May 2,  O Wayhee            He did not invent Pacific cuisine.  and he did not go on any chef’s TV show.

He sailed here.  He is one of the “THE NEWCOMERS, 1778 to 1895 portrayed in Maui in five centuries, the last section of my forthcoming book Voices of Aloha: Beyond the Beach. He is Captain James Cook.  As the tale goes:

ONCE UPON A TIME—the year was 1778—a British sea captain named Cook landed on a majestic set of islands. Polynesians had discovered them thousands of years ago.

Cook, from England, viewed the natives as “a handsome people, hospitable, friendly and cheerful living in a beautiful land.”

Others more than a century later had a different view: 

“These were a strong and hardworking people skilled in crafts and possessing much learning,” another early observer noted.   The Calvinist leader from New England, however, described a different people—a people view as naked savages.  Cook got it rightt, yet paid for the visits  with his life:

PICTURED:  The many travels of Captain Cook who crissrossed ed these seas and channels many times before his last and fatal landfall on Hawaii Island near present-day Kona.