Publisher's Synopsis
In 1956, Australian art historian Bernard Smith published an article in which he linked the navigator on Cook's second voyage, William Wales, to Coleridge's celebrated poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. Smith had found that Wales taught Coleridge mathematics at school and that the journal he wrote on the voyage must have been a source for the poem. This connection has been virtually ignored by Coleridge scholars, many of whom have seen the poem as a fantasy. The author came across Smith's article while planning a tramping trip into Dusky Sound, visited by Cook in 1773 on his second voyage. As he says in the book, '...Wales was moved by these surroundings and, to my eye, his description of this waterfall seemed to re-emerge in Coleridge's poem...Before I knew it, the Coleridge vortex had sucked me in and had "autocratically demanded right of way".' In this absolutely fascinating and assiduously researched book, Bill Whelen traces the connections between the two men and 'the Ancient Mariner'.
