Former talk show host Sir Michael Parkinson has praised Captain James Cook, saying he was an "extraordinary man" who mapped a third of the unknown world.
Sir Michael was speaking in Sydney at the launch of a book on the explorer by Peter Fitzsimon called The Story Behind the Man Who Mapped the World.
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He said the book was the most comprehensive account of Cook he had ever read and we shouldn't judge him by today's standards.
"I think a lot of what’s said today about him is quite unfair, quite frankly. I think he was a man of his time. We’re judging him on 21st-century morals," Sir Michael told the SMH.
"He was an extraordinary man. He mapped a third of the world which he didn’t know existed.
"You think too of the primitive methods 250 years ago of navigation and sailing and all that. What an extraordinary story, a remarkable man.
"I think he’s a great man. I think he’s unfairly judged [by] people," he told the SMH.
That is not a view shared by many in New Zealand. The current tour by a replica of Cook's ship the Endeavour as part of the Tuia 250 flotilla hasn't been welcome in some communities.
The flotilla set off from Gisborne in October on a three-month voyage around the New Zealand coast, however some iwi opposed the venture saying it was hurtful to indigenous people.
Far north iwi Ngāti Kahu were vocal in their opposition to the flotilla visiting Mangonui.
"TUIA250 organisers and supporters have been clearly advised that the three mana whenua Marae over Mangōnui (Kēnana, Aputerewa and Waiaua) oppose the flotilla coming into the harbour and that the vast majority of mana whenua Marae around Tokerau oppose them coming into the Bay at all," they told Newshub in September.
In July a petition was launched to stop the flotilla happening at all.
"To indigenous people in the Pacific, it represents imperialism, it represents very much a death ship," said petition organiser Sina Brown-Davis.
"To honour the people that were killed by Cook and the people that died in the resulting genocide, that we honour those deaths by opposing this re-enactment in our times."
At the book launch author Peter Fitzsimmons said he believed Cook didn't mean to kill anyone.
"When he returned to New Zealand for the second voyage, he worried about the impact of the white man had had on the Maori," The SMH reported Fitzsimmons said.
"He wasn’t, for me, an imperialist. He was certainly an instrument of the empire."
Newshub.
