Profs & Pints Annapolis: Captain Cook's Last Voyage

Profs and Pints Annapolis presents: “Captain Cook’s Last Voyage,” on a famed mariner’s exploits and demise, with Justin M. Jacobs, professor of history at American University and scholar of the history of archaeology and of the travels of Captain Cook.

Over the span of little more than a decade in the late 18th century, Captain James Cook embarked on three of the most consequential maritime voyages in history, capping a meteoric career in which he rose from the depths of rural poverty to receive global fame and accolades.

Cook’s first two voyages were marked by near-fatal encounters and groundbreaking scientific discoveries, but it’s his third that became the stuff of legend.

Join historian Justin M. Jacobs, a favorite of Profs and Pints fans, as he retraces Cook’s final Pacific voyage in a talk lavishly illustrated with the work of Cook’s shipboard artists and supplemented with newly drawn satellite maps.

We’ll stop along the way at nearly every island or coastline where Cook’s ships laid anchor. We’ll examine Cook’s surprising responses to the Māori cannibalism of his crew and learn about Cook’s narrow escape from plots on his life on Tonga.

Professor Jacobs will discuss how Cook was invited to join a Tahitian war fleet and give an account of Cook’s harrowing sail through deadly icebergs in the Bering Strait. Finally, he’ll talk about Cook’s attempted kidnapping of a Hawaiian chief—a foolish act that led to Cook’s untimely demise.

It’s a talk that will give you newfound appreciation of an age of oceanic exploration and scientific discovery and the huge risks involved. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 4 pm and talk starts at 5:30 pm.)

Image: Cook's ships Resolution and Discovery off Tahiti, as painted by Samuel Atkins around 1800.