As an eighteen-year-old, Georg Forster joined his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, who had been appointed naturalist on Cook’s second voyage (1772-75). J.R. Forster clashed often with those on board, including Cook himself. He was the ‘tactless philosopher’, as his biographer called him. He had been promised the assignment of writing the official account. This would have brought much-needed cash to the family; the author of the first voyage account, for example, had earned £6000 in publishing fees. However, the arrangement was abrogated, there were recriminations, Forster was forbidden to publish, and so his son produced an unofficial version which appeared six weeks before the official one. It failed as a commercial venture, owing to the fact that the government had subsidised the official version, two lavishly illustrated volumes, which sold for the same price as the Forster offering.

None of this affected Georg Forster’s admiration for, and veneration of, Cook. Cook der Entdecker was published as an introduction to his translation into German of the official account of the third voyage. Forster was motivated by the fact that the editor of that official version, Dr John Douglas, had produced what Forster believed was an inadequate memoir of Cook’s life: ‘intolerable’, he called it. In a nutshell, Douglas had seen Cook in the context of a long line of British explorers; outstanding, yes, but part of the tradition. Forster saw Cook as exceptional, one of those unique specimens thrown up from time to time in history.

For Forster, Cook was an Enlightenment man bringing back to Europe new knowledge about other human societies. He was, of course, a superb seaman and chart maker. But he was also a modern human resources manager who realised that his crew was his greatest asset. He chose them carefully, cared for their health, welfare and happiness, and trained them in navigation and seamanship. ‘Men are the strongest forces set into motion by a great man,’ writes Forster, ‘as well as being the tools by which he achieves everything.’ Cook also involved himself in all aspects of the preparations for his voyages, ranging from the type of ship to the quantities and types of supplies carried.

It seems to me that most of the writing on Cook in the subsequent 220 years has been variations on these themes, either elaborating on them or reacting against them. Forster’s essay is a seminal piece, and it is a great service to scholarship that it is now available in English.

Forster had the great advantage of having sailed with Cook. He creates for the lay reader a vivid picture of life on board a working ship, and his descriptions are evocative:

Fogs and storms alternate with each other; often a storm would rage even during dark fogs; often we did not see the sun for a fortnight or three weeks. We were encircled by vast masses of ice which emerged from the sea like floating islands and were even more dangerous because their positions could change, and we often sighting them when it was almost too late to steer the ship past. How often we were terrified by being able to hear the waves breaking on the ice, without being able to lay our eyes on the object of our fear.

The reader has to put up with a little ‘turgid philosophical speculation’, as Nigel Erskine in his illuminating introductory essay calls it, but this just adds to the Germanic flavour. As Erskine says, the achievements of the Forsters, père et fils, have been largely ignored by English-speaking scholars and have only recently been recognised. This book is therefore not before time.

The volume includes a facsimile of the original German publication, as well as the English translation. It is a handsome publication, bound in quarter tan kangaroo with speckled papered sides reminiscent of an eighteenth-century volume. Given Sydney’s recent weather, it is just the book to curl up with by the fire with a glass of port in hand.