Book review: "The Wide, Wide Sea" by Hampton Sides

An amazing life, a shocking death, a riveting book.

"The Wide, Wide Sea," a 2024 book by Hampton Sides, tells the extraordinary story of English Captain James Cook's third (and last) voyage. It was on this voyage, from 1776 to 1778, that Cook's two ships explored the vast Pacific Ocean from as far south as New Zealand to the bitter icy edges of the Arctic Ocean at the north. 

Along the way, Cook made the first European contacts with numerous native cultures. Most significantly, he and his crew were the first non-Polynesians to reach Hawaii. It was there that Cook would die in a dramatic and tumultous conflict with the islanders. 

It is a fascinating book, stuffed with details, about a remarkable time when men could venture into blank spots on the map, finding places they never imagined, and meeting people who were far different from them. And doing it again and again. Such was the life of Captain Cook. 

As Sides describes him, Cook was both a tireless explorer and a master mapmaker. The later skill should not be minimized. Whereas earlier explorers clumsily created maps that were largely (or completely) inaccurate, Cook employed the best tools of the day to read the positions of the stars and the sun, and his knowledge of trigonomety to place his discoveries precisely on the map. And once on the map, they would soon be greeting a lot more visitors. 

Of course, "discovery" is a fraught word for lands that were already occupied. But from the European perspective — or really any perspective other than the islanders themselves — Cook did discover scores of islands and outposts throughout his three voyages.

Cook, says Sides, seemed to have a preternatural sense — or was it just luck? — that enabled him to stumble onto new islands (including Hawaii). 

Each fresh encounter with natives usually begain tensely, with both sides warily approaching each other. While there was sometimes violence, more often the two sides slowly warmed to each other, exchanging gifts, trading goods, and introducing each other to their respective customs. 

Sides recounts the perilous landing of Cook and his men at St. Lawrence Bay, in what is today remote Eastern Russia, where hostile Chukchi natives aimed their bows and arrows at him. Cook told his men to wait at the water's edge while he gingerly stepped forward. "The Natives, still bellicose and untrusting, could have killed him an instant, and they showed every willingness to do so."

But Cook stood his ground, slowly approaching, his arms outstretched to show he was unarmed. And gradually the tension eased, Sides notes, the mood softened. 

Cook had performed iterations of this risky minuet on previous voyages, in assorted beach scenarios, striding ashore alone and unarmed. It was a kind of theater of first contact he had perfected. On one level, it involved a bravery and a confidence that bordered on recklessness. Behind it, though, was an optimism. He believed cultures could be made to understand one another: If he used the right tone and body language, if he looked them in the eye and showed proper respect, the chasm between radically different people could be bridged.

While others on the English crew sometimes dismissed or recoiled at the "primitive" practices of the natives, Cook tried hard to be simply an observer of local customs. On Tahiti, Cook even viewed a human sacriifice (the victim was killed earlier in the day; his body then brought to the ceremony), then did his best to objectively describe it in his journal. 

Still, one of Sides' themes of "The Wide, Wide Sea," is that Cook was behaving differently on this voyage than on his first two, and sometimes exploded with uncharacteric fury after things were stolen from his English crew. For example, after one of the Englishmen's goats was stolen on the island of Moorea, Cook flew into a rage, leading a party that burnt the natives' homes, destroyed crops and wrecked canoes. 

Sides speculates that the 48-year-old Cook may have been suffering from an unknown disease causing his erratic behavior, but there is no proof.

The book is not entirely about Cook. The most substatial sub-story is about a youg Tahitian man named Mai, who had been brought to England in 1774, the first Polynesian to reach England. It was a peculiar time when exotic people from faraway lands were brough to London as "human pets" (think Pocahontas) to be shown off.

Mai travels aboard Cook's ship on his return to Tahiti, hoping to come back to his homeland to gain vengeance on his people's enemies and earn a place of prominence on the island. Sadly, he never gets the respect, or the vengeance, he wants. I had never heard of Mai, and it is an interesting story, though Sides spends a bit too much space on Mai's time in London.

If that's a small weakness in the book, it's about the only one. Otherwise I loved the way Sides tells the story, in doses of just two or three pages. History doesn't always fit together neatly, so some of the passages are simply standalone vignettes, while othes help build the deeper story of the voyage.

Even in the best of encounters, the English learned that the islanders would come to resent their presence after two or three weeks. Cook could sense when it was time to move on. 

Cook's death on the Big Island in Hawaii was horrifying, but perhaps inevitable. He had been treated as a god on arrival, but relations between the English and the Hawaiians slowly deteriorated. Still, everything would have been fine if the English had sailed away from the island in February 1778 as planned.

But a a storm severely damaged Cook's main ship, the Resolution, and they had to return to the Kona Coast harbor to make repairs. The Hawaiians were not happy to see them. 

Soon, an important English boat was stolen, Cook became enraged, and his efforts to force the Hawaiians to return the vessel triggered an eruption of violence. Cook was beaten and stabbed to death. It was an ignominous end to his life but perhaps an inevitable one, writes Sides.

What was perhaps more surprising than Cook’s violent death was that it hadn’t happened earlier, at some other island. For how many times had he landed upon unfamiliar shores—alone or nearly alone—a stranger, surrounded by thousands of understandably suspicious Indigenous people who could not know his true intentions? Over the years, across the hundreds of thousands of oceanic miles, how many opportunities had there been for disagreements to erupt? Cook had cheated death so many times, at so many of his anchorages, that it was a wonder he had lived this long.