The Columbus Of The Pacific
What Christopher Columbus did for America, Captain James Cook did for the Pacific—with all the baggage that entails. A restless explorer who didn’t know when to stop, Cook paid a high price for his ambitions, yet his shocking decline and infamous end have been shrouded in mystery for centuries. Only, historians now have disturbing answers.
Nathaniel Dance-Holland, Wikimedia Commons
1. He Had Humble Beginnings
Born in November 1728 in Yorkshire, England as the second of eight children, Cook wasn’t always drawn to marine life. He spent his post-school days helping his father manage a farm, and then settled in the village of Staithes to work as a shopboy—a job he was hopelessly bad at.
It was only after giving up these moderate ambitions, and as a somewhat desperate Plan B, that Cook became a merchant navy apprentice. Suddenly, a whole world opened up.
John Webber, Wikimedia Commons
2. He Made A Meteoric Rise
Cook’s rise through the ship ranks was nothing short of meteoric. Despite his difficulties cutting it as a shopboy, he gained a reputation for almost preternatural competence at sea, and took to many of the intellectual pursuits required of sailors, including algebra, navigation, and astronomy.
He didn’t shy away from physical pursuits either: In 1755, in his mid-20s, he joined the Royal Navy on the cusp of the Seven Years’ War, and within months he had helped Britain capture a French warship and sink another. Yet these weren’t the only things he learned.
Rafael Monleón, Wikimedia Commons
3. He Found His Calling
While moving up the ranks during the Seven Years’ War and fighting in North America, Cook met the officer Samuel Holland and saw him use a plane table device to survey the area. Cook was immediately enraptured, and Holland taught him top-of-the line techniques to accurately map out coastlines. It was talent for which Cook would soon be revered, and it helped British Major-General James Wolfe infiltrate Quebec and win the famous Battle of the Plains of Abraham.
But Cook didn’t get out of the war unscathed.
Hervey Smythe, Wikimedia Commons
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4. He Maimed Himself
The most terrible event of Cook’s young life happened during wartime, but by complete accident. While he was master of the HMS Grenville surveying the coast of Newfoundland, his powder horn exploded and utterly mangled his right hand. The injury left a long, distinctive scar—one that played a significant role in his future, at least one dark piece of it.
Sasso and G.B. Bosio, Wikimedia Commons
5. He Was Strict With Himself
As his time in the Navy went on and the young shopboy matured, Cook grew into an almost intimidatingly competent man, and he had a reputation for remaining cool, rational, and sober even in the most chaotic of situations. Moreover, he was little prone to drinking and carousing; he rarely imbibed and reportedly remained celibate on ship voyages.
Nonetheless, what he lacked in carnal sins he made up for in an iron will.
William Hodges, Wikimedia Commons
6. He Insisted On Total Loyalty
Cook had an innate sense of the mood of his crews—it’s just that he hated pandering to it, or indeed to anything else. Sticking to his rational side, he refused to let priests aboard his ships, and could be wholly inflexible even if flexibility was needed. His demeanour, though usually calm, would flare into temper in the face of incompetence or back-talk from his men. And that wasn’t all.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Wikimedia Commons
7. He Answered To No One
Captain James Cook was a man of tightly bottled emotions, and he was unusually good at mastering his passions in secrecy. Unfortunately, he extended that secrecy to nearly everything: On a personal level, he rarely confessed his thoughts or feelings to anyone, even those closest to him. On a professional level, he tended to keep even major decisions to himself—a habit that would not serve him well.
8. He Started A Family
In 1762, Cook came out of his shell enough to marry Elizabeth Batts, the daughter of his mentor Samuel Batts. Both James and Elizabeth were practical people, and it was an eminently efficient marriage: the couple had six children in total, though three of them did perish in infancy, tragedies Cook no doubt suffered with in near silence.
Yet despite his growing family, Cook was hardly tied down.
