THE WIDE WIDE SEA BY HAMPTON SIDES

 

The Wide Wide Sea is a 2024 history book by Hampton Sides that chronicles Captain James Cook's final voyage, focusing on his transformation from a celebrated explorer to a controversial figure whose actions led to his death in Hawaii. The book examines the complexities of the Age of Exploration, the scientific and imperial ambitions of the journey, and the first contact between Europeans and indigenous peoples in the Pacific. 

JAMES BY PERCIVAL EVERETT

 

James begins in the town of Hannibal, Missouri. Jim, an enslaved man, is waiting at the home of Miss Watson for a plate of cornbread to bring back to his wife, Lizzie, and daughter, Sadie. During this first scene, it becomes apparent that the enslaved people speak erudite, standard English among themselves but code-switch into dialect around their enslavers, conscious that white people view them as inferior and would be puzzled to hear them use grammatically correct English. While Jim is waiting, the young Huck Finn stops by. Although a racial divide separates the two, Jim has a soft spot for the boy, whose abusive father regularly subjects him to beatings.

Jim finds out that Miss Watson intends to sell him. Without a clear plan but knowing that he must flee, he absconds to a nearby island in the river. He plans to hide there until he figures out what his next steps will be. He does not want to go north without his family. While he is hiding, Huck appears, having fled yet another of his father’s brutal acts of violence. It soon becomes clear that the townspeople are looking for Huck, and Jim speculates that he will be blamed for the boy’s disappearance, so he sends Huck back into town dressed in some girls’ clothes that the two found. Huck reports back that Jim is indeed a wanted man, and that Huck’s father has also disappeared. Jim and Huck realize that they must flee, so they set out on the river together, heading south to throw off their pursuers, who wouldn’t expect a self-emancipated person to travel away from a free state. They encounter multiple groups of people despite traveling only at night. Huck lies to a group of white men, claiming that Jim, who is hidden under a tarp, is his smallpox-infected uncle, and the men nervously let them go. They run into a group of enslaved men who advise them to flee the area. Before they leave, one of the men manages to steal Jim a pencil, and he begins to write his life story to better understand it.

Next, they run into a pair of confidence men (conmen) who claim to be the rightful king of France and an English duke. Although they don’t trust the men, they cannot shake them. The Duke and the King take over a tent revival and manage to swindle the congregants out of a hefty sum of money before the crowd grows suspicious. The four are forced to flee with the townspeople in pursuit. Jim and Huck want to reverse course and head north alone. However, the Duke and the King have figured out that Jim is a fugitive from slavery and hatch a scheme to sell him, then sell him again once he escapes.

The King and the Duke stop off for some whiskey and leave Jim chained up in a local blacksmith’s shop. When they return to find him unchained, they beat the enslaved man in charge of Jim’s shackles. That man’s enslaver returns, interrupts the beating, and informs the Duke and the King that he intends to keep Jim to work while the other enslaved man recovers from his injuries. The Duke and the King leave with Huck in tow. Jim meets the head of a traveling minstrel show named Emmett, who “hires” Jim to be a tenor in a troupe of men who perform in blackface. Although Emmett purports to not be prejudiced, it becomes clear that he does intend to exploit Jim, and Jim flees in the company of Norman, another enslaved man who has been passing as white in the troupe. To raise funds, the two decide to try out the Duke and the King’s scheme of selling Jim, and although Jim does manage to escape, the experience is harrowing and traumatic, and Jim emerges badly beaten.

Through a series of coincidences culminating in the sinking of a riverboat, Norman dies and Jim is reunited with Huck. Jim reveals himself to be Huck’s true father and expresses his desire that Huck return to the safety of Hannibal, where he can be taken care of by Miss Watson and Judge Thatcher. Huck is flabbergasted that his mother had an affair with a Black man and does not want to be separated from Jim. The two return to Hannibal and Huck asks around about Jim’s status as a wanted man. He learns that Jim is wanted and that a sizeable party has been searching for him. He also finds out that Jim’s family has been sold. Jim steals into Judge Thatcher’s study in search of a bill of sale for his wife and daughter and is interrupted by Judge Thatcher. Jim forces him to reveal the location of his wife and daughter and sets off to recover the two. He sets fire to one of the area fields, enabling him, his family, and other enslaved people to escape. He and his family make it north to safety. Although they are still subject to racism and treated with suspicion in Iowa, where they settle, they are free.

THE WIDE WIDE SEA BY HAMPTON SIDES

 

On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution . Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment?

Hampton Sides’ bravura account of Cook’s last journey both wrestles with Cook’s legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration in the 1700s. Cook was renowned for his peerless seamanship, his humane leadership, and his dedication to science-–the famed naturalist Joseph Banks accompanied him on his first voyage, and Cook has been called one of the most important figures of the Age of Enlightenment. He was also deeply interested in the native people he encountered. In fact, his stated mission was to return a Tahitian man, Mai, who had become the toast of London, to his home islands. On previous expeditions, Cook mapped huge swaths of the Pacific, including the east coast of Australia, and initiated first European contact with numerous peoples. He treated his crew well, and endeavored to learn about the societies he encountered with curiosity and without judgment.

Yet something was different on this last voyage. Cook became mercurial, resorting to the lash to enforce discipline, and led his two vessels into danger time and again. Uncharacteristically, he ordered violent retaliation for perceived theft on the part of native peoples. This may have had something to do with his secret orders, which were to chart and claim lands before Britain’s imperial rivals could, and to discover the fabled Northwest Passage. Whatever Cook’s intentions, his scientific efforts were the sharp edge of the colonial sword, and the ultimate effects of first contact were catastrophic for Indigenous people around the world. The tensions between Cook’s overt and covert missions came to a head on the shores of Hawaii. His first landing there was harmonious, but when Cook returned after mapping the coast of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, his exploitative treatment of the Hawaiians led to the fatal encounter.

At once a ferociously-paced story of adventure on the high seas and a searching examination of the complexities and consequences of the Age of Exploration, THE WIDE WIDE SEA is a major work from one of our finest narrative nonfiction writers.

GenresHistoryNonfictionBiographyAdventureAudiobookTravelWorld History 

408 pages, Hardcover

First published April 9, 2024

 

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Hampton Sides

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