Cook · 1779
Kealakekua Bay
On the morning of the fourteenth of February 1779, Captain James Cook RN, on his third Pacific voyage with HMS *Resolution* and HMS *Discovery*, came ashore at Kealakekua Bay on the western coast of the island of Hawaii to retrieve a cutter stolen during the night by a chief of the bay. He had a marine guard of nine men and the intention of taking the local king, Kalaniʻōpuʻu, hostage in his cabin until the cutter was returned, a method that had worked for him in eight previous theft incidents in the Pacific. By misunderstanding, by the failure of the strategy, by the chief's reluctance and his retainers' alarm, by news that arrived on the beach at the wrong moment of a Hawaiian killed by a British boat in the next bay over, the situation collapsed. Cook was struck on the head from behind in the surf, fell on his face, and was killed by clubs and daggers in shallow water. Four marines died with him. He was forty years old. His remains were treated with the highest Hawaiian honours, the bones distributed among ranking chiefs as a man of mana, and many of them eventually returned to the *Resolution* in a parcel for sea-burial. The third voyage continued under Charles Clerke and made it home to Deptford on the fourth of October 1780, sixteen months after his death.
It is a quarter past seven on the morning of the fourteenth of February, 1779, on the lava beach below the village of Kaʻawaloa, on the north shore of Kealakekua Bay on the west coast of the island of Hawaii. He is forty years old. He is Captain James Cook of His Majesty's Ship Resolution, post-captain of the white, Fellow of the Royal Society, on his third voyage in nine years. He is in undress uniform with a fowling-piece in his hands, one barrel loaded with small shot, the other with ball, marine sergeant Phillips at his right elbow with a brace of pistols, nine marines in a line behind him on the beach, the pinnace and the launch lying offshore at twenty yards under Lieutenant Williamson and Lieutenant Roberts.
Three hours ago he sent the boats to blockade the bay against the canoes carrying the cutter that was stolen from the Discovery in the night. He has come ashore himself, with the marines, to invite Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the king of this island and his host of three weeks, up to the Resolution as a guest until the cutter is returned. He has done it eight times in eight other islands. The chief on each of those islands has come quietly. The cutter on each has come back within the day.
Kalaniʻōpuʻu, eighty years old, has come quietly. He is sitting on the beach in front of his house. His son, sixteen, is sitting beside him. His chief wife, Kanekapolei, is at the door of the house calling to him not to go on the ship.
He thinks: the king is willing. The wife is the problem. If the wife persuades him to wait it will not happen.
He thinks, hearing the noise out in the bay: Williamson is firing on a canoe. Some chief has gone to the head of the bay and is on the way back with news.
He thinks: the news will be that we have killed someone in the next bay over and the news will arrive on this beach in two minutes.
The news arrives on the beach in two minutes. A man comes running. A blood-priest of the Lono cult, by the later report of the Resolution's officer Bayly, calls out at the top of his voice that the people of Kalaniʻōpuʻu's chief have been killed by the haole in the canoe at the head of the bay. The people on the beach pick up stones. The marines are not yet attacked, but the marines are not yet retreating. The king does not stand up.
Cook decides to abandon the attempt and to go back to the boats. He takes the king's elbow lightly. The king's elbow does not move. The king, by the testimony of his own grandson at a remove, is afraid for the first time in fifty years. The chief warrior of the king, a man called Kalaimanokahoʻowaha, comes between Cook and the king with an iron dagger. Cook fires the small-shot barrel of the fowling-piece. The shot is stopped by the warrior's woven mat-armour. He fires the ball. The warrior, by the tradition, is killed. By the British logbooks, he is unhurt and disappears into the line of his retainers.
Cook turns to walk back to the surf. The surf is twenty yards down the lava. He has the marines around him. The marines fire one volley over the heads of the crowd. The crowd does not break.
He is in the surf. The water is to his knees. He turns to wave the boats in to take him off. The pinnace is fifteen yards. He has just signalled them in. He has his back to the beach for the first and last time. A man behind him, by the testimony of a midshipman on the pinnace looking at him through a glass, hits him on the head with a club. He goes face down in the water at his own feet. By the time the man with the club has hit him, three other men have come into the water with iron daggers and the marine line has broken. The marines that can swim go for the boats. Four cannot. The four are killed in the surf within the next five minutes. Cook, by the testimony of the seamen who saw it from the launch, is held face-down in the shallow water by one warrior while another stabs him repeatedly with the iron dagger. He is dead before the boat can come in. The body is dragged up onto the beach.
The body went up the slope to Kaʻawaloa village in the next hour. The Hawaiian funerary practice for a man of the highest mana was to disjoint the body, strip the bones of flesh, distribute the long bones, the skull and the jawbone among ranking chiefs of the king's household, and burn or bury the rest with high ritual. This was done, and was the practice for Hawaiian kings, and was thus, in Hawaiian terms, an honour. Charles Clerke, in command of the expedition, and Lieutenant King negotiated for the next eight days for the return of what could be recovered. On the twentieth of February the Resolution received a parcel containing the parts that had not been distributed: the scalp, the hands (preserved in salt by the islanders, who had gathered Cook had wished his own people to recognise him), the long bones, the lower jaw, the skull-cap. The remains were committed to the sea on the twenty-first of February, with a full naval service. Cook had been in the Pacific for almost ten years across three voyages. He had, by the careful judgment of the late twentieth century, opened the Pacific to European mapping more than any single navigator before or since, and is also, in the same judgment, accountable for the chain of dispossessions and disease that followed European contact through the Pacific. The Hawaiian Islands, which he had named the Sandwich Islands for his patron, kept the name on British charts until the 1840s, then dropped it. The bay he died in is now a Hawaiian state historical park; a white obelisk on the headland marks the spot. It was put up by his countrymen in 1874, ninety-five years after.