9. He Had Powerful Admirers
Cook’s talents on a ship and in surveying did not go unnoticed by the British Admiralty, and their notice couldn’t have come at a better time. As the Seven Years’ War wound down, Britain began looking for the so-called Terra Australis—an enormous continent (much bigger than the real Antarctica or Australia) they believed had to exist in the south of the Earth to balance out the land in the north.
If a land like that did really exist, Britain wanted to find it. And in Cook, they thought they had just the man for the job.
![TERRA AUSTRALIS INCOGNITA, Hondius, 1618, pars tabulam AMERICA noviter delineata, auct. Jodoco Hondio, 1618; H. Picard fecit [1640].](https://www.factinate.com/storage/app/media/factinate/2026/4/20/177666185908846eba7b096bc4d4cb448c5f4d01cc42527d2c.jpg)
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10. He Took On A Huge Responsibility
Starting in 1768, Britain recruited Cook to lead a scientific voyage aboard the HMS Endeavour, ostensibly to observe the 1769 transit of Venus from the island of Tahiti. They chose Cook for his adeptness at navigation and astronomy…but also because, taciturn as he was, Britain likely thought he could keep a secret. They certainly gave him one.
Samuel Atkins (c.1760-1810), Wikimedia Commons
11. He Had A Secret Mission
Although Cook’s voyage on the Endeavour had the stated aim of viewing Venus, in reality Britain was after something much bigger: land, in the form of Terra Australis. After all, if they could colonize the hypothetical continent, untold riches might await them.
So in addition to Cook’s astronomical orders, Britain issued him confidential aims to claim any “discovered” lands for the current monarch King George III. But this was a tall order for one particular reason.
Johann Zoffany, Wikimedia Commons
12. He Had One Constant Enemy
Sea travel was dangerous for all the reasons you might imagine, but nothing was more feared in the 18th century than scurvy. Sailors, who spent months and years on water without fresh produce, often suffered from this vitamin deficiency (though no one knew this is what caused it at the time), leading to fatigue, bleeding gums, and even death. The longer the voyage, the bigger the risk.
That said, Cook was something of a ship-whisperer—he never lost a man to scurvy. His secret was a mix of his usual discipline…and unusual luck.
Archives New Zealand from New Zealand, Wikimedia Commons
13. He Was A Miracle Worker
To combat scurvy, Cook insisted on certain diet restrictions and standards of ship cleanliness—and though not all of these directives were useful, some of them were instrumental. Perhaps most effective of all, he banned his men from skimming the salt fat from copper boiling pans, a common occurrence at the time. As it happened, ingesting copper compounds prevents the absorption of vitamins, so having sailors avoid the practice was a godsend.
In short, many on the Endeavour thought they were in good hands. Even so, the trip began with a disturbing event.
14. His Voyage Had A Tragic Beginning
At the beginning of the journey, Cook and his crew made a stop at Tierra del Fuego in South America, where the ship's naturalist Joseph Banks went ashore with two Black servants, Thomas Richmon and George Dorlton, on an overnight excursion to collect botanical specimens. Thomas and George never made it back, instead suffering bitter deaths by freezing.
This wouldn’t be the only fateful omen of Cook’s first voyage.
Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, Wikimedia Commons
15. He Witnessed A New Sport
In April 1769, Cook did what he publicly set out to do, arriving in Tahiti and observing the transit of Venus. He and his men then spent time on the island getting to know the native Tahitians, even observing them surfing—likely becoming the first Europeans to observe the sport in the process. (As we go on, you’ll see they were the first Europeans to witness a lot of things.)
Yet despite this idyllic setting, there were signs of tension that would one day become explosive.
Pedro Szekely from Los Angeles, USA, Wikimedia Commons
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16. His Crew Stole Religious Artifacts
That June, Cook and his crew committed a nearly unforgivable act: Without asking anyone, they took rocks from a sacred marae to use as the ship’s ballast, a sacrilegious move that the Tahitians looked none too kindly on. Unfortunately, it got worse. When the Tahitians later took several items from crewmates, Cook refused to see it as a tit-for-tat, and his slow-burning temper flared.
