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Hampton Sides, the bestselling author of “Ghost Soldiers,” “In the Kingdom of Ice,” and “On Desperate Ground,” returns with “The vast sea” (Doubleday), the story of Captain James Cook and the account of his last and fatal voyage of exploration.
Read an excerpt below and Don’t miss Ben Tracy’s interview with Hampton Sides on “CBS News Sunday Morning” on April 7!
“The Vast Sea” of Hampton Sides
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In recent years, Captain James Cook’s voyages have come under increasing attack as part of a broader reassessment of the empire’s legacy. Cook was an explorer and cartographer, not a conqueror or colonizer. Yet throughout history, exploration and map-making have typically been the first phase of conquest. In Cook’s long wake came the occupiers, the guns, the pathogens, the alcohol, the money problem, the whalers, the furriers, the sealers, the plantation owners, the missionaries.
Thus, for many indigenous people of the Pacific, from New Zealand to Alaska, Cook became a symbol of colonialism and the devastation caused by the arrival of Europeans. In many parts of the world his name was vilified, not so much for what he did, but for all the problems that followed. And also because the indigenous people he met had been ignored for so long, their voices rarely heard, their perspectives and cultural significance barely considered.
In recent years, monuments to Cook’s explorations have been splashed with paint. Artifacts and works of art from his travels, once considered priceless treasures, have been radically reinterpreted or completely removed from museum and gallery collections (in some cases, rightfully returning to their original lands) . Cook Islands residents are seriously considering changing the name of the archipelago. In 2021, in Victoria, British Columbia, protesters toppled a statue of Cook in the city’s harbour. Cook, in some ways, became the Columbus of the Pacific.
There was a time when Cook’s three epic expeditions were considered by many to be captivating adventures – worthwhile, even noble, projects undertaken in the service of Enlightenment and the expansion of global knowledge. Cook sailed into an age of wonder, when scientific explorers were encouraged to travel the world, measuring and describing, collecting unknown species of plants and animals, documenting unknown landscapes and peoples in Europe. In a direct way, Cook’s travels influenced the Romantic movement, benefited medical science, strengthened the fields of botany and anthropology, and inspired writers ranging from Coleridge to Melville. The journals of Cook’s odysseys were turned into bestselling books and became the driving force behind popular plays, poems, operas, novels, comic books and even a television show set in space. (Captain James Kirk of the USS Enterprise it is generally believed to have been inspired by Captain James Cook.)
Yet today Cook’s voyages are hotly contested, particularly in Polynesia, seen as the beginning of the systematic dismantling of traditional island cultures that historian Alan Moorehead has called “the fatal impact.” Moorehead said he was interested in “that fateful moment when a social pod is broken into,” and Cook’s expeditions certainly provided an excellent case study in the phenomenon. Taken together, his travels form a morally complicated narrative that has left modern sensibilities with much to untangle and critique. Eurocentrism, patriarchy, law, toxic masculinity, cultural appropriation, the role of invasive species in the destruction of island biodiversity: Cook’s travels contain the historical seeds of these and many other current debates.
It was in the midst of this growing antipathy towards Cook that I began to research the story of his third voyage, the most dramatic of his voyages, as well as the longest, both in terms of duration and miles sailors. The time seemed ripe to try to reckon with this man whose movements have sparked so much acrimony and dissension. This was curious to me: other early European sailors who had sailed the Pacific—Magellan, Tasman, Cabrillo, and Bougainville, to name a few—did not seem to generate as much heat or attention. What was it about Cook that set him apart?
I don’t have an easy answer to this question – there are probably many more difficult ones – but I hope this book leads readers to a broader understanding. Perhaps part of the current resentment towards Cook has to do with the fact that on his last voyage something was wrong with the fearsome captain. Historians and forensic pathologists have speculated about what ailed him, whether it was physical or mental illness, perhaps even spiritual. Whatever the root cause, his personality had definitely changed. Something was affecting his behavior and judgment that was spoiling the course of his final journey. It could even have led to his death.
Whenever it seemed relevant and interesting, I let current controversies infuse and illuminate this book. I have tried to present the captain, and the goals and assumptions behind his third voyage, in all their imperfect complexity. I don’t lionize him, demonize him, or defend him either. I have simply tried to describe what happened on his consequential, ambitious and ultimately tragic final journey.
Excerpt from “The Wide Wide Sea” by Hampton Sides. Copyright © 2024 by Hampton Sides. Excerpted with permission from Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this extract may be reproduced or reprinted without written permission of the publisher.
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