I am at a loss for words. Earlier today, my friend and mentor Captain James Cook was killed during an altercation with the natives. I'm not even sure where to begin. I guess the best place to start would be what happened during the events that led up to his death. Yesterday, I recorded about the natives' theft of some of our metals from the hull of the UMS Discovery. I also discussed our plan to capture the native Chieftain and ransom him for our materials from the ship. I had my doubts about this plan, but I never imagined that this would happen.

We landed on the Hawaiian beaches in transport boats shortly after dawn and made our way to the village of Kavaroah. We were greeted almost instantly by the natives living there and the situation started off tense and peaceful, but eventually turned violent and deadly. The natives seemed to piece together fairly quickly why we were there and things escalated. First, the natives began throwing stones at us, which led to one of the men panicking and he opened fired upon them. Then the chaos ensued. We were vastly outnumbered even with our superior weaponry. We attempted to fall back to the transport boats, but 5 of the men including Captain Cook were overrun. The 5 of us that made it back to the transport boats attempted to aid the remaining 5 by open firing on the natives, but it eventually proved unsuccessful. All 5 of the sailors that didn't make it to the transport boats perished.

I watched helplessly as Captain Cook died at the hands of the natives. First, he was clubbed over the head by a native that had snuck up on him. Captain Cook stubbled a few paces, dropped his musket, and then fell to his knees. As he attempted to get back to his feet, another native approached him from the rear and stabbed him in the back of the neck with an iron dagger. It was at this point that I realized that Captain Cook was going to die.

As the blood rushed from the wound on his neck, Captain Cook was grabbed by a couple of natives and dragged toward the water. They then proceeded to push his head under and try to drown him. I frantically fired my musket, hitting one of the natives holding Captain Cook down. That gave Captain Cook an opening to gasp for air. They tried again to push him under the water and drown him, but Captain Cook was able to get his head above water on his own this time. The natives didn't give Captain Cook a chance to fight them a third time as he was clubbed over the head again. With that blow, Captain Cook was no more. I then watched in horror as they dragged his lifeless body from the ocean and took turns stabbing him repeatedly to make sure that he was dead.

The other 4 men trapped with Captain Cook on the beach didn't fare much better. As we rowed back toward the UMS Resolution and UMS Discovery, nobody said a word. We were all too stunned by the horrors that we had just witnessed. While we were all reeling from the loss of our Captain, I was reeling from the loss of my friend. His death had left me with a sense of rage that was most unlike my character. No man should ever have to be mutilated like that. It's savage. It's barbaric. It's ungodly.

The other aspect that left us silent was that we had been forced to leave our fellow sailors in the hands of those savages. There were simply too many of them. We couldn't get back to the Captain without being subjected to the same horrors that he endured. Part of me still felt that I should have gone down with my Captain. The other part of me just wanted to go home.

I'm hoping that before we depart this hellish nightmare of an island that we are able to retrieve Captain Cook's body and give him a proper burial at sea. We owe it to him. I owe it to him.

- J. Taylor 1779