M.A. Rooker del. from a sketch by W. Wilson, Wikimedia Commons
17. His Punishments Were Harsh
Instead of asking around about who the culprit was, Cook decided to punish the island indiscriminately. He took 22 canoes for ransom, regardless of to whom they belonged, until the property made its way back to him.
Unfortunately—and to his eventual doom—Cook found he rather liked this method, and used it again almost immediately.
18. He Made Deserters Regret It
By July, two of Cook’s men, much preferring to stay in Tahiti, deserted, married local women, and went into hiding. In yet another disproportionate and indiscriminate response, Cook took one of the local chiefs hostage in order to compel the inhabitants to smoke his deserters out. The ploy worked once more, and Cook soon sailed on, content with his conduct.
It would all get much more complicated.
Henry Byam Martin, Wikimedia Commons
19. He Met A New Culture, Then Killed Their Men
Cook’s next stop was New Zealand, where he met with the Maori people and was probably the first European to communicate with them. But these “triumphs” for Britain were still marked with tensions and violence: One skirmish between Cook and the natives left several Maori dead. Around this time, Cook also witnessed the Maori eating the flesh of their enemies.
It was not the moment to outstay a welcome, and after a brief visit to (a rather hostile) Australia, Cook returned to England in July of 1771. But he didn’t return for long.
James Barry, Wikimedia Commons
20. He Couldn’t Stand To be On Land
Cook and his crew had spent literal years at sea, but the restless explorer managed exactly 12 months on his home shores before the itch to travel was too strong to ignore, and he readily accepted a second voyage with the Royal Society. This time, Britain sent him with the specific intent to find Terra Australis once and for all, and Cook personally chose to command the Resolution alongside Tobias Furneaux, who commanded the Adventure.
They left in July 1772—and it began to fall apart almost immediately.
Willem van de Velde the Younger, Wikimedia Commons
21. His Co-Captain Went Rogue
Tobias Furneaux proved to be more of a liability than a help, and two ships did not seem better than the first expedition’s one. Furneaux almost immediately deviated from Cook’s dietary regime, and just a month after setting out, 20 of his men contracted scurvy, with one of them dying. The ships also kept losing each other, with a storm that October separating them permanently.
The next events were horrific, though still a pale shadow of what was to come.
James Northcote, Wikimedia Commons
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22. His Men Were Massacred
In December 1773, Furneaux docked solo off of New Zealand, and 10 men soon went ashore to gather supplies—only for yet another violent altercation to break out between the Europeans and the Maori. Though it’s difficult to know exactly what happened, when Furneaux found the bodies of his 10 men, they had been partially burned in preparation for cannibalism.
Though Cook would later indicate it may have been the crew, not the Maori, who were to blame, he didn’t find out about their deaths until much later. Instead, he was put through his own ordeal.
Manner of John Cleveley the Younger, Wikimedia Commons
23. He Went At It Alone
Thanks to this early rupture, Cook’s Resolution spent much of the second voyage traveling in search of Terra Australis alone…even as Cook became increasingly sure that no such thing as Terra Australis existed. When his crew passed the Antarctic Circle—again they were the first Europeans to do so—and no land was in sight, he simply couldn't fathom that anything was out there. In this particular case, he was wrong.
![Map of Antarctica. Scale [ca. 1:40,000,000]. Col., 34 x 41 cm.](https://www.factinate.com/storage/app/media/factinate/2026/4/20/177666689044eee7a72c0a3c686b0d1eb7c69aa76d946c4a1e.jpg)
24. The Ocean Beat Him
In fact, on January 18, 1773, just the day after crossing the Antarctic Circle, an oblivious Captain Cook came as close as 75 miles to the continent of Antarctica. All the same, he would never step foot on it: After another year of searching in a large loop, then hitting pack ice and being able to go no further, Cook admitted, “I whose ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go”.
By then, even the nearly indomitable Cook was showing signs of weakness.
