Captain Cook's Merchant Ships

While the story of Endeavour is widely known, Captain Cook sailed with eight ships, which began their lives as merchant vessels. This detailed illustrated history tells the story of these vessels and the people who sailed in them. In placing these ships and people in the personal, political, social, financial, scientific and religious contexts of their times, this book provides a comprehensive and readable account of the 'long eighteenth century'. Using contemporary sources, this gripping narrative fills a gap in Cook history and attempts to catch something of the exciting, violent, gossipy but largely untaught and unknown period through which these vessels and their people sailed literally and figuratively between the old world and the new.

Auteur

Stephen Baines was born and bred in Yorkshire, and has ancestors who were mariners in Whitby. He studied Theology at Cambridge University and trained as a teacher in London. Having taught English for several years in a comprehensive school he moved to the Sixth Form College at Colchester where he introduced the International Baccalaureate. After retiring from full-time teaching he worked for two years part-time at Essex University, lecturing in Philosophy. He has written a book on the Carleton of Whitby as well as a number of articles.