Alone and defenceless: the tragic death of Captain Cook

The principal purpose of Captain James Cook’s last voyage, which began in Plymouth on 12 July 1776, was to discover the elusive Northwest Passage. Attempts had been made before, in vain, from the Atlantic, but this time it would be from the west, from the Pacific. 

On the way, Cook was to return an Anglicised Polynesian named Mai to Raiatea, ‘a ragged volcanic island’ about 130 miles north west of Tahiti. Mai takes up much of Hampton Sides’s narrative, offering ‘a poignant allegory of first contact’, before being deposited home with his cargo of English domestic farm animals and his suits. 

Prior to that, Cook had investigated, in New Zealand, the massacre of ten crew members of the Adventure, the Resolution’s sister ship on his previous voyage.  His attitude to this tells us much about him. He was neither vengeful nor judgmental. One of his powering characteristics was a profound curiosity. He wanted to know what had happened.