Samuel Atkins, Wikimedia Commons
25. He Ate A Dog
Around the time that he gave up on Terra Australis, Cook experienced a severe illness aboard the ship, becoming bedridden and terrifyingly constipated. His crew were thrown into such panic that, in order to get some kind of fresh provisions into him on an otherwise barren ship, they killed a pet dog, turned it into a soup, and fed it to their ailing captain.
One way or another, their ministries worked and Cook survived. But then again, a more silent doom was moving through the crew.
26. His Crew Spread Disease
Sailors aren’t usually a self-denying lot, and they happily found in the Pacific many women, brought up outside the strictures of Christianity, willing to bed down with them. As usual, Cook steadfastly abstained—sometimes even offending the offerors in the process—but this didn’t stop him from worrying that his men were passing European diseases to their lovers and on to the rest of the islands. He was tragically right: many Pacific islanders experienced the horrors of gonorrhea and the like for the first time thanks to the Resolution and other ships.
Instead, Cook got himself into a different kind of trouble.
27. He Poisoned Himself
Cook frequently and happily partook of local food traditions, usually without complaint…except, sometimes he could have benefitted from more queasiness. In September 1774, Cook was traveling around various islands in the Pacific when he ate, against warnings from a crewmate, a pufferfish liver. Soon, Cook was almost completely numb from the famously toxic fish, couldn’t walk without help, and only recovered after inducing vomiting.
Still, this time anyway, Cook knew when to stop.
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28. He Got Famous For Finding Nothing
Cook returned to England in 1775 with little to show for it except the conviction that there was no massive southern continent. It didn’t matter: His negative discovery, as well as his track record with scurvy, made him an instant celebrity. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society, met writer James Boswell, and was called “the first navigator in Europe”.
So, when he soon got promoted to the rank of post-captain and given an honorary retirement, it looked like Cook could go out on top. But fate—and James Cook himself—had other plans.
E. Phillips Fox, Wikimedia Commons
29. He Hated Retirement
Cook’s “retirement” consisted of a cushy position as a captain of Greenwich Hospital, a tidy pension of 230 British pounds per year, and no need to live in open water ever again—and he was utterly miserable about it. By now, the 47-year-old suffered from mental and physical exhaustion as well as a probable diseased gallbladder, but all the same he longed for his days of exploration. An opportunity fell right into his lap.
Miscellaneous Items in High Demand, PPOC, Library of Congress, Wikimedia Commons
30. He Pushed His Way Back In
When Cook heard that the Admiralty now wanted to find the fabled Northwest Passage connecting North America to Asia, he couldn’t help but get involved. Initially, he was supposed to only consult on the forthcoming expedition, but the siren call of the ocean worked its magic. Eventually, in a meeting where he was supposed to help select officers, he came out and declared he would lead the voyage himself.
As it happened, the Admiralty was over the moon about his decision, even if he was in physical decline and his rare temper had recently turned short. They shouldn’t have been.
31. He Had A Worthy Cause
When Cook first set out on his third expedition, everything looked in impeccable order, at least on the surface. For one, Cook had control of the Resolution again, with trusted long-time crew member Charles Clerke taking the Discovery. For two, Britain had yet another cover story for their true goal of the Northwest Passage: They insisted they wanted to return the Polynesian native Mai, who had come over to Britain, to his home in Tahiti.
The expedition set off, then, for the morality and glory of Britain. It would return in shambles.
Manner of John Cleveley the Younger, Wikimedia Commons
32. His Cooler Head Prevailed
For a time on the voyage, Cook appeared to be his normal cool, rational self. When he landed in New Zealand again in 1777 and finally learned of the deaths of 10 of Furneaux’s men, he even refused to retaliate, much to the chagrin of some of his crew as well as the confusion of the Maori, who expected him to seek revenge in accordance with their own customs.
Cook, however, calmly explained that he would remain friendly unless provoked again. It was one of the last truly merciful things he did.
