I'm John Batchel with the author Hampton Sides.

His new book is The Wide Wide Sea, Imperial Ambition, First Contact, and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook.

Cook makes a decision not to winter with the Russians in Kamchatka, but to head to, not even Tahiti.

Let's go back to Hawaii. So they head south,

and in January of 79, they come through to the Hawaiian Islands. First, they're around Maui and then

they're around Big Island. But he doesn't land. What's his thinking, Hampton? Well, he's come to Hawaii

to warm up, to spend the winter, to replenish his ships, and to let us men thaw out a little bit, right?

He also, at this point, doesn't want too much contact with the native people.

He knows that his men, many of his men, have venereal disease.

He does not want his men, you know, fornicating with the local women on the beach.

He writes about this extensively in his journal.

Like, you know, these are innocent people.

They do not have this disease.

We do not want to inflict it on them.

So his idea is to circumnavigate the big island and trade via canoes with the local people

who would come out in their canoes and they would trade things, but control the bartering

to a certain extent and also make sure that his men weren't coming ashore.

But slowly but surely they, you know, they go all the way around the island.

Meanwhile, Cook is charting the big island.

He understands this is a major, major fine and that the Admiralty back in England is going

to want to know all about it.

But he's like doing this weird dance where he's just offshore flirting with the island,

...