This country has, to understate matters, undergone a profound reckoning in recent years with many of our historical figureheads. Statues and monuments that lionized heroes and antiheroes of yore have been felled as we have collectively reexamined long-held legacies. A modern eye has at times perceived that, well, plenty of the leaders in our grade-school textbooks weren’t such great folks after all. Memphis had a front-row seat to the removal of the statue of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest in 2017; the statue’s former location in the medical district — Forrest Park — was renamed Health Sciences Park.
It’s instructive to cast a critical eye on historical figures, especially as efforts are underway in some quarters to whitewash the more unsavory aspects of our history. Author (and former writer for this very magazine) Hampton Sides is no stranger to tackling complex historical issues, from the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Hellhound on His Trail) to the United States Army’s fierce clashes with the Navajos (Blood and Thunder). His latest venture, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, takes to international waters, tracing the final voyage of Captain Cook, the renowned British explorer and cartographer.
photograph by kurt markus
Recognized as one of history’s most talented mapmakers, Cook’s achievements include the first European contact with the east coast of Australia in 1770, and the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle. What separated Cook from many of his peers was an almost unheard-of respect, at the time, for the cultures he encountered during his voyages. Sides writes of Cook’s experience with a Tahitian man named Mai, who after ferrying him back to England, feels a profound responsibility to reunite him with his people. When mapping out new locations, Cook refrained from giving them European-inflected names and instead attempted to show respect by providing names from the locale’s native language. Yet his exploration was not without complicated consequences.
“Cook was an explorer and a navigator, not a conqueror or a colonizer,” Sides writes in his author’s note. “Yet throughout history, exploration and the making of maps have usually served as the first phase of conquest. In Cook’s long wake came the occupiers, the guns, the pathogens, the alcohol, the problem of money, the whalers, the furriers, the seal hunters, the plantation owners, the missionaries.”
That unsettling dichotomy is at the heart of The Wide Wide Sea. Despite Cook’s willingness to engage with and seek to understand other cultures, his many first contacts with people in the Pacific led to problems down the line. And, as Sides acknowledges, much of the recorded history comes from the side of the British.
The Wide Wide Sea’s main focus is on Cook’s third voyage in 1776, which led to his exploration of — and eventual demise on – the islands of Hawaii. It is perhaps the most compelling of Cook’s adventures, where his normal approach to exploration shifted, and he became more prone to violence and aggression.
Sides treats his subject matter with care, combining European historical records with oral accounts from the island communities Cook visited during his travels. Despite diary entries and travel logs, the historical records are silent on the question of Cook’s psyche. That absence lends an air of mystery to the tale: How did a successful navigator, one who placed a premium on the health and safety of his crew and the communities they encountered, get it so wrong? Was his approach an admirable effort to create connections, or simply the first step on paving an imperialist foundation?
I jumped into The Wide Wide Sea shortly after reading another nonfiction seafaring epic, David Grann’s The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. Early passages from the latter (an ultimately enjoyable read) took a deep dive into the operational workings of the British Navy, which, while important to understanding the ensuing events, gave me the dry, yawning feeling of a long history lecture.
Sides, an old hand at weaving gripping historical tales, commits no such offense. The Wide Wide Sea is many things at once, yet with the competing narrative facets never getting in the way of another. There’s an unpacking of many context clues — his treatment of locals, or a unique approach that staved off such nightmares as scurvy — to see what makes Cook tick as a person, and why he might draw more scrutiny than his other seafaring peers. At the same time, it’s a historical epic, the desperation and grittiness of long sea voyages emerging from Sides’ prose as Cook and his crew navigate the perils of sea travel and first contact.
Never lost in the excitement of the adventure is the careful examination of how Cook’s reputation has slowly evolved. Is Cook the leader of swashbuckling epics, Sides muses, or simply the tip of an imperialist sword? There’s no easy answer, he says, but it’s an important question to ask, as many wrestle with the long shadows of colonialist history and exploration. And The Wide Wide Sea is as close and compelling a look into Cook’s legacy as we’ve seen.
The Wide Wide Sea releases on April 9th. Hampton Sides will host a book signing at Novel on Thursday, April 18th.
