Customer Reviews

Last Voyage of Captain Cook: The Collected Writings of John Ledyard (National Geographic Adventure Classics)

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This book can not be said to hold up to many of the writings about any of the voyages of Captain Cook. I also agree that the letters are of no worth. However, for anyone that has read other books about Captain Cook it is a very interesting book. There are many things that Ledyard writes, which differ with the accounts that Cook records, which makes it an interesting look at what some of the crew thought about the third voyage. If you have never read anything about Captain Cook, DO NOT start wiht this book. If you have read anyhting about Cook already then this book will please you.

Although I agree with the criticisms of the other two reviewers, I found Ledyard's journal on Cook's voyage interesting reading, and worth paying a few dollars postage for. But as there are only about 115 pages worth reading, I'd feel disappointed with this book if I'd bought it new, or paid more than a few dollars plus postage for it. Apparently, this is about the only chance you have of reading Ledyard's journal without going to antique book auctions. But more gifted writers may have covered this voyage better, and few readers will wade through the rest of the book in its entirety, letters and all. More interesting perhaps is the biography of Ledyard's life, written by James Zug. Just because a man led an exciting life doesn't mean he was a great writer.

This book is not nearly as interesting, enriching, or well written as the other books in this series. (I highly recommend the Voyage of the Beagle by Darwin, for example.) Publishing a whole volume of Ledyard is really overkill, and misstates his importance as a writer and historian. While the 20-page account of Cook's murder and the, er, unpalatable aftermath of his death is riveting, the rest of Ledyard's journal is dull. The private letters that make up the latter half of the book have little of interest to the general reader. For much better travel adventure about the same regions that Ledyard covers here, read Darwin (see above), or the Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy by Nordhoff and Hall, or Farley Mowat (especially The Siberians).

I read anything I come across relating to John Ledyard the traveller. I'm not a historian, but as a person who is trying to find my ancestors, I have a keen interest in all Ledyards, who they are, where they came from, and what was their family like. Were they unusual? were they good people? Why do I know so little about them? And why am I able to find so much about this person? The last question of course, relates specifically to John Ledyard. I have been looking for information about him for more than forty years. I have found quite a lot; and quite a lot of it is not true.

There is no doubt that John Ledyard is an interesting subject for academics, historians, and biographers. I'm grateful for people like James Zug, Edward Gray, and others who go to the archives, and credible, authoritative sources that are not available to most people. John Ledyard deserves his "fame" and he deserves first-class scholarship that only a few are capable of getting and conveying it in a pleasing and interesting way as Zug, Gray and a few others have done. The authors mentioned here have apparently gotten to know one another since their books have been published. Zug's, "American Traveler..." in 2005; and Gray's "The Making of John Ledyard..." in 2007. I would hope that they keep in touch and keep John Ledyard "alive" for a time when all the untruths propagated about the family of Captain John and Abigail (Hempstead)Ledyard by early Ledyard "historians" can be put out with the garbage. With Ledyard's Journal and correspondence edited by Zug and published by National Geographic, available generally now, perhaps the professional historians can get their heads together and consult with John Ledyard's journal, papers, and letters, and get a true account of Ledyard's birth, young life, failures and achievements. The early Ledyard family history has been botched from the early days; even before they came to America. The modern family historian, Cass Ledyard Shaw, puts Squire John Ledyard (1700-1771) in the family of Ebenezer Ledyard(1668-1718/9)and Mary Yerbury(1641- ? ). If Mary Yerbury is the mother of Squire John and his seven siblings, the last one born about 1712, she would have been 59 years when her son John was born, and about 71 at the last!!!

The Squire himself has a few fishy dates in his vital statistics, but his son Captain John and his family are totally twisted and distorted by the family "historians." The six children born to Abigail are listed in "The Ledyard Family In America," by CSL:
John Ledyard, November 1751
Charles Frederick Ledyard, died young.
Ferdinand Ledyard, died young.
Thomas Grover Ledyard, ...and about whom little is known.
George Ledyard, born in 1753.
Fanny Ledyard, born in 1754 at Southold. !!!

That family group was published in 1993. There is not one line entry that is true. Most egregious, the name Ferdinand is a figment of someone's sick imagination. From the first child to the sixth child there is less than three years for six single births.

I understand that the academics, and John Ledyard biographers are writing about one person and those lies are things that don't concern who John Ledyard the traveler was and his adventures. Except that those historians were lying about John too. He wasn't born in 1751. He was born in December 1750 and baptized eleven months later. I believe that at least three Ledyard biographers know that. Also, John Ledyard knew that. He wrote to his cousin Isaac in May 1788 and said that he was 37 years-old. His wife's father knew that. He recorded in his diary (published diary) that John was born about 2 Dec 1750. He also recorded the birth of two other siblings: a child, name unknown in mid-January 1754, and a child born mid-June 1756. That child was Thomas Grover. Again, the biographer writing about John Ledyard, can't be side-tracked with little details about children not connected with their subject. But, they do have a responsibility to verify the subject's vital statistics, and point out specious information and obvious misinformation. Ledyard biographers since Jared Sparks in 1827, and still to Zug and Gray in the first decade of the twentieth century, can't come to say, "John Ledyard was born on 2 December 1750 in the Ledyard home in Groton, CT," and then go on with the adventures of John Ledyard. (See "The Diary of Joshua Hempstead...," published by the New London County Historical Society, 1999). Get the collected papers and correspondence of John Ledyard and find out what He meant when he referred to his "broken and distressed family."
And what might these words of John quoted by his first biographer, Jared Spark's (get those letters and publish them Mr. Zug!), be about:"...the sufferings I met with, and the contemptuous ideas the people where I was born and educated had of me, were nothing strange, but reflected honor on me...a prophet is hardly accepted in his own country." I think was talking about his family and people who were supposed to love him; and he was hurt. This was after he dropped out of Dartmouth, and tried to find a minister to support and mentor or sponser his efforts to become a preacher. Soon after this having failed to find a position with a church, he went to Long Island and stayed with Prime relatives at Huntington, NY for twelve days, "feasting" in the home library of Rev. Ebenezer Prime, and his son Benjamin Youngs Prime, who may have been more than a cousin to John.
AlanTLedyard
Let's have a discussion about John Ledyard: Truth and Myth.