Captain James Cook

As I was enjoying a fine Eggs Benedict breakfast at the Coffee Shop restaurant in Captain Cook, I asked the proprietor if Hawaiians liked or disliked Captain Cook. I suspected the later since the Captain Cook monument is located where he was killed rather than where he initially landed. Here is what this lifelong resident of the Big Island told me.

Captain Cook was neither good nor bad, he was just stupid. The Hawaiian natives were in the midst of Makahiki, the harvest festival where they honor the god Lono. During this festival of peace, Captain James Cook's ships, the HMS Resolution and the HMS Discovery appeared. The Resolution's masts and other iron resembled certain artifacts used by the Hawaiian people and the Hawaiians believed Cook was the incarnation of Lono. According to the ship's surgeon, David Samwell, "Capt. Cook attended by two other gentlemen went on shore to see for a convenient place for erecting the tents, astronomers, observatories, etc. As he went along a herald walked before him repeating some words & the indians cleared the way & prostrated themselves on their faces before Capt. Cook." First Lieutenant James Burney noted that he saw "all the people, except those of the priesthood, laying prostrate or rather on their hands and knees with their heads bowed down to the ground." Over 1,000 ships put to sea to greet him. Cook and his crew received lavish gifts and the Hawaiians worshipped him with many ceremonies. Cook and his crew stayed for a month and the sailors traded iron nails (the Hawaiians were fascinated by iron) for sex. In the space of one month, the crew unwittingly infected Hawaiians with gonorrhea, syphilis, and other diseases against which they had no natural resistance. Captain Cook's encounter resulted in the decimation of the majority of the Hawaiian people - an estimated 500,000 or more Hawaiians greeted him in 1779. By 1848, the population was reduced to 88,000.

Captain Cook's final journal entry begins, "I have nowhere in this sea seen such a number of people assembled at one place, besides those in the canoes all the shore of the bay was covered with people and hundreds were swimming about the ships like shoals of fish."

After a month of enjoying the royal treatment, Cook left Hawaii to resume his exploration of the Northern Pacific. Unfortunately, a storm broke the foremast of his ship and he limped back into the bay in Hawaii for repairs. By that time, the season of peace on Hawaii had passed and the natives were praying to Kū, the god of war. Seeing that the man they had deified was in fact a mere mortal with a broken ship upset the Hawaiians and they took one of his ships and began looting it. Cook tried to kidnap the Hawaiian king to trade him for the ship, but his efforts were thwarted. On February 14, 1779 while his back was turned as he tried to launch one of his ships, the former worshipers hit Cook over the head and then stabbed him to death.

Interestingly, William Bligh was the sailing master on the Resolution. History remembers him as the captain of the HMS Bounty on which Fletcher Christian led the infamous mutiny.