I love a well-written true life historical adventure, and this is a great one. It tells the story of Captain Cook’s third and final voyage, a voyage on which he was killed in the Hawaiian Islands. The depth of research and amounts of fascinating facts are amazing, but even more amazing is that despite the abundance of details, the author Sides manages to keep the story fast-paced and thrilling every step of the way.

This voyage is one that I am content to take from an armchair, thank you. It’s not that I don’t like traveling: I’ve roamed around the world, hitchhiking and taking public transportation across the United States, around Europe, across the Middle East, and around the Indian Subcontinent. The way was often rough, and I was often broke or near broke, but I almost always managed to find congenial companionship, good food, and a safe place to lay my head. The conditions on this third voyage of Cook’s, though, and presumably on the first two as well, were appalling to say the least, especially for the common sailors: dampness, heat, cold, filth, rats, cockroaches, close quarters, and often disgusting cuisine. Why did they do it? Well, for one thing, conditions weren’t much better at home and this was probably the only job for which they were suited. But besides that, they reveled in the adventure of exploring new lands; they looked forward to liaisons with willing Polynesian women; and most of all, they craved a share of a generous reward offered by the Crown if they located and navigated the fabled Northwest Passage over the North American continent from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.

I had studied a bit about Cook’s journeys back in high school, but this is something I never knew, or at least I’d long since forgotten: that one of the primary goals of this third voyage of Cook’s was to search for a water route back to England through the Bering Sea and beyond. The trip took years, and along the way Cook charted the islands in the Pacific as well as the Northwest American coastline. He left just as the American colonists were signing the Declaration of Independence, and was unaware of the escalating Revolutionary War until many months later. He traveled from England to Cape Town, South Africa, and from thence to Tasmania, New Zealand, Tahiti, and other tropical islands. On his way to Alaska, he discovered Hawaii and its inhabitants, which no one in England knew existed. Then he made his way north, along the coastline of the Oregon Territory and Alaska, journeyed as far as he could before being stopped by solid ice fields, and then returned to Hawaii, where he was killed.

I’m not giving any spoilers here; you can find this all out in Wikipedia. What makes this book difficult to put down is the way that Sides tells the story. It is full of details, as I mentioned, but these details help to immerse you in the adventure, so that you can feel the sea spray, experience the frequent storms at sea, shudder from the bone-chilling cold, dread the unknown while sailing through thick fog, and revel in the calm interludes of abundance and romantic entanglements during stopovers in islands such as Tahiti. The author’s skill as a writer makes it all come alive, as if you are a participant in the action.

As I said, I am content to sit this adventure out in an armchair, but nonetheless I am thankful to Sides for making it possible for me to partake of it, at least vicariously. It’s a thrilling tale of a high-stakes voyage on the high seas that holds the attention from start to finish. Highly recommended.