Captain Cook: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Captain Cook, credited to Walter Besant, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Captain Cook by Walter Besant. Read in English by Pamela Nagami James Cook (1728-1779), British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the Royal Navy was the son of a farm laborer. Apprenticed to a grocer, he ran away to sea. He saw hard service in the Baltic as a merchant seaman, while applying himself to the study of mathematics, navigation, and astronomy. In 1755 he volunteered for the Royal Navy, working his way up to captain. This little biography by Walter Besant, chronicles Cook's three voyages of discovery and his violent death in Hawaii. Cook replaced vague mythology with accurate observations of people and places, animals and plants. Of his achievements Besant writes, "We seek St. Brendan's Island and Terra Australis Incognita; and we find New Zealand and Cape Horn, the Continent of Australia, and the great Pacific Ocean, studded with islands as the firmament is studded by the stars." (Pamela Nagami, M.D.),

Recording facts

• Recording title: Captain Cook
• Author credits: Walter Besant
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 25
• Listed recording duration: 6:15:00

Catalogue topics

• australia
• Royal Society
• Prince Edward Island
• Maori
• Royal Navy
• Newfoundland
• new zealand
• longitude

Opening tracks: first 24 of 25

1. 01 - Ch. 1: Birth and Education, Pt. 1 — 17:35
2. 02 - Ch. 1: Birth and Education, Pt. 2 — 13:07
3. 03 - Ch. 2: Before the Mast, Pt. 1 — 8:52
4. 04 - Ch. 2: Before the Mast, Pt. 2 — 8:00
5. 05 - Ch. 3: In the Royal Navy, Pt. 1 — 19:33
6. 06 - Ch. 3: In the Royal Navy, Pt. 2 — 12:33
7. 07 - Ch. 4: The Great Unknown Ocean — 21:25
8. 08 - Ch. 5: Cook's Three Predecessors — 18:23
9. 09 - Ch. 6: Cook's First Voyage, Pt. 1 — 16:28
10. 10 - Ch. 6: Cook's First Voyage, Pt. 2 — 13:53
11. 11 - Ch. 7: A Breathing Space — 13:00
12. 12 - Ch. 8: The Second Voyage, Pt. 1 — 18:51
13. 13 - Ch. 8: The Second Voyage, Pt. 2 — 19:15
14. 14 - Ch. 9: Last Stay at Home — 12:23
15. 15 - Ch. 10: The Third Voyage, Pt. 1 — 14:50
16. 16 - Ch. 10: The Third Voyage, Pt. 2 — 14:14
17. 17 - Ch. 10: The Third Voyage, Pt. 3 — 16:08
18. 18 - Ch. 10: The Third Voyage, Pt. 4 — 20:53
19. 19 - Ch. 11: His Death, Pt. 1 — 8:06
20. 20 - Ch. 11: His Death, Pt. 2 — 13:50
21. 21 - Ch. 11: His Death, Pt. 3 — 21:39
22. 22 - Ch. 11: His Death, Pt. 4 — 16:55
23. 23 - Ch. 12: The End of the Voyage — 4:01
24. 24 - Ch. 13: The Ship's Company — 16:23

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.