James Cook's voyages would have been impossible without Tupaia, Maheine and Mai, who introduced Cook to the world of the South Seas, saved his ships from dangerous coral reefs and kept the Maori from massacring him as an intruder in New Zealand.
Tupaia, master navigator, high priest and chief advisor to the rulers of Tahiti, drew up a nautical map of more than seventy previously unknown islands – the first written document to attest to the tremendous nautical knowledge of the Polynesian seafarers. Is the only reason he barely shows up in Cook’s descriptions because he fell ill with scurvy on board and died soon afterwards – and Cook wanted to go down in maritime history as the captain who had “not lost a single man to scurvy”? It was thanks to Maheine that Cook’s second voyage lasted for three years and gained him access to important cult objects. The only one of the three men to make it to London was Mai, where he achieved bizarre fame as a “wild prince of the south Seas.”
All three of these indigenous men had their own reasons for sailing with the English, which the latter knew nothing about.
