Skip to main content

We're not afraid to die

 I get a lot of queries from students as well as teachers about Gordon Cook's essay prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's class 11 English course. So I thought of presenting certain salient points here. [I'm thus saving myself from having to answer too many people.]

Gordon Cook was replicating the second voyage made by Captain James Cook from 1772 to 1775. Gordon Cook is not related directly to James Cook. James Cook was married but none of his children married and none of them had children of their own. So there are no direct descendants of Captain James Cook. 

James Cook undertook three voyages all of which started from Plymouth, the same starting point of Gordon Cook too. But only the second one was for circumnavigating the globe. The missions of the other two were different. Gordon Cook intended to go round the world too in a ship similar to the one used by his role model. 

Resolution and Adventure, a painting by William Hodges

Strictly speaking, the Resolution did not start voyage from Plymouth but a small river town called Sheerness. It carried 118 people including the 20 men who had sailed earlier on Cook's first voyage. At Plymouth, it was joined by another ship called Adventure. Both the ships together set sail from Plymouth on their mission on 13 July 1772. 

Gordon and family in their ship in 1976

James Cook's 3 Voyages: Green indicates 2nd

James Cook's second voyage was commissioned by the British government with the mission of not only going round the world but also determining whether there was a great landmass (Terra Australis) lying further south of Australia. That's why you will find the route taking too many circles near Australia. 

Ile Amsterdam

Ile Amsterdam and the neighbouring Île Saint-Paul were first claimed by France in June 1843. Today they are French scientific bases just as when Gordon Cook and family sought asylum there in Jan 1977. 

What happened to the Cook family after this? The textbook tells us that some of them were badly injured and needed much medical assistance. For example, Suzanne - the 7-year-old daughter - required 6 minor surgeries to remove a recurring blood clot in her head. 
Gordon receiving Lady Swathling Award

Gordon Cook was awarded the prestigious Lady Swathling trophy by the Shipwrecked Mariner's Society for that year's 'most outstanding act of seamanship and navigation that saved the lives of everyone on board.' But Gordon never turned up to receive the award until 33 years later. The Wavewalker was repaired in Australia and the voyage that was to last three years went on for 16 years. Mary who was a teacher by profession taught Jon and Sue in the ship. Later on Sue and Jon went on to take university degrees through distance education systems. But Gordon Cook was of the opinion that he had saved them from the British education system. 

After the longer-than-planned voyage, Gordon established a bookshop in Cambridge, England, in 1993. Jonathan went on to complete 4 Masters while Suzanne did PhD in zoology. In 2013, Gordon at the age of 74 was bitten by the travel bug again and undertook another round-the-world voyage, alone this time since Mary was not in the mood to join him. But she did join him at some places on his route for a few weeks. 

I haven't been able to find out more about Gordon and his family. Anyone who has more information is requested to leave it in the comments space below. It will be your gift to a lot of students and teachers. 



Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanJuly 27, 2021 at 4:48 PM

    Hari OM
    Most interesting! I was vaguely aware of this part of recent history, but had not known of the 2nd voyage undertaking. The most recent report I could find was from May 2019 in The Telegraph with Cook still out on the waters... so one wonders if he still out there somewhere?!! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 28, 2021 at 7:35 AM

      That Telegraph article is one that I wanted to read but it keeps demanding subscription. Thanks for providing the information which i had suspected that Cook is still there somewhere in the seas.

      Delete
    2. Yamini MacLeanJuly 28, 2021 at 9:29 PM

      Hari OM
      Paywalls are tiresome - just met same with your link in next post to the article on the subject. Still - your post was sufficient! Yxx

      Delete
  2. AnonymousApril 9, 2023 at 7:59 PM

    The daughter - Sue - has published her own account of the voyage in her book “Wavewalker”, April 2023

    ReplyDelete
  3. veerAugust 11, 2025 at 4:25 PM

    perfect explainatio

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
18 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

Relatives and Antidepressants

One of the scenes that remain indelibly etched in my memory is from a novel of Malayalam writer O V Vijayan. Father and little son are on a walk. Father tells son, “Walk carefully, son, otherwise you may fall down.” Son: “What will happen if I fall?” Father: "Relatives will laugh.” I seldom feel comfortable with my relatives. In fact, I don’t feel comfortable in any society, but relatives make it more uneasy. The reason, as I’ve understood, is that your relatives are the last people to see any goodness in you. On the other hand, they are the first ones to discover all your faults. Whenever certain relatives visit, my knees buckle and the blood pressure shoots up. I behave quite awkwardly. They often describe my behaviour as arising from my ego, which used to be a oversized in yesteryear. I had a few such visitors the other day. The problem was particularly compounded by their informing me that they would be arriving by about 3.30 pm and actually reaching at about 7.30 pm. ...
16 comments
Read more