33. He Suddenly Turned Cruel
Despite his lenience to the Maori, Cook’s relations with his own crew were turning sour—in fact, they were becoming cruel and unusual. When he experienced theft onboard his ship after sailing from New Zealand, Cook decided to punish everyone by cutting meat rations, and the disgruntled crew responded with a hunger strike.
Though there were flashes of this indiscriminate punishment in Cook’s career, it wasn’t the way he’d ever run his ship before. But it was just the beginning.
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34. He Flogged His Men
As the journey wore on, Cook, never too soft-hearted, turned outright severe, ready to punish his men at the drop of a hat. In particular, his ordering of floggings not only became exponentially more frequent than ever before, but he also demanded the men submit to ever more lashes, with some enduring 60 cracks of the whip.
Yet it wasn’t just that this new Captain Cook was crueler; something vital he once had was also missing.
35. He Went Through A Fundamental Change
Alarmingly, on this third voyage and despite his restlessness in Britain, Cook no longer seemed to possess any true drive for exploration. To the puzzlement of his crew, he now left many of the islands around him untouched, even when there was ample time and supplies for sojourns. As a result, he grew ever more closed off to himself and others.
His men began to whisper that something was deeply wrong with Captain Cook, but even they couldn’t predict the bloody outcome.
Universal History Archive, Getty Images
36. He Hated Stealing
Instead of exploring, Captain Cook now focused intensely on controlling theft and property, both within and without his crew. The trouble was, the Indigenous people around him had different ideas about stealing than Europeans: In places like Tahiti, a successful heist was to be admired, though a failed one might be punished.
Even with the help of the Polynesian Mai onboard interpreting, Cook failed to internalize this perspective. So after locals took a goat on Tahiti, a terrifying switch flipped.
Screenshot from Timewatch, BBC (2009)
37. He Went On A Rampage
Cook decided he would get the goat back no matter the cost, and he took an armed group of men and did nothing less than terrorize the island. He burned homes, crops, and especially canoes, with no sign of stopping, until the goat was quietly returned. His men—and the natives—were aghast at this disproportionate attack, but Cook was hardly done.
Screenshot from Timewatch, BBC (2009)
38. He Mutilated The Natives
Deterring thieving was now a complete obsession for Captain Cook, and he had no mercy when it came to punishing offenders. When a valuable sextant was stolen from the ship, he tracked the culprit down in no time at all, locking him up aboard. He then cut off his ears, as a permanent sign of his shame, and sent him back to shore.
This, too, was even more forceful than Cook had ever been on his first two voyages, tense and violent as they were. Moreover, the altered captain doled out his draconic “justice” with impunity, his men too fearful to openly criticize him. He was about to get even more untouchable.
Screenshot from Timewatch, BBC (2009)
39. He Stumbled On Another Discovery
After leaving his ward Mai in Tahiti at the end of 1777, Cook began the true aim of his expedition in earnest, setting off for the Northwest Passage. But in January 1778, he instead found something else: the Hawaiian Islands, a paradise no European had yet seen. Even better, the natives spoke the same language as the Tahitians—thanks to an ancient migration route—and Cook and his men were able to communicate with them, albeit not as smoothly now that they didn’t have Mai.
If they had brought Mai along, perhaps the miscommunication that led to Cook’s brutal end never would have happened.
Jacques Descloitres, Wikimedia Commons
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40. He Was Greeted Like A Chief
When Captain Cook anchored on Hawaii this first time, the islanders greeted him with incredible veneration, prostrating themselves at his feet and treating him like one of their highest-ranked chieftains. As Cook traded with the population, mostly in nails and tools, locals continued to prostrate themselves, and did so right up until Cook sailed north, still in pursuit of the Passage.
If Cook thought this was a good omen for his upcoming trip, he was sorely mistaken.
