Captain James Cook was already a world-renowned explorer when he set out on his third great voyage around the world. Over the course of three years, he’d touch down on the shores of Tasmania, be the first European to come in contact with the people of the Hawaiian islands, and nearly destroy his ships and sailors in the search for the fabled Northwest Passage – and meet a grisly end in a strange murder that is still being debated to this very day.
I read about the strange death of James Cook, who may have been taken as a representative of a Hawaiian god, several years ago in Anna Della Subin’s Accidental Gods, and of course I knew him as the first European who found Hawaii and decided to call them the Sandwich Isles. It’s not until I read this book though that I realized quite how far he sailed and all the things he did.
Sides focuses on Cook’s third voyage, in which it seems his charmed luck finally ran out. Cook himself remains a bit of an elusive figure, if only he never really committed his own thoughts and feelings to paper, but Sides draws upon the recollections of others on the journey to bring life aboard the ship into vivid focus. Captain Cook may be an important figure, but we spend plenty of time getting acquainted with the others aboard the ship, especially the strange, sad tale of Mai, a young Ra’iatean man who was the first Pacific Islander to visit Europe and was supposed to be returned home on this voyage.
One thing I really appreciated was Sides’ focus on the various indigenous peoples all around the world who Cook and his men encountered, from Tasmania to far flung Polynesia to the Pacific Northwest. It’s one thing to know how colonization has wiped out entire peoples and cultures, and another to get a glimpse of how they lived at the point of so-called ‘first contact,’ Sides drawing on oral traditions to show Cook’s visit on the side of the inhabitants of the places he went.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.