How Captain Cook went from being celebrated to slain in Hawaii

On his third voyage, well over two centuries ago, Captain Cook made a detour to Hawaii that would result in his violent demise. (Supplied: Dixson Galleries, SLNSW) Link copiedShareShare articleBeneath the sprawling, gnarled branches of a kiawe tree in Hawaii's pristine Kealakekua Bay, an X lies carved into an otherwise unassuming rock face. But there's no buried treasure to be found here. This X marks the spot where Captain James Cook was killed by Kānaka Maoli (native Hawaiians) on Valentine's Day in 1779. The X in question that quite literally marks the spot. (ABC/Wooden Horse/WildBear Entertainment/Artemis Media) Almost 250 years on, the British naval explorer is famed for his navigational and cartographic feats. Emalani Case thinks another descriptor should be added to that list: thief. The Kānaka Maoli lecturer in Pacific Studies smiles as she looks down at the spot where Cook met his demise, waves gently lapping against the foreshore. "What I think most people hear is that Captain Cook was killed by a group of savage Hawaiians," she tells ABC iview's Stuff the British Stole. "What people don't know is that he stole from us. "And I think people need to see him and his crew as thieves." Emalani Case is "so sick" of talking about Cook. But her conscience won't let her stop. (ABC/Wooden Horse/WildBear Entertainment/Artemis Media) Centuries later, the debate continues over the circumstances of the death of one of the world's most famous explorers — as well as the implications of those events for his legacy. Award-winning journalist Marc Fennell takes audiences on a globe-trotting investigation spanning the Caribbean, Asia and Egypt, following the trail of remarkable objects and the communities still fighting for their return. Case thinks it's "essential" that the story is revisited, including the perspective that isn't "tied to power". "[It's a misconception] he was an innocent explorer … What we understand as Hawaiians is that he was a coloniser," she says. Cook was just 17 years old when he left behind his stable job at a general dealer's shop in a North Yorkshire fishing village. He moved to the neighbouring ship-building trade centre of Whitby in 1746 with a goal: to make something more of himself. At the time, the town of Whitby was reportedly known as the "university of the sea". (ABC/Wooden Horse/WildBear Entertainment/Artemis Media) "He was primarily a simple man from very humble beginnings, with a real enthusiasm for science," says historian Clair Stones, of the Captain Cook Memorial Museum. Over the next three decades, Cook would complete two celebrated expeditions aboard the Endeavour. On the first, he mapped the Pacific Ocean, including New Zealand, Tahiti and the east coast of Australia. And on the second, Cook and his crew became the first recorded people to cross the Antarctic Circle. Clair Stones says Cook "opened up the world". (ABC/Wooden Horse/WildBear Entertainment/Artemis Media) According to Stones, Cook's expeditions differed in key ways from those of his predecessors, such as Christopher Columbus and Sir Walter Raleigh, whose Age of Discovery voyages were driven by the desire to increase wealth. "Cook's voyages were to find out … What do people on the other side of the world look like? How do they live? What customs do they have?" she says. In his lifetime, Cook went from working in a shop to a widely celebrated explorer. (Supplied: Dixson Galleries, SLNSW) By 1775, this man of "humble beginnings" had become renowned for his voyages of enlightenment and had climbed his way from a lieutenant to a commander to the higher rank of post-captain. It made sense that Cook would turn, then, to one of the last big navigational feats left to solve. For centuries, the British had dreamed of finding an elusive, ice-free trade route along the Northwest Passage connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In July 1776, Cook set sail in the Resolution from Plymouth in south-west England in search of the coveted shortcut to Asia. Cook and his crew battled through the storm-tossed waters of the Cape of Good Hope off the coast of South Africa and then rested and replenished their supplies in Aotearoa/New Zealand. By January 1778, they had come across the Hawaiian Islands — becoming the first-known Europeans to do so — before continuing their hunt for the Northwest Passage. An illustration of Cook's third voyage by John Webber, the official artist who accompanied the cartographer and his crew. (Supplied: Wellcome Collection) But mere months later, the Resolution's path forward was blocked by a wall of sea ice near Alaska. "You've got to imagine the horror of being on these tiny, tiny ships," says Peter FitzSimons, the author of James Cook: The Story Behind the Man who Mapped the World. "It was a cork on the ocean, and you're being swept by the waves and the wind and the frost. [Imagine] somebody shows you the brochure … Hawaii looks nice! Taxi!" "We know [Cook is] impor

How Captain Cook went from being celebrated to slain in Hawaii

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