Historian Hampton Sides closed out the 2024-25 Mark O. Hatfield Lecture Series on Tuesday, May 13, by speaking of his book The Wide Wide Sea, a profile of Captain James Cook’s third voyage. The lecture, at downtown Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, was sponsored by the Oregon Historical Society. 

Cook’s success, Sides told his audience, was due to three factors: his skill as a navigator, his outstanding cartography skills, and his use of the chronometer. The chronometer allowed Cook to know his location in the world and to determine his longitude, which permitted him to make accurate maps on his voyages. Another advantage of the chronometer was that it permitted Cook to accurately report where he had been and to be able to document the exact location of isolated islands that had not previously been discovered.

One aspect of Cook’s success on his voyages was that no one ever succumbed to scurvy.  Scurvy was a dreaded disease in this era caused a lack of Vitamin C and was a “hazard of the trade” on long sea voyages. Cook made sure that his men were provided with fresh fruit, vegetables, and meat on a regular basis, and it preserved their health.

During Sides’ presentation he highlighted some of the experiences Cook and his men had during their four-year voyage. Cook also documented the sport of surfing, when he visited Hawaii on his third voyage. What surprised Cook and his fellow sailors was the skill of the Hawaiians on their surf boards amongst the crashing waves, since many of his sailors did not know how to swim.

 Sides mentioned that while in Tahiti, Cook and his men learned on their voyage the use of Lomi Lomi, a form of massage.  During this voyage Cook suffered from painful sciatica. An army of Tahitian men and women descended on Cook, and in three sessions cured him of his malady.  Initially skeptical, he was dumbfounded by the experience.

During their visit to Tahiti, Captain Cook and his crew observed the practices of human sacrifice and tattooing. Cook’s men were so fascinated with tattooing, Sides said, that many of them had the Tahitians tattoo them during their stay. When they got back to England, Cook’s men showed their fellow sailors their tattoos — and so began the practice of mariners getting tattoos that prevails to this day.

Cook’s purpose on his third voyage, Sides related, was to find a shortcut through Canada that would connect the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean for trade reasons, a quest that had been an obsession of the British empire for centuries. The purpose was to be able to get to Asia and India a lot easier for trade purposes, and to avoid the Spanish fleets. Cook’s third voyage was a little different because it involved going to Alaska and trying to find a “magical route” from the Pacific to the Atlantic (the Northwest Passage). Cooks’s mission was to explore Alaska, which was largely unknown at the time, and he had to rely on inaccurate maps that had been made by Russian explorers.

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Cook’s third voyage began in July 1776 when he left Plymouth, England, with two ships, The Resolution and The Discovery. With so much going on, Cook and his men never did hear about the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution on the North American continent.

Sides emphasized that his book is not a biography on Captain Cook. Rather, he termed his book an “ensemble story.” Several individuals who accompanied Cook on this voyage went on to greater fame themselves.

George Vancouver captained an exploration himself to the Canadian province of British Columba and Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California.

John Ledyard, an American who ended up on Cook’s ship The Resolution, figures very prominently in Sides’s book. After the third voyage, Ledyard was sent to Canada to fight for the British during the last days of the American Revolution. After that, he traveled by foot in an epic trip across Europe and Russia in order to reach Alaska. He died at the age of thirty-seven in Cairo, Egypt, while preparing to find the source of the Niger River.

A third example is William Bligh, who captained the famous ship HMS Bounty and its subsequent mutiny.  According to Sides, Bligh was extremely talented and competent but was insufferable to others.

During the voyage Cook anchored at locations such as Tonga, The Society Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand, and Hawaii.  Many of the sailors had signed up for this trip so that they could visit these places. The sailors on this voyage also encountered beautiful women who were willing to have relationships with the mariners, according to Sides.

Sides mentioned that a major character in his book is Mai, the first Polynesian to set foot on British soil.  Mai came to England as part of Cook’s second voyage. England “rolled out the red carpet” for Mai, treating him like a celebrity and thinking he was a prince. Mai was presented to many aristocrats and intellectuals in London, and met King George III.  George III thought that Mai represented the “noble savage,” and even had him immunized against smallpox. Mai learned the games of backgammon and chess and was extremely popular with women. After two years, he was homesick and wanted to return home to Tahiti. George III agreed to have Captain Cook take Mai back home to Tahiti, along with his personal belongings that he had accumulated during his stay in England.

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According to Sides, on the way to Alaska Cook stumbled on the island of Kaua’i in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that was not on any of his charts. Cook is believed to be the first European explorer of the Hawaiian Islands. His experiences with the Hawaiians were positive, and he noticed they shared a similar language and culture as other groups he had encountered in the Pacific Ocean, such as New Zealand, Tonga, and The Society Islands. 

Cook recognized that Polynesians had spread over an extremely large area in the Pacific and must have been very knowledgeable about the stars, the currents, migration patterns of birds, and marine life.  Cook made landfall in Oregon (Cape Foulweather) and Washington (Cape Flattery), Nootka Sound (Canada), along the west coast of Alaska, and into the Arctic through the Bering Strait looking for the Northwest Passage. In the Arctic Ocean Cook encountered an impenetrable wall of ice, and headed back before his ships were crushed.  Sidess mentioned that Cook made the decision to try to find the Northwest Passage the following summer. 

Cook went back to Hawaii and spent the winter there. He anchored his ship in Kealakekua Bay on the island of Hawaii. When Cook made landfall he was mistakenly thought to be the god Lono, and the Hawaiians made him the centerpiece of their festival. Sides then discussed the reasons why things went wrong between Cook, his crew and the Islanders.

Sides made several valuable observations regarding Cook and his expeditions:

• First, Cook never named anyplace after himself, breaking with the custom of the era.
• Second, during Cook’s voyage, Benjamin Franklin notified American merchant seamen not to stop Cook because he was involved in scientific research that would have far-reaching consequences.
• Third, Captain Cook was much different on the third voyage than he had been on the previous two voyages. On the third voyage he was short-tempered, depressed, stayed by himself and was quick to give his men the lash, which he would have never previously done.  It is Sides’ belief that Cook was a victim of parasites. 

Sides concluded his talk by saying that Cook was a product of the Enlightenment and never tried to convert the native peoples he encountered to Christianity. He described Cook as a “proto-anthropologist” who described in a nonjudgmental way how the natives ate, the weapons they used, and what they wore, which was extraordinary for the times. 

Sides stated that most explorers, in contrast to Cook, would exploit the native peoples’ resources at gunpoint and leave as soon as possible. Cook was genuinely curious, and wanted to know about the people (especially the Polynesians) he encountered during his voyages. He wanted to know about their ship architecture, and what kind of mariners and navigators they were.

Regarding Cook’s legacy, Sides emphasized that one should avoid judging  historical figures such as Cook by the standards of today. According to Sides, Cook’s era showed that many of the puzzles of their day still needed to be solved. Sides’ presentation, as well as his book, showed us the importance of Cook’s final voyage, and his exhaustively researched and wonderfully written monograph is an original contribution to our knowledge of exploration and the peoples the explorers encountered.

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