January 17, 1779. Two English ships drop anchor in Kealakekua Bay, on the great island of Hawaii, amid a thousand canoes that have come out to meet them. Priests lead James Cook onto the great platform of worship, the morai, where he is honored almost to the point of adoration and hailed under the name of Orono. King Terreeoboo comes in person to exchange his feathered cloak and his name with the captain. Nothing in this unparalleled welcome hints at what is to come.
A month of feasting and provisions offered, then departure. A squall breaks a mast and forces the two ships back to a bay that has turned cold and silent. A boat stolen in the night, then a pinnace taken in turn: Cook decides to hold the king hostage on the beach at Kaawaloa. The crowd arms itself, a shot is fired, and on February 14, 1779, the greatest navigator of the century falls beneath the daggers, thirty paces from his boats.
The journal kept in Cook's own hand stops short. It is his second lieutenant, James King, twenty-eight years old, an astronomer and friend to the island's priests, who takes up the pen. A week of stratagems and reprisals, a white flag carried ashore, the village of Kakooa set ablaze, and then the captain's bones at last returned and committed to the sea. The ships then resume their course from island to island, searching in vain for an anchorage at Maui, Molokai, and Oahu, before facing one last clash over water at Kauai.
King then draws the first complete portrait of the archipelago: eleven islands named in honor of Lord Sandwich, the volcanoes Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, whose height he calculates, a population estimated at four hundred thousand souls, the law of taboo explained at last, and those islanders who let themselves be carried, lying on a board, by waves where no European launch would dare venture.
This fifth volume corresponds to Book V of the original edition, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (London, 1784): from the arrival at Kealakekua on January 17, 1779, to the departure from the Sandwich Islands in mid-March. It is the text in which the narration changes hands: after Cook's death, it is James King who tells the story, in the words of a direct witness rather than the captain himself.
Fifth of the six volumes devoted to James Cook's third and final voyage, in the Forgotten Travel Journals collection. Each volume can be read on its own.
A first complete modern rewriting for today's reader, making this account readable without betraying anything of the voyage. Twenty original illustrations and redrawn maps bring the route to life, while a set of reference tools (glossary, timeline, index, editor's note, afterword, and further reading) and selected passages from the original text shed light on the reading.
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