours story, Moore argues, is not mercantile Britannia of 1764, when the vessel was built, but Restoration England under Charles II, when John Evelyn published his pioneering survey of English trees, Sylva, Or a Discourse of Forest Trees (1664). Whitby had the advantage of a dry dock, first opened in 1734, which facilitated all year round shipbuilding. Moore explains that Whitby-built vessels were not built to fit a perfect type they might blend different attributes, depending on the materials available in the yards at a particular time - but they were built to serve a purpose. The first purpose of the Earl of Pembroke was to transport coal from Newcastle to London. It was not until 1768 that she was acquired by the Royal Navy, renamed and refitted, to serve as Cooks vessel of exploration. From this point, the life of Endeavour comes sharply into view. She weighed 368 tons and the master shipwright Adam Hayes took responsibility for customising her, in the shipyard at Deptford, for Cooks voyage. She left her London anchorage on 30 July 1768, bound for Tahiti, where her crew observed the Transit of Venus over the Suns Disk, before continuing further south into uncharted seas and towards Australia and New Zealand. Her dramatic end came in 1778 when she was selected as one of the transport ships the British sank at Newport to obstruct the French The botanist Joseph Banks accompanied Cook and could often be seen in his collecting boat, towed along behind the ship. Bankss journal shows a man who sets to his collecting every morning with the cheer and spring of a parson on Easter Sunday, Moore writes. Bankss research opportunities were influenced by the attitudes with which Endeavour was met. In Tahiti, Moore suggests, there was caution; in New Zealand, belligerence; in Botany Bay, aloofness. Banks derided Indigenous Australians as rank cowards in his journal: Apathy was a crime for him far greater than the violence of the Maori or the thieving of the Tahitians. It was made worse by these peoples proximity to the thriving plant life. Moore notes the irony that among the old newspapers Banks used to press his specimens, there was a copy of the Spectator, including criticism and notes on Miltons Paradise Lost. Bankss specimens can still be seen in Londons Natural History Museum, some pressed inside the lines: the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste, / Brought death into the world and all our woe, with loss of Eden. The ship returned to England in July 1771 with more than 30,000 botanical samples, 1,400 previously unknown to European scientists. Johnson complained to Boswell: they have found very little, only one new animal, I think (the kangaroo). But many insects, Sir, Boswell replied. Moore berates Johnson and Boswell for this harsh verdict, pointing out that it took decades to come to terms with the scale of the samples brought back in Endeavour: All told, this one single voyage enhanced the list of plant species collected in the Species Plantarum of 1762-63 by around a fifth. Whilst the ships company Cook and Banks especially were honoured, promoted and rewarded, nothing was immediately done for Endeavour herself. She did not come to rest in a dock like Sir Francis Drakes Golden Hind, waiting to be turned into relics. She was recommissioned and Cook turned his attention to his next ship, which had the more steely name of Resolution. Endeavour left England again before the end of the year for the Falklands. By 1775, she was laid up in the Thames requiring a middling to large repair. Afterwards she was sold, sailed to Newfoundland, returned and eventually renamed Lord Sandwich. Moore finds evidence for this in the ship surveys in the Deptford record books. Lord Sandwich was one of about 350 ships that assembled off Staten Island before the Battle of Brooklyn in August 1776 during the American Revolution. Her dramatic end came in 1778 when she was selected as one of the transport ships the British sank at Newport to try to obstruct the French fleet, which had arrived to help the revolutionaries. In his epilogue, Moore gives a balanced account of Endeavours cultural afterlife. For many in the west the ship remains a source of inspiration, most dramatically illustrated by Nasas naming of the space shuttle Endeavour in 1989 (Moore notes that it was in homage to the original ship that the Americans retained the u in the spelling of SS Endeavour). But for others the ship is a symbol of colonial oppression. Eventually, fragments of the wood did become relics. A piece was given to the novelist James Fenimore Cooper, author of the fictional it-biography, Autobiography of a Pocket Handkerchief (1843). Another went to the moon with the Apollo 15 astronauts in 1971. And another was loaned to Nasa by the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island to travel on the space shuttle Endeavours maiden voyage. Moores richly detailed book is an engrossing love letter to a word, an attitude and a ship: it is an endeavour that honours Endeavour, without denying the death and destruction that followed in her wake. - Ruth Scurr.
Kirkus Review
A dense but enlightening history of a highly significant 18th-century vessel.Moore (Creative Writing/Univ. of London and Univ. of Oxford; The Weather Experiment: The Pioneers Who Sought to See the Future, 2015, etc.) goes well beyond simple history or a mere tracking of the Endeavour's exploits. Though the minutiae may seem daunting at first, readers should stick with it, as the narrative transforms into a page-turning, breathtaking adventure story for the ages. Built in 1764 and initially christened the Earl of Pembroke, the ship was flat-bottomed and featured an open hold, reinforced hull, and bulldog nose that was designed for strength rather than beauty. Her first life was as a collier, transporting coal to London. Enter Alexander Dalrymple, long a student of the South Seas, who was determined to find the southern continent, Terra Australis. The Royal Society appointed him as observer of the expected 1769 transit of Venus across the sun. The king's funding made this an Admiralty voyage, which required a naval captain; officials didn't choose Dalrymple, but they used his plans. James Cook would take the helm of the now renamed Endeavour, accompanied by naturalist Joseph Banks, who was well-versed in Carl Linnaeus' new taxonomy system, and artist Sydney Parkinson. Idyllic days in Tahiti were followed by a complete circumnavigation and mapping of New Zealand and parts of Australia's coast. The reactions to the ship's arrival varied from distrust to fear to belligerence to aloofness. Her sudden discovery of the Great Barrier Reef illustrates just how perfect ship and captain were for the job. Among the many other discoveries thrillingly recounted by Moore: birds, fish, arthropods, and more than 30,000 botanical specimens. In her third life, the Endeavour made a series of journeys to the Falklands. As the author notes, "her biography roams across the history of the time, binding into a single narrative diverse moments of true historical significance."History at its most exciting and revealing. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
When George Washington anxiously surveyed the British ships anchored in New York Harbor in August 1776, he would not have recognized a remarkable vessel that scant years earlier had circumnavigated the globe, enlarging geographic and scientific understanding of the planet. In recounting the history of the Endeavour, Moore illuminates the improbable life of a humble collier, reborn as a floating scientific research station, and later converted into a naval transport before being scuttled off Newport to blockade its harbor. In learning about one boat's world-straddling feats, readers also learn about the impetuous spirit that transformed society during the decades she sailed. The embodiment of that spirit, Captain James Cook, guides his bark through perilous waters, even surviving a collision with the Great Barrier Reef, so enabling astronomer Charles Green to observe rare celestial sights and naturalist Joseph Banks to collect exotic flora and fauna. To be sure, readers soon realize that in putting new lands on the British map, the Endeavour was exposing those lands to imperial forces that would destroy the traditional cultures of native peoples. With an acute eye, Moore limns the conflicting human impulses in the first episodes of this epoch-making drama. Maritime history that opens onto much more.--Bryce Christensen Copyright 2019 Booklist
Choice Review
British explorer James Cook preferred the ship Resolution to the Endeavour, though the Endeavour is the one most commonly associated with him and the one that modelers still build. There are even two full-sized replicas of the ship, attesting to its enduring fame. Beginning life in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, in 1778, the Endeavour was scuttled near Newport, RI, as the transport Lord Sandwich 2. Yet the ship's voyage to circumnavigate the globe, which began in 1768, cements its place in history. In recounting the life of this celebrated ship, Moore (creative writing, Univ. of London and Univ. of Oxford, both UK) also tells of the English oak; takes readers to the port town of Whitby; provides accounts of Cook, Joseph Banks, and others; and delves into the Georgian world itself. Readers learn of the Great South Sea as it was when the Endeavor sailed and how that voyage impacted not just the people of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific archipelagos but Europeans as well. Well-written, with a thorough bibliography, Moore's narrative history of the Endeavor excellently captures the ship's legacy. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Darlene M. Hall, Lake Erie College
Table of Contents
| Map | p. x-xii |
| Prologue: Endeavours of the Mind | p. 1 |
| Part 1 Life | |
| 1 Acorns | p. 15 |
| Part 2 Trade | |
| 2 Enigmas | p. 33 |
| 3 Cross Currents | p. 58 |
| 4 Mr Birds Ways | p. 83 |
| 5 Land of Liberty | p. 105 |
| Part 3 Exploration | |
| 6 'Take a Trip in disguise' | p. 129 |
| 7 Airy Dreams | p. 155 |
| 8 Perfect Strangers | p. 184 |
| 9 'That rainbow serpent place' | p. 213 |
| Part 4 War | |
| 10 360° | p. 243 |
| 11 The Frozen Serpent of the South | p. 268 |
| 12 The Collier Fleet | p. 293 |
| 13 Ghosts | p. 318 |
| Epilogue: Endeavours | p. 339 |
| Acknowledgements | p. 354 |
| Select Bibliography | p. 357 |
| Notes | p. 364 |
| Index | p. 390 |