41. He Made Huge Mistakes
Cook’s attempt to find the Northwest Passage over the next weeks proved both futile and miserable. Storms and hostile winds continually hindered the voyage, and Cook’s own changing faculties were no help either. He made unusual and glaring errors, including when he missed the 10-mile-wide passage off Unimak Island into the Bering Sea, as well as when he nearly ground his ship the very next day after pushing it overzealously in fog.
Even so, Cook refused to admit defeat and drove his crew onward. He appeared to be losing himself, and he was certainly losing his men.
William Hodges, Wikimedia Commons
42. His Crew Rebelled
By now, the mood aboard the expedition’s ships was dismal, with Captain Cook growing ever more erratic and angry and his men losing ever more trust in him. At one point, when the men grumbled about the unpalatable walrus meat Cook had procured and threatened another hunger strike, Cook grew so incensed at their “disobedience” that he continued serving it anyway.
But then Cook made perhaps his greatest mistake.
Screenshot from Timewatch, BBC (2009)
43. He Refused To Give Up
Around October of 1778, Cook, now nearly 50 years old, gathered his men together and finally conceded that they weren’t going to find the Northwest Passage in these conditions. But in a twist, that didn’t mean they were going home: Cook wanted to sail south again toward Hawaii and try again next year. It was an entirely unnecessary plan, and it spelled his end.
44. He Lost Control
Even Cook’s return to the Hawaiian islands seemed cursed. The expedition’s two ships struggled to find a safe place to anchor, all while women came in canoes to try to get on the ship and enjoy the sailors. Captain Cook, still fearful over his men’s communicable diseases, tried to ban the women as well as restrict diets to conserve supplies, until another near mutiny forced him to relent.
On January 17, 1779 the ships finally set down in Kealakekua Bay on Hawai’i island…and then it turned from tense to surreal.
John Webber, Wikimedia Commons
45. He Became A God
The events of Cook’s life after anchoring in Hawai’i in 1779 will always have an air of tense mystery, largely because of the enormity of their nature. But, to most historians’ understanding, the islanders, having heard of his previous journey to their islands, now mistook Cook for a god—specifically, their rain god Lono. He had, after all, arrived during the Makahiki, the harvest festival that worshipped Lono, and his ship and route was reminiscent of certain Hawaiian religious lore.
It had dire consequences.
Sydney Parkinson, Wikimedia Commons
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46. He Met A King
Following their belief that a god was in their midst, a massive crowd of 10,000 gathered to greet Captain Cook, prostrating themselves whenever he looked their way. Cook even met with the Hawaiian king Kalaniopu’u, who gave him a magnificent feather cape in recognition of his admiration, and the pair of them eventually exchanged names.
And while all this may seem like a good thing for Cook, it very much wasn’t. He was now on a high pedestal, and it was a brutal crash down.
John Webber, Wikimedia Commons
47. Tensions Rose Again
For all this pomp and circumstance, it didn’t take long for very human tensions to surface between Cook and the Hawaiians. In his usual fashion, Cook promptly and unpopularly punished a native with flogging for thieving. Then, in an ironic twist, sailors took religious artifacts from a Hawaiian shrine, possibly deeply offending the Hawaiians in the process.
But there was one issue that towered above all others.
Jacques Arago, Wikimedia Commons
48. He Fell Out Of Favor
The worst trouble for Cook was that, soon after his arrival, Makahiki season ended, ushering out the time of Lono and ushering in the season of the war-god Ku. In other words, Cook, in his identity as “Lono,” was no longer ascendant, and the natives likely began to wonder what a god was doing outstaying his phase of life. In fact, after a month, the king and priests anxiously pressed Cook for when he planned to leave.
Cook took the hint, packing up and sailing out on February 4. If only he could have stayed away.
Screenshot from Timewatch, BBC (2009)
49. He Suffered Fatal Ill Luck
Just days into this departure, the Resolution’s main mast broke in a gale, and Cook and his crew were forced to return to Kealakekua Bay to repair it, landing just a week after they’d left.
It was viciously bad luck: Not only had both sides grown "reciprocally tired of each other,” in the words of one crew member, but the presence of “Lono” this deep into the season of Ku was decidedly awkward for the Hawaiian priests. It began to seem that James Cook was no deity, but a mere mortal man.
The atmosphere now grew more tense than ever as the Europeans repaired their ship, with petty thefts popping up again immediately. Then on February 14, 1779, everything came to a disturbing head.
Michael Nicholson, Getty Images
50. He Planned To Capture A King
That day in 1779, Cook found out that the Discovery’s large cutter, an extremely useful vessel at sea, was the latest pilfered item. Incensed, he fell back on an old favorite strategy: Informing very few people, he decided he was going to hold King Kalaniopu’u for ransom on his ship until he got the cutter back.
Accordingly, he set out to capture the monarch. But his quest coincided with another extremely unlucky event.
51. He Was In The Wrong Place At The Wrong Time
Without telling him why he wanted him, Cook convinced the king to walk over to the ship with him—until one of Kalaniopu’u’s wives, sensing danger, ran down to the beach with two chiefs and pleaded with him not to embark, soon drawing a crowd of 2,000 to 3,000 Hawaiians. Then, just as Cook tried to persuade Kalaniopu’u to continue on, horrible news reached the masses: On the other side of the bay, some of Cook’s men had shot a chief in an unrelated altercation.
It unraveled very fast from there.
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52. They Cast The First Stone
Suddenly, the Hawaiians’ long-simmering resentment and doubts about Cook and his men turned into rage. A warrior—the first to truly break the illusion that Cook was a god—now threatened the captain with a dagger and a stone, and before long the entire crowd was throwing stones at Cook’s men, with the Europeans firing rifles back. It didn’t last long.
53. He Perished In Agony
The marines managed to fire just one round before the growing crowd of Hawaiians fell on them and they had to retreat. But Cook never escaped: Another Hawaiian, the spell of Lono fully broken, clubbed him on the back of the head, then a group surrounded him, stabbing him and beating the false god to death as his men watched from the boats.
Many of the sailors likely knew enough about the Hawaiians to know what came next.
Universal History Archive, Getty Images
54. They Cooked His Body
When the scene calmed down, four marines were dead alongside their captain, though many more Hawaiians perished that day as well as in the tense days that followed. In accordance with his status as a high-ranking enemy, the Hawaiians dismembered Cook, burnt him, and then distributed his parts among various chiefs of the island—though, contrary to popular belief, his body was never eaten. In fact, it was partially returned.
Screenshot from Timewatch, BBC (2009)
55. One Feature Remained
A day later, King Kalaniopu’u allowed priests to return part of Cook’s thigh to his crew, and three days later more parts, including his legs, arms, and hands, made their way back to the ship. Gruesomely, Cook’s men were able to identify his remains by the distinctive scar he had gotten on his hand decades ago in the Seven Years’ War.
Throughout, still-credulous Hawaiians asked officers when Lono would return, and if he would be wrathful.
56. They Tried And Failed To Continue His Legacy
Charles Clerke, who had been commanding the Discovery and now took over as leader of the expedition, cautioned the men against full-scale retaliation and, after burying what he had of Cook at sea, set off as soon as he could.
The ruined voyage still clung to Cook’s plan and sailed north again to find the Northwest Passage—once more to no avail. Exhausted and empty-handed, the crew reached a mournful England in October of 1780, the news of Cook’s death having preceded them by some months.
Nathaniel Dance uploaded by User Robinhood on de.wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons
57. He May Have Suffered From Mental Illness
Captain James Cook’s brutal death is now viewed as a cautionary tale of one man’s obsession and hubris, not to mention the obsession and hubris of the colonial project. Even so, that may be only half the story—and modern historians have suggested a new, tragic reason for his disturbing end.
Tracking the change in Cook’s mood and personality from his first to his third voyages, some believe the captain may have been suffering from some mental or physical illness; one that made him cruel, impulsive, and ultimately doomed.
Gillfoto - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gillfoto, Wikimedia Commons
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