Third Voyage of James Cook, Volume 3

The third and final voyage of James Cook stands as one of history's great acts of exploration and one of its most tragic conclusions. Departing in 1776 with orders to locate the fabled Northwest Passage, Cook commanded the HMS Resolution while Captain Clerke led the companion ship Discovery. The expedition swept across the globe via Tenerife, Cape Town, and New Zealand, where Cook returned the Polynesian traveler Omai to his homeland of Raiatea. From there, Cook became the first European to encounter the Hawaiian Islands, which he named the Sandwich Islands, before charting the fog-shrouded western coast of North America. The explorers pushed northward into the Bering Strait, only to find themselves trapped by impenetrable ice. Cold, exhausted, and desperate for supplies, Cook made the fateful decision to return to Hawaii. There, in an altercation over a stolen boat, Cook met his death on the beach at Kealakekua Bay in February 1779. This volume chronicles those final years: the brutal Arctic conditions, the desperate homeward voyage, and the moment when the greatest navigator of his age fell to the people he had come to study. For readers of naval history, the age of enlightenment exploration, or anyone drawn to stories of ambition pushing against the limits